BELFAST - Five years ago, county officials started a vegetable garden on a 5-acre piece of farmland in Swanville with the dual goal of offering meaningful work to residents of the state prison system’s re-entry center in Belfast and stocking local soup kitchens, food pantries and similar programs with fresh produce.

When the lease set to expire in December, the county commissioners on Tuesday accepted an offer to buy the land, along with the rest of the adjoining 65-acre farm. 

The commissioners voted on Tuesday to enter into a purchase and sale agreement with Richard Nickerson to buy the farm, including the area currently leased by the county, for $100,000. Commissioner William Shorey, who was instrumental in founding the county garden, said Nickerson had offered to sell the farm to the county in the past, but county officials had declined. Shorey said interest from a housing developer factored in Tuesday’s decision.

“The county really appreciates him doing that, because I’m sure if someone [in his position] wanted to pursue all the avenues available to them, they could make a few thousand extra,” he said.

Under the deal approved on Tuesday, Shorey said the county will pay $50,000 of the sale price up front and $25,000 per year over the next two years.

The county garden is run primarily by volunteers from the Mid-Coast Regional Reentry Center, a transitional facility in Belfast for men completing prison sentences. Shorey said the garden produced 26,000 pounds of crops last year. He noted with enthusiasm that other areas of the Nickerson farm are better suited to gardening than the five acres the county has been using.

“I think we can easily double the productivity we have now,” he said.

New tower aims to clear up calls in Stockton Springs

Dropped calls between emergency dispatchers and first responders in the Stockton Springs area have had county officials searching for a suitable location for a new communications tower.

On Tuesday the county commissioners approved a 50-year lease with the Searsport Water District that would allow for the erection of a new 110-foot tower on land behind the water district’s reservoir in Stockton Springs. Commissioner Shorey said the site is adjacent to an existing commercial telecommunications tower, and has an access road maintained by the Water District in the winter. The county will pay the Water District $8,000 per year, with the annual rate increasing by $250 every five years.

The new tower will stand 10 feet taller than one built for the Waldo County Communications Center on Aborn Hill in Knox four years ago. Shorey said the height for the Stockton Springs tower was determined by a series of transmission tests from Northport and Belfast.

In other business, the county commissioners:

• Denied a request to include domestic partners under the county’s health insurance plan. Commissioner Shorey said the county has insured spouses since a self-insuring system was set up by officials several years ago, and would continue to do that. “Maine has a same-sex marriage law and that’s fine with us, but we only insure people with a legal document between them,” he said.

• Increased the starting salary for the Register of Deeds to $43,000. The change was made in anticipation of Deputy Register Stacy Grant replacing Register Deloris Page in 2015. Page’s term expires and she is not seeking re-election. Grant is running unopposed for the position. The new salary, which Shorey said was based upon Grant’s 12 years of experience at the registry of deeds, falls between the previous starting salary of $37,271 and the $49,095 salary currently received by Page.

 Ethan Andrews can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com