FARMINGTON – Rangeley officials informed the sheriff and Franklin County commissioners that Rangeley police officers would not be scheduled to work on Sunday and Monday nights as of Sept. 26.
Rangeley Police Chief Phil Weymouth stated in the letter dated Sept. 20, which was also signed by Town Manager Perry Ellsworth, that because of recent developments in Rangeley, a workshop was planned to discuss police coverage. Town officials and plantation assessors were to meet Tuesday night with Ellsworth and Weymouth.
Until then, there will be a no call-out policy, other then Rangeley’s regularly scheduled shifts, Weymouth wrote, and “we will not be available to respond outside the town of Rangeley under any circumstances. My patrolman will notify your dispatch at the beginning of each shift as to their availability. Without notification your dispatchers should assume that they need to cover incidents in Rangeley 24-7.”
Commissioners asked Franklin County Sheriff Dennis Pike about the letter Tuesday during a commission meeting.
Pike told commissioners that he hadn’t expected the letter. He said an agreement was reached in 2004 that the county and state police would split coverage of Rangeley on Sundays and Mondays, and he thought it was working. Pike also said he was disturbed by Ellsworth’s “blasting” of the Sheriff’s Department in a Rangeley newspaper.
Pike said his budget couldn’t handle covering Rangeley full-time this year.
County Chief Deputy Raymond Meldrum sent back a letter dated Sept. 22 to Weymouth stating that the department didn’t agree with his letter.
Meldrum stated that having “a no call-out policy for a police department is unheard of” and “to abandon fellow officers by a no response outside your town under any circumstances order is certainly not accepted in good feelings. Add that to a near demand for assistance with your required police protection for the citizens of Rangeley, shameful,” Meldrum wrote.
The Sheriff’s Department is not responsible for police coverage in towns with their own full-time police departments, Meldrum wrote. The county is not opposed to resuming full coverage of the town as it had done in the past, he stated, and would give Rangeley the same professional coverage that other unorganized areas and towns without full-time police departments would receive.
“However if we are filling in for your shortcomings, it will be with a price tag attached, after proper administrative communications and written agreements,” Meldrum wrote.
Pike said after the meeting that he hadn’t expected to discuss the letter with commissioners. This should have been settled between the two parties, Pike said, and not taken into a public forum.
Weymouth, reached in Rangeley Tuesday, said his officers have covered shifts that the county was expected to cover and were continually called out to cover calls in neighboring plantations with assistance sometimes hours away.
Weymouth said he has spent 58 percent of his overtime budget between July 1 and Oct. 1. The $15,000 in the account is expected to last to June 30, 2006.
Both Weymouth and Ellsworth said Tuesday that this has nothing to do with Sheriff’s Department employees. It is more about the amount of money Rangeley pays to the county and whether the town is getting value for its dollar in the services it receives, Ellsworth said.
Rangeley is expected to pay $367,000 to the county this year, Ellsworth said, and that figure is estimated to be more than $400,000 next year.
Weymouth said “we need to make a decision” about becoming a full-time agency. He added that Ellsworth hadn’t endorsed that concept.
“I’m not going to fight with Franklin County Sheriff’s Department to cover us anymore,” Weymouth said. “The town needs to take responsibility for ourselves.”
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