Bangor Legislative Committee explores Dorothea Dix site for housing

[0:07] Carollynn Lear: Thank you for your life and you're welcome to go home now. It's fixed and started right. [0:16] Daniel Carson: Thank you, Assistant City Manager O'Donnell. Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the Bangor City Council's Legislative Committee. Today is Wednesday, September 9th, 2026, and it is 9:44 p.m. I am your chair, Councillor Carson, and joined by committee members Councillor Walker, Councillor Deane, Councillor Leonard, and Councillor Fish. We are also joined at the table by our wonderful city manager here, and we have two agenda items this evening, and you're there. [0:51] Carollynn Lear: Yes, so the first item on the agenda is an update on the Georgia facility. Several months ago you had deputized Jen Genderman and myself just try to suss out what was happening at Dorothea Dix, just generally, but also I think really specifically to determine whether there was state buildings or property that might be used for some of the ongoing housing development projects that have come across your desk to consider. I'm gonna work through the map from the map that was in yet, but first sort of. generally dorothea dix is still licensed to hold to 100 patients at the time that we met with staff they had about 67 or exactly 67 patients there may have changed since then. And they don't staff for a full 100 people. They also provide a number of outpatient services, court-ordered psych services for individuals who are not criminally responsible for their crimes, adults with major mental health diagnoses, policies, jail transfers, civilly committed individuals, and 60 day evals for individuals who are being will eventually go to jail. Those are sort of the primary outpatient services that they're providing there. So going to the map, I mean, I think it would not be crazy to think that they have a lot of available property. But I will sort of go through what they do have. So if you look sort of at the middle of the map, there's numbers one through nine. And that's the portion of the property that's primarily being used to provide either inpatient or outpatient mental health services. And in speaking with folks from the state, although there are floors or portions of that building that are not used either because they're not safe to use or primarily they're not safe to use, largely that building is in fact being used. Use. The building sort of to the bottom of your page is listed as the Pooler Pavilion at 166 Hogan Road. That has actually since been demolished and you'll see it notes to be demolished. That has since been demolished, and the long-term plan will be, or is, to build a new mental health facility in that area. And so I think there's an acknowledgement that the facilities, the outdated old facilities that are currently being used, aren't appropriate for what they're being used for, nor ideal to provide healthcare services. But I think certainly the funding, the founding of a brand new mental health facility, is the barrier to actual, actually building that. It has not been budgeted. There's no plans to budget, but the long term plan would be to budget a new mental health facility, and then eventually the buildings is numbered one through nine and being torn down. Moving to the left of your page, you'll see Mount Hope Avenue Access Road and athletic playing fields. These are properties that I believe are used by John Babs, at least to John Babs for sports. That plot, as well as on the bottom of your page what's listed as Saxel Park, which is the other portion of sort of vacant property, it was sort of represented to us that there's real barriers to construction over either of those lots, primarily because of underground utilities. And so I didn't, I didn't do an in-depth fact check of that. Is that something I can tell that my experience over there is [5:46] Daniel Carson: that there's lots of flooding that field. I'm surprised that they still use the field the way that it is, and then there's walking trails around there that are often flooded and muddy. Yeah, it. [6:02] Carollynn Lear: So yeah, I don't, you know, I didn't fact check, go pull a map and see what utilities are under there. But as we started to talk about those properties, that vacant property, it was like a hard stop. No, that's not buildable for that reason. There are a number of other are out buildings listed, the 176 Hogan Road, 174 Hogan Road, 636 State Street. All of these buildings are, you'll see they have, you know, DEP listed underneath them. They're all being used by the state currently, with and the one exception is that over on the right hand side of your map where you see 650A State Street, that is a vacant building that has not been demolished yet, but is in need of demolition. And so I think that site, the 650A State Street, in the conversation with the state, was really the only place where in the future, once that building is demolished, that could potentially be a viable site for some other, you know, housing or service provider development. I'm [7:37] Daniel Carson: just wondering, was there any indication about when that might be the demolition [7:43] Carollynn Lear: There was not, the demolition was not budgeted for in this year, and so I think that's kind of their full sort of forward thinking on that was they don't have money to do it this year or last year or the year before. But I mean, certainly, if just theorizing, if we had a project that we thought was right for that location, maybe there would be some motivation to demolish that more quickly, Councilor. [8:26] Joseph Leonard: Leonard, so if maybe that's the sell, then like maybe in order for them to sort of get the ball rolling, we do our homework on what we as a council would agree would be feasible for a plan or what we want to construct, and then bring that to the legislature, and then we just moan and cry until they do something about it, effectively. I mean, I don't know what else to do at this point, because it seems like everything else seems to be at least carving it from wrong places, sort of like locked into what is an already ongoing state plan that they will likely not implement for many years. [9:17] Carollynn Lear: Yeah, I think the challenge will be making sure that whatever's proposed there is compatible with the existing uses. Because I do think when you sort of evaluate the nature of the services being provided there, are certainly some uses that would not be compatible and some that would definitely be compatible. So I think that would naturally be a limiting factor. [9:47] Carolyn Fish: with the facility that has been demolished and they have no plans at some point they plan to do a mental health service facility there is there any way we can pressure legislators i mean for state or funding or government funding i mean our mental health you know a lot of our unhoused it's it's mental health and they're left out on the street and we you know when they close BMHI they really never I mean for 60 beds compared to the patient level we had prior to I think that we have a good case to say hey you closed it and it's been like what was that 1996 or even earlier but it 's been a long time that it's long overdue for them i think we need to pressure them to make a plan to create a mental health facility sooner than later and if that other lot that they're going to demo becomes available you know i think we should come up [10:54] Joseph Leonard: With some ideas for that. So I'm hearing two basically strategies, which is pressuring the legislature for just the facility development overall, which 100%, I mean, having to just have that be a general project. I think the more likely thing that we would probably see something sooner rather than later is giving a look for that specific property as soon as we publish what would be best suited for that property to help facilitate their future projects as well. Realistically, I think that's with this legislature probably the only thing we can really see if we really put our efforts forward, see something reasonable in a short period of time. But in regard to Dorothy, because this is going to be a long-term legislative strategy push, it's just continue crying and moaning about this facility. I know it's late. I don't mean to go on a story and I'll make it very, quick. When I was, and I apologize for anyone who's watching, I don't know why you are at this point so late, but when I was a kid, my chore was, one of my chores was mowing the lawn. I hate mowing the lawn. My parents always happened to get a property that was like at a giant hill that I always had to mow for a bushman, and then when I finally went off to college, it was my brother's turn to mow that lawn. I suffered in silence. I didn't complain once. Well, maybe it could complain a little bit. He cried and moaned so much my parents bought him a riding lawnmower. So that's what we have to do. We have to just keep pressuring, crying, and moaning, and make it so that they want to take action just to shut us up. That's the strategy we have to go for. [13:05] Daniel Carson: I'm like raising, I'm tired. I'm raising my hand to call on myself. Wow. It's a passing. Yes, thank you. So I think I'm also hearing sort of two things there. One, there's pressuring the state to actually follow through on its stated plans, and then there is the potential that there's another building that could be demolished. And so this is where I think on that question that's a little bit of a different strategy and would take in, we want to take into account the sort of contradictions between our, you know, local government, how we're set up and financed, state government, and then there's also the opportunity of the federal government. And so I think probably the approach in my brain would be to sort of empower somebody to start thinking through the limitations of Dorothea, you know, what goes on there and what we would be limited to, as was already mentioned. And then to think about, you know, maybe it's the homeless committee, maybe it's another other area, but to start building some sort of a concept as to what we might do with that for the state. And we right, we want to get money from appropriations and the best way to do that, and my experience has been to present them with a real plan and as well to have your commitment ready to know how much money that you can put towards something when you're approaching them. And I would say that the third piece Once we have all of that would be congressionally, we could really advocate that way as well. So for things I hear counselor. [14:52] Joseph Leonard: I was just gonna add to that point. I don't mean to keep bringing the same thing about guests for direction. Once we do understand, or if that specific property what it is that we want to do, and what this committee has agreed upon. I mean, I would be completely in favor of just writing an SR for one of our legislators here to just, if they want to champion it, let them champion it so that when it is actually turned into an LD, we can then use that as a way to actually talk about that strategy for what we want to do and then whenever these two bills are going to be talked about in their respective committees we can then have a representative of the city or even counselors or an organized community after whatever that is to Just consistently organize and just go there over and over and over again and it does work. I mean, I know I can't really say that we've had success with passenger rail, but it actually has moved the needle quite a bit to a point where now it is a statewide talking point. Do like this upcoming event, I'm not going to get into the whole conversation with that, but that's the strategy we need to go for. We actually need to have legislators literally see a bill in front of them in order for them to Actually [16:27] Carollynn Lear: Be invoked on this. Yeah, so on this plot that has potential, I just want to clarify too, I that's my judgment that it has potential. They haven't invited us to ask for that property, we're going to invite ourselves. That's right. I think what I can do is I can work with Jen and maybe I'm actually thinking Chief Hathaway to maybe talk through whether there's there's a gap in services because this facility is largely serving individuals who are somewhere in this stream of incarceration or post-release. Whether there's an unmet need, I imagine there is in housing folks who are in need. And I think, for example, one of the things in talking with the folks at North Dix. One thing that happens is that folks get released from incarceration. They have service providers at this facility, but they might not have housing here in Bangor. And that's a way that people might become unhoused in Bangor because they want to stay here connected. So that might be a good example of where there's an unmet need that can be served there. there. [17:49] Daniel Carson: I'm thinking about, as you're saying that, so when I started my career in Cleveland, Ohio, one of the things that I did adjacent to my banking career was to staff a nonprofit called Towards Employment, whose mission was direct intervention with the incarcerated population as they were being released to help them work towards employment, housing other opportunities. And so I, as you're saying that probably even before you ask, there's definitely a need in that and that would connect to a lot of the other things that we've been [18:31] Susan Deane: talking about. Counselor Dean, I have another suggestion, which may or may not be popular, but I was kind of joking about pre incarceration, but we have a number of individuals who are on the streets doing illegal things but we're not doing anything because we don't have our tails this might be a facility we're getting together gee that maybe those individuals could be somewhat rehabilitated before they end up in kirkland so that might be a population that needs help that we could actually help before it becomes too late wasn't that me following i haven't had a chance [19:12] Carolyn Fish: yet to give you a kind of up-to-date one of the homeless committee last night we were talking about the fact that you know the crimes that they committed that we don't have really any way that we're there's no accountability and so what is the gap the matter of fact we're supposed to get a gap map where the committee on the next meeting where they're going to be talking about identifying the gaps and one of them was well this isn't really working we understand you know if you put them in jail There's no room, they're just the D.A. turns around and that we have to all be on the same page. We as a community have to get together and agree to work together for whatever the accountability is. So if that was a place for those that are unhoused, they don't really go to jail but they go to time out, you know, our facility where maybe they get wraparound so they have that opportunity and then it helps the police to be able to have some source of accountability and interaction. So I like that so deep. So. [20:26] Carollynn Lear: We can explore, I'll explore options with folks internally and then what we can do acknowledging that this is probably going to take the form of a legislative proposal as opposed to like a council order that's actionable by staff. I actually think the amount of leg work that we would need to do is probably smaller because we're really just presenting an idea and so I actually think long way of saying I think we can turn that around pretty quickly in anticipation of this session. [20:59] Daniel Carson: Questions continue to explore there our second agenda item it's our upcoming legislative session. [21:11] Carollynn Lear: That's a good segue yeah so I think my goal really for this item was to just start the process of talking about whether there were any other things that we wanted to prioritize this legislative session because we do have a long list of ideas that Councillor Carson has been collecting and we certainly can't move on all like a hundred of them right yeah right away so. [21:39] Daniel Carson: i'm glad that 's a question and of course i mean even in the last committee meeting people were still presenting ideas about things that we could take to the state and advocate and fight for and heard about pub seven potential right you know resources there or so i will i'm gonna just read through some of the things actually this list of about five million things has significantly decreased some of the things that were on here naturally made were removed when we voted down as a council, when we Voted down the language change proposal for this committee. So it actually took some of the things off the table that we could have potentially considered. And that actually makes this a little bit easier, but some things that have come up and this is not maybe complete, but we had a significant conversation during the budget session about an emergency response manager. And out of that, there was discussion about this committee potentially taking on the question of state funding to look at an emergency response manager, as well as building relationships with our surrounding communities, but particularly thinking about Brewer, our Cross River friend, to think about emergency response in a collaborative way. So that was one thing. Like I just said, that built for zero changes that sort of came up in that last thing I just wrote down at the top of the list because people were talking about it. There was another one that came up in just a previous committee meeting tonight was elect the electrification question and so work that could be done around that. Earlier in this council session there was a discussion around potentially generating a report support for unfunded state mandates impacting the city and that would provide us the opportunity of being able to actually have something to go back to the state with, you know, all the things that they pass and they don't fund that we end up having to take on. There is of course we would want to save ourselves some capacity because committees are going to make referrals to us. When the homeless committee comes up with a brilliant plan, this committee is going to have to be prepared probably to go marching to get funds to advocate to bring that plan into existence. We did hear before we created the homeless committee from case managers about particular things in their world that are unfunded by the state. So they're just a couple examples, main care doesn't cover transportation. So in case managers have to go out and about looking for people, they're doing that out of their own pocket. So that was something we did have a constituent who sent a proposal to re-examine that real estate transfer tax that has, right, they have money set aside for certain housing things, but to go back and perhaps propose that a portion of that is set aside for emergency warming shelters across the state rather than finding funding at the last minute. Counselor Fish has repeatedly reminded us that Juniper Ridge is going to reach capacity and we have heard from our wastewater staff about the ongoing issues and concerns with biosolids and the complications of, course, having that contract with Casella where that has to be removed. And for those of us who toured the wastewater plant, we got to hear a horror story about what happens when there's a breakdown in that process. So, and then of course, there is opportunities across the city as departments put in applications for congressionally-directed spending for this committee to advocate with our federal representatives on those pieces. And finally, so this is actually just going back in time actually, so finally I think the first proposal that we received at our very first legislative committee meeting was from Counselor Beck, and that was a proposal on advocating for changes to the county tax credit service centers. So that is not maybe 100% of everything everybody's said all year. But that is quite a list of things that we could have been working from, counselor. [26:17] Carolyn Fish: Did we remove or is it in one of these that I missed, where we wanted some time of help from the state legislation about communities participating in, you know, when they, when we do search, we're the service center, but if, you know, they're, you know, I've heard from a lot of people when they go into Brewer for instance, they fill out the form, the same system managed in the same computer to qualify for GA, and when they do it over there for some reason they don't qualify, but when they come over to Bangor and they qualify, and so is there any type of, you know, pressure we can put on the state to try to force these communities to try to take better care of their own need, you know, you know, I know we're a service center, but Brewer's not exactly small, Hamden's not exactly small, there's some of these communities that are big enough to have some type of better, even if we're a teacher or somehow, I think that the state needs to be tougher in mandating these towns to make better effort and providing services to their own. Just because we're a service center doesn't mean that they're off the hook for making their own efforts. So I don't know how we'd word that, but I think that will take a state legislative [27:46] Carollynn Lear: that it mandates somehow by certain communities. [27:50] Daniel Carson: Yeah, so I would, that is on my list and it wasn't highlighted, so I apologize because you have brought that up before. And I think there's been other versions of that idea brought up also by, you know, like creating a system where communities opt in, you know, but there I think are a few different forms that have been suggested in that conversation. So certainly something that I think would be valuable to take on and other components of that. I know you know right now when somebody comes, you know, there's there's the six month sort of thing, right, the community where they came from will pay for six months and then the next Community picks that up. So there could be enhancements there. Incidentally, I have actually talked to a few town counselors, state counselors from a few other communities that have mentioned lacking GA and I have found like a mixed bag from people where some will report that it's that they don't have GA and it's because they don't use G so right it never increases. Others have said, and of course I don't have like any way to really dig in on this because I'm not from those communities, but other people have said to me offhand, well, we don't have the experience. So there's a knowledge gap in general assistance and then therefore whoever's doing that in that community doesn't have the knowledge to actually execute upon that. So there may be something we can do as a service center to encourage the state to put resources behind education and make sure that communities are empowered to use the tools that they actually [29:27] Joseph Leonard: I did to your point and your point, I think, whatever strategy that we put forward just from my experience just being on Council for a short time. It is. is, my personal opinion, it's not even in our best interest to try to compel other municipalities to do what we know would be best for the entire region. I think the best way to go about this is to be an advocate for everyone, but we are the center of our advocacy for everything that we do. So if we want to do, like, prioritize Augusta to have more general assistance funding come up to this section of the state, we would have to go to bat for ourselves with that large increase of that GA funding if we also wanted to add more GA funding to the surrounding community as well. That's really the only way that would more but to counselor fish's point if we wanted to create a program that incentivized communities to work with us we would need to basically create that program to be centered solely around Bangor and have that be something that we can invite other municipalities into and give them an actual good reason to be invitees to that so that it would be in their best interest to be invited. The reason why I say this is just because if we try to go forward with legislation that is too broad, the idea might be too big to the point where these subcommittees are just going to shoot it down. And the only reason I say that is because, like, you know, just my personal experience is spending like five years trying to promote a passenger rail bill, like, literally only asking for $50,000 for a feasibility study with like, we had nothing to lose and everything to gain. And that subcommittee voted it down two to seven, and then it failed in the House. And it was just, you can have the most rational idea possible, and the legislature will find a way to not support it. And so I think the best way to go forward is to make sure that whatever we do propose that it is almost beyond sound and its foundation and that we can defend it from the most ridiculous opposition questions that come into mind. So I guess what I'm trying to say is we need to really keep these simple and stupid as much as possible. [32:40] Carolyn Fish: Can you quickly kind of elaborate on that? It might be with the homeless committee and one of the research that I did and I provided to them, one of the things they extrapolated from that was from the West Coast, I can't remember what town, and I talked to the mayor, they had an opt-in. Other communities could opt-in. So they had a 24-7 clearinghouse, kind of a dispatch triage, so that when there was a person in crisis and it was a multitude of different services there was always a calling and everybody knew that number. And so in other towns in the town mayor that I spoke with they weren't the service center even though they were a bigger population but they were the beneficiaries of the service center and they opted in and they paid money to that opt-in for these services and I maybe I should call them back. Now that you know we may be going in that direction but that might be, you know, where, you know, we can have the role model plan, hopefully, eventually, and then we call the other towns and say, Hey, do you want to opt in, then all you have to do instead of sneaking them over and dropping homeless people off with no, you know, no coordination, they opt in, and they working with us in collaboration, what service we're going to provide, and we're happy because they're paying somehow, or at least cooperating. So maybe we scratch that for now. See what the homeless community, because they're, they're kind of grabbing on to that, and we're trying to now elaborate a little bit more to come up with an idea around that. So to your point, you're right, it goes to guster go nowhere. [34:15] Carollynn Lear: Another thought that I had about this list, there's two items on this list that I think will be in some way, shape or form consistent with recommendations coming from the property tax relief task force, the unfunded mandates item and the accounting tax credit for service centers. Although I don't know if it will be exactly that, but some sort of, I actually think it may take more of the form of a modifications to the revenue sharing formula for service centers. And so strategically, if we're interested in having our voice amplified, maybe it makes sense to sort of commit to focus on proposals that have traction from other groups. And that would be two that I think will show up in some fashion this session. [35:14] Daniel Carson: I would be inclined to agree with that approach. And then I would also just remind this committee that, you know, and I do, I do a lot of this work in other roles outside of council, but, you know, that building relationships ultimately is what's going to really get us what it is that we need. And not so, not just with our state delegation, but building relationships with, you know, our neighboring communities, the elected officials there, the town and city managers in those places, because I mean, yes, we're going to advocate for vanguard, we're going to fight for what we need, but we're going to lose if all of the communities around us feel that it's an adversarial relationship and that what we're fighting for is actually fighting against them. I don't think that people, you know, when we talk about like homeless individuals who are brought here, whether it's by a neighboring community or, I don't necessarily believe that they want to do all of that in secret and silence and darkness, that they don't have the resources and that's just a part of their response plan. They don't have the shelter. They don't have the general assistance. They do know who has that, and so, you know, here we go. And so I think if we're able to build a collaborative approach, build relationships, that we're going to be able to really dig through some of those pieces in a much more impactful way, and to build the power that we would need, you know, with our neighboring communities, to actually achieve those results in the legislature. Because ultimately that's what every question comes down to, is power and how much has been built and is it enough to compel the deciders to decide, you know, what, you know, your way. So those would be important components. Did [37:10] Joseph Leonard: you have your hand up? I did. I was just going to say that when there's similar ideas in the legislature, it is a strategy if they're like extremely similar. And there's benefit to both bills, killing one and then putting all your weight into the other similar one. Not only is that a really solid strategy, you're also creating alliances, not just for that bill, but potentially for the future. That's all I want to say. [37:48] Carollynn Lear: So I think the actionable items that I have, the probably top priority is to get with Chief Hathaway and Jen to come up with a concept for that plot that we might then start advocating for. I think I heard support for there's probably a couple of items here, probably also the warming shelter one, where it makes sense to hear what the homeless advisory committee is ultimately going to put forth to you, and then support for piggybacking on proposals coming from the property tax relief task force is that an accurate summary of what you'd like me to take away and work on from this meeting? And then maybe, depending on how long it takes us to get through those items, if we still have time, we might be able to pick off one or two of these other items, although I have a feeling my bandwidth is about to get pretty challenged. [38:49] Daniel Carson: Challenged, and they're coming. Yes, well, I, and I mean, as chair of this committee, I'm also willing to contribute significant bandwidth that I have not got to any of these issues, but once we've decided what they are. And I still have like a really just deep love for the idea of collaborating with Brewer and thinking about, you know, state funding for emergency response, because I'm not going to keep, I'm not going to be able to forget about potential disasters and maybe, you know [39:20] Carollynn Lear: Talking through maybe the division of labor. That's probably a space where, if you all were interested in coordinating directly with your fellow policy makers to get traction on that, would probably be super helpful, because it doesn't necessarily make sense to put a lot of legwork and thought into a plan if we aren't going to get the policymaker support for that plan. [39:53] Daniel Carson: There's committee support for that. I would be willing to take on that reach out to Brewer committee support. That's, I said that I'll rock if there's committee support to that. I'm happy to bring that idea to a council workshop to get council support to execute on that idea, make sure we actually do it the right way. We're not full designers here. [40:20] Susan Deane: We have in the past invited the rural city council to our table. I don't know that we've actually really had any discussions that went anywhere, but once or twice we, since I've been on council, once, it was just once, but I mean that might be something that we should do in the future. [40:45] Joseph Leonard: I would definitely recommend we're going to do that. Make sure they do their homework so that we're not just doing a dog and pony show. [40:54] Carollynn Lear: Probably a well-crafted agenda. Yes. [40:56] Susan Deane: Yeah. Not just a meet and greet. It's all nice, but it goes nowhere. [41:02] Carollynn Lear: We don't have extra time. No. You can tell. [41:04] Daniel Carson: Right. Yeah. I saw a bunch of head bobbles. I just want to check in and make sure. Do I take head bobbles as the committee will to move and bring that to a workshop? Shot. Okay. Are there any other thoughts, questions, comments, side remarks? I will report to end this that tomorrow, the Legislative Policy Committee of the Maine Municipal Association will meet in Augusta and conclude its work on its recommended platform for the session. And after that meeting tomorrow I will ensure that I draft a memo for this committee or for a council workshop just update everybody on what that work, how those, how that was found. [41:55] Joseph Leonard: So sounds good, anything else? [41:59] Daniel Carson: Well, with that, it is 10 26 p.m. and we're adjourned.