Ellsworth considers charging for downtown parking

Ellsworth officials are considering whether to charge motorists to park downtown as a way to ease the property tax burden and potentially raise up to $1 million in revenue.
But some downtown business owners have told them they don’t think it’s a good idea. They argue that raising money without adding to the tax burden might be appealing from a certain perspective, but could hamper people who staff or frequent downtown businesses.
“Don’t give away an advantage that Ellsworth has over Bar Harbor and other places right now,” Greg Winston, co-owner of Morton’s Moo ice cream shop, told city officials on Friday. “I worry it will be a major drag if not the death knell of small businesses.”
Property taxes in many Maine towns and cities have shot up in recent years, and some have turned to paid parking as a way to shift some of the financial burden of their municipal budgets onto user fees for things such as parking, in order to minimize the impact on local residents and business owners. Bar Harbor, which gets millions of tourists every year, implemented a paid parking plan in 2019 that, from July 2023 through June 2024, generated nearly $4 million in revenue for the town.
Ellsworth’s deputy police chief, Shawn Willey, told other city officials at the council’s finance committee meeting on Friday that the city has roughly 460 parking spots downtown spread across sites that include City Hall, Main Street, nearby side streets, public parking lots and the city’s harbor park and marina.
The upfront costs of buying and setting up solar-powered payment kiosks, implementing a payment system that would include a mobile app, and putting up appropriate signs would be around $192,000, he said. The additional annual costs of managing and maintaining the parking system, which would run from May through October each year, would be about $145,000.
Assuming that the city charged $2 per hour and had a high enough occupancy rate among the paid parking spaces, it could earn more than $1 million per year, he said. But this estimate does not factor in payment exemptions the city could provide to residents, local business owners and employees, he added.
How that money might be spent has not been determined, but City Manager Charlie Pearce said it could support road projects or anything that would relieve the local property tax burden. He said he would want to give downtown business and property owners a voice in how the money is spent, because of the impact the fees could have on them.
“At some of our peak times, parking [downtown] is an issue,” said Pearce. “This could be a significant revenue stream.”
Suzanne Wood, who owns thrift shop Clothes Encounter on Water Street, said she was not opposed to the idea, but that there should be higher priorities on the city’s downtown to-do list. One is signage that encourages drivers to stop and visit downtown businesses, and another is a public bathroom, she said.
“If you have to pee, you are not going to stop to pay for parking,” Wood said. “I could get behind this if we had public bathrooms.”
But other downtown business owners said they were not in favor of paid parking.
Winston said that some of his employees used to work in Bar Harbor and now find the free parking in downtown Ellsworth much easier to deal with. He also said that the national retail chains on High Street, which offer free parking to their customers, would have a distinct advantage over downtown businesses if the city charged for parking in public spaces.
Daron Goldstein, owner and chef of Provender Kitchen + Bar, said that charging for downtown parking would undermine the relaxed, small-town feel that appeals to both locals and tourists. Gretchen Wilson, a resident who works on Main Street and is a former executive director at the local Chamber of Commerce, said that paid parking could threaten to undo the revival of downtown, which a decade ago had multiple dark storefronts after businesses closed down.
Lori Chase, who owns and runs Coastal Interiors on Water Street, said a paid parking system would result in more people parking in her private lot.
“I think this is a really bad idea,” Chase said.
City officials stressed that, while they have been interested in looking into the idea, no decision has been made and that residents and local business owners will have more opportunities to weigh in before the city decides whether to pursue it.
“We’ll be having additional meetings on this,” Councilor Tammy Mote said. “This is just the beginning.”