WATERVILLE — Gov. Paul LePage is scheduled to speak Monday at a groundbreaking celebration for the new Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter, to be built this year on Colby Circle.
The event will take place at 10:30 a.m. at Pleasant Street United Methodist Church at 61 Pleasant St.
LePage is former co-chairman of the shelter’s Board of Directors and has been involved in the shelter since the early 1990s.
The new 40-bed shelter will replace the current 18-bed shelter on Ticonic Street. Shelter officials say the current facility turns people away daily because it is full. Officials send some people to an overflow shelter it helped open in the basement of the First Baptist Church on Park Street.
The new shelter is expected to cost between $2.95 million and $3 million; officials hope it will be open in September, according to Douglas Cutchin, chairman of the shelter’s capital campaign and former co-chairman of the shelter’s Board of Directors.
The 16,600-square-foot shelter will be built on about 2 acres across the road from Waterville District Court.
The shelter on Ticonic Street is a 120-year-old, two-story house and serves people from Somerset, Franklin and northern Kennebec and Waldo counties.
 It operates on about $387,000 a year, with about 55 percent  of that funding coming from individuals, businesses and foundations; 11 percent from special events; and the remainder from public assistance funds, including those from the Maine State Housing Authority, according to Betty Palmer, the shelter’s executive director.

Amy Calder — 861-9247
acalder@centralmaine.com

 


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