About 120 Orrington residents voted overwhelmingly to approve a new ordinance that prohibits people on the sex offender registry from living within 750 feet of schools and parks.
The new rule, adopted on Monday, was the product of months of advocacy and petition gathering from Orrington residents after they discovered the town did not already have such restrictions.
Maine does not have a statewide residency restriction for sex offenders, but it offers language towns can adopt. Under Maine law, it would only apply to someone on the registry for a conviction of a crime against a child younger than 14.
Three questions were on the ballot before Orrington voters, all of which set a 750-foot restriction from schools, parks, playgrounds and other areas where children are the primary users, for people who are on the sex offender registry.
The first two, which residents voted down, were proposed by residents through petitions.
Residents only approved the third question, which was written by the town and town’s attorney and is the only one Orrington selectmen endorsed.
The key difference between the residents’ ordinances and the town’s is how it applies to people on the registry already living in town who already live within the 750-foot radius.
Under the ordinances proposed by residents, a registered sex offender living within the 750-foot radius who left Orrington would not have been allowed to return to the same home they had lived in.
The town’s ordinance — the one adopted by a 91-23 vote on question three — removes that issue.