Voters in the only town on Mount Desert Island that does not have its own police department decided Thursday to stick with the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department for regular law enforcement coverage.
At a special town meeting, residents rejected a proposal to pursue a contract with the neighboring town of Southwest Harbor for regular police patrols, according to town staff. The measure was supported by 29 people at the meeting, but 51 others opposed it.
Had the proposal been approved, Tremont selectmen would have sought to negotiate a contract with Southwest Harbor to have up to 30 hours of law enforcement coverage each week at a cost of $150,000 a year for three years, 2020 through 2022.
With its defeat, the town instead is expected to renew its existing contract with the sheriff’s department for 2020, under which it will receive up to 30 hours of law enforcement coverage each week at the cost of $64 per hour. The extension would, at most, cost just shy of $100,000 for the year.
Outside those 30 hours of law enforcement presence in Tremont, either Maine State Police or the sheriff’s department would respond to a law enforcement call in town, but may have to send an officer from several towns away, which can result in lengthy response times.
Had the town reached a contract with Southwest Harbor, the neighboring town’s police department also would have responded to law enforcement matters beyond the contracted 30 hours, but would have tacked on an additional charge for each call. One argument for contracting with the neighboring town is that, outside the 30 hours of contracted law enforcement coverage, response times from Southwest Harbor likely would be much shorter than they are for state police or the sheriff’s department.
Police coverage has been a recurring topic of debate for years in Tremont, which has a population of about 1,400 people. At times residents have considered whether to contract with another law enforcement agency for regular coverage, establish their own police department, or continue to go without having any law enforcement presence in town unless officers are called to respond to a specific incident.
Tremont’s latest decision on the issue of police coverage comes months after two other coastal towns took votes on whether to disband their own local police departments and rely on county sheriff’s offices instead. Both of those towns, Gouldsboro and Thomaston, decided to keep their local police forces.
