CASTINE—Concerns about safety overshadowed the rest of the agenda at the select board meeting on Monday, October 7, at Emerson Hall.
Resident Sarah Stammen spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting and described two alleged incidents involving Maine Maritime Academy students and youngsters in town. Some two dozen residents attended the meeting.
In one alleged incident, children as young as 6 years old were offered alcohol and cigarettes by partying MMA students on homecoming weekend, Stammen said.
She also said an 11-year-old riding a kick scooter was run off the road by a pickup truck with people in the bed and on the roof. The incident was witnessed by at least two others, she told the board.
The comments prompted a discussion of how to improve safety in town. Resident Johanna Barrett of Compass Rose Books said that “the primary responsibility has to be with the students and the academy.” She added that the academy has to be willing to part ways with students if they commit these kinds of violations.
Barrett added that when she has brought such issues up in the past, previous administrations at MMA have dismissed her concerns.
“It’s really serious,” select board member Dan Leader said. He said he was in favor of a joint town-school safety committee to address these concerns on a regular basis.
“We bring it up at Town and Gown [meetings], but I wonder how seriously we’re being taken,” Leader said, referring to the regular joint meetings held between the town and the school.
MMA spokesperson Kate Noel attended the meeting briefly to present information from the Castine School Board, which she chairs. But she left before the public comment period raised concerns over alleged student misconduct.
Reached by phone the day after the meeting, Noel said “being good neighbors is paramount to us.”
“We were made aware of two complaints via email just yesterday,” she said, on October 8. “We would implore anyone with actual details of the cars involved to contact the campus security department as well as the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department.”
Peter Stewart, MMA’s Director of Campus Safety, Security and Facilities, said that his department has no law enforcement powers so works closely with the Maine State Police or the sheriff’s department when illegal or criminal activities may have occurred. Castine is the only municipality in Maine that hosts a college but lacks its own police department.
In the case of the two complaints, Stewart said he turned the emailed information over to the sheriff, who would be responsible for investigating the complaints.
“We take any complaints about student behavior seriously,” Noel added, noting that student conduct is a topic stressed in every talk or written communication from the academy’s leadership. “And we’re only as strong as the information receive from law enforcement and the community.”
Both Noel and Stewart said they looked forward to the next regularly scheduled Town and Gown meeting, where Castine and MMA officials meet to coordinate actions, address issues and improve cooperation. Stewart said he had invited representatives from both the Maine State Police and the sheriff’s department to the meeting to discuss policing issues.
Other business
Prior to the select board discussion prompted by Stammen’s comments, student organizers behind MMA’s campus ride-share program addressed the 25 people present.
Junior Lydia Lancina, an International Business and Logistics major, described the program and how it sprang up in the aftermath of the tragic accident that killed four MMA students in December of 2022. She was joined by fellow student Piper Baumgarten and Tonya Murray, Director of Counseling Services at MMA.
More than 120 students have used the program this semester, Lancina said. It is run and staffed by students, she added.
In other business, the select board heard directly from the engineers who conducted some hydrogeological testing of the proposed site for a new fire station on Battle Avenue.
The groundwater flows toward Battle Avenue at the site, not toward the ponds that serve as a source of drinking water in town, said the engineer who joined by a remote connection haunted by technical issues.
Town Manager Derik Goodine said the next steps were to begin to prepare a request for proposals for a preliminary site design.
The next scheduled select board meeting is Monday, October 21, due to the holiday the previous week marking Indigenous People’s Day.
—With additional reporting by Jack Beaudoin
