Letters to the Editor
It’s that time of year!
To the Editor:
Every year around this time in November you may have noticed collection jars popping up around town with the monies collected going to local Christmas projects. One such program is the Piscataquis Santa Project spearheaded by a number of local organizations. The Parkman Grange No. 305, the Kiwanis Club of Dover-Foxcroft, the Town of Dexter and Penquis CAP formed a collaborative effort to benefit children in the Dover-Foxcroft, Guilford and Dexter school area. Warm winter coats, hats, boots and a wished-for toy were provided for 550 children last year. Well, the need this year is just as great.
So in your heart this year, I’d ask you to consider helping the Kiwanis Club of Dover-Foxcroft provide a Merry Christmas to a deserving child by adopting a child. The cost runs on average between $75 to $100 per child but varies depending on their needs. If adopting stretches your budget too much, please consider sharing the cost and the joy with a friend or co-worker.
You can give me a call at 564-2281 or Judy Raymond at 564-2264 or e-mail Rita Page at rlbern@myfairpoint.net with questions or to “adopt” a needy child.
For those kids not “adopted,” the Kiwanis Club purchases all of their needs out of funds we have raised and through generous donations. So no child goes without on Christmas morning.
If you live outside of Dover-Foxcroft, I encourage you to contact the organizations mentioned above who help with the children in your town. And next time you see one of those collection jars at Will’s Shop ‘n Save or the Redemption Center or a beauty shop, throw in a few coins. It’s for the kids.
Barb Austin, chairman
Kiwanis Christmas Project
Fuel oil companies out of touch
To the Editor:
I’m writing this to address the issue of oil companies in this area. Like most people around here, my wife and I both work in order to make ends meet. We basically live paycheck to paycheck and usually don’t have a lot of extra cash on hand. We have an excellent credit rating and make sure our bills are always paid on time.
Now, however, we come down to the problem. Why is it that oil companies insist on only delivering 100 gallons of heating oil at a time? At today’s prices, that is around $400, which is almost equal to an entire week’s pay for me. We like to keep at least a half of a tank of fuel at a time and can afford 50 gallons of fuel on any given week, but 100 gallons is just a bit too expensive.
My wife called every company in the area recently and asked if, while they were making other deliveries in our neighborhood, they could deliver 50 gallons of fuel and every one said that they have a 100-gallon minimum. This is ridiculous. Don’t they realize that if they would do deliveries of this type, they would actually gain business instead of possibly losing customers because of this unreasonable rule?
I believe it basically comes down to the usual idea that the bottom line is everything and making as much as possible on every single sale. It is unfair to expect people to come up with this amount of money in order to keep their families warm, usually by not paying some other bills or cutting back on other necessities, like food.
I think it is about time that business owners in this area wake up and realize that most people here are not “well to do” and try to be a little more sensible in their business practices. They would not only gain more customers in the long run, but also earn the respect of their community.
Dennis Dow
Sangerville
RBOs appear to be
the way to go
To the Editor:
Ann Bridge’s letter about the Parkman Rights-based Ordinance (RBO) suggests it may affect resident property rights. She warns that it could support one resident suing another on behalf of the ecosystem, or prevent the sale of your property or your building a driveway. If one reads the RBO closely they will see that it would do none of those things, unless they were associated with the construction of a transportation and distribution corridor, like the East West Corridor. It targets corporations and state and federal government, specifying what they cannot do without the town’s consent.
Ann expresses concern about liability and high legal costs if the RBO is challenged. Sangervilles’s consulting attorney said that should their RBO be challenged, the town could withdraw it by pursuit of a summary judgment, with minimal legal fees. As for the risk of being challenged, of the more than 160 RBOs in existence, only five have been challenged, and all five were withdrawn without significant costs to the affected towns. Since that time, a bill of rights has been added, and no RBO has been challenged since. Regarding liability, the Maine Municipal Association told Sangerville that its insurance will cover both the town and the Selectmen against any claims made against them, and that their insurance premiums would not be affected by the passage of an RBO.
Opponents of RBOs naturally question the makeup and motives of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). CELDF is a non-profit, public interest law firm. You can read about or contact them via their website, CELDF.org. CELDF invented RBOs 15 years ago, when some rural Pennsylvania communities asked them for help in preventing factory farms from moving in. These communities had had their land use ordinances (designed to keep factory farms out) over-ridden by the state legislature.
As Ann noted, the RBO is designed and written largely by CELDF, with direct local resident input. Many of us involved in the effort to stop the Corridor feel any ordinance needs to be written by people experienced enough to make it valid and defensible. Thus, we see CELDF’s writing the “boilerplate” of our RBOs as a much lesser evil than the writing of most state legislation, which is often done largely by corporations with little or no citizen input.
CELDF appears to many of us to have no motive other than seeking to assist towns in regaining their right to self-determination when it comes to large corporate or state projects, to help us reverse the tide of our eroding democracy. In contrast, corporations, as the authors of much of our state legislation, have profit as their number-one concern, with community self-determination secondary. In addition, as opposed to state legislation, RBOs get a second check by the community, when they are voted upon by town residents.
Ann suggests consideration of other options. Land use ordinances appear to be the most viable alternative. However, these laws have drawbacks. Expense ($5,000-$20,000 according to a local land use consultant) and the typical need for a comprehensive plan (which many local towns neither have nor want) are two of them, but the worst is that they can be over-ridden by the state legislature at any time.
RBOs appear to be the way to go.
Bob Lodato
Charleston
Electric, not fossil fuel, is the future
To the Editor:
Up until now the best mileage economy for school busses has been those with diesel engines. But the worst exhaust has also been diesel. Stopped on the road with the engine idling, oft times the kids have to walk through oily smoke to board. And they leave the bus in a cluster of busses at school, all smoking, some invisibly. At every pick-up stop the bus can wrap itself in one of 40 clouds along the way, one cloud per stop.
Not so with the electric bus, now beginning delivery.
When I drove the small two-seat Mercedes Electric Smart Car up the Mount Washington Auto Road to the summit, a 4700 foot climb, I wasn’t thinking about big yellow busses. I just worried, “Did the battery have enough capacity for the task?”
The first successful ascent in 1974 of an electric vehicle had been a 3 1/2 hour literal cliffhanger ending with a flat dead battery.
The 2013 car had more than enough. This year I used only a third of the 14.7 kilowatts of the full hydro-electric charge, but that was only for the climb. My car was equipped for regenerative braking. Instead of brake shoes on metal drums making wasted heat, when I wanted to slow descending I lifted my foot pressure on the accelerator, and the electric motor became an electric generator to recharge the battery.
I glanced at the charge meter and found it reading 37.5 percent expended to reach the 6,288-foot top. But on the way down regeneration instead of braking recharged my car to 82 percent. Diesel is diesel from fossil fuel, and makes smog but electric can come from wind, nuclear, sunlight, coasting, or a waterfall — all of them renewable except the nukes, none of them finite, except nukes.
Momentum is the same as altitude. Accelerating and braking are changes of momentum. We can use it to charge the battery. Every stop along the electric bus route is a mini-recharge when the bus stops for a passenger, and it is non-carbon, non-smoke, non-global warming and “juice” is four times cheaper than diesel fuel, requires no oil changes. In the future both dams at Dover can be making electricity for mileage.
There may already be 200 successful electric school busses protecting health and saving money on U.S. roads — for starters.
Our EPA needs right now to consider regulating abusive black carbon [soot], CO2 and global warming. There is big money lost in things that endanger life on earth because the “endangerers” seem blinded to the danger. Mr. Vigue told us he and his secret friends’ scheme, to run 4,000 massive double diesel towed super trailers over his East-West Highway daily, that would be about one noisy engine braker every 27 seconds whose noise and smoke and salt will spill off the E/W anonymous-owned private property onto ours, plus baby insomnia, and a serious threat to this elderly Maine-born vet’s peaceful investment in a rural quality of life, a serious threat to Maine and everywhere the breezes blow.
I don’t think a Jersey Turnpike imitation right through the heart of the Maine Woods improves anything but the pockets of rich guys by removing 1,760 square miles of peace and quiet and wrecking historic rentals where generations of Urbanites have found peace by pond-side. How are we going to pay our taxes?
The result? $2 billion of damage, a permanent scar of industrialization. A rainbow scheme of diesel oil on the water and fish thrown in the garbage. This is the only Maine in the world, maybe the universe. Let’s not industrialize it!
Charles MacArthur
Sangerville
A meaningful act
To the Editor:
This past Veterans’ Day, I had cause to visit Will’s Shop and Save to pick up a head of cauliflower. At the register I was asked if I was a veteran. Needless to say as I stood there with the cauliflower in hand, the question somewhat puzzled me. When I replied positively, I was presented with a gift card by an employee and thanked for my service.
I left with a good feeling because 1. my military service was recognized, and 2. a local merchant had the foresight for recognizing the value of his customers and making a small statement of his appreciation.
Bravo! Will’s Shop and Save.
Fred J. Muehl
Dover Foxcroft