Editor,
By the time you read this, the 122nd Maine Legislature should have completed its work. In the last two years, we’ve considered more than 2,000 pieces of legislation in order to move Maine forward. Our final decisions on new laws were made by putting people first, and realizing the importance of increasing access to affordable health care, providing the best education, protecting consumers, and preserving our quality of life while finding new ways to cultivate our economy.
There is, however, more work still to be done. We need to look carefully at our long-term strategy to grow our local and state economy. A major piece of this is investing in our infrastructure-building new bridges, repairing major roads, and making our communities more accessible.
Besides providing the avenues to keep our economy moving, improvements to infrastructure would create new jobs, both in construction and for Maine small businesses.
The construction on Route 302 over the past few years is a good start. But the miles of Maine’s rural highways carries the majority of our traffic. Critical improvements to these roads, along with many of our most important bridges, last occurred in the 1950s. When you start to compound the constant traffic on these roads with our most recent winter of perpetual freezes and thaws, it’s obvious that we can’t wait much longer to make these repairs.
I supported these investments this session, and will continue to push for them in the Legislature because I know that delaying these much-needed repairs will only cost Maine taxpayers-and our small businesses-more in the end. Besides the additional costs, our infrastructure needs to grow with our communities. As more and more people move into Windham and Gray in our developing economy, we’ll need better roads to keep goods and services, as well as residents, in motion.
If you have ideas on how we can grow our economy and improve local infrastructure, I’d like to hear them. Feel free to call me at home at 892-6591, or e-mail me at RepMarkBryant@yahoo.com.
Sincerely,
Mark Bryant
State Representative
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