Commissioners to request additional funding for County Jail

By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
    CARIBOU — County Administrator Douglas Beaulieu reported to the Aroostook County Commissioners during their June 6 meeting that things went fairly well for The County during a June 5 meeting of the Board of Corrections.
    For years, Beaulieu has been advocating for adequate funding of the Aroostook County Jail from the Board of Corrections, as it’s been under-funded since the BOC’s inception in 2008; Beaulieu has been a member of the board since 2011.
    Aroostook County has been budgeted approximately $465,000 for the Aroostook County Jail for the 2013 Fiscal Year, and Beaulieu informed the commissioners that he plans to request an additional $185,000-$200,000 in funding from the board during their next meeting on Tuesday, July 10.
    “As you know, our FY13 budget was approved at level funding,” he said, which means that Aroostook County (and all the other counties) will be receiving the same level of funding that they did last year; if a county doesn’t have enough money to run their facilities with the level funding, that county will have to request additional funding from the BOC.
    Beaulieu told the commissioners that he’s already informed BOC members that Aroostook County will be asking for additional funds.
    “I’ve already alerted my BOC colleagues that if we do not receive additional monies, [one] option is layoffs and sending out our inmate population — essentially flooding them into the system,” Beaulieu said.
    He explained that the other option would be for the board to allow Aroostook County to keep its current level of staffing at the jail, even though that would result in running the budget in the red at the end of the fiscal year.
    “That [option] would require what they call at the end of the year a ‘kicker payment’ so that we can balance our budget,” he explained.
    While Beaulieu expressed that he’s unsure Aroostook County will receive the entirety of the soon-to-be requested funds, even allocating half that amount while allowing the Aroostook County Jail to keep its full level of staffing would be a step in the right direction.
    “It will get us that much closer so that when we get to FY14 and FY15, even if they just want to bring [the budget] up slowly, we’ll get to a point where we don’t have a structural gap in our budget, because right now, we do,” Beaulieu said.
    During the meeting, the commissioners also discussed the possibility of changing their board meeting times from the current 5:30 p.m. to a possible 3:30 or 4 p.m. They decided to re-address the potential change when they finalize their 2013 meeting schedule.
    The roof of the Caribou Court House is slated for repairs, and the commissioners received six bids for the project; as the county has allocated roughly $48,000 for the project, the commissioners authorized Beaulieu to accept the lowest bid that meets project specifications.
    Bids were received from:
• McLaughlin Builders of Medway, at $22,200;
• Philip Trombley of Caribou at $27,400;
• Roof Systems of Maine of Bangor at $38,740;
• Williams Roofing, Inc. of Brewer at $42,990;
• J.P. Martin and Sons Construction of Caribou at $64,760; and
• PNM Construction, Inc. of Presque Isle at $77,673.
    The next meeting of the Aroostook County Commissioners will be held on Wednesday, July 11, in Caribou at 4:30 p.m.