PARIS — The Paris Select Board voted unanimously to keep data centers out of town for the next six months.
At the Sept. 28 meeting, the board’s five members approved a 180-day moratorium on data center development and a separate motion directing the Planning Board to develop an ordinance prohibiting data centers.
“It destroys the quality of life,” Selectman Robert Ripley said. “I don’t think they help any community they’ve ever moved into. They just pillage and they’re gone.”
Select Board members called their action a “preemptive strike.”
“We’ve got lots of water,” Ripley said. “We’ve got a rural area.”
He said those factors could make the town a target for data centers.
“Our local infrastructure could not handle it with the amount of power and data they consume,” Ripley said.
After Gov. Janet Mills vetoed a bill in April that would have established an 18-month statewide moratorium on large data centers, Bangor in Penobscot County and several small towns in Oxford County began considering temporary bans.
If the Planning Board and Select Board approve a proposed ordinance, Paris residents would have the final say in a vote.
The Select Board also spent much of the meeting discussing the search for a successor to the police chief, whose resignation takes effect Oct. 31.
Town Manager Natalie Andrews said she is seeking an interim chief and developing a process for a permanent hire, including confirming comparable salary data. She said she contacted the Maine Chiefs of Police Association for help.
Brunswick Chief of Police Scott Stewart, who chairs the association, said the usual hiring process takes a month or two and that the association would charge at least $6,000 to help with the search.
“Chief Stewart has also made calls that have not yielded positive results for a working chief as opposed to an administrative chief,” Andrews said.
Explaining the distinction, she said, “We don’t expect our chief to sit behind a desk” and that the chief would at times be “out on the road.”
Andrews asked whether the county would provide administrative policing support to help Paris in the interim or on an ongoing basis. She learned that the county does not offer that service.
On a lighter note, the board chair shared an invitation from New York-based Gemelli Films to film a Christmas movie in Paris.
“Our goal is to make the town itself an important part of the film and to work respectfully with the local community,” Candice Cain, the company’s president, wrote in an email.
Encouraged by the Select Board members’ enthusiasm, Andrews said she would invite Cain to Paris to discuss the project.
The board appointed Ripley and Ronald Ramsey to the Norway-Paris Solid Waste Interlocal Agreement Review Committee. The committee is working to address concerns about legal and financial details in the agreement.
At its next meeting, scheduled for Oct. 13, the Select Board is expected to discuss the police chief search and go into executive session for the town manager’s annual performance review.
Leslie Goode is a Community Reporting Fellow receiving training through the Journalism New England Career Lab to do civic reporting that provides people in towns across New England with the information they need to be engaged in their community.
