Bangor cannot be “a star on the edge of night,” as new Mayor Joe Baldacci proclaimed Monday, when the city turns its back on marginalized people, namely those struggling with substance abuse.
Baldacci made his comments, using Henry David Thoreau’s description of Bangor, to emphasize that the city will be welcoming to immigrants in the wake of concerns about what a Donald Trump presidency will mean to them and others whom the president-elect has maligned.
“In a time of dark images, I see a Bangor that will never tolerate hatred, bigotry, discrimination or prejudice — not now, not ever. I see a Bangor that has a welcome sign to people all over the world who share our love for America and our desire to be contributing members of our city,” Baldacci said Monday after being chosen as mayor.
These are beautiful words, but they ring hollow, however, when councilors, including Baldacci, only months earlier took down a welcome sign for people seeking addiction treatment. In August, Bangor city councilors voted 7-2 to deny an application from Penobscot County Metro Treatment Center to expand its Bangor methadone clinic by 200 slots.
A day after after Baldacci’s speech, a federal judge ruled that the ordinance upon which Bangor councilors based their August decision was discriminatory.
“For the ordinance to single out methadone clinics and devise special rules to apply to them, as opposed to all other types of clinics, is facially discriminatory,” U.S. District Judge John Woodcock wrote in his 31-page decision. He denied a request from Penobscot County Metro Treatment Center for an injunction that would have allowed the Hogan Road clinic to move ahead with the expansion because the company had not proven that methadone clients had been harmed by the council’s action.
Councilors who opposed the clinic expansion application this summer justified their decision by saying that Bangor was already home to three methadone clinics, so it was time for other communities to step up and open clinics or other treatment facilities. They didn’t apply such thinking, or legal restrictions, to other treatment options, such as doctors prescribing Suboxone, which is one example cited by Woodcock in determining that the city’s ordinance for methadone clinics was discriminatory.
At a time when the need for additional drug treatment capacity in Maine couldn’t be more obvious, seven Bangor city councilors turned their backs on hundreds, potentially thousands, of people in eastern Maine with addictions who need medication-assisted treatment, are ready for it and can’t access it.
Many caught in the trap of addiction are at a point at which they want to get well. And methadone offers a reprieve from the cravings and the chance to start getting better.
The council had before it an easy opportunity to help a population for whom help has been hard to come by. The council had the chance to make it a little less likely that someone with an addiction would call a clinic seeking help and be told there was no room.
They failed a group of Maine people who are desperate for help, now more than ever. But, now, with Woodcock’s ruling, they have a chance to make it right.
Bangor city councilors should admit that many of them made a mistake in August. They can live up to Baldacci’s ideal of a “Bangor that will never tolerate hatred, bigotry, discrimination or prejudice” by approving Penobscot County Metro’s expansion to ensure that area residents get the help and support they need and deserve.
