Thumbs up to city and town clerks county wide for their hard work and attention to detail this election season. Clerks – and their helpers – work long, long hours on the days leading up to the election and on the day itself. We know of at least one clerk who began election day at 4 a.m.
and didn’t wind down until 11 p.m. or later; that is a very long work day, by anyone’s standards.
Thumbs up to efforts for a second beach wheelchair in Old Orchard Beach. The town acquired one such chair last year, which was used by a number of people this past summer. People come from miles away to enjoy the beautiful stretch of shoreline, and beach wheelchairs make the sands
accessible to more people.
Thumbs up to the Thornton Academy field hockey team for making a run to the 2015 Class A State Championship game. This was the first time the Golden Trojans had ever made it to the state title game. Head coach Lori Smith and her team have plenty to be proud of despite falling to
Skowhegan in the championship game. The team was led by a pair of seniors – Grace Pickering and Libby Pomerleau – who helped the program reach new heights during their four years with the team. The two standouts will leave some big shoes to fill, but there are some talented underclassmen, including Taylor Ouellette and Abby Pomerleau, who will be back next year – along with standout goalie Issy Capozzi. If the underclassmen continue to work hard, the Trojans should continue to be state title contenders.
Thumbs down to the 78 percent of registered voters in Sanford who didn’t vote in the municipal election, 70 percent who didn’t vote in Biddeford, and all those in other communities who made a conscious decision not to go to the polls on Tuesday. We realize elections in so-called “off
years” don’t attract huge amounts of voters statewide but come on, folks, it couldn’t be easier. Polls are open 12 hours on election day, and more in some communities, and voting absentee is easier than ever.
Thumbs down to Biddeford voters who rejected a $2.27 million bond to pay for repairs at City Hall, including the restoration of its clock tower, at the polls Tuesday. The 120- year-old City Hall building was designed by famed Maine architect John Calvin Stevens and is listed on the National
Register of Historic Places; many consider its equally old clock tower to be the icon of the city. Biddeford voters have rejected a bond to pay for its restoration three times, and because it’s been decades since any significant restorative work has been done on it, city officials now fear the clock tower – from which rotting wooden pieces have at times broken off and fallen to the street below – may eventually have to be removed. Thumbnails is a Friday feature of the Journal Tribune’s opinion pages. If you want to respond, feel free to write to the Readers’ Forum via e-mail (jtcommunity@journaltribune.com) or by dropping your letter off at our office.
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