Town blocks methadone clinic

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CHERRYFIELD – Residents voted 98-0 at a special town meeting Thursday night to enact an emergency moratorium, effective today, that will keep methadone facilities out of the small town for the next six months.

The announcement was met with applause.

“That was 98 to zero, and I forgot to vote myself,” said Art Tatangelo, the town’s first selectman who also served as moderator for the meeting at the Cherryfield Elementary School.

It was the biggest special town meeting in years, said Mona West, who has not seen a larger turnout in her 28 years as the town clerk.

Whether a for-profit methadone clinic moves into town, as Discovery House of Rhode Island plans to, is also the biggest issue to hit the town in years.

“Is there anybody in this room who will stand up in favor of it?” Murray Seavey, retired after 20 years as a police officer, asked during the discussion portion of the meeting.

“I don’t think so,” Tatangelo responded after several seconds of silence as people glanced around the gymnasium.

The matter has wracked the town for a month now. Discovery House, which already runs one clinic in Washington County in Calais, has a purchase-and-sale agreement in place for a professional building along Route 182.

The proposed location would put the clinic within two-tenths of a mile of Cherryfield Elementary School.

Discovery House officials held an informational meeting on Aug. 30 to introduce themselves and their program – and more than 100 residents made it clear that they were not welcome in the rural community of 1,157.

Although Discovery House officials were aware of this evening’s meeting, none were present.

But nearly 100 angry residents were.

Leah Backman announced that she needed help in starting a letter-writing campaign to state and federal leaders.

Lucy Witt said that her one-on-one conversations with Discovery House led her to believe “they are arrogant and don’t listen.”

“I don’t see an atmosphere of caring and healing there,” Witt said. “I see profit-making.”

Joseph Tibbetts of Columbia, the Washington County sheriff who had previously given tentative support to Discovery House, told the voters that he had recently withdrawn all of his support for the project, since he began studying methadone issues.

“Methadone clinics do nothing but supply addicts with another drug,” he said. “It’s about nothing but dollars. It’s not about helping our friends and neighbors and addicts.”

Cherryfield selectmen also have circulated an opinion poll among residents in the last two weeks. People went door-to-door seeking signatures and asking the question, “Are you in favor of a substance abuse treatment facility being located in the town of Cherryfield?”

Residents could sign their names and indicate “yes” or “no.”

As of Thursday, West had received back in the town office dozens of sheets with signatures. From that, she said, there appear to be 10 residents in favor of Discovery House siting in Cherryfield, and 429 residents against it.

Thursday’s moratorium vote identified that the potential location of a methadone treatment facility “in the town, or in any small rural Maine community, raises legitimate and substantial questions and concerns about the impact of such facilities on the town,” including:

. Adequacy of streets to additional vehicular traffic.

. Compatibility of a methadone treatment facility with existing uses such as homes, schools, churches and businesses.

. Potential adverse health and safety effects of a methadone treatment facility on the community.

. Possibility of illicit sale and use of illegal drugs.

. Misuse of prescribed methadone doses and associated criminal activity.

. Drug-related deaths.

. Increased burden of law enforcement in a town with no police force.

Tatangelo reminded residents that Discovery House officials had said, at the Aug. 30 meeting, that, “We don’t want to be where we are not wanted.”

“They are obviously hard of hearing,” he said Thursday evening.