The SAD 52 Board of Directors convened a meeting Thursday night to talk about problems with unruly behavior by some students in last year’s first grade at Greene Central School.It wasn’t a discussion. It was a presentation. And it didn’t answer parents’ concerns.The subject of the meeting was supposed to be discussion of Principal Thomas […]

The Department of Transportation finished its restructure of the Chick-A-Dee section of Route 4 in Turner Friday. It’s a decidedly different traffic pattern for the developing business district there, and one that seems to have stumped motorists over the past several days as they’ve funneled into fewer travel lanes.The section, where motorists tend to zoom […]

The YWCA of Central Maine is thriving. It’s a terrific place for the agency to be when, just five years ago, it was struggling to stay open. The struggle was so great, the agency went through five directors in six years and had to dig out from under a weighty $200,000 debt.The sheer determination of […]

When it comes to cutting taxes, everyone talks a good game. High-tax state. Waste in government. Cut the fat. You’ve heard it all.Yet, despite the talk, we have seen a host of money saving proposals come to nothing.And, we can’t always blame politicians for the inaction. Mainers just don’t seem willing to make the sacrifices […]

Mexico police officer Michael J. Richard is right: His abysmal record of suspensions, demotions and reprimands has nothing to do with his arrest for domestic violence and terrorizing. Separate issues.But his record does raise the question of why the Mexico Police Department hired him in the first place.Richard, 57, spent 28 years with the adjacent […]

Sixteen miles of pipeline – nearly all pipe at the Prudhoe Bay oil field on the Beaufort Sea – is so corroded it will have to be replaced. The job could take months, guaranteed to force up energy costs just as we’re preparing to enter the heating season.The Prudhoe Bay site, which now accounts for […]

The annual Maine Open starts today.In Auburn.This is the 88th year of the Charlie’s Maine Open championship. Of those years, golfers have teed off at Portland’s Riverside Municipal Golf Course 42 times. The event has been played at Poland Spring seven times; eight times at Augusta Country Club; three times at Springbrook Golf Club in […]

It seems so quaint by today’s standards: A small group of women in white gloves and dresses meeting for tea to discuss books.And it certainly harkens back to another era when more Americans seemed to feel that lifelong intellectual self-improvement was a necessary part of a successful, well-rounded life.The Rumford Book Club will mark its […]

So, college athletes are using the N-word, the F-word, and posting risqué pictures of themselves drinking alcohol and using drugs online.That shouldn’t be a surprise to educators who work with college students. It shouldn’t be a surprise to the parents who raised these kids. And it’s certainly no surprise to college students themselves.At Ohio State, […]

Charlie Lemon has some advice for Paul Morency.It’s good advice from one business owner to another.Lemon owns two bars in Minnesota; Morency owns two in Maine.According to Lemon, the wrong kind of crowd can ruin a bar’s business. “Police are a bar’s salvation,” he said.He should know.Lemon hires off-duty police officers to work his clubs […]