SANFORD — Councilors will host a public hearing tonight on a proposed moratorium on the location of methadone clinics in town just weeks after a Massachusetts firm submitted an application to build one.
The application by Spectrum Health Systems Inc. would see the company build a clinic at 61 Eagle Drive in Sanford Industrial Estates. The town’s industrial parks are approved in an ordinance crafted in 2008 as locations for methadone clinics. The ordinance prohibits the clinics from locating in the downtown area, Springvale Village or within half a mile of any school, among other restrictions.
A moratorium, said Town Manager Mark Green, would allow the council to examine the ordinance and tweak it, if necessary.
“They may decide after a moratorium that the (current ordinance) is appropriate,” said Green. He said without a moratorium, the town would be obliged to follow the ordinance crafted three years ago.
“This gives the council an option,” said Green, who said the issue arose when some tenants in the industrial park expressed concern about an outpatient methadone clinic locating there, and based on conversations with some councilors.
Council Chairman Gordon Paul, who has long said he’s opposed to methadone clinics, also said he doesn’t favor a moratorium.
Paul said he believed the methadone clinic issue should be discussed by the full council in open session, and said he was “shocked” when the agenda came out and saw the moratorium proposal. Paul said coming in with a moratorium at the “11th hour” seemed like an effort to try and halt the clinic.
One of the companies in the industrial park expressing concern was Atlantic Pump and Engineering, said Green. An employee of the company Monday referred questions to a parent office in Massachusetts, but no one responded by press time today.
The public hearing is set for 7 p.m. tonight at town hall.
The council’s public hearing on a moratorium comes just one day before the Planning Board is to review the application by Spectrum Health Systems Inc. and host a public hearing on the clinic proposal. That hearing is set for 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, also at town hall.
The application by Spectrum Health Services Inc. marks the first submitted under the town’s Mental Health and Abuse Centers ordinance, approved by the Town Council in November 2008, following a moratorium that went into effect after a different company explored the possibilities of opening a clinic in the downtown area.
Methadone is a synthetic narcotic used to treat addiction to heroin and other opiates.
Spectrum’s Director of Outpatient Services Kristin Nolan in a prior interview said the company, which provides variety of treatment programs for Maine’s correctional system, chose Sanford because of the community’s central location.
Use of narcotics is on the rise in York County and particularly in western York County, said Nolan.
— Senior Staff Writer Tammy Wells can be contacted at 324-4444 or twells@journaltribune.com.
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