Copyright Bangor Daily News
Property taxes and development are the top issues being addressed by people running for Ellsworth City Council this fall. For some candidates, lowering property taxes — which has been cited as a significant concern throughout Maine — is the main thing they want to address. None of the candidates has advocated for raising property taxes or maintaining them at the current level, but other candidates have instead emphasized a need to manage the city’s growth in order to maintain its affordability and liveability. Seven candidates, none of whom have previously been elected, are running for three seats on the council. The three councilors whose terms are ending this year — Michelle Beal, Tammy Mote and Jon Stein — all decided not to seek re-election. The candidates are Earl Awalt, Timothy Carter, John Linnehan, Eric Marichal, Carol Martineau, Patrick Shea and Marrina Smith. All seven participated in a candidates’ forum earlier this month at The Grand that was arranged by the Ellsworth American weekly newspaper and Heart of Ellsworth. Five candidates — Carter, Linnehan, Marichal, Shea and Smith — later responded to separate questions sent to them by the Bangor Daily News. Two candidates — Awalt and Martineau — did not respond to questions from the BDN. Attempts to contact these two candidates in person at their homes were unsuccessful. Linnehan, 77, who has run for city council multiple times, again is campaigning on a promise to cut city taxes. Linnehan, a conservative businessman, says if he is elected he will go through the city budget line by line to find places to reduce the city’s spending. “Ellsworth’s property taxes are unnecessarily way too high,” Linnehan said. “I believe our taxes are not fairly or equally assessed or allocated. Ellsworth’s current and recent past city councils have had a spending problem.” Carter, 65, agrees with Linnehan that property taxes have risen too much and the city should better manage its finances. Taxes on his home on Bucksport Road have risen 38 percent in the past four years, he said. Carter, who retired earlier this year from the pulp and paper industry, did not specify how the city can reduce its spending. He said Ellsworth should do what it can to relieve the tax burden on individual property owners by encouraging growth. He would welcome more tourism and manufacturing jobs in the city, and more housing development for middle-income families, he said. “We still need to promote more businesses, more private residences so that we actually have more tax revenue coming in to help dilute that burden,” Carter said. Awalt, 55, also said at the candidates’ forum that the city should rein in its spending to reduce the burden on taxpayers. A landscaper by trade, Awalt also did not say exactly what the city should cut, but said he is opposed to outsourcing services — which City Manager Charlie Pearce has proposed to do with the assessing department. Awalt said that the city should become more “business friendly” and could start by eliminating the steep impact fees that businesses have to pay if they want to develop commercial properties in Ellsworth. “Once you get the taxes down, free enterprise will take care of the rest,” he said. Martineau, who teaches at University of Maine, said the issues of the tax burden and development in the city are closely interconnected. Smart growth that preserves Ellsworth’s small-town livability — which is called for in the city’s new comprehensive plan — can help relieve the property tax burden by encouraging both affordable housing development and commercial investment in the city, she said. “We have a wonderful plan,” Martineau said at the candidates’ forum. “It is what is going to see us through tackling these interconnected issues.” Marichal, 47, who works for a local hotel firm, also said Ellsworth needs to grow to alleviate the tax burden, but not in such a way that it becomes a less desirable place to live. Rising property taxes are “a major concern,” he said, but at the same time the city cannot neglect infrastructure that residents both want and need, such as good roads, sidewalks, parks and other recreational facilities. “It’s not just about development,” Marichal said about the city managing its continued growth. “It’s about balance.” Patrick Shea, 66, is an Army veteran who grew up in Ellsworth. He said maintaining city infrastructure, keeping property taxes affordable and limiting spending are the three main things the city has to focus on. He said the city has not made good decisions in its spending priorities in recent years and has little now to show for some of them. Too many water mains keep breaking and there’s not enough affordable housing, he said. “Previous councils have kicked the can too far down the road, and throwing more money at a problem just doesn’t solve it,” Shea said. Marinna Smith, 29, is the daughter of current City Councilor Nancy Smith. A Jackson Laboratory employee, Marinna Smith said the city should draw in new residents by encouraging affordable housing development in its urban core, where infrastructure can serve more people and be maintained more cost effectively. Attracting new residents and new businesses go hand in hand, she said. “Raising property taxes creates hardship for everyone,” Smith said. “[Insufficient] affordable housing is a major obstacle to economic growth.” Part of the city’s economic growth includes the boom in weekly rental vacation properties, a sector that has significantly grown in Ellsworth in recent years as Bar Harbor has sought to rein them in. The candidates gave a variety of answers when asked at The Grand whether Ellsworth should take steps to limit the number of weekly rental dwellings in the city. Awalt, Linnehan, and Shea each said the city should not regulate the weekly rental market. Martineau and Smith said Ellsworth needs to gather more data on the local volume and variety of weekly rental properties before it decides whether to set limits. Carter and Marichal each said that they think the city should adopt limits on weekly rentals but that more information is needed before it decides what those limits should be.
