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Penobscot County voters will decide this November if a new county jail can be built in Hampden.
Penobscot County Commissioners Dave Marshall, Andre Cushing and Dan Tremble on Wednesday approved adding the measure to the November ballot, pending a notification of the county’s budget committee.
Under state law, voters need to approve when a county facility is built outside of the county seat. The November vote will not determine if the jail will be funded.
This will be the first time voters will have a say in any part of the years-long process the county has undergone to build a new jail. Although commissioners have not yet approved plans for the facility, they anticipate asking voters to approve funding the jail in the November 2027 election if the ballot question passes this fall, according to plans presented Wednesday.
It’s unclear if the question on the ballot this November will ask if the jail can be built anywhere outside Bangor, or only to move it to the Hampden industrial park location for which the county has a land option.
Commissioners had intended to put the question on the ballot this June, Cushing said previously, but the vote was delayed because county officials were looking into a possible Bangor site that was deemed unsuitable for the county’s needs.
Although the county holds an option for land in Hampden, it’s still undetermined if that’s where the facility would be built. Another site in the same industrial park has since become available and will be looked into, Cushing said.
The Hampden location the county has a land option for is a former quarry that was once filled with water.
Two members of a coalition supporting a new jail that’s not affiliated with the county, Matt LaChance and Ed Marsh, questioned if it would be more expensive to build on the selected plot of land because of the material used to fill in the quarry.
No issues were found by Haley Ward when engineers reviewed the site, Cushing said. Supports will be added in the ground to hold up the one-story building, he said.
Initial documents have shown that the new facility will cost between $72.7 and $84.5 million. The building will have 258 beds, a jump from the jail’s current limit of 157, according to the plans.
Officials have said Penobscot County needs a new jail because the current one, built in 1869, has costly deferred maintenance and size restrictions that costs roughly $2 million a year. A new facility would slash the costs for boarding inmates and allow for more services to be provided in the jail, cutting transportation costs.
Robert Brown and Jason Sharpe, co-founders of Dirigo Strategic Advisors, an advising company hired by the county, led the presentation about the timing of the votes and cost for the jail.
Paying for a new facility would cost Penobscot County taxpayers. In the first year after the bond is secured, a house worth $300,000 is expected to have $79 added to its tax bill, Brown said. It’s unclear what the costs will be during the length of the bond, which county officials previously said would most likely be for more than 20 years.
Having a year between the two votes will allow the county to get a “good pulse” on the public and get approval from Hampden for the site.
“If this passes with a huge majority and people are for it, it gets a momentum, lets people know what’s happening, but also that there is a change happening with our correctional facility,” Brown said.
Sheriff Troy Morton and County Administrator Blair Tinkham are leading the project. Tinkham will release more details soon, he said.
Marketing done by Haley Ward will be released through the process, but county and local officials will have to successfully sell the new facility to voters to get it approved, Cushing said.
“If we were building a civic center, it might be a little easier sell, but we’re building the facility that is a necessary component of what citizens expect they’re paying taxes for: public safety. And it has been a, at times, torturous process, because we haven’t had all the information,” Cushing said.