Cheers to Mountain Valley High School Assistant Principal Chris Decker of Turner, named one of the top three assistant principals in Maine.

Decker, who has been at the Rumford school for five years, is a career educator who has worked with elementary, middle school and high school students in Rumford and in the Turner area school district.

Last year, Decker worked with Mountain Valley students to build a 16-foot canoe by hand, teaching them a basic skill in a way that the students can truly measure, and engaged students who are not always easily engaged by more traditional school projects.

Decker takes students on college tours, showing them there is something to aspire to after high school. He helped launch a community effort to reduce student drug and alcohol use during graduation week, and was honored in 2005 for his work in helping students be more engaged in physical activity.

He’s not your typical discipline-only assistant principal. We congratulate him on being recognized for his exceptional work with students.

Jeers to developer Barry Mazzaglia’s anticipated yet unwelcome appeal of the town of Norway’s eminent domain action to claim the soaked and sagging Norway Opera House. Enough already.

Mazzaglia has demonstrated, to the great hazard of the people of Norway, that his interest as owner of the Opera House is exceedingly limited. The only effort he has made to shore up the sagging roof or to repair damages from the September 2007 collapse has been when ordered to do so by town officials.

To now claim that the town has abused its process in taking the property is laughable. The town has been exceedingly patient, well more than it should have been over the years, and Mazzaglia has no standing to claim he was wronged.

He is just simply wrong.

Cheers to “LD1,” the law Maine voters passed five years ago to limit the growth of government spending. According to a report released Wednesday, the law is helping.

About 71 percent of municipalities stayed within their property tax growth limits in 2009, although smaller communities (fewer than 2,500 people) were less likely to have done so than larger ones.

Across the state, property taxes rose by 2.5 percent in 2009, less than half the growth rate in the three years prior to LD1’s passage.

State spending decreased by 3 percent in 2009, mainly due to the recession.

Maine’s school districts did not fare as well, with 87 percent exceeding their spending limits. It must be remembered, however, that state support for schools also dropped during the period, meaning the state gained some of its savings at the expense of school districts.

Cheers to the University of Maine at Farmington for setting an ambitious goal — becoming carbon neutral by 2035. UMF’s Climate Action Plan contains a detailed plan to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions, decrease energy use and minimize energy costs.

The campus has already achieved several ambitious goals, such as reducing campus energy consumption from heating, cooling and electricity between 2005 and 2010, despite an 11 percent increase in building space.

The campus also built  its new education Center with a geothermal heating and cooling system, which will save $60,000 per year once the system’s cost is recouped in 2012.

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