The Lincoln County Commissioners voted unanimously to lend their full support to a plan to transform Jefferson’s Curtis House into a residence for recovering alcoholics at a July 6 meeting.
According to commissioners, the county is unable to provide the financial backing requested by the Sober House Advisory Board, but their endorsement should “lend clout” to fundraising efforts, Commissioner Sheridan Bond said.
Bob Whear, director of the Lincoln County chapter of Communities Against Substance Abuse (CASA), presented a business plan for the house with the help of Joyce Steel of Healthy Lincoln County and Mary Trescot, executive director of Youth Promise.
According to the business plan, CASA intends to house alcoholics and drug addicts with a mission based on the “Oxford House Model.”
In use in the U.S. since 1975, the model requires residents to take responsibility for house operations. Residents pay rent, utilities and other expenses and resolve issues through a classically democratic form of government.
According to the business plan, CASA hopes to prevent recidivism and stem “the downward spiral of addiction… poverty, homelessness, fatal accidents, crime and violence. Twin Bridges [sic] correctional facility is filled with repeat offenders whose basic underlying problem is addiction.”
Staff at Two Bridges Regional Jail will refer prisoners to the program. Shelter can make all the difference for individuals in recovery, Whear said. “A homeless guy that needs help – he’s drunk in a week. He’s back in jail,” he said.
CASA asked the commissioners for $30,000 in startup costs. The organization needs to secure a lease of the Curtis House, a former residential facility for adolescents, purchase a van to transport residents to AA and NA meetings and furnish the house.
Whear said he thinks he can accomplish those goals with much less. CASA needs $3000 to secure the lease. Furniture, Whear said, might be obtained free of cost through donations from local businesses and partnership with the Miles Memorial thrift shop. Whear did not present a figure for the van.
All three commissioners applauded the project’s goals, but said financial backing was simply unavailable. “We don’t have $30,000 in this drawer that we can hand out… every penny is budgeted,” Commissioner William Blodgett said.
Blodgett said the county might be able to help next year.
Chairman Lynn Gilley Orne encouraged Whear to approach “civic organizations and faith-based organizations” like the Lions and the Rotary, as well as individual towns. “I don’t think this would be very difficult to obtain,” Orne said.
In other business, commissioners heard from auditor Fred Brewer about the county’s finances from 2005 to 2009. Spikes in protection spending – specifically, hikes of 70 and 60 percent in the Two Bridges Jail and Sheriff’s Dept. budgets, respectively – account for much of the inflation of the county budget, from $7.2 million in 2005 to $10.2 million in 2009.
Together, those line items account for nearly half of the county’s total budget.
Mary Ellen Barnes, director of the Lincoln County Economic Development Office, reported the results of last month’s first meeting of the new Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission. “About 20 representatives” came, bringing “a lot of energy [and] a lot of interest in discussing issues all the towns face,” Barnes said.
Barnes also asked commissioners to endorse Edgecomb’s application for a $575,000 Recovery Zone Facility Bond from the Maine Municipal Bond Bank to build a new fire station. The commissioners voted unanimously to give their “strong support” to the project.
Elsewhere on the agenda, Lincoln County Administrator John O’Connell announced the hiring of Robert Mooney as the county’s new deputy administrator for Finance and Budget. Mooney, an employee of a recycling facility, also serves as the Westport Island Fire Chief.