Residents approve full-time police force

LINCOLNVILLE – Residents appear ready to pick up the tab to continue full-time police coverage.

At a special town meeting Monday night, residents voted in favor of an article that asked if the town should retain its current level of law enforcement after Chief Rick Osgood retires at the end of June.

Osgood is paid as a part-time chief, but he consistently works about 40 hours each week. The town also uses several part-time officers.

In June, a nonbinding referendum indicated that residents favored – by a slim margin – creating a full-time department that would have provided 85 hours of coverage each week at an annual cost of about $80,000.

At Monday’s meeting, Osgood said the town could continue with the same level of coverage by increasing its budget for law enforcement from $22,000 annually to $52,000.

Town Administrator Skip Day said Wednesday that selectmen are considering applying for a federal Community Oriented Policing grant, which could offset as much as 75 percent of the cost of a new officer for up to three years.

Selectmen will discuss how they plan to structure a police department after Osgood retires in the coming months, Day said, as part of the budget planning process. Residents will vote on the cost of police coverage when the budget is presented at the annual town meeting.

In other business at Monday’s meeting, residents agreed to make modifications to the school budget.

Pupils now attend a temporary school built by MBNA New England at the company’s Northport conference center. MBNA built the temporary school after the Lincolnville Central School was closed due to air quality problems.

Some of the budget changes included increases to the transportation line to reflect the higher cost of busing pupils out of town, and a decrease in operations and maintenance of the closed school.

Residents also authorized the Lincolnville Historical Society to add a room to the second floor of the Lincolnville Improvement Association Building. The expansion will come at no cost to the town.