SKOWHEGAN, Maine — The race to become the next sheriff in Somerset County pits a chief deputy at the sheriff’s office with 40 years of experience against a Waterville police officer who has spent 15 years working in law enforcement.
Chief Deputy Dale Lancaster, 58, of Cornville, has been in law enforcement since he was 18 and has spent his professional life serving the communities in and around Somerset County.
Kristian “Kris” McKenna, 38, of Skowhegan, grew up in Old Town and was hired by Somerset County in 1999, working there until 2006, when he took the Waterville police post.
They are running to replace Sheriff Barry DeLong who has held the post for 20 years and has decided to retire.
Both men started their law enforcement careers with Somerset County and worked in dispatching, as correction officers and as patrol deputies. Both say they want to provide the best law enforcement services available but they have different views about what can be done with limited funds.
The Sheriff oversees a $1.8 million law enforcement budget that covers a staff of around 100, including deputies, detectives, and personnel in the civil division and courthouse, as well as a $16.8 million budget for the Somerset County Jail in East Madison.
Lancaster said with his decades of experience he knows budgets and operations and has spent his time as chief deputy advocating for programs that address problems within the rural county’s communities, specifically domestic violence and sexual assaults against children.
“We have worked aggressively looking for outside funding sources to augment our operations,” said Lancaster, who spent 27 years with the Maine State Police finishing as commander of the Major Crimes Unit for southern Maine. “We are the first county in the state of Maine to have satellite tracking of people. That’s to help make victims of domestic violence safer.”
The Blutag GPS tracking device used in Somerset County is strapped to the leg of people charged with domestic violence crimes. A portion of the funds for the program that started Oct. 1 came from a fundraiser by the parents of Amy Lake. Lake and her children Coty, 13, and Monica, 12, were killed in June 2011 by her estranged husband, who then turned the gun on himself.
There also is a new school resource officer and a specially trained child sexual assault detective now employed to deal with those crimes.
McKenna said he also knows budgets because he runs his own media company, ZeroEnd, and he’s been thinking about how to reduce county costs for years. His central ideas involve call sharing with Maine State Police and eliminating a county vehicle for the sheriff and chief deputy.
“From Fairfield to Sandy Bay and Smithfield to Palmyra, it’s a huge county and how to best serve the people in such a large area? Call sharing,” he said. “With call sharing you just doubled your resources … [and] it didn’t cost you a penny because it’s already taken out in taxes.”
Eliminating a county vehicle for the sheriff and chief deputy would save $40,000 a year that could be used to hire more personnel, McKenna said.
While several counties in the state taking advantage of call sharing with state police, Lancaster said the idea is “flawed,” due directly to “issues with daily intel and long-term intel” with investigations.
“Even with call sharing I can’t go to the state police and say ‘Go investigate this person’ because they don’t work for me and vice versa,” the chief deputy said.
He added that both Oxford and Aroostook counties abandoned their call sharing partnerships earlier this year.
“It has nothing to do with collaboration with state police. I think there is a healthy relationship,” Lancaster said. “We both share each other’s [radio] frequency so if there is a real safety issue, the closest unit will respond.”
While Lancaster doesn’t believe in call sharing, he does believe in the pursuit of additional partnerships, “so we can utilize each other’s services more effectively.”
McKenna said he doesn’t know why Aroostook County stopped call sharing, but Oxford County got a casino and with the additional revenue no longer needed to outsource the work to the state police.
“It’s not a flawed idea if it’s put into a proposal correctly,” the Waterville officer said.