CAMDEN — A proposed ordinance change that would have allowed a Camden innkeeper to seek permission from the Zoning Board of Appeals to serve dinner to overnight guests was killed before it could advance to the town’s Select Board.

Voting 2 to 2 at a May 15 meeting, the Camden Planning Board was split in its opinion on whether Kristi Bifulco’s proposed amendment to the town’s zoning ordinance should be sent on for further consideration and eventual placement before a citizen vote at town meeting.

 “I’m surprised,” said Camden planner and Code Enforcement Officer Steve Wilson, on May 17.

He had been directed by the board last winter to work with Bifulco on proposed ordinance language after she had appeared before the Planning Board, asking how it might be possible under town ordinance to make dinner for her guests.

Watch the May 15 Planning Board meeting here.

Bifulco is coowner of the Windward House, at 6 High Street, which has nine guest rooms and is close to Camden’s downtown.

She crafted language that would amend the ordinance. That amendment amounted to a sentence included in the definition of inns and would effectively allow an inn abutting High Street and within 500 feet of a zone where restaurants are already allowed the possibility of being granted a special exception “to be allowed to serve meals to overnight guests only, subject to meeting the standards of a Low Impact Use as determined by the Zoning Board of Appeals.”

The 500-foot area in question would extend north on High Street (Route 1) from the intersection of Route 52 (see attached PDF for map).

Bifulco returned to the Planning Board in April with the new language and for a hearing on it. After discussion and a few more changes following a planning board discussion, she returned again last week.

But at the May 15 meeting a three-hour discussion ensued about the proposal, with several Camden citizens citing its potential economic impact on the local restaurant business, the potential deleterious effect of incremental changes on a town’s zoning ordinance, and raising fears of High Street losing its federal National Register historical district status.

By the end, the board members summed up their positions:

“The debate speaks for itself,” said John Scholz.

He said his ongoing concern rests on ordinance work to be done, “while I am sympathetic to what you’d like to do,” he told Bifulco.

He said, however, that there enough “what ifs” that need to be looked at harder. Scholz referred to the municipal need to look at the bigger picture of planning throughout the entire town.

“I am inclined, if not to vote it down, at least to abstain,” he said.

Richard Bernhard said he found the “whole thing rather anxiety provoking.”

“I think High Street is one of the nicer streets in town,” he said.

Bifulco’s proposal would add to the intensity of the property, said Bernhard, and said he was “inclined to vote it down.”

Jan McKinnon noted that the High Street area in question: “is different from any other [area] where B&Bs are. There’s no doubt about it, everything is for sale.”

“I was in the restaurant business for a while and know what the ramifications are,” she said, adding that there are “many, many reasons” why they succeed or fail. “This request to serving dinner is so nominal as compared to running an entire restaurant.”

While she said she had a problem with changing a district, “at the end of the day, this proposal — and we are always considering proposals similar to this, to add business — I feel I can support it still.”

Planning Board Chairman Lowrie Sargent said that the amendment change would require any inns wanting to pursue serving dinners within the 500-foot High Street area to first go to the Camden Zoning Board of Appeals and would add competent scrutiny.

“The ZBA does a good job and adds a whole other level of review,” he said.

Sargent said the 500-foot rule is bizarre, and described the proposal a quirky thing, but said the board’s responsibility was to look at the impact on the neighborhood.

A motion was then made, recommending the proposal go the Select Board for consideration to include on the next town ballot.

McKinnon and Sargent voted in favor of the motion, Scholz and Bernhard against.

Because the vote was 2 to 2, the motion failed (the requisite is a 3 to 2 vote).

Editorial Director Lynda Clancy can be reached at lyndaclancy@penbaypilot.com; 207-706-6657.