On December 14, Maine’s Tremont Planning Board tabled the review of an application to build 15 cabins for Pointy Head in order to consult legal counsel. The question to be considered concerns whether or not the Pointy Head project would be classified as an official campground.
As per a report, voters in November approved a moratorium that pauses a review of campground applications for six months.
Ed Bearor, Pointy Head applicant Madellon “Bunny” Brogdon’s attorney, said the application is its own and doesn’t have anything to do with the Pointy Head Campground application that had been rejected by the Planning Board months ago.
“We all know that there’s a campground moratorium in effect and that we first have to make a decision about whether this is a campground or not before we proceed,” said Planning Board Chair Mark Good.
The location, now only referred to as Pointy Head, includes 15 cabins and a bathroom. “We didn’t care what we were called two years ago or even six months ago when we were last in front of you in April,” said Bearor. “We never were a campground.”
The town defines campgrounds as areas or parcels of land that can accommodate two or more guests in temporary living quarters which include, but are not restricted to, camping vehicles, tents, and other shelters.
Planning Board member Geoffrey Young stated that he is still having difficulty defining “other shelters” and distinguishing the application from the definition.
When the applicant proposed the initial plans to the town office, former code enforcement officer John Larson decided that the property was a campground.
Bearor explained that Brogdon’s proposal is not in the scope of the definition but instead is a transient accommodation to be used for commercial purposes.
“It’s not a place where people drive RVs onto it, there aren’t outdoor fire pits that are producing smoke, they don’t have tents, there are no campsites here,” he said. He stated that the site has cabins with beds in them. “Our place has none of the accouterments that you would find with a campground. I don’t think there is anything in this definition that fits our application. I would also suggest you look at the definition of campsites,” he said.
Tremont’s land-use ordinances describe campsites as “any plot of ground within a campground intended for the occupancy by a recreational vehicle or a camping unit.”
“In the definitions, hotel, motel, cottages, and cabins are defined as a building or group of buildings containing rooms which are used or rented for sleeping purposes by transients, so that to me seems pretty clear what it is,” said Planning Board Vice Chair Lawson Wulsin. “What Ed is describing seems to apply.”
“I understand that you’re struggling with it because there is a moratorium on campgrounds now, and we were before you in the past with that characterization, but I would suggest that it was at a time that wasn’t nearly as important as it is now,” Bearor said.
Young and Good agreed that the application be put on hold until legal advice is received.
“I’m going to move that we table consideration of the Pointy Head site plan review application pending engagement of our council to render an opinion on the applicability of the campground versus hotel, motel, cabins, cottages provisions in the land use ordinance first, and secondly to render an opinion with respect to the applicability and binding effect of the prior opinion of the appeals board on July 18, 2019,” said Planning Board member Brett Witham.