CUTLER – Reactions to a proposal to use the former Cutler Navy base for a residential drug treatment program were mixed during a public meeting Monday night, but nobody questioned the need to help the estimated hundreds of Washington County youths who are addicted to prescription painkillers.

Questions about the proposal centered on whether Cutler – a fishing village of just under 700 people – is an appropriate location for a drug treatment center and whether a private nonprofit organization would generate the economic development that area towns anticipate from the reuse of the 55-acre former base.

The Cutler Development Corp. – a quasi-municipal organization of town officials from Cutler, East Machias and Machias – is working with Eastern Maine Development Corp. to attract developers to the base and has issued a call for proposals by Oct. 11.

More than 75 people – including law enforcement officers, a drug prosecutor and parents of addicted children – gathered at the Bay Ridge Elementary School for Monday’s explanation of a proposal by the Maine Sea Coast Mission and others to develop a 100-bed residential center to treat young addicts from Washington and Hancock counties.

The meeting included a presentation by Dr. Gregory Bunt, a board-certified addiction psychiatrist, who is the medical director of Daytop Village Inc., a New-York-based substance abuse treatment program that has 26 residential drug treatment centers nationwide.

A group of Washington County residents, including two women from Cutler, visited Daytop’s treatment center in Rhinebeck, N.Y., last month with Gary DeLong, executive director of Maine Sea Coast Mission, and Bar Harbor lawyer Doug Chapman.

DeLong and Chapman, both of whom grew up in Washington County, are working with Dr. Stanley Evans, medical director of the recovery center at Mercy Hospital in Westbrook, and Dr. Charles Alexander of Maine Coast Memorial Hospital in Ellsworth to develop a treatment program for addicts from both counties.

Bunt described Daytop’s therapeutic community approach to drug treatment, a highly structured family environment where addicts work with one another and their families to overcome addiction and acquire the range of skills they will need to remain drug-free.

Not everyone who enters a therapeutic community stays in the program, and some return two or three times, but of those who complete their stay, 80 percent stay sober for at least five years, Bunt said.

In response to questions about potential community problems with offenders who are at the center as an alternative to incarceration, Bunt said residents committed by the court system are nonviolent offenders who are committed because of drug-related crimes.

Washington County Sheriff Joseph Tibbetts said most of the young offenders who have been involved in Washington County’s drug court program over the last year should be serving time in a therapeutic community rather than the county jail. Other than using drugs, none has been involved in serious crimes, he said.

One woman, who said her son was recovering from a six-year addiction, said the people some are concerned about are already on the streets of Washington County and that their conduct is caused by their addiction.

Other people, including a man who said he had been the victim of a drug-related theft, and a Machias educator also spoke to the need in Washington County.

Tim Reynolds said he had had two students suffer nonfatal overdoses in his Machias classroom. He called the treatment center proposal “an ends to a mean,” but said the county also must put energy into getting kids’ attention “before someone with a needle in their hand gets their attention.”

In response to questions about how many jobs the center would create, Chapman said the group wants to employ local people and is talking with the University of Maine at Machias about its offerings in behavioral sciences and the Washington County Technical College in Calais about its nursing program.

Bunt said questions about a therapeutic community’s impact on Cutler property values were legitimate and have been raised in other communities where Daytop has located. The program’s experience in New York indicates that a well-managed center has no impact on property values, he said.

DeLong said after the meeting that Bunt has said that staff from Daytop Village would assist in any way they can, but that the proposal for the treatment center should be developed by a grass-roots community group that will make the decisions.

DeLong said the group has a series of next steps before determining whether to submit a proposal to the Cutler Development Corp., including meeting with state officials.