When a small group of people makes a big dream come true, it’s a victory for all of us. We celebrate such triumphs in legends, ballads, made-for-TV movies and even newspaper stories.

But these events in which a marvelous idea captures the imagination and harnesses the passion of the populace are rare. And they usually require some kernel of excitement or injustice to overcome the differences between us, to unite us in a wholly worthwhile cause.

Regionalism may lack that kernel.

Regionalism, as preached by former state planner Evan Richert at a Franklin County forum last week, makes a whole lot of sense. It would streamline government, it would save tax dollars. Richert estimated that such changes might save the state as much as $150 million a year.

Richert gave Idaho as an example of a similar but more streamlined state. Both states have 1.3 million people, but Idaho claims fewer than half as many municipalities: 210 to Maine’s 430.

It doesn’t take higher math to figure out that Idaho probably employs about half the town managers, road commissioners, school superintendents and animal control officers that Maine does.

Yes, regionalism makes sense, but the excitement factor is missing and, well, tradition is against it. To expect folks in Industry, say, to give up their town identity voluntarily and merge with Farmington is a stretch of anyone’s imagined concept of efficiency.

Yet Richert expects such stretches. He touts regionalism as a movement that must come from the people, not be imposed by the state, no matter how much sense it may make in Augusta.

We agree that the decision must come from the smaller school systems and municipalities. But the regionalism movement can be facilitated at the state level by offering guidance, establishing frameworks and passing laws to make such consolidation not only sensible but exciting.

Save us some money AND fire our imaginations. That’s Augusta’s role in this grass-roots dreamin’.
Sofa ‘so-long’


Give us your tired CD’s, your poor portables, the not-too-wretched household refuse of your teeming apartment or dorm room.

Thanks for the memories, and thanks for all the stuff.

This may come too late for many of the departing Bates College contributors to the annual Dump & Run/Clean Sweep program held over the weekend. But it’s the thought that counts.

In their haste, or perhaps out of the kindness of their hearts, departing Bates students donate items they no longer need or want as the leave the campus each spring and head out into the world. The accumulation is sold in a two-day extravaganza, and the proceeds go to local nonprofit organizations.

Whatever the motivation, it’s a generous way to say “goodbye.”
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