County officials to tour potential sheriff’s patrol office spaces in Guilford

By Stuart Hedstrom
Staff Writer

DOVER-FOXCROFT — Earlier in the month the Piscataquis County Commissioners met with Sheriff John Goggin and Chief Deputy Bob Young to discuss the possibility of leasing space at the former Guilford Primary School on High Street to serve as office space for patrol officers working in that part of the county (the sheriff’s office administrators would all remain in Dover-Foxcroft). During a meeting on Feb. 16 the two administrators provided some some more information, and county officials decided to schedule visits to the site and another in Guilford a week later.

“We looked at two places,” Young said, as he and Goggin were joined by County Manager Tom Lizotte at the former school as well as another building on Hudson Avenue across the street from the post office. Young said the school building is now owned by the town of Guilford and the left portion of the facility, where the sheriff’s office space may be located, currently houses the SAD 4 superintendent’s office. The district is looking at vacating this location later in the year, and should make a final decision on doing so in the near future.

Young said the location has an entry area, two different office spaces, a conference and interview room and storage capabilities. The county could rent the part of the building, which also houses Friends of Community Fitness and a food pantry in the other sections, for $2,000 a month with utilities included.

The other site visited by Young, Goggin and Lizotte was a former law office, which is a stand-alone, two-story building. Young said these rental costs are $500 per month with utilities not included, and the building is also currently for sale. “It’s a good location but to me it’s not as good as SAD 4’s,” Young said.

He added that the sheriff’s office is currently seeking candidates for a pair of patrol investigator positions, one for Greenville and the other for the Milo/Brownville area which would enable other department personnel to concentrate more on the center part of Piscataquis County. Young said a visit to the Emergency Management Agency (EMA) bunker in Milo went well “and we are going to establish an office at the bunker to work out of that.”

Later in the meeting EMA Director Tom Capraro reiterated the consensus on the agency location, saying, “I think that will work out great up in the bunker.”

Goggin said the Greenville Police Department has offered to share its space with the sheriff’s office when needed.

Commissioners Chair Fred Trask brought up the issue of the communities of Milo, Brownville, Dover-Foxcroft and Greenville all having full-time police departments while also contributing funds to the sheriff’s office, while towns in the Guilford-area either have a part-time department or none at all. “That section of the county gets all the benefits and the rest of us our paying for it,” Trask said. He wondered if having a municipality share its town office space with the sheriff’s office was a possibility.

Lizotte said Guilford meets the criteria considered of a central location — 62 percent of the sheriff’s office’s calls for help and complaints in 2015 came from Guilford, Sangerville, Abbot and Parkman — with affordable spaces that can be set up as offices.

“Our resources go where the needs are, our responsibilities are where they don’t have police departments,” Young said.

“I personally feel a sense of urgency because the sheriff’s department is looking at two patrol deputies,” Lizotte said, saying finding qualified candidates in a rural area is a challenge. “Solving this office problem is crucial. It’s providing a decent working environment.”

“It would be helpful if the commissioners would visibly view the two options we have now,” he said, with a tentative tour scheduled for Feb. 23. Lizotte said it is unrealistic to ask communities to provide office space free of charge, “nor should they be expected to.”

In other business, Piscataquis County Economic Development Council Executive Director Chris Winstead told the commissioners that he has visited many of the region’s select boards to gauge interest in a proposed countywide broadband feasibility study. “We have had a resounding thumbs-up,” Winstead said.

At a future meeting, the commissioners will make a formal decision on proceeding with the broadband feasibility study, which if in place would help the county seek outside funding for technology improvements. The data could look at the potential broadband providers available, access speeds, household data, what infrastructure is available and what the possibilities for broadband are.

Winstead the study would include information specific to each participant. “The solution that works in Dover-Foxcroft may not work in Sangerville and Greenville’s needs may not be what Sangerville’s are,” he said.

The commissioners also opted to not pursue, at the present time, a proposal from CES, Inc. to complete the monitoring well abandonment process for the closed landfills in Frenchtown and Lily Bay. Both landfills were closed and capped in 1994 and the two sites have been monitored since to ensure there has been no adjacent ground contamination per Department of Environmental Protection regulations.

Lizotte said the CES proposal is for $5,000, but “it is not mandatory that we do this at this time or in the future.” With the project the contractor would “pull up the metal cases and fill it with packing material until about five feet and then they fill it with soil,” Lizotte said. He said the benefits may be to prevent the possibility of someone tripping over the well or having the site vandalized, but there is not a high probability of either of these happening.

“I personally feel if there’s no reason to do it we should just leave it and not spend the $5,000,” Commissioner James White said. “We could spend $5,000 and not have any benefit, or we could not spend the $5,000 and have the same result.”

A possible agenda item for the commissioners’ March 1 meeting could be a proposal of the Municipal Review Committee (MRC) for solid waste disposal with this operation moving from PERC in Orrington to a future facility in Hampden, operated by the Maryland-based Fiberight, after 2018. The 187 MRC members will need to each make a decision on the organization’s proposal over the next few months.

When asked, Lizotte said the county has not been contacted by PERC whereas the MRC made a presentation on the Fiberight option late last year.