PORTLAND (NEWS CENTER Maine) -- In order to keep costs down for Portland taxpayers, the city is billing other municipalities for shelter costs.
Roughly 2,000 people utilized the Oxford Street Shelter in Portland last year. It is one of the only city-run shelters in New England. Of those people, only about one-third of them are actually from the city of Portland.
"This is a regional issue and I think we all need to share in the burden of that," Portland's City Manager Jon Jennings said. "Why should the city of Portland and its taxpayer bear this burden exclusively -- when a third of the individuals who are staying in our shelter are not from Portland, they're from different parts of the state."
His solution? Bill the other Maine cities and towns for their community members on general assistance who spend the night in the shelter. But how do they track where they come from?
"Sometimes they have identifications, sometimes they have bills from their last residence like a light bill or a power bill," Jennings said.
That information gets sent to the city's social services office. They verify where the individual came from and send out the bill. If they can't -- Portland taxpayers cover the cost.
"Our staff does an amazing job tracking anyone coming into the shelter," Jennings said. "We're not interested in billing another community if there isn't a legitimate connection to that community."
How much does it actually cost Mainers? If you do the math, it comes out to about 10-dollars per night.
Multiple that by the number of non-Portland residents and you're looking at more than $7-thousand dollars.
"We are proud that we can play this role in having the emergency shelter in the city of Portland but we all need to step up and help," Jennings said.