BANGOR, Maine — A City Council member who opposed an ordinance blocking expansion of a local methadone clinic said Monday that the council should allow the expansion now that a federal judge has referred to the ordinance as discriminatory.
U.S. District Judge John Woodcock’s preliminary ruling of Nov. 15 stated that the ordinance denying Penobscot County Metro Treatment Center’s plan to expand was “facially discriminatory” and violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.
That’s right in line with the thinking of Councilor Sarah Nichols.
“He felt the same way I did. I voted the way I did because I felt [center officials] met all the qualifications of the law,” Nichols said Monday. “It should be allowed to expand. They met the criteria.”
Nichols and Councilor Gibran Graham were in the minority when the council voted 7-2 on Aug. 8 to deny the clinic’s request to expand from 300 to 500 patients. The center filed suit a few weeks later and sought a preliminary injunction that Woodcock issued a 31-page ruling on. Woodcock, however, stopped short of granting the injunction, which would have allowed the expansion to proceed.
Woodcock found instead that at the time of the August lawsuit there were at least 60 open slots at the city’s other two methadone treatment clinics, so patients would not be denied treatment and would not suffer the irreparable harm required to approve the injunction.
Nichols said she agrees with the majority council sentiment that Bangor is overburdened with treatment centers. Bangor has three methadone treatment centers licensed to serve a total of 1,500 patients, more than any other state municipality and as many as are treated in southern Maine. The cluster of treatment centers places an unfair burden on Bangor, especially since only about 20 percent of the patients live in Bangor, city officials have said.
But Nichols isn’t trying to have it both ways, she said. Nichols believed that the center met the city’s expansion criteria and that was the issue at hand, not whether the city was overburdened.
“To me that argument had nothing to do with what we were voting on,” Nichols said. “That’s a whole different conversation. I don’t link the two.”
Graham had no comment on Monday, saying that he would wait until the council revisited the matter.
Council Chairman Joe Baldacci has said he believes the court ruling gives the council room to amend the ordinance to eliminate the discriminatory elements. Bangor, he said, does a great deal to help combat addiction, and will do more, but residents also have the right and wish to limit the number of clients served by treatment clinics within city lines.
The council will take up the issue with its attorney in executive session before meeting on Nov. 28, he said.