Hancock County to open drug court

MACHIAS – The clients who attend the state’s Adult Drug Treatment Court in Washington County, where weekly meetings alternate between the Machias and Calais courtrooms, unwittingly served as examples Friday for how drug court can help young people change from drug users to contributing citizens.

One by one, they appeared before Judge John Romei to talk about their progress in staying clean and sober. He peppered them with questions: How many support meetings are you attending? What are you doing differently now? How’s the job search coming?

Listening in – as the public is allowed, even encouraged, to do – was a defense attorney from Ellsworth, Anthony Beardsley.

He was representing a group of Hancock County individuals and agencies that are working to create a similar drug court program for the Ellsworth courthouse.

“The need has been there, and the group dynamics of a drug court are strong,” Beardsley said.

Although it will follow the model of the state-run drug court already in place in several counties, the planned Hancock County program will not have either the state’s judicial or financial resources backing it.

Neither issue was enough to stop the planners, who expect to open the court within weeks. The Ellsworth program will be called the Hancock County Delayed Sentencing Project.

Meeting every two weeks, the program will make use of the volunteer services of a retired Superior Court justice living in Bucksport.

An annual budget of $125,000 will be covered largely by a $100,000 federal grant that was announced in September.

Those involved in the planning for the Ellsworth court include: Beardsley; District Attorney Michael Povich; Sheriff Bill Clark; and probation officers Bill Goodwin and Candace Kiefer. Others include Commissioner Faye Lawson; Assistant Attorney General William Savage, who prosecutes drug cases in Hancock County; representatives of Open Door Recovery Center in Ellsworth, plus several others.

On the day that Beardsley was observing the Machias drug court, Richard Dimond was visiting the Penobscot County drug court in Bangor. Dimond is a retired physician in Southwest Harbor who helped coordinate the countywide effort to build a drug court.

“The Hancock County piece really offers the potential to have a truly regional approach involving three counties,” Dimond said. “Hancock County is the missing piece. It’s crucial to plug the hole.”

Drug court team members looked largely to Washington County in the last year to see how.

Since May 2003, Dimond has met and stayed in touch with several members committed to Washington County’s effort to fight substance abuse. At twin drug summits in Machias and Calais that month, he encountered Barbara Drisko, a Columbia Falls woman who chairs the Washington County Drug Action Team, and Nancy Green and Anne Perry, two Calais women who helped start Neighbors Against Drug Abuse.

He also conferred with the two probation officers who work with Washington County clients, Bill Love and Betsy Jaegerman. He attended Judge Romei’s drug court sessions in Machias and Calais, and sounded out Sheriff Joe Tibbetts on common problems.

“All those people have been extremely helpful to us, as they revisited how they got [the Washington County drug court] where it is, and what some of the rough spots in the path are,” Dimond said.

In Machias on Friday, Romei took a moment to introduce Beardsley and note the Hancock County effort.

“We wish them well,” Romei said. “It’s in everybody’s interest to see the court happen in that county, too.”