Five years ago there were 56 registered sex offenders living in Bangor. Today there are nearly 200.

They are scattered throughout the city. They are on Ohio Street, Broadway, Howard Street, Vernon Street, Essex Street, Sixteenth Street, Smith Street, Essex Street, Woodbury Street, Pearl Street, Center Street and Lincoln Street. Until a few days ago one was living quietly just four doors down from Fourteenth Street School.

Today it is nearly a full-time job for one Bangor Police Department detective to keep track of the list, provide notification to neighbors and ensure that the registered offenders are living where they say they are.

And just like the price of gasoline, the numbers aren’t expected to go down anytime soon.

Five years ago – after some high-profile cases in Augusta and Lewiston, when offenders moved into neighborhoods where proper notification was not made – a commission was formed to construct comprehensive legislation to protect Maine neighborhoods from sex offenders and to improve notification practices.

I don’t think much has changed.

Last week in Bangor, the principal of Fourteenth Street School was notified that a sex offender who had been convicted of two counts of gross sexual misconduct was living four doors away from the school, which serves kindergarten through third grades and borders the West Side athletic fields.

It was proper that the principal was notified, and he subsequently sent home a letter to parents, who could then have those nasty but necessary conversations with their children. The problem was it was about five months too late.

Someone dropped the ball.

The issue of sex offenders and how to deal with them continues to perplex legislators, law enforcement and correction officials. Things got even more complicated and ugly two years ago when a young Canadian man stalked and killed two men whose addresses he found on the Maine Online Sex Offender Registry.

While some called for more notification and accountability, others argued that as a society we were putting offenders at risk of being assaulted or killed. After a year of debate, the Legislature’s Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee put forth a bill to refine the registry to better differentiate between violent, risky offenders and those who pose no real threat to public safety.

In early May, Gov. John Baldacci refused to sign the bill into law, saying that more work needed to be done.

Under Maine law, each police agency creates its own policies regarding notification of neighbors when a sex offender moves into the area. The Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department has a two-tiered system. When a lower-risk offender moves to a Penobscot County town, the sheriff’s department notifies the town office and the school department and officials there decide who else to notify. If a second-tier or riskier offender moves into the area, the sheriff’s department will enlarge the notification to neighbors, perhaps the entire town and the media.

Bangor has a less aggressive approach, according to Police Chief Ron Gastia.

The city’s policy is to notify abutting property owners and other tenants if the offender moves into an apartment building.

“It’s a case-by-case basis,” Gastia said.

If an offender moves close to a school, the department would notify in writing the school superintendent’s office.

“It’s then up to them whether to notify the individual school officials or parents,” Gastia said.

The principal of Fourteenth Street School claims he was notified by a police detective on May 21 and sent a letter home to parents the following day. Superintendent Robert “Sandy” Ervin reportedly told one parent who called him that he knew nothing of the offender living on Fourteenth Street until he was notified by the principal.

Neither Ervin nor Assistant Superintendent Betsy Webb was available on Friday.

Notifying a principal instead of the superintendent and doing it five months after the fact “would not be our policy,” Gastia said, “but I’m going to have to look into it further to see whether we followed our policy. If we didn’t, then we will certainly address it. Our policy would not be to wait from January to May to notify neighbors.”

It may have been nearly 20 years ago that an 8-year-old girl was snatched off the street and raped as she walked to Fourteenth Street School, but memories here are long. Just last fall there was a reported abduction attempt of a pupil at nearby Fairmount School.

The controversy over how to safely, effectively and humanely deal with sex offenders who live among us continues. It’s clear that the policies in place in Bangor are shaded in gray, but the School Department and the Police Department need to take a hard look at those policies and determine who should be notified and when in order to offer the absolute best protection they can for the kids headed to school each day.

Parents won’t tolerate anything less.

reneeordway@gmail.com