By Nate Jones

Staff Writer 

Only a few seats were empty at Monday’s South Portland City Council meeting, where votes were cast on issues ranging from new police officer association agreements to plans to allocate funding available through Cumberland County’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program.

About a dozen South Portland police officers accompanied Chief Edward Googins in attending the meeting to encourage the council’s final approval of new agreements for both patrol and commanding, or supervisory, police officer contracts.

“We will finally be on a much better playing field when we bring officers into the community,” Googins said.

The two separate agreements, one for patrol officers and another for command and supervisor officers, implement an annual 3 percent increase in what City Manager Jim Gailey called “competitive salaries and wages” offered in the upcoming year.

In addition to the scheduled increases, city collective bargaining team representative Robert Bower said the new agreements would allow the department to hire patrolmen from other communities without subjecting them to a decrease in pay.

“Lateral hiring allows us to hire experienced officers up to a five year pay grade,” he said. “They will not, however, have city seniority and will still be subject to a probationary period.”

Command and supervisor officers must still be promoted from within the department, Bower said.

All officers hired under the new contracts will be placed into a Maine Public Employees Retirement System plan that allows officers to retire with two-thirds of their average final compensation after 25 years on the police force.

“It’s a Cadillac pension plan,” Bower said.

The council approved both agreements with a 6-0 vote, Councilor James Hughes was absent.

“We did the best we could, and you deserve more,” Councilor Tom Blake told officers in attendance.

The council also allocated a $25,000 contract to Tyler Technologies in Falmouth to update the city’s financial management software, which Gailey said could eventually allow the city to accept debit or credit cards from residents.

“I don’t pretend to know anything about this,” Councilor Maxine Beecher said. “But perhaps we all know a little too much about it after the Hannaford incident.”

City Finance Director Rob Coombs said the city would not begin to accept debit or credit cards until the proper security measures had been researched and approved by the council.

“It’s the most requested thing we get in the treasury department,” he said. “We will be bringing [this] to the council hopefully in the near future.”

A $87,000 contract was awarded to Maietta Construction in Scarborough to construct sidewalks along High Street in the Ferry Village neighborhood. While councilors commended Public Works Director Dana Anderson for negotiating a fair price for the work to be done, some said they were worried the original bid focused too much on sidewalks along High Street rather than the neighborhood as a whole.

“We need to take a look at [High Street] sidewalks again,” Councilor Linda Boudreau said. “If we can put more sidewalks on one side of the street and get [pedestrian access] somewhere it’s a better use for the money.”

Blake said he was “absolutely appalled” by the narrow specifications of the work proposal after walking the existing sidewalks along High Street, and believed there should be flexibility to spend the money elsewhere. He said he spent an afternoon taking pictures of various sections of sidewalks and speaking with residents who told him they would rather see the city spend money in other areas. 

“We need to make sure we’re spending [the money] the right way,” he said.

The council unanimously approved an amendment changing the name of the project from the High Street Sidewalk Construction Project to the Ferry Village Neighborhood Sidewalk Construction project before unanimously approving the bid.

“We’re changing it so we can construct new sidewalks where new sidewalks are needed,” Boudreau said.

The council also unanimously approved a CDBG Annual Action Plan proposed by Gailey that included strategies for funding a variety of housing assistance and public service programs in addition to identifying future economic opportunities for the city. 

“This is why we pay our federal taxes,” Blake said.