Town considers banning clinics

EAST MILLINOCKET – Mental health and substance abuse facilities such as methadone clinics will be all but banned under a proposed ordinance change reviewed at a public hearing Monday.

Except for a portion of commercially zoned Main Street at the western edge of town, such facilities would be banned if residents approve the changes at a May 15 town meeting. The ordinance would go into effect 30 days after the vote.

The ordinance bars clinics from residential, industrial or mixed zone areas. It allows permits for clinics in commercial zones if they are more than 1,000 feet from another clinic or schools, public libraries, public parks or “youth-oriented establishments” and are not abutting residential zones.

Town officials intended to ban drug treatment clinics entirely from town, Selectman Rick Nicholson said, fearing that they bring with them drug addicts and increased crime.

“Those give you a different kind of traffic. I think you know what I mean,” he said Monday.

Yet they stopped short of a complete ban of mental health clinics because they might permit facilities whose population was deemed unthreatening, such as for autistic children, said Mark Scally, chairman of the Board of Selectmen.

“The real impetus behind this was to keep a residential zone a residential zone,” Scally said during the hearing at town hall on Monday, which 11 people attended.

Home-based businesses and other commercial entities are taking advantage of loopholes in town ordinances and diluting the quality of life in residential zones, Scally said.

No one spoke against the ban during the hearing.

Originally developed as a pain medication, methadone is widely used as a therapeutic substitute for illegal narcotics such as heroin and prescription medications such as morphine or OxyContin.

Treatment providers and other proponents say successful methadone therapy allows an addicted person to resume normal life activities such as finishing school, holding a job and raising children.

Critics argue that methadone, itself addictive and potentially lethal if misused, simply substitutes one drug habit for another and contributes more to the drug problem than it resolves.

Two methadone clinics operate in Bangor, with a third to open in early spring. Methadone clinics also are operating in Calais, Waterville, South Portland and Westbrook. Two more clinics are pending in Portland and Rockland.

Fears that the town could become home to a methadone clinic began when a doctor’s office closed on Western Avenue recently, Nicholson and Scally said.

Medical clinics, Nicholson said, are generally an awkward fit in East Millinocket, a mill town of about 1,500 people living mostly in tightly clustered homes on the northern side of Route 157 between Medway and Millinocket.

“The town’s not laid out for any kind of a clinic, not just methadone, although those do raise concerns,” he said. “There’s not a lot of room for parking, or for the town to grow. It’s tight for space.”

Selectmen also reviewed a proposed property maintenance ordinance banning unauthorized junkyards and unsanitary conditions.