LINCOLN – Following Millinocket and Waterboro, the town will be the state’s third municipality to consider barring sex offenders from loitering or living near schools and other places children frequent.

Town Councilors Linda Brown, Rod Carr and Samuel Clay volunteered for a committee that will study Millinocket’s proposed ordinance, among other things, and decide whether to recommend adopting one for Lincoln.

Carr, who suggested such an ordinance, said he thought Lincoln should have an ordinance to protect town children and because he feared the Legislature would soon restrict the types of crimes listed on the Maine Sex Offender Registry.

Town resident Mary Hawkes, a member of the SAD 67 board of directors, also recommended the town create its own ordinance. She said she feared what might happen if sex offenders were not more closely watched.

“We need to really pursue this,” Hawkes said during a council meeting on Monday.

Millinocket’s proposed ordinance, which would ban sex offenders from loitering at schools and parks, is not yet written. Town Manager Eugene Conlogue hopes to have it written for his Town Council to consider at its Aug. 24 meeting, he said.

Waterboro Selectman Evan Grover has announced he will introduce a proposal this week to bar sex offenders from living within a 2,500-foot radius of a school or child-care business, according to press reports.

Millinocket began considering the ordinance in early June, when school officials and police told them during a public forum that they could not prevent a handful of convicted sex offenders listed on the state’s convicted sex offender database from loitering around schools and parks, which is not illegal, because neither the law nor most of the offenders’ probation conditions bar them from such places.

Several parents had said their children had been approached by the sex offenders.

Carr said he was unaware of such occurrences in Lincoln. The registry lists 21 sex offenders as living in town.

The Maine Municipal Association reviewed the idea and told Conlogue that their attorneys saw no reason why the town could not pursue it, Conlogue said.

He asked for MMA to review the idea to ensure that it would protect the rights of all involved. The MMA review took so long because the state lacks a body of case law with which this proposal can be vetted.

The Legislature considered such laws banning sex offenders from loitering near schools in 2004 and 2005, but the proposals failed. Opponents said the laws punished sex offenders beyond their time in jail, according to press reports.

The Maine Civil Liberties Union has opposed local ordinances that restrict the residence and movement of sex offenders, saying similar rules have been struck down by courts in other states.