CARIBOU, Maine — In a bid to save money and rely more on teamwork to perform municipal tasks, the city of Caribou has decided not to replace its code enforcement officer after his resignation became effective April 30.
Instead, City Manager Austin Bleess said last week that several employees in the City Office will take over the code enforcement duties, a move that could save the city an estimated $20,000 in the municipality’s fiscal year 2015 budget.
Bleess said that Steve Wentworth, who had served as code enforcement officer for Caribou, had submitted his resignation effective April 30 to pursue other interests. Bleess said that since the city is always looking for ways to save money for taxpayers, he began thinking that this could be an area where that could happen.
“We decided that we could delegate the major tasks that our CEO performed among several other people in our office,” he said. “We will delegate someone to handle issues with shoreland zoning and plumbing and building permits and so on. The only thing that will change is the face of the person that you are talking to.”
Bleess said that the process for securing permits at City Hall will remain the same.
“This has been tried in other parts of the state,” he said. “I think it can work here. If it doesn’t work, we’ll try something else.”
