Bar Harbor's town council will look to form a new overall tourism committee following the council's decision on Tuesday to disband its Cruise Ship advisory committee. Critics of the committee say its membership overwhelmingly represented the interests of cruise ship connected businesses over residential concerns about scale and congestion. Town council members agreed Bar Harbor no longer needed a committee solely dedicated to cruise ship tourism.
"I think the level of cruise ship visitation is part of this bigger conversation around the overall level of tourism in Bar Harbor," said Val Peacock, Bar Harbor's town council chair. "Tourism is a huge part of our economy, so it's a part of everything that we do."
Council members expressed interest in creating a new committee non-exclusive to cruise ships and dedicated to broadly addressing tourism in Bar Harbor. Peacock requested the council review and access all of the town's committees at its next meeting.
"It's part of a larger conversation of what is the role of municipal government," Peacock said. "Not just what we want [tourism in Bar Harbor] to look like, but how do we build out [the] policy and decision-making processes that [will] allow us to get to that place."
Bar Harbor residents voted in the last election to cap the daily number of cruise ship visitors allowed to disembark at a thousand. The law's constitutionality is being challenged in federal court. This is the latest development in Bar Harbor's debate over cruise ship tourism in town.
