Sheriff’s office dispatch center nearing completion

DOVER-FOXCROFT — The construction process to move the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Office Dispatch Center from cramped conditions in the county jail in Dover-Foxcroft into the administrative unit of the sheriff’s office on the first floor of the same building has been proceeding and is nearing completion.

During a meeting of the Piscataquis County Commissioners on Tuesday, Aug. 20 County Manager Michael Williams said the day prior a punch list was gone through. He said a couple of security doors are awaiting delivery and these need to be installed before the move is made.

“It’s getting close to getting done so we can get things moved back and put together,” Head of Maintenance Josh York said, with a precise date to be determined.

In the spring Williams said the project was on pace to be completed ahead of schedule, even after asbestos was found, with Sept. 9 being the project deadline.

In early March Old Town-based project architect Vicki Leavitt told county officials all the contracts and permits were in place to begin a 6-month timeline through Sept. 9. In late November last year the county commissioners voted to proceed with a $668,944 project bid from Ganneston Construction, the lowest of three received.

County officials had planned to move the dispatch center from the control room at the correctional facility in Dover-Foxcroft into the patrol and investigation divisions building in downtown Guilford. Financially and logistically, the sheriff’s office was determined to be a better home for dispatch.

Leavitt looked at three options for the dispatch center’s new location, including the basement of the Peaks House, which houses county offices and commissioners chambers; the basement of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension building; and the first floor of the sheriff’s office. She recommended refurbishing the first floor of the sheriff’s office to meet the needs of administrative employees and dispatchers. Leavitt also said the former dispatch space will be used by jail staff with the locking doors remaining in place.

The dispatch center is too small for current and future operations, and office space is shared with corrections staff, according to the presentation made by Communications Design Consulting Group.

The dispatch center, when it was set to move to Guilford, was estimated to have cost $500,000, plus another $57,000 fee for an architect. By moving the dispatch center to a space in the sheriff’s office, where cable is already in place, a tower would not need to be built. The new tower was estimated to cost more than $100,000.

In other business, sheriff’s office Dispatch Sgt. Eric Berce discussed a planned move by Northern Light Health to have an ambulance be based out of Dover-Foxcroft rather than Corinth in Penobscot County starting in the middle of next month.

Berce said the move would likely mean more calls for the sheriff’s office dispatch center. He said this could be around 1,000 more calls annually and wanted the commissioners to be aware. Previously calls for an ambulance would come to Piscataquis County if these could not be handled in this section of Penobscot County.

“That seems to be happening in a lot of communities, ambulances are shutting down because they just can’t staff,” Berce. said.

“It affects our dispatch a great deal,” Sheriff Bob Young said. He mentioned if an ambulance needs to travel out of Dover-Foxcroft and the county then there is a longer wait for the vehicle to arrive and the dispatcher is therefore on the call for a great amount of time.

Young said Northern Light Mayo Hospital of Dover-Foxcroft is working to try to hire more ambulance staff. “We’re just at a time where people aren’t interested in doing these kinds of jobs,” he said, mentioning the same is true for police and fire departments.

District Attorney Chris Almy told the commissioners about the work done by Corina Rackliff of his office in an embezzlement case involving the Dewitt Machine & Fabrication Company of Medford. “I’m pretty certain it was the biggest embezzlement case Piscataquis County ever had and one of the largest cases in the history of the state of Maine,” Almy said.

Late last month Terri Moulton, 53 of Guilford, was found guilty of Class B Forgery and Class B Theft after a four-day jury trial in Dover-Foxcroft for stealing more than $700,000 from the Medford company over a period of three years.

Moulton worked as an office manager and bookkeeper for the Dewitt Machine & Fabrication Company. From January 2019 through February of 2022, she is accused of stealing more than $730,000 from the company, according to the district attorney.

Earlier reporting from the Bangor Daily News listed the embezzled money as totaling more than $900,000. In an email, Almy said, “Further investigation showed $730,000 plus. That [is] what we could prove beyond a reasonable doubt.”

“One of your employees was integral to the conviction in that case,” Almy said. He said Rackliff “put everything she had into that case to be sure the jury could understand.”

The district attorney said embezzlement cases often feature lots of tedious and complex financial information.

He said Moulton stole by using a company debit card for hundreds of ATM withdrawals, and wrote 179 checks to herself.

Rackliff “traced all but 15 of those checks right to the defendant’s bank account,” Almy said. He said the funds were dispersed into cash or as loans instead of all the money simply going into the personal account, so more work needed to be done to trace it.

“I just want you to know what a great job she did,” the district attorney said, also mentioning all the work Sgt. Guy Dow put into the case.

The Bangor Daily News’ Ethan Andrews contributed to this story.