Today is Monday. Much of southern and eastern Maine is under a heat advisory, with temperatures expected in the high 90s to the mid-80s across the state. Here’s what we’re talking about in Maine today.
Lawmakers reached a bipartisan agreement Sunday afternoon on a revised $8.5 billion two-year state budget that will provide $300 COVID-19 relief payments to most Maine workers.
Former state Sen. Tom Saviello, R-Wilton, speaks at a rally after opponents of the Central Maine Power corridor submitted signatures to get an earlier referendum question on the ballot on Monday, Feb. 3, 2020, outside the State House in Augusta. Credit: Robert F. Bukaty / AP
Few visited a remote stretch of woods in western Maine before construction on Central Maine Power’s $1 billion hydropower corridor began there. Then in January it got a visit from a video crew working for Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.
Months later, producers flew Tom Saviello, a leader of the group No CMP Corridor, to Los Angeles for a short sit-down with Carlson, the conservative provocateur who also has a home in Bryant Pond, where he films his show occasionally. The result was an April web segment where the Fox News personality hit the project as a “corrupt green energy scam.”
The Hancock County Courthouse in Ellsworth. Credit: Gabor Degre / BDN
Maine counties have started getting installments of the $260 million they are due to receive in federal American Rescue Plan funds, which are meant to help state, county and municipal governments recover from pandemic-related losses and help spur an economic rebound.
But the counties, which typically oversee and fund fewer direct services than their municipal and state counterparts, have not yet decided how they will use the money. Some counties are anticipating almost as much as or more than they spend in a year in American Rescue Plan money.
Raised beds inside Deb Emerson’s repurposed above ground swimming pool are expanding the variety of what she can plant. Credit: Courtesy of Deb Emerson
Deb Emerson won’t be throwing a swim party any time soon. But after repurposing a damaged above ground pool and some old barn beams, the Piscatiquis homesteader can certainly throw a garden party.
That’s because her old pool is now her new greenhouse and is full of growing vegetables and herbs.
Members of Mount Desert Island High School’s 1972 Class B state championship cross country team pose for a team photo Friday during its 49th-year reunion on the Village Green in downtown Bar Harbor. Credit: Ernie Clark / BDN
The conversations continued deep into the afternoon Friday, with long-ago teammates reliving the competitive glory days that now reunited them nearly five decades later in the gazebo on the Village Green in downtown Bar Harbor.
Members of Mount Desert Island High School’s 1972 cross country team, which captured that school’s first state championship in any sport, were oblivious to the sometimes heavy rain that fell around them — perhaps just another example of the focus that enabled the Trojans to rise from last place at the 1971 Class B state meet to first place in a year.
Orson Horchler, also known as Pigeon, sits in a bus shelter on St. John Street in Portland on Thursday. The shelter’s glass walls are adorned with his drawings of fellow Mainers. Credit: Troy R. Bennett / BDN
A coalition of community organizations, powered by creative Mainers and funded by a pile of grant money, are transforming Portland’s streets into an open-air art museum, one bus shelter at a time. Four stops have already been revamped and more are on the way.
In this Aug. 15, 2017, file photo, prospective football officials listen as Doug Ferguson (center) explains a new football rule during the Bangor Chapter of Maine Football Officials prospective officials class at Bangor High School. Credit: Ashley L. Conti / BDN
The prospect of a return to high school sports as usual this fall revives a question that’s been posed during the best of times in recent years.
Who will officiate the games?
A shortage of game officials in virtually every interscholastic sport has become a growing challenge not only in Maine, but around the country.
