Rockport Town Manager Jon Duke issued the following report in advance of the Select Board's Dec. 9 meeting. That meeting will take place in the Geoffrey Parker Meeting Room at the Rockport Opera House at 6 p.m. 

The meeting's agenda includes a consideration of the Harbor Committee's work plan, the Budget Committee's bylaws, action on a revised Harbor Fee schedule and fire and EMS personnel policies and procedures amendment, and cosigning a warrant for a Jan. 14 special town meeting to facilitate the Five Town CSD's referendum to spend $7.3 million on four repair and maintenance projects at Camden Hills Regional High School.

The Rockport Select Board will also act as wastewater commissioners to hear a  sewer abatement request from Paula and Alex Armentrout, and enter executive session. The reason for going behind closed doors has not been stated.

Click here the premeeting packet.

Town Manager's Report and Update, December 9, 2024

By Jon Duke, Rockport Town Manager

January 14th School Referendum: On the Select Board agenda for Monday evening is a request to approve a referendum from Five Town CSD concerning a bond they wish to take out to make improvements to Camden Hills Regional High School. The referendum would be held January 14th from 8am-8pm. Due to the expected turnout, we will hold this secret ballot referendum at the Town Office, so voters can cast their ballots in person on that date. Absentee balloting should be available early next week. This will be fourth election conducted by our staff this calendar year and coming off a challenging presidential election, this does have a considerable burden on our clerks.

Dog Licensing: All dogs must be licensed by January 31st to avoid any late fee charges, so now is a great time to get your dog licensed. The State of Maine has implemented a new web based dog licensing service for town offices to undertake which has added a curveball to our usual process in the office, but hopefully this won’t impact our residents negatively.

Harbor:

Closing Time: In the next couple weeks, with the removal of the commercial floats, all of our floats will be removed from the water for the season. On there removal of the floats, we’ve inspected each of them to ensure they are not in need of further repairs in the offseason. In addition, we will replace one of our floats this offseason after many years of saving for their replacement due to age and wear.

Holiday on the Harbor:
• Save the date for December 31st for Holiday on the Harbor’s New Year’s Eve celebration. Food trucks, music, luminaries, and fireworks- more information to come. So check our Rockport Harbor Facebook page with more information!

Police Department:

New Hires:
It has been a busy month in the world of hiring new employees for our police department. Last month, I introduced the hiring of our new lieutenant, Chris Young. Within the last two weeks, we’ve hired two patrol officers who will bring our department back to full staffing for the first time in many months.

Dustin Hedgpath and James Greeley are joining us in a full-time patrol officer capacity after previously being employed by the Searsport Police Department. Greeley is a veteran of the Marine Corps who has worked for nearly two decades in law enforcement. James and his wife Katie live in Searsmont with their children and in his spare time Greeley a volunteer coach with the Camden Hills football team. Hedgpath has nearly two years under his belt in law enforcement and before that he worked 7 years in corrections at the Maine State Prison. Hedgpath and his family live in Prospect and he is eager to get to know our community and our residents. Please welcome Dustin and James to Rockport!

Planning and Codes:

Retirement:
Scott Bickford, our Code Enforcement Officer will be retiring on January 24th after 19 years of full-time service. We are thankful for all his hard work and dedication to the Town of Rockport. Scott has been an integral part of the Town of Rockport’s code enforcement team for many years prior to joining as a full-time employee in 2005. As a part-time local plumbing inspector for nearly a decade prior to being hired full time, Scott was involved with so many projects over the last thirty years. Surely it will be hard to imagine coming in to get a permit in Rockport without a chat with Scott Bickford, but his legacy will be intact as a real bedrock piece of the Town’s operations. But even beyond Rockport, Scott Bickford has been a code officer’s code officer and regionally so many in this field rely upon Scott’s wit and wisdom to deal with the challenging aspects of plumbing code and land use ordinances. Thank you, Scott, for your decades of service to Rockport and our residents!

Comprehensive Plan:
The first Public Meeting on the latest draft of the Comprehensive Plan was on November 14th at the Opera House. We’ve received little feedback thus far on this most recent draft. The draft document is available on the Towns website for review.

Harbor Strategic Plan Task Force:
The Task Force is currently reviewing the responses to the RFP to hire a consultant to draft the strategic plan for the harbor. We hope to have a selection early in the new year so they can begin working with the task force as soon as possible.

VPI Task Force/Bridge Advisory Group:
We will be meeting with Maine DOT Bridge department to discuss Goose River Bridge work to

be done and how it could accommodate a second sidewalk. It seems very preliminary, but it is fair to say it’s looking quite good we could end up with sidewalks on both sides of a new bridge. There is a lot of work left to do on this effort, but Maine DOT has worked hard to respond to citizen requests.

Public Works:

Winter Work: Our crews are already out working on starting our road work for 2025. We’re focusing on brush cutting in the Rock Ridge/West Wood/Pine Wood in advance of paving this summer. As a rule of thumb, Town roads sit within a 50 foot right of way within which the Town must maintain adequate room for drainage and public utilities. The middle of the road may not lie exactly in the middle of this right of way but 25 feet from the center should provide some sense of the edge of the right of way. Removing tree limbs and other vegetation in this area not only improves line of sight for motorists, but it also greatly aids ditching and allowing sunlight to support melting snow and ice off a road, lessening the need for sand and salt.

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Remember if you have any questions or concerns on Town roads, please reach out to Public Works at 236-6245.

Assessing:

Revaluation:
Representatives from KRT Appraisal have been circulating around Rockport through the summer and fall visiting various neighborhoods to gather data concerning each property in our town. The data from each property is crucial to provide as clear a representation as possible as to the assessed value of each property. This process can seem intrusive for property owners, but a full property revaluation requires all data involved to be as accurate as possible. Neither the Town, nor the contractors employed by the Town, wish to provide an inaccurate value to any property owner which could easily be resolved if the revaluation company is able to gather an accurate read on a given property. Obviously, the sales of properties in Rockport in recent months will set a stage to understand the impact of the market value, but we all need eachproperty owner’s help in providing that data through these visits to improve the accuracy of the entire effort. Rockport has not had a full property revaluation since 2005 and while our assessing department works diligently to gather information each year, the best method to level set all properties is a full property revaluation. We appreciate your assistance through this process.

Fire Department:

West Rockport Fire Station Updates:
Sadly, our delayed completion of the West Rockport Fire Station is continuing to progress and now we may not be able to fully move in until mid-January. We are working diligently with Maine Coast Construction to ensure subcontractors are onsite and completing tasks quickly, but unfortunately getting these subcontractors to the jobsite has been incredibly challenging. There will still be several weeks of punch list items needing to be completed, and exterior items that will wait until spring, but we will be moving in and functioning as a full-time Fire and EMS service well before full completion of the project.

Calls:
The fire department has had 365 calls YTD, and our first responding crew has had 121 EMS calls.

V olunteers:
For those interested in learning more about joining the fire department, please contact Chief Peasley at jpeasley@rockportmaine.gov

Marge Jones Fields:

Facility Improvements:
In some unfortunate news, our basketball courts will be out of commission for some months, and we can use your help to get them back into playing shape. Despite our best attempts to resurface our basketball courts, the courts have a very large crack across the entire centerline which necessitates removing all the pavement, re-compacting the gravel underneath and new pavement. With recent winters and spring rains the cracks were just too big to fix. A fundraising will be started to help with this portion that was in the plan. New basketball post and backboards with new pavement and lines will be installed in the spring once the ground has time to settle. If you wish to help us complete this unplanned project, please reach out to Fire Chief Jason Peasley or myself.

If you want to schedule the use of a field for this year, email rockportrec@rockportmaine.gov.

Library:

Upcoming Programs: Check out the library website.

Opera House:

For more information on all of our events, please visit our calendar at rockportmaine.gov/operahousecalendar.

If you wish to participate in helping make these shows part of our calendar in 2025, please visit here to learn more.

Employment Opportunities:

We have several job openings with the Town of Rockport, stop by the Town Office for an application or call and we can email you an application.

The Town of Rockport is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
Job applications are available on our town website, along with a detailed job description.

Civic Ready:

We encourage all residents to sign up for this, if you are interested in knowing what is happening in the Town of Rockport. What is great about this system is that you decide which types of information you receive whether it is a reminder when property taxes are due to information on an upcoming event at the library, opera house or when a public works project is happening in your neighborhood; Civic Alert can keep you informed. Those interested can also sign up for alerts on our website

Maine Water Assistance Program:

Is a federally funded program to help support eligible households in having access to drinking water and wastewater utility services. Households will be required to have water liability to be eligible for the drinking water/wastewater program. To receive an application, you can call 888- 623-6762 or email water@mainehousing.org.

Rockport Resource Newsletter:

If you would like to receive the Rockport Resource Newsletter via email you can sign up through our website.