Lincoln County Dental on Tuesday asked Lincoln County commissioners to help it buy the former Wiscasset Dental building at 93 Churchill St.

LCD asked for $100,000, nearly a quarter of the cost, according to Commissioner Hamilton Meserve.

LCD provided low-cost care to people with incomes of up to 180 percent of the federal poverty rate, and had had accepted MaineCare. Plumbing problems led to LCD to lose its small clinic. When Wiscasset Dental also closed last year, the last MaineCare full service dental provider in Lincoln County was lost. According to Holly Stover of Lincoln County Dental, Lincoln is Maine's only county without a low-cost dental clinic, and the only county without a dentist that accepts MaineCare.

LCD has been operating a small center at John Andrews Family Care Center in Boothbay, but could not do reconstructive dental services, including filling cavities, extractions, dentures, or other work. According to Dr. Jim Olson, LCD had to stop all dental services except infection and pain management, and had to stop accepting patients earning between 150 and 180 percent of the federal poverty limit. Some clinics are done in schools, Stover said, but without a dental office, there are limits to what the organization can do.

Meserve asked why dental is not covered like other health, and how LCD has tried to fill in the gaps left by other medical providers. Stover said dental, mental and behavioral health are often not part of mainstream medicine. Meserve also asked why Lincoln Health did not provide space in the expanded Miles Hospital complex in Damariscotta. LCD representatives said they did not know why. They said Lincoln Health made sure, after the flood and subsequent loss of LCD's premises, that LCD at least had an office to do business, but that they were told there was not enough room for the dental clinic at the hospital campus.

With Commissioner William Blodgett absent, no vote was taken on the request, which Meserve said was one percent of the county’s budget.

The commissioners agreed to fund the hours for Michele Cearbaugh and another employee to provide free tax preparation service during next year’s tax season, as part of the VITA program the IRS sponsors for taxpayers earning less than $54,000. Currently, the plan is for the two employees to provide services on Thursdays at the courthouse, and have other volunteers join them as they can be trained.

A new full-time dispatcher was hired to join the Communications Department. Jill Reynolds of Boothbay Harbor will be trained starting next week. County Administrator Carrie Kipfer said ads are running for a new department chair, and she received permission to interview candidates not certified in dispatch. “What we really need in that position is someone to run the department,” she said. “Recently, the director spent nearly half his time on the phones, and that’s not what we need.” The new job description will express a preference for training as a dispatcher, but a lack of training would not bar employment.

Healthy Lincoln County’s Kate Marone and Chris Johnson discussed a film they plan to show in late September to town and county officials. “Resilience” explores how adverse experiences in early childhood can cause health and behavioral problems in later life, and how intervening at an early age can stop those progressions.

Two grants approved for the Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission, one for brownfields, the other for broadband planning, must go out to bid due to their size. Commissioners approved requests for proposals for both.

They approved Animal Control Officer contracts for Alna and Dresden; authorized buying two Ford Explorer SUVs for the Sheriff’s Office and apps for officers' smart phones to upload crime scene and accident scene reports to the state system; and authorized a grant application and grant spending for TASERs under the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant program.