Source: Tom Walsh, Bangor Daily News, June 14, 2012

This remote Washington County coastal community may go more than a year without routine law enforcement services after a long-standing contract that now provides police protection through the Washington County Sheriff’s Department runs out in 15 days.

Lubec, which has a population of 1,300, has no police department. For the past eight years, law enforcement needs here have been met under a contract with the Washington County Sheriff’s Department. That contract ends June 30 and won’t be renewed.

Due to manpower shortages within his own department, Washington County Sheriff Donnie Smith has pulled the plug on renewing the agreement. The police protection contract provides Lubec with an 86-hours-a-week, two-officer patrol system at a cost of $181,358 a year, the equivalent of $500 a day.