Brunswick Town Council Workshop on Mobile Home Park Rent Review Board Rules - July 27, 2026
Brunswick Town Council Workshop on Mobile Home Park Rent Review Board Rules - July 27, 2026
The Brunswick Town Council held a workshop on Monday, July 27, 2026, to review and discuss the proposed rules and procedures for the newly established Mobile Home Park Rent Review Board. The meeting, which began at approximately 4:00 PM, focused on the draft regulations developed by staff, interns, and the Housing Committee, as well as an accompanying FAQ document. Council members debated key provisions regarding the burden of proof, debt service, noticing requirements, and the role of the Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers (CPI-U). The council also received public comment from a tenant union leader and planned for upcoming amendments and board appointments.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Marika Gaison, a resident of Bay Bridge Estates and leader of the Broken Bridge Tenant Union, raised several points: she noted that the ordinance already requires landlord compliance with state statutes, including uniform rent increase provisions; she suggested that the worksheet include the date of the last rent increase for each lot; she expressed concern that tenants may not be informed if a landlord proposes an increase above the affordability threshold, as the 90-day notice only states the proposed amount but not its relation to the threshold; and she clarified that the CPI-U date used in the ordinance is the May number (published as of June 1).
Discussion Items
- Presentation of Rules and Regulations: Director of Economic and Community Development Costello presented the draft rules, developed with the help of interns and the Housing Committee. The rules were modeled on ordinances from Sanford, Old Orchard, Portland, and Waterville. Key elements include: board organization (chair duties, quorum), procedures for reviewing lot rent increases above the affordability threshold (defined by CPI-U), noticing requirements, and a reporting spreadsheet that collects lot-level data (address, type, vacancy, previous and new CPI-U, current/proposed rent, dollar and percentage increase) without tenant names.
- Debt Service Treatment: The director noted that debt service is a below-the-line expense but could be considered by the board in extraordinary circumstances, provided it is clearly tied to the specific property. Councillor Teemy recommended breaking out debt service as a separate section to avoid implying it is an operating expense. The director agreed to work with legal counsel on this.
- Burden of Proof and Extraordinary Increases: Councillor Ellis argued that the rules should emphasize that the affordability threshold (CPI-U) is the presumed maximum reasonable annual increase, and requests above it should be considered extraordinary. Legal counsel Kristen Collins cautioned that such language would be better placed in the ordinance itself rather than the rules. The council agreed to explore strengthening the ordinance language and to consider including an orientation script for the board chair.
- Chair Duties and Staff Support: Councillor Anderson questioned whether the chair alone would verify affordability threshold calculations. The director confirmed that the spreadsheet includes formulas and that staff (Fran or the director) would double-check before handing to the board. Staff will provide additional support during the first year.
- Noticing and Timing: The director explained that landlords must provide 90-day notice to tenants and the town for any rent increase. The rent review board must hold a public hearing within 45 days of receiving notice, with the chair setting the hearing date no later than 10 days after receipt. The first hearing could occur by October 15, 2026, assuming the moratorium expires September 1. Councillor Ellis raised a concern about the timeline: if a landlord seeks an increase above the threshold, they may need to wait for the hearing outcome before issuing a valid 90-day notice, potentially causing a delay. Legal counsel noted that state law requires a notice of the actual increase, and if the board modifies the amount, a new 90-day notice may be required.
- Uniformity of Rent Increases: Councillor Teemy referenced a Maine consumer law guide stating that rent changes must apply uniformly to all tenants. Legal counsel clarified that the current state law creates a rebuttable presumption that non-uniform increases are unreasonable, but it does not strictly prohibit different percentages for different groups of lots. The council noted that the board will evaluate each notice individually and that state law enforcement is not within the town's scope.
- Administrative Concerns: The council discussed the potential for a large number of individual lot rent increase requests (e.g., 300+ lots) arriving at different times. The director expected landlords to bundle increases for efficiency, but if “drip drip” strategies emerge, the council could amend the ordinance to limit the number of extraordinary requests per year. The council agreed to monitor the first year.
- Appointments Timeline: The appointments committee has interviewed three candidates and has two more scheduled. The slate could be approved at the August 17 council meeting, allowing the board to be established with a quorum of three members before the September 1 moratorium expiration.
- CPI-U Metric: The June 2026 CPI-U rose 3.5% over the prior 12 months and fell 0.3% seasonally adjusted. The ordinance uses the last published CPI-U as of June 1, which is the May number. This will be included in the spreadsheet with a hyperlink.
Key Outcomes
- The council expressed general support for the draft rules and FAQ, with several refinements to be made by staff and legal counsel before the August 3 council meeting. These include: clarifying that debt service is not an operating expense, strengthening language in the ordinance about the presumption that CPI-U is the maximum reasonable increase, adding a provision regarding failure to notify the town of rent increases, and ensuring the FAQ formatting is corrected.
- The council will consider amendments to the ordinance at the August 3 meeting, which will also address the expiration of the moratorium and set a public hearing.
- The appointments committee will expedite interviews to have a slate of board members ready for approval at the August 17 council meeting, enabling the board to start operations by September 1.
- The meeting adjourned unanimously at approximately 5:30 PM.
Meeting Transcript
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Monday, July 27th. Um mobile home park rules, rental rules, I suppose, workshop. Um was this meeting properly noticed, town manager? Yes, it was. Perfect. Um currently we have all members present, the two that are not in the room are on Zoom of Councillor Peralt and Counselor Hicks. So without further ado, we'll go ahead and jump on in just to review the agenda. The thing that we plan on talking about today is the rules and procedures for the mobile home park rent review board that we just established in a recent ordinance. Um I'll also give a uh just a heads up to you all that we have another workshop next week uh at five just before our town council meeting, and that is looking at the AI data center overlay ordinance, um, which we currently have a moratorium on, and one other thing. Uh and uh talking about some of the rated street. The main street overlay, that was the other one. Yeah. Um just to give a little preview, but I know that we're doing more of these workshops, and this one's kind of on an odd day um that we don't have a meeting, but we scheduled this one before we started this whole process and we want to see it through. So without further ado, new business, I'll bring up director of economic and community development, uh Costello to talk about the rules and good evening, counselors here and on Zoom. Thank you for um taking the time for this extra meeting. If you recall when you passed the um ordinance, we had that very lengthy schedule of a lot of actions and activities to get us to getting our rent board up and running and being able to um actually implement the ordinance. So um this is one very important step. Um it's coming off a um workshop at the housing committee that we had last Wednesday. Um and we had a very robust process. Um we actually enlisted the help of our three Bowdoin interns working with Fran Smith and I um as staff and then the finance subcommittee for the um housing committee. So we had people that had relevant experience to help us kind of pull this together. Um and they are not here tonight, but they actually presented in front of the housing committee. They did an excellent job, I will say. Um Ian Bridges, Omar Frostman, and Andy Robinson. So they helped us um with the research and then just um working on the drafts, the various drafts, which of course were reviewed um and had input by our legal staff. Um and then Andy, who is a an intern with economic development, he also helped develop an FAQ. So that document was something that we hope um makes it easier for people to use the mobile home park ordinance in general, but also just some kind of key questions, answers that I think will help generally um with the whole process. So with that, I'm gonna go through their their presentation just to give you guys a sense of what the process was. Next slide, please. So we started by um researching a number of ordinances. We did not by any means uh just start with a blank slate. We did not reinvent the wheel. We looked at other um or uh uh ordinances that had you know rent um stabilization. So Samford, Old Orchard, Portland, and Waterville. Um and I think we took the very best parts of those or tried to. Um and we got counseled by our legal staff about what things um you know would really help the board in their review because the purpose of the board is actually I'm gonna read this because it was in my memo, and I think it's important for the um the public to know that the purpose of the mobile home park rent review board is to impartially review any and all requests to raise rents on a mobile home park lot, which exceeds the affordability threshold as defined in Chapter 10, Article 6 of the Brunswick Town Codes. The rules and regulations supplement the ordinance and establish uniform procedures for the administration of rent increased rent requests. So that's important because um it's a very limited scope, um, but it's a very important um board responsibility. So as you recall, the ordinance has two pieces to it. It has the property piece, which we are hiring a new codes enforcement officer to work with us on addressing some of those um issues, and then the rent review board. So rents and property. Um so that's that's their very narrow scope. But that being said, it's pretty broad. And if you also recall, we have a lot of different mobile home parks, and they're we've got one publicly held, we've got privately held parks, we've got resident-owned communities, and we also have some that have not only do they um rent the lots and have you know mobile homes come to there, but they also just rent mobile homes. So they're they're treated a little bit differently. So there's a lot of nuances to uh think about when you're writing these rules and regulations to give the proper guidance to this new board. So some of the takeaways that the um that the interns um really wanted to communicate to um the housing committee and to you all is that um the the the first piece was the board organization, so the logistics, the the meeting order, um the leadership and the responsibilities of the chair and vice chair, et cetera, what constitutes a quorum, those kind of things. And then the second part really was to review the procedures for how they will like review lot rent increases. Um so there's some criteria and a checklist and um all of these things in the decision making process are really um nuanced. And so there's a long list, but a lot of those things were really debated by staff and legal and of course the housing committee had um looked at this as well.
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