More small towns in Maine should be disincorporated and run at the county level or merged with other municipalities. At some point excessive local control is inefficient and duplicative

Fun fact, there was a loophole that allowed this (and oral) in Maine until the mid/late 90s. Downtown Bangor, before it’s “revitalization” had numerous massage parlors openly offering happy endings (or so I’ve been told, I arrived in the Bangor area in 1998 as an 18 year old college freshman living in Orono and as far as I know the only sketchy thing left in downtown Bangor was Diva’s gentleman’s club). There was a BDN article about this in relation to the downtown revival

Not sure inserting one extra letter is a “big fuck up”. You aren’t the first to post about Arcadia National Park.

It happens

It’s Acadia not Arcadia

Yeah, that would have been my assumption I didn’t see wealth listed in the criteria.

That’s what I assumed but wealth wasn’t mentioned in the criteria.

Why is New Hampshire so much higher than Vermont?

Sounds like a plate misread.

We got a bill from Florida once. Picture of a white pickup truck and they were saying it was the plate on our Subaru. Turns out it was a truck from Maine with commercial plates that were the same letters/numbers as our normal Maine plates (didn’t know that was possible, I think they avoid duplicating a plate even if it is a different class). We called and within a couple minutes it was corrected.

Out west a huge percentage of wilderness / undeveloped land is federally owned. Over 60% of Utah is federal public land, over 80% of Nevada, 45% of California, 52% of Oregon, etc

They’re talking about federal land (like BLM, National Forests, National Recreation Areas, etc). Out west hunting, ATVing, snowmobiling, etc is generally done on federal land. BLM generally allows more permissive use (like jeep trails and boondocking)

The land that was suitable for agriculture was cleared and developed as such. That’s where potatoes are grown in northern Maine.

When Maine sold off vast tracts of state held forestland, they assumed the timber barons would clear it and then sell it off to homesteaders. Turns out it was shitty farmland so that didn’t happen.

As you go even farther north into Quebec you eventually arrive at the St Lawrence valley, which has good farmland.

No experience with Fidium but I’ve had Consolidated (formerly Fairpoint) business fiber for 2+ years and it’s been rock solid. No outages and I reliably get +- 2Mbps of the speed I’m paying for. There was a big ass tree that broke the power lines and was hanging on Consolidated’s bundle for days and the fiber kept working like a champ.

Can’t really say it’s too high unless we know how much oil they burn.

Two chest freezers and a dehumidifier can cost $100+/month all on their own (although the dehumidifier probably doesn’t run much in the winter)

At least with Versant you can qualify for a break for heating with electric heat or heat pumps. (Excess usage in the winter is discounted).

https://www.versantpower.com/energy-solutions/heat-pumps/

> This is available for homes using electric heat and/or a heat pump water heater. To be eligible for this rate, 50% of your electricity use must be attributable to use of a heat pump and/or heat pump water heater. This is the same as residential space heating service rate but now adds heat pump water heaters.

Not out of the ordinary if you heat your home and water primarily with heat pumps.

I used roughly 1300kWh last month.

That’s with a 24kBTU heat pump with two indoor units, electric dryer, electric oven (but gas cooktop), full size upright freezer, LED lights, gas hot water. Two people working from home full time (multiple computers, monitors, networking gear) and one teenager. Under 2500 square foot home.

I use 1lbs ground lamb and 1 lbs ground beef

CMP didn’t contribute because your developers opted for underground utilities (either by choice or because they were required to by the town). I live on a private road and all the poles were put in and are owned by Versant.

Glad I’m in versant territory: CMP charge you twice as much as Versant charges me… When I first got my solar panels my minimum charge was $8.xx and then like 3 or 4 months ago it dropped to under $7

Net metering means customers pay less in distribution fees for maintaining the grid but they still use the grid, so distribution rates are raised to make up the difference

I have solar. Each month I push hundreds of kilowatt hours into the grid, and then consume hundreds of kilowatts hours. Because of net metering I don’t pay anything more than the minimum fee to be connected, which is like $6.xx

Lots of net-metering customers eventually result in price increases for everyone else. 1:1 net metering isn’t really sustainable

Opioids.

You can also drive around looking at run down houses flying Trump flags.

Nope. Their tank.

Wow. I got a propane fill up just before Christmas @ 2.119/gallon

We get a volume discount through my wife’s employer (something like rack + 0.25), no idea what it would have been otherwise.

You can’t buy bagged milk here.

You can buy Maine-made cheese curds to make your poutine (Pineland Farms)

That’s super common, it’s definitely not just a thing with your family.

That’s like saying “putting a tree up in our house and decorating it in December” is a family tradition (I’m exaggerating a bit, but Chinese food at new years is wicked common).