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QUOTE OF THE WEEK
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"I've enjoyed helping people in the community.
That's what the job is all about.'
- Louis Duval, who retired Tuesday
after working 30 years as a Brunswick firefighter. He hated to
leave, "but there comes a time ...," he said (July 23, "Fire
department's 'Capt. Fix-it' retires"). "I hope I helped save a
lot of property and maybe a few lives," Capt. Duval
said. |
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For more information, call Claire M. Bastien at
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| Need land bank |
| letters@TimesRecord.Com |
| 08/05/2003 |
To the editor:
Congratulations to The Times Record
and reporter Christopher Cousins for being the only ones among
Maine's major newspapers to present the full story of tax
reform (July 25, "Everyone's talking tax reform").
Yes,
the Maine Municipal Association and the Legislature are
feuding, but there is a larger, less friendly gorilla in the
room that our leaders seem reluctant to address or even
acknowledge. The Maine Taxpayers Action Network will most
likely have their 1 percent tax cap initiative on the ballot
in November 2004. If the Legislature is struggling to find an
alternative to the relatively benign MMA proposal, imagine the
chaos next year when they try to combat Carol Palesky's
radical tax cap!
The Maine Land Bank and Community
Preservation Program deserves to be enacted in its own right.
It is the only reform proposal that is actually self-funding
and provides genuine and sustainable tax relief to those who
are being literally forced from their homes. (For details,
please see www.maine landbank.org.) But the Maine Land Bank
could play a different and perhaps even more valuable role as
the alternative the Legislature will be seeking to the Palesky
tax cap next year. The reasonable and logical Maine Land Bank
can defeat the draconian tax cap.
However, this option
will not be available unless the Legislature acts during this
summer's special session to pass the constitutional amendment
(LD 938) needed to enable passage of the Maine Land Bank
legislation.
We urge your readers to act now and inform
their legislators that intelligent action this summer will pay
off when the chips are really down next year.
David R.
Hill
Yarmouth |
Top of Story
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08/06/2003
