The few weeks before Election Day are ripe with expectation and prediction. The leaves fall and cover the sidewalks, while political signs compete in color and volume. It’s somehow appropriate, too, that elections coincide with the World Series. One group will celebrate with champagne, the other will mope, in both.
Those who care about the coast and islands should learn about two bond requests, one that would fund seafood processing and the other, detailed in Laurie Schreiber’s front page story, that would pay to upgrade a lab that may be used in combatting Lyme disease and other invasive biological threats.
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And some voting is already complete. Residents in Bristol voted Oct. 1 on a motion to block a cable from coming ashore there, if and when an offshore wind turbine project is developed at a site off Monhegan Island.
The Lincoln County News reports that town selectmen believe the vote, while overwhelmingly against allowing the electricity to pass through the town, is non-binding.
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Maine humorist Tim Sample writes a regular weekly column in the Boothbay Register, the local paper in the town in which he was raised. Sample writes in the Oct. 9 paper about “the mill’ being forced to close, meaning, of course, Bucksport’s Verso paper mill. He relates this news to a couple of days spent in an old mill building in Biddeford, where he and others were recording a scary audiobook.
After being killed off in the production, Sample decided he’d return to the coffee shop in the repurposed building, but got somewhat lost.
“I was doing OK until I noticed the art studios, galleries and shops lining the corridors of the old mill. Hmmm, business must be picking up.” He finally finds the coffee shop, where “affluent clientele [were] queuing up to purchase their $6 lattes.”
The aroma of the high-end caffeine drinks left Sample smiling about the old adage about the odor of paper mills being “the smell of money.”
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And speaking of coffee, the Deer Isle-Stonington newspaper Island Ad-Vantages reports that 44 North Coffee, a popular coffee roasting business and café in Deer Isle village, is expanding to Stonington. Owners Melissa Raftery and Megan Wood have signed an agreement to buy a building that used to house the Eagull Gallery, the paper reports.
No roasting will be done at the in-town location, but the women hope to create a popular hang-out for coffee lovers.
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The state’s Coastal Program, part of the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, announced that Chebeague Island, Rockland and the Kennebec River town of Richmond have been given funds to help them plan and design improvements for harbor management, infrastructure and public access. Chebeague landed $20,000 “for the assessment of a town-owned coastal parcel called Sunset Landing for its potential future use.”
Rockland won $15,000 for design and engineering to improve its public pier, and another $10,000 “for planning new technology improvements and a dredge survey for Rockland Fish Pier.”
Richmond was awarded $7,239 for the planning and design of a pedestrian walkway to connect public access to the town’s waterfront.”