Commissioners awaiting bids for DA office renovations and jail yard roof

DOVER-FOXCROFT — In early February bids will be due for a pair of projects on the Piscataquis County campus. The first is for renovations to provide for more room at the district attorney’s office on the first floor of the courthouse and the second bid is for the construction of a roof enclosure over the exercise yard at the Piscataquis County Jail.

During a Dec. 19 Piscataquis County Commissioners meeting, County Manager Tom Lizotte was asked to adjust the bid contract in order for the electrician doing the wiring to work with the general contractor on the renovations to convert a former vault into additional office space for the four employees working under the district attorney and more meeting space. Last month the commissioners decided to separate the project work into the two parts.

“Right now we are talking about bids coming in on Feb. 2, so there is still all kinds of time for this,” Lizotte said.

Bids for the exercise roof yard were due before the Dec. 19 meeting, but only one submission came in.

“I would entertain a motion to extend this out a month so they are opened at the same time,” Commissioners Chair James White said. Bids for the two projects are both scheduled to be opened during the Tuesday, Feb. 6 commissioners meeting.

“The yard itself is 70 feet long and 40 feet wide, and the fence around it is 14 feet high,” Lizotte said. He said funds for the project would come from the inmate benefit account and “that’s one of the things the state said we could use it for.”

In other business, county officials met with Sheriff John Goggin and Chief Deputy Bob Young who said the sheriff’s office will be getting new colored uniforms.

“We’re changing uniform color and styles, we are going black with gold,” Young said, as the stripes and buttons will be gold on the black material. The chief deputy said the switch has been discussed in the department for a time and the move is being made as a result of difficulties in ordering the brown clothing.

“Literally it takes us three or four months to get a shirt,” Young said. “This year’s brown is different than the brown of two years ago,” he added about another problem the sheriff’s office has had to deal with.

“What we’re looking at, black, it gives us lots of options,” he said. “”It’s readily available, it’s cheaper.”

“I’m a traditional sheriff, I like the brown I need to recognize we can’t get the traditional brown,” Goggin said, saying other Maine’s sheriff’s departments are also switching to black uniforms. “You put three officers in uniform and they’re each wearing a different uniform.”

“We’re going to do it incrementally so for a while we’re going to keep the brown dress uniform but the working uniform will be black,” Young said, with three members of the department being fitted for their black attire the day before.

Young also said the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Office has a military Humvee on loan from the Eliot Police Department. “We thought it would be good to go on the Golden Road and that area,” he said.

The chief deputy said the Humvee may be stored in Greenville. The vehicle can hold four officers and could transport them all to a remote area at once, such when responding to an incident as a camp.

“We send vehicles on those northern woods roads and they take a beating,” Young said. He said the sheriff’s office will maintain the Humvee and will turn it back to the police department in York County when done with it.

File photo courtesy of Tisbury Manor Chapter DAR
SWITCHING FROM BROWN TO BLACK UNIFORMS — The Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Office will be switching from brown uniforms to black with gold stripes and buttons. Pictured last year with a cake presented to the department by the Tisbury Manor Chapter DAR are Sheriff John Goggin, seated, and standing, from left, Jamie Kane, Maria Landry, Gary Grant, Bob Young and Ron Moulton.