WILTON — After 10 meetings, 80 hours of deliberation and more than 600 pages of documents, the Wilton-Jay Police Collaboration Committee began its final round of discussions Tuesday on whether the two towns should work together on policing.
The committee presented four options for future policing to the Wilton Board of Selectpersons.
The committee is expected to repeat that process Monday night when it presents the four options to the Jay Select Board.
The options are:
- Do nothing, leaving each town to continue operating and funding its own police department.
- Contract with the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office to provide policing for both towns.
- Have one town contract with the other to provide police services for both.
- Establish a quasi‑municipal corporation to provide police services to both towns.
Chief Joseph Sage of the Jay Police Department said the collaboration committee was formed because both towns struggle to find and retain officers, share similar profiles — including population and call volume — and believe collaboration could save money. The towns also share a long border and a major state highway corridor, Route 4.
Chief Ethan Kyes of the Wilton Police Department elaborated on the staffing issues, saying, “We hire new officers, send them to the (Maine Criminal Justice Academy) at town expense and then they leave.”
He said his department has lost two officers recently to the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office.
Sage, Kyes and Lee Ann Dalessandro, a Jay selectwoman and the committee chair, presented the options Tuesday.
Most of their attention went to the second option, contracting with the Sheriff’s Office, and the fourth option, setting up a quasi‑municipal corporation. Each option comes with a list of pros and cons.
The 33‑page primer prepared by the committee shows that contracting with the Sheriff’s Office would give the towns police coverage around the clock, with a lieutenant and 10 patrol deputies, five for each town. It projected a cost reduction of nearly $218,000 from the $2,456,241 the Sheriff’s Office says the two towns would spend if they continued operating separately.
The towns’ current budgets for policing total $2,097,010, significantly less than the figure used by the Sheriff’s Office.
Sage said that if the Sheriff’s Office provided police services, each town would face added costs for office space, internet service and printing. The towns’ administrative assistant positions would also be eliminated.
“To get to its cost estimates, the Sheriff’s Office would have to cut jobs,” Sage said.
Wilton Selectwoman Tiffany Maiuri said, “There’s no guarantee that costs wouldn’t balloon with the Sheriff’s Office.”
She asked Sage and Kyes about the case clearance rates for the towns and for the Sheriff’s Office. Sage said Jay’s rate is about 20 percent above the state rate, which the state puts at 36 percent. Kyes said Wilton clears 55 to 60 percent of its cases. The Sheriff’s Office clears 51 percent of its cases, according to the Nationwide Police Scoreboard website.
Establishing a quasi‑municipal corporation would likely be the most complicated of the four options. Kyes said some Maine municipalities have created such corporations for firefighting, but the approach is not common in the state.
Other states rely on the model far more heavily. In Pennsylvania, municipalities use it widely for policing. Across the state, 143 municipalities have created 43 quasi‑municipal police departments. Pennsylvania reports that 58 percent of its police departments have 10 or fewer officers. Jay and Wilton each has fewer than 10 officers.
As a quasi-municipal department, “it’s one agency,” Kyes said, “but it’s controlled by both towns,” so neither community loses its local identity.
The committee cited the potential loss of identity as a drawback of the second and third options — contracting with the Sheriff’s Office or having one town contract with the other.
The towns would be able to attract more grant money, Kyes said, because a quasi‑municipal department would have its own grant identification number. Thus, its grant applications would not compete with or weaken grant requests submitted by either town.
Kyes said the idea has already been reviewed by the office of District Attorney Neil McLean Jr., which found no legal problems with it.
The committee proposed a detailed starting structure that would give each town police coverage at all hours, with a corporal on duty at night who could respond quickly to emergencies or case overloads and fill in when officers miss shifts. The proposal calls for a total staff of 18, compared with the Sheriff’s Office contract proposal, which would employ 11.
Kyes said having a local oversight board with equal representation from each town would help preserve local identities. The board would likely include select board members from each town and each town manager, along with members of the public.
Kyes said this option would be the most difficult and time‑consuming to put in place.
Jay Town Manager Shiloh LaFreniere saluted the two select boards and the committee “for thinking outside the box and for working so hard.”
In another matter, Wilton Town Manager Maria Greeley said the town’s legal counsel, Kristin Collins of Preti Flaherty in Augusta, has advised that “it rests solely with the select board to adopt an ordinance regulating all‑terrain vehicles.”
At its previous meeting, the board repealed its ATV policy after being advised that a policy cannot be enforced and only an ordinance carries legal authority.
Residents had complained about ATV use on roads where riders could be at risk, such as McCrillis Corners Road, which has two hills and two sharp curves.
“We need to come up with an ordinance,” Selectwoman Nancy Allen said.
Chair David Leavitt noted that a town ordinance could regulate access only on town roads. Wilton has several state roads, including Routes 2, 4, 17, 133 and 156. He added that such a measure would be an ordinance of the Board of Selectpersons, not of the town meeting. Greeley confirmed it would be a Board of Selectpersons ordinance.
The board unanimously named Jay Cummings to the Comprehensive Plan Committee. Cummings also serves on the Planning Board, but Greeley said serving on both does not present a conflict of interest.
