Stories by Staff Aroostook Republican

CARIBOU, Maine — Aroostook County EMA just received $50,000 in supplemental funding from Homeland Security and 90 percent is already spent.
“With this supplemental funding came a string attached, they wanted us to turn it around quickly,” Director of Aroostook County EMA Darren Woods said.
Parts of Maine received Homeland Security funding and didn’t use all of it so the state picked it up and redistributed it. Woods wrote a needs request with the help of Aroostook’s police chiefs association and other county agencies.
It only took a few days for almost all of the money to be spent and Woods said that’s because The County has a dire need for equipment.
Items purchased with the supplemental funding will benefit all community police departments and the sheriff’s department.
“Our last grant round we started assisting our law enforcement agencies with the purchasing of body cameras,” Woods said. “I foresaw next they were going to need storage for all the data, and rather than spending thousands on servers and computers I approached them with the idea of purchasing removable hard drives.”
Woods purchased several 5,000 gigabyte removable hard drives for each department in The County.

CARIBOU, Maine — The city of Caribou is gaining a new employee whose job will be to beef up marketing and event efforts.
Caribou native, Lydia Kieffer, only has a few more weeks left of hospitality school before she begins her new job as marketing and event director for the city.
“There are so many things I’m excited about,” Kieffer said. “It’s marketing and events, two things I’m passionate about.”
Kieffer’s main focus is to put an emphasis on growing the community and making it a fun place to work, live and play.
“I’m looking forward to continuing Thursdays on Sweden Street, developing that further, and creating new events to celebrate the community and attract tourists,” Kieffer said.
Kieffer has a folder packed with ideas she’s been sharing with her team members at the public library, the Caribou Wellness Center, and City Manager Austin Bleess.
“We have a number of events that we do in town that we want to expand upon and she’ll be tasked with that as well,” Bleess said. “Tourism’s a large part of the economy in Maine and we’re hoping we’ll be able to get a bigger slice of the tourism pie.”