BELFAST - Members of the City Council on Tuesday sparred over whether to waive the rental fee for two groups hoping to use of the Belfast Boathouse for educational events. The requests were approved by majority votes, though only shortly after the Council unanimously, and with no discussion or fee, approved requests to hold a paddleboard race, two 5K private fundraisers and an Earth Day parade on city parklands and streets.

None of this was out of the ordinary.

The city rents the Boathouse 10 months out of the year for between $100 and $2,300 per day, depending upon the season and the renter’s city of residence. There is, however, no charge to use other "city facilities," including parks, streets, the municipal pool, and until recently, the baseball diamonds at Walsh Field.

Whether should be is a question Parks and Recreation Director Norman Poirier has been giving fair amount of consideration.

"You kind of wonder where the balance is," he said. "If you have a fee for one [like the Boathouse], you may want to consider having a fee for the other."

The Boathouse, which plays host to many weddings in the warm months, is managed by an outside contractor and event planner. But it’s far from the only event space the city offers. From May through October of this year, Poirier said, 25-30 events will be held in Belfast parks, including many in the Boathouse-abutting Steamboat Landing Park and Belfast Common.

Some will have fewer participants than a pickup soccer game and require little or no extra work by city employees. Others like Maine Farmland Trust's Maine Fare, the Maine Celtic Celebration and the American Lung Association’s Trek Across Maine bicycle race are expected to draw upward of 2,000 attendants and require a variety of city services, including garbage collection, police, electricity and water.

Event organizers are required to provide insurance, but associated costs are negotiable, and more often than not taxpayers are left to pick up the tab.

The subject is thorny because many summer events are put on by not-for-profit organizations and others are charity fundraisers. Additionally, the events bring visitors to town who may patronize local businesses.

On the flip side, Poirier said special events can render public spaces temporarily inaccessible to residents and may be moneymakers for organizers and participants. Larger events organized by nonprofit groups often bring for-profit-vendors under the tent to add to the offerings. These vendors typically pay a fee to organizers in exchange for permission to do business on public land.

Shortly after Poirier was hired last year, he was surprised to learn that organizers were additionally charging for electricity, which was provided by the city.

"When people are making use of [parks] and charging vendor fees, then that makes a tough argument for not charging them," he said.

In other areas of city government, fees are routine. Belfast charges users directly for ambulance, solid waste disposal, leases of city property, dock rentals, liquor and victualers licenses — two of which the Council approved on Tuesday alongside the five "facilities" requests — notary services and many other items.

Combined with receipts municipal revenue sharing and excise tax, fees pay for close to half of the city's $8 million budget.

Parks and recreation facilities have historically been treated differently — more in the spirit of a public trust than a special service. Charging for access, opponents of fees say, would send the city down a slippery slope, eventually excluding residents who couldn't afford to pay.

In February, Poirier drew some backlash from the Council after he proposed chargine Midcoast Cal Ripken and the Waldo County YMCA baseball and softball leagues an annual fee to offset the relatively high cost of maintaining the baseball diamonds at Walsh Field.

City Councilor Eric Sanders, a former president of Midcoast Cal Ripken, argued that the volunteer-run organization couldn't afford the fee on top of fundraising efforts for basic equipment. Councilor Roger Lee widened the argument, contending that it would be unfair to charge some users of park facilities and not others.

Midcoast Cal Ripken serves around 100 players, ages 6-12, from an 11-town area surrounding Belfast. With the Council’s blessing, Poirier negotiated a deal that puts the league on the hook for $750 this year, payable either through work on the facility, a direct payment or some combination.

President Scott Cournoyer said some board members initially objected to the city charging a community youth league to use a public facility. But after asking around, Cournoyer said many of his peers were already giving their host municipality some form of compensation.

"When you really broke it down, it was consistent with a lot of the other leagues," he said.

The Cal Ripken season starts on April 26, and Cournoyer said volunteers have already done nearly enough work to meet the $750 threshold.

Another facility that has been a perennial candidate for fees is City Park Pool. Currently the pool is free to anyone who walks through the gate.

Last year, users included not only residents of Belfast and surrounding towns, but out-of-state visitors, tourists and school-age children traveling by bus from as far away as Rockland and Veazie.

They also came from Orono, which is where Poirier served as parks director for over twenty years before taking his current job in Belfast.

“That’s how I knew it was free,” he said. “We used to send our day camp there all the time. It was a very low-cost day trip for us. You’d have the pool, playground and basketball courts, for nothing.”

Orono has a pool of similar dimensions, but using it comes at a price of $1 per child and $2 for adults. Poirier's day campers used the Orono pool on a regular basis, but the added attractions in Belfast made the city a great field trip destination, he said.

Asked about other municipal pools in the region, Poirier listed a handful, but said he couldn’t think of another one that was free. 

"It's a difficult conversation to have because you're talking about community assets," he said. "If the city wants to head in that direction [instituting fees], we need to make sure that we don't make it so expensive that it's a club or a private resort-type setting."

Those who support user fees argue that it would transfer some of the cost from resident taxpayers to non-residents who currently pay nothing. Poirier said even something as seemingly straightforward as a fee for nonresidents might be hard to implement, given that children, who may come to the pool unaccompanied, are unlikely to be carrying proof of residency.

There may be other ways to raise money, according to Carol Good, chairwoman of the advisory Parks and Recreation Commission. Good, who is also president of the fundraising powerhouse group Friends of Belfast Parks, said the commission is compiling a list of options, including renting the pool to private groups after regular hours and renting park structures like the Wima Moses Pavillion in City Park that are currently available on a first-come-first-served basis.

"People go at six in the morning and they hang onto it because they want to have a family reunion," she said. "It seems miserly one hand, but our parks budget [roughly $200,000 per year] is humungous. So we have to look at ways to keep things up to date."  

Good said part of the reason the commission supported hiring Poirier is because he had successfully increased revenues in Orono.

When he started as parks director there, Poirier said the town collected around $12,000 annually in fees. When he left, it was around $136,000. That included fees from soccer, basketball and other programs that Belfast defers to outside groups, including the YMCA.

"I wouldn't say, I'm one who loves to implement fees, but it's a balancing act," he said. "We have to look at how to operate these facilities with minimal impact to the tax rate."

Poirier has solicited information from other municipalities that currently charge fees, and as of Tuesday, had heard back from around a dozen. Some, particularly in Southern Maine, charged what he judged to be "outrageous fees."  

Bangor, he said charges “nominal fees,” including a $25 permit for use of parks, and might be a good model for Belfast. Other municipalities, he said, don't charge for permits but require event organizers to pay for police officers as needed.

As the weather improves, he’s hoping to talk to people who use Belfast’s parks to get a better idea of what would be reasonable. Poirier said he did not expect to bring any proposal to the Council until after budget season.

Ultimately, he said, the goal is to reduce costs. If this can be done through a bartering arrangement like the one with the Midcoast Cal Ripken League, that’s fine, he said. But in some cases bartering is less likely to be an option.

“When you have direct costs, like a pool where you have staffing and operating costs, you have to come up with some way to lessen the burden on the taxpayers,” he said.

Ethan Andrews can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com