By Will Tuell

By Nancy Beal

Nearly 40 Jonesporters turned out last week for a second look at a budget for their elementary school. It was a mob compared to the handful of voters who rejected an earlier version of the budget in a late May meeting at which two of the three school board members were absent. 

Word had spread about the earlier failure, and, as several of the school’s teachers had firmly predicted, the “right” people were there at the second meeting and approved the budget by a vote of 30 to 2.

By Paul Sylvain

Anyone accusing the people of Milbridge of not knowing how to throw one heck of a summer party has never come out to the town’s yearly Milbridge Days celebration.

Once again, Milbridge is pulling out all the stops, and is all in, for this year’s event-packed Milbridge Days celebration July 23-25. The theme of this year’s Milbridge Days is “Where Dreams Come Alive One Storybook at a Time.”

Selectman Alley Resigns, Cites Work Demand

By Nancy Beal

Jonesport’s special town meeting on ordinance changes, originally set for July 23, has been postponed a week to 6 p.m. Wednesday, July 30, at the Jonesport Elementary School gymnasium.

The change was announced at the selectmen’s July 16 meeting and was prompted by the need to comply with posting and publishing schedules by which residents are informed of events on which they have a vote.

By Nancy Beal

The town of Beals now has sufficient grant money in hand to proceed with expansion at the marina. At the June 24 selectmen’s meeting, chairman Glenda Beal told Daniel Davis and Lorena Faulkingham that the town’s application for money from the Northern Border Regional Commission (NBRC) had been approved in the amount of $482,237. Along with a previously awarded $144,840 Working Waterfront Grant, the NBRC money will cover the town’s required match and green-light the long-planned improvements and expansion of the town’s marina, Beal said.

By Will Tuell

The Machias Area Little League has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, as several of its baseball and softball teams have regularly punched their tickets to the state tournament. As Machias’s prestige as a league has grown, so too has enthusiasm amongst players, their families, and fans. 

By Paul Sylvain

With scarcely three weeks until the annual Machias Wild Blueberry Festival’s musical opens for its all-too-brief four-night run at the Centre Street Congregational Church, Gene Nichols and company are hitting their weekly rehearsals hard.

This year’s production, titled The Pringle Family Re-enactors, was written and is being directed by Nichols. With about 30 parodies of mostly well known songs planned for the show, calling it ambitious is an understatement.

By Paul Sylvain

Washington County’s towns and cities, still reeling after getting broadsided with a hefty 22% county tax increase this year, should begin bracing for a replay next year and perhaps beyond.

Holmes, Pelivanis Smash Grand Slams in Offensive Outbursts

By Will Tuell

The Machias Area Little League 12U baseball team has clinched a berth in the state Little League championship playoffs, set to begin later this week at Beal Field in Machias. Despite outscoring opponents 56-7, the squad, coached by Michael Fergerson and Ryan Harmon, still had to play their way into the tourney, where many of them grew up playing ball. 

By Nancy Beal

Nearly 100 well-wishers gathered last Friday night in the Beals Elementary School gym to celebrate Beals’ centennial anniversary in what was billed by the event’s organizers as an evening of “Refreshments and Recollections.”

Islanders had been encouraged to share relics of the past, and a table stretching from one end of the gym’s regulation-size basketball court to the other was filled with exhibits ranging from Beals High School basketball uniforms to personal items and remembrances of successfully fighting for a bridge to the mainland.