By David Harry
Staff Writer

Landing a catch or catching a criminal suspect could become easier due to two grants awarded to Scarborough officials this month.
Town Councilors last week unanimously accepted a $252,000 state grant to help pay for building a new pier at Pine Point. The Scarborough Police Department also received a $101,000 grant to pay for a crime analyst, according to Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Steve McCausland.
 The $252,000 grant from the Working Waterfront Access Pilot Program, administered by the Land for Maine’s Future Board, completes funding for the pier. The project still requires approval from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and the Planning Board, said Town Manager Tom Hall.
Hall said the Army Corps of Engineers also approved a permit application for the project to build a 15-foot-wide pier that would extend more than 225 feet into the Scarborough River.
Plans also include mechanical hoists to allow fishermen to unload catches to waiting vehicles. The improvements will eliminate fishermen’s dependence on tides to work at the pier, according to Marine Resource Officer Dave Corbeau.
The existing pier will remain and be open for pedestrian use, according to Hall and Corbeau. It also will be linked to the new pier that will be able to support vehicles.
Hall said he anticipates a DEP decision this month.
“I hope it will be a Christmas present,” Hall said.
Planning board members who heard pier plans in September expressed enthusiasm for the project and promised a favorable evaluation of the plan for the DEP to consider with the application. Board Chairman Allen Paul also said the board will quickly consider pier plans once state approval is made.
Corbeau said he would like the project to cost less than $750,000 and to be completed by late spring. Town officials set aside $400,000 three years ago and the Maine Department of Transportation has provided about $120,000 in grants to help pay engineering costs.

The new crime analyst position will be funded for two years through a federal grant of more than $101,000 distributed by Maine’s Justice Assistance Council, which is administered by the Department of Public Safety.
Scarborough Police chief Robert Moulton said the grant also helps pay for a computer and other equipment for the position, which continues and expands the work dispatcher Jamie Higgins has done for about three years.
“It is all about connecting the dots,” Moulton said.
He said Higgins has been compiling bulletins and briefings for officers and detectives using statistics, records and reports from town officers and other local police forces.
If hired to be the analyst, Higgins will have more tools to search records and also be able to visit and communicate with other law enforcement officials in a full-time job, Moulton said.
The analyst will try to discover potential crime patterns and assist officers and detectives with information that can be too time consuming to gather, Moulton said. His enthusiasm for creating the analyst position led Moulton to seek grants from two sources, he said.
While his application for federal stimulus money did not earn a grant, the Justice Assistance Council approved an application as part of about $1 million in grants, according to McCausland.
Other state grants included $385,250 to Maine’s Administrative Office of the Courts; $200,000 for an updated record keeping system at the Maine Criminal Justice Academy; $96,050 for a community police coordinator for Portland Police, and $8,500 for homicide investigator training for the Maine State Police.

Staff writer David Harry may be reached at 282-4337, ext. 219