LEWISTON- The City Council met for a workshop Tuesday night, seemingly determined to make progress on a proposed syringe service provider (SSP) ordinance.
The Council spent the bulk of the past two meetings, each lasting around four hours, discussing the ordinance but agreeing upon very little. At the end of their meeting on October 7, several councilors asked for a workshop before they met again on October 21.
Workshops are designed for councils to get information about a topic and have public discussions prior to business meetings. Voting is not allowed at workshops, and neither are public comments (both happen during business meetings).
To gauge support or opposition to an idea, staff often ask Councilors for a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” as a straw poll during workshops. Councilors are not locked in to their preferences, but they don’t often change their positions.
The workshop lasted under two hours, and councilors appeared to reach agreement on several contentious issues.
On the issue of number of licenses, councilors indicated they would support only one licensee, but allow for up to two locations for that licensee.
Councilors also indicated they wanted to keep all 1-for-1 language out of the ordinance. This means that the ordinance will not require SSP’s to exchange needles on a 1-for-1 basis, or require any other ratio.
Another agreement seemed to emerge around exempting hospitals from the zoning requirements. City staff will better define the geographical area around the hospitals, with the concern that the concept of hospital property could be applied to satellite locations.
Councilors indicated support to remove mention of “radius” in a “good neighbor” clause of the ordinance. This means that SSP providers won’t be responsible for a radius around their property; instead, they’ll be responsible for participant behavior.
The next item agreed upon was to remove the provision regarding restricted hours and weekends.
Councilors also appeared to not support a cap on the number of syringes allowed to be dispensed, per visit. The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) already has a limit of 100 syringes per visit, so the city is essentially opting to not require a number lower than that.
Lastly agreed upon was to not remove the age limit of eighteen. The city will follow existing Maine CDC guidelines.
Towards the end, Ward Six Councilor David Chittim proposed a series of non-substantive language changes. It’s possible some of the changes may be debated later, but it was suggested for the changes to be combined as a single amendment to be voted on at next week’s meeting.
The plan moving forward is to bring up a series of items when the Council meets again on October 21.
The Council postponed the ordinance discussion during the last meeting while reconsidering a previous vote about removing the 1-for-1 requirement. The Council will first be required to vote on that, which is now expected to pass based on the conversation tonight.
Next, councilors will combine all of the proposed changes that they agreed upon tonight, into a single amendment. This amendment will be voted on after the 1-for-1 vote.
After that, Councilor Chittim’s non-substantive changes will be considered as a single amendment. Once all of that is hashed out, the Council will finally vote on the final SSP ordinance.
These types of policies are required to have two votes of approval. First passage will be October 21, and the second will likely take place during the following meeting on November 18.