At an abbreviated meeting of the Lincoln County Commissioners on Tuesday, June 21, Ken Mason of the Sheriff’s Department announced that the department had taken possession of the five new vehicles in this year’s county budget.

One of the older vehicles will be used in another county department. One of the other used vehicles will go out to bid for the municipalities of Lincoln County, but one town in particular, Damariscotta, has expressed interested in obtaining the vehicle, a Dodge Durango, for its fire department, Mason said.

Mason also informed the commissioners that the Attorney General had provided $2,093.85 in criminal forfeiture for the Sheriff’s Department.

Tod Hartung, of the Lincoln County Emergency Management Agency, said that the county had obtained five more generators to develop a countywide emergency community shelter program. While details are still coming together, several locations are being considered for shelters, including the Wiscasset Community Center, Great Salt Bay School in Damariscotta, the Baptist Church in Waldoboro, and the existing shelter at Jefferson School. South Bristol Community School is also set up as a local community shelter, and Boothbay Harbor is considering a shelter as well. Of these, Jefferson School and South Bristol Community School already have generators. Hartung said there was money in a Homeland Security grant for installation of hookups for the generators.

The five generators were located at Camp LeJeune in North Carolina, and are being transported at the expense of the sites that will ultimately take the generators under a memorandum of understanding. There is no cost for the generators, which operate on diesel power.

The meeting was shorter than usual because the commissioners had attended the Small Business Forum hosted by the Lincoln County Planning Commission first thing in the morning, and the commissioners were considering several tax abatement requests beginning at 11 a.m.