BANGOR- Monday night in a city council workshop, members of the Downtown Bangor Partnership and Bangor City Council talked about the rising homeless population and some of the effects it’s had on the city.
Earlier this month, Bangor police were forced to clear out camps of transients on the Bangor waterfront after business owners and citizens had complained of syringes, waste and extra clutter accumulating there.
In Monday’s meeting Downtown Bangor Partnership’s Betsy Lundy said those issues are city wide and proposed hiring Streetplus to help clean up syringes, waste and graffiti across the city.
“Their job is to first really understand what all the resources that exist that are available and help place people and direct people to the resources that they find them,” Lundy said.
She said the organization Streetplus is an a-la-carte service that offers city-wide landscaping services, cleaning services, hospitality services, safety & security and even social outreach services that the city needs.
“This is used pretty widely across the country in a variety of communities large and small. Typically the organization hire and train their own people, they’re their own employees but then the organization either reports into a downtown alliance which is what they are in many communities or to the city itself,” said Tanya Emery, the director of Community Development for the city of Bangor.
The proposal was a preliminary idea so no official word was given on whether the council would be moving forward with the plan, what exact services the city would require or how much tax payer dollars it would cost.
