AUGUSTA — City councilors will consider Thursday accepting Homeland Security money that will fund a food canteen truck that will be available for use at emergencies throughout the region.
Other items on a busy council agenda include whether to allow a privately funded monument to people who died while patients at Augusta Mental Health Institute in a city cemetery, allowing an alternative form of choosing contractors for major city construction projects that could be put to use on the upcoming Lithgow Public Library expansion and whether to allow small distilleries, breweries and bakeries in some zones in the city.
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The $118,000 in federal Homeland Security grant money alloted for public safety purposes would include $30,000 for the food canteen truck.
City Manager William Bridgeo said the city gets Homeland Security public safety grant money each year, and no local match is required. The federal money may be used for non-personnel expenses that meet state and federal guidelines, including vehicles and training.
Fire Chief Roger Audette said the city’s focus was to improve the city’s ability to respond to emergency incidents in the region. Those include a plan to spend $30,000 on a canteen vehicle in partnership with Kennebec County Emergency Management Agency and/or the Salvation Army that would be available to respond to emergency scenes throughout the city, county, state and even New England.
“A basic essential need we seem to be missing is our ability to feed emergency personnel in the street and citizens who may have suffered through a natural or terrorist event,” Audette said in a letter to Bruce Fitzgerald, director of Homeland Security for Maine Emergency Management Agency.
The grant money also includes $50,000 to install security cameras at the city’s shelter sites at Cony High School and the Augusta Civic Center, Augusta schools, water and communication towers and intersections; $11,000 for protective vests for police; $10,000 for police officers to participate in annual disaster training drills and $10,000 for firefighters to participate in regional hazardous materials and disaster training programs.
Councilors, who meet at 7 p.m. Thursday in council chambers at Augusta City Center, are also scheduled to:
• Vote on a proposal, recommended by the Planning Board, to add distilleries, breweries and bakeries of less than 5,000 square feet as allowed uses in some city zones. Bridgeo said the city’s land use ordinance doesn’t include any of those uses now, although the city has had multiple bakeries in the past.
He said the proposal to add those uses was prompted by a proposal from Litchfield resident Rob Coates, who he said would like to have a small bourbon distillery on property he owns on North Belfast Avenue.
• Authorize Bridgeo to make provision for the placement and maintenance of a memorial to people who died while patients at AMHI in Cony Cemetery, a city-owned cemetery across Hospital Street from the old AMHI campus. The Cemetery Project Committee, a private group, raised $15,000 to buy a stone monument to recognize the 11,647 people believed to have died while patients at the facility, at least a few of whom are buried in Cony Cemetery.
• Amend the procurement ordinance to allow “construction management at risk,” an alternative method of selecting contractors for major city projects. Bridgeo said the city may consider using that method, which was used recently by the state in the new courthouse project nearing completion in Augusta, to select a contractor for the $11 million Lithgow Library renovation and expansion.
• Consider declaring that a public nuisance exists at an Eastern Avenue residence where a septic system has failed and is leaching waste onto the surface, which Bridgeo said would allow the city to rebuild the septic system and place a lien on the property for the amount the city spends on the project.
Keith Edwards — 621-5647
kedwards@centralmaine.com
Twitter: @kedwardskj
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