FORT KENT, Maine — Officials here are expressing disappointment and frustration at the planned closing of a Maine Department of Health and Human Services office in town.
DHHS officials reportedly informed their Fort Kent staff on Friday, May 27, and an agency spokesperson confirmed this week that the regional office in town would be closed on Monday, Sept. 5.
Two of the 17 positions at the office are unfilled, but the remaining 15 employees will be relocated to the DHHS office in Caribou about 40 miles away, said Samantha Edwards, the agency’s manager of media relations.
The relocation “will allow direct supervision for these positions in Caribou creating a more efficient and effective service model,” Edwards said in an email confirming the move.
The state also will save the $106,000 in annual building costs, she said.
“DHHS will continue to have a presence in the area,” she said. “We will have staff from the Office of Aging and Disability along with [the Center for Disease Control] public health nurses maintaining an itinerant site.”
The location of that office has yet to be finalized, according to Edwards.
But Town Manager Donald Guimond said the move is going to decrease services to those clients currently served by the Fort Kent office.
Although Edwards said that there would be some interaction with staff at a Fort Kent location, and that clients would still be able to access services online, Guimond said it is likely that many clients will lose out.
“You have elderly people who cannot use computers, and some of these people simply don’t have cars to drive down to Caribou,” he said.
“There was no consideration given to clients or employees,” Guimond said. “There was no talk of consequences. The future of that [office and the services] should have been discussed with the people it impacts. Ultimately the decision [to close] may have been the same. But, it was still not the right process to use.”
Rep. Roland “Danny” Martin, D-Sinclair, said Friday that he was made aware of the planned closure only Thursday.
He said he would be contacting DHHS and conferring with Rep. John Martin, who serves Fort Kent, to see what can be done.
“The residents of the St. John Valley deserve services provided by our Fort Kent office,” he said in an email.
He said he would consider sponsoring legislation to keep the office open if that was an option, but he added that the Legislature may not be in session again until next January.
While the agency indicates that all the employees will have jobs in Caribou, Steve Pelletier, the town’s director of planning and economic development, said he suspects that some local DHHS employees will choose not to commute to the Caribou office.
The education level and training of most of the employees at the Fort Kent DHHS office would make it difficult for many of them to find comparable pay within the area, if they declined to commute to Caribou, according to Pelletier.
“It’s not a good deal,” he said. “When you displace 15 workers it’s not a good sign. … Any time you lose a facility like that, it’s going to be a hit to the area.”
Guimond also expressed disappointment that no one from DHHS or the state contacted the town or surrounding communities before making the decision to close the DHHS office in Fort Kent.
“That’s not the way to conduct business,” said Guimond. “We have better communication from private businesses.”
“You would think that [DHHS] would want to let the town officials know beforehand,” Pelletier said. “We never had an opportunity to discuss alternatives to closing it.”
Department positions based out of the Fort Kent office include nine with the Office of Family Independence, four with Aging and Disability, two with Facilities and two with CDC, according to Edwards.
In a subsequent email, Edwards said that the Family Independence staff in Fort Kent deal with fewer than eight clients per day. About half of the clients go to the local DHHS office for actual meetings with staff, while the remainder are conducting business that could be done without the office staff, such as picking up an application or dropping off paperwork.
Guimond said there has been a slow decline in state services in recent years, including at local offices.
“There used to be more than 30 employees at that [DHHS] office in the past,” said Guimond.
The town manager discounted the estimated cost savings to DHHS by closing the office as trivial, when compared to the agency’s overall annual budget of $6 million.
Edwards could not confirm if there were similar closings or relocations planned at DHHS offices elsewhere in the state, saying, “We regularly review leases as they come up for renewal.”