BELFAST — Students here in third- through eighth-grades started a week of state-mandated assessments on Monday. The new test, made by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium,…
Maine
Belfast students start week of testing today
Thunder Bay’s next mission is the Penobscot River
ROCKLAND — Lt. Zac Bender is the commanding officer of the Coast Guard Cutter Thunder Bay, whose home port is Rockland. Thunder Bay returned home after a 61-day deployment on the…
Town meetings 2015
WALDO COUNTY - The third week in March is typically one of biggest for town meetings in Waldo County. This weekend, six towns — Brooks, Burnham, Knox, Morrill, Jackson and…
5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 35 years recognized
ROCKLAND — Knox County Commissioners Roger Moody, Carol Maines and Rick Parent Jr,. along with County Administrator Andrew Hart and Human Resources Representative Laurie Bouchard, Monday…
Prom dress giveaway now in 10th year, looks for new home
BELFAST - On a recent Friday afternoon, a few women worked behind a curtain of sorts — storefront windows papered over in a regal shade of purple.
…
Snow day payback
BELFAST - Regional School Unit 20 has had six snow days this year. A proposal to make up three of them by holding school on Saturdays was voted down by the district’s board of directors Tuesday…
Reversionary tactics
BELFAST - A group of property owners abutting the former Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad corridor is seeking damages from the Federal Government related to the conversion of the route…
Deal includes increased coverage for spouses; changes expected to ‘sift down’ to other city workers
BELFAST - To anyone working in the private sector, government jobs can look awfully generous. Even by the standards of other…
Three competing for two open seats on Board of Selectmen
SEARSPORT - Voters will pick two selectmen from a field of three and decide several other municipal positions in a regular municipal elections, Tuesday, March 3. Other business will be taken up…
Scholarships provided for students to attend
ROCKLAND — Two dozen (plus one) students from the Midcoast and around Maine gathered at the Penobscot School in Rockland for an intensive look at Russian culture prior to their attendance of this…
Mobile home succumbs to fourth residential fire in seven days
SWANVILLE - Twelve hours after tending the smoldering remains of a house fire on Chandler Road, Belfast firefighters were back in Swanville to put out a blaze in a mobile home.
Fire Chief…
City eager to prepare ‘Maskers’ property for next use
BELFAST - 45 Front Street has had at least two significant lives already, as part of the now-bygone Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad terminal complex, and later as a performance space for the…
Wind, low temperatures slow firefighting efforts
SWANVILLE - Firefighters from a half-dozen towns worked through the night into early hours Tuesday morning to contain a house fire on a rural road north of Swan Lake.
The fire at 109…
Snow day calculus
MIDCOAST — Monday was a holiday, but if it weren’t, what are the chances it would have been a snow day?
Rewind to Saturday night when second blizzard of the season…
Varsity basketball players talk about their colorful shoes
SEARSPORT — When athletes don pink for breast cancer awareness, the effect is usually pretty noticeable. Less so on the court at Searsport District High School.
…
Longtime leader of sprawling, rural districts headed to the big city
UNITY - RSU 3 Superintendent Heather Perry will be heading to Gorham next year after five years with the 11-town Western Waldo County district.
Perry was officially hired…
City sends out $1.1 million grant bid
BELFAST - Economic Development Director Thomas Kittredge submitted a grant application last week on behalf of Ashland, Mass.-based …
Fire chief: ‘It was a horrible loss. It's tough in these small communities.’
BROOKS - An unexplained fire leveled a Brooks home Wednesday morning.
Firefighters were called out shortly before 10 a.m. to a one-and-a-half-story home on Veterans Highway owned by…
Valentine’s Day wishes from Belfast
BELFAST - Valentine’s Day is still three days off, but that’s close enough for fresh seafood.
At Hannaford supermarket Wednesday morning, Tim Taylor unveiled a display of mussels in the…
Seasoned rails-to-trails engineer weighs in
BELFAST - At post-meeting work session Tuesday, councilors reviewed engineering recommendations for the Passy Rail Trail project. …
Total approaches $100,000, city manager says Belfast had no choice
BELFAST - Any benefits in the city’s decision to leave Regional School Unit 20 remain to be seen. But the cost of the process is now known.
On Tuesday, the Council authorized spending just…
‘We had no idea he was still here that whole time’
BELFAST - Family Dollar got a delivery of dry goods in the middle of yesterday’s snowstorm. Two hours later, the cashier called…
One business bucks the trend for a bit
BELFAST - One business was open.
Inside Rollie’s Bar and Grill, a half-dozen patrons leaned into their tables. They talked, occasionally glancing up at television screens that outnumbered…
Under pressure to get moving, school board gives Mailloux the nod
BELFAST - Under pressure to get through a laundry list of obligations in a short time, the RSU 71 board of directors hired former RSU 20 leader Bruce Mailloux as interim superintendent until the…
Mailloux likely pick for interim superintendent
BELFAST - The board of directors for the newly-created Regional School Unit 71 met for the first time Tuesday. The unofficial “organizational meeting” included discussion of everything from when…
New ‘Operations Lodge’ breaks out of main building
BELFAST — Athenahealth got city approval last month to convert the interior of warehouse next to the company’s main building into offices and a new “Operations Lodge” for mail processing. A nearby…
Questions about company’s track record stalls review
SEARSPORT - The Searsport Planning Board on Monday heard two descriptions of a proposal by Topsham-based Grimmell Industries Inc. to create a scrap metal staging area at Mack Point marine…
Election results: Newcomers favored strongly over district veterans
BELFAST - Voters in the city and four surrounding towns picked slate of fresh faces to lead their new school district, RSU 71. In elections held Jan. 13, newcomers prevailed over…
[Editor’s note: the letter concerns a proposal from Grimmell Industries Inc. to locate a staging area for scrap ferrous metal…
Interest varies in surrounding towns; elections on Jan. 13
BELFAST - In special elections next Tuesday, voters in five towns will choose members for the inaugural Regional School Unit 71 board of directors.
Several contested races in the new…
$35,000 by April is the goal
CAMDEN — It’s coming up on that time when students from Japan arrive to spend a week at Camden-Rockport Middle School and a short time later, students from the middle school will make their own…
Musician, hatmaker and ‘jazz poet’ gets Council nod, gold cape to follow
BELFAST - Toussaint St. Negritude has lived in a lot of places, but none that valued poetry as much. On Tuesday the City Council unimously voted to appoint him as poet laureate of Belfast.…
Annual wreath fundraiser coincides with Wreaths Across America visit
BELFAST - Dawn Voigt stood in the kitchen of the Parish House at First Church, bearing down on a tangle of red ribbon and wire. Ten minutes and a couple good stories later, she held up a bow for a…
Fifth-graders get an unvarnished look at local government in action
SEARSPORT - At meeting of the Select Board, Tuesday, Chairman Aaron Fethke noted that it felt a little like July. The comment was a reference to the sunlight creeping around the drawn curtains of…
Next steps laid out for new school district; police get a second SUV
BELFAST - The City Council on Tuesday approved a plan to make more space for boats and marine commerce in the inner harbor. For now, that means swapping out the loose scattering of single-…
Tree lighting ceremony scheduled for Saturday at new location
BELFAST - The city will be lighting a different tree this year to kick off the holiday season. In past years, crowds gathered a the towering pine outside City Hall. There was hot cocoa and carols…
Sizing up GAC’s shoreline
SEARSPORT - Ron Huber’s descriptions of the bluff on the west side of Kidder Point are as colorful as the rock-like clumps of chemistry and stains that mark the beach there.
A “toxic…
Belfast City Council preview, Dec. 2
BELFAST – A plan to reorganize moorings in Belfast Harbor would free up space for current users, including commercial fishermen and boat workers. It would also raise the bar for…
Photo Gallery of floats
ROCKLAND - The annual Festival of Lights celebration continued Saturday night with the Parade of Lights. Throngs of people crowded the sidewalks spilling into the street to watch the parade pass…
Mayor, Santa Claus and children throw the switch
ROCKLAND — Amid much anticipation, a large crowd assembled in Mildred Merrill Park in Rockland to watch the annual lighting of Rockland Main Street’s Lobster Trap Tree that officially heralds the…
Has been used as a shooting range, for boxing matches and roller skating. What next?
BELFAST - Maine Preservation last month released its list of …
ROCKLAND — In a 3-2 vote announced by Rockland City Clerk Stuart Sylvester, Frank Isganitis has become the new mayor. The short meeting at City Hall, Monday evening, also saw two new city…
Goals in the works, budget on the horizon, and lots to do in the meantime
BELFAST - With two new members since the Nov. 4 election, the Belfast City Council came together informally on Monday to talk about goals for the coming year.
City Manager Joe Slocum said …
With six towns slated to leave next year, what’s in the cards for Searsport and Stockton Springs?
BELFAST - At the first Regional School Unit 20 board meeting since the election that effectively exploded the district, there…
Celebration in Belfast for Daniel Krajack’s ‘Visiting Hope’
Daniel Krajack worked almost a dozen years as copy editor for both the Republican Journal and the Waldo Independent in…
Cedar Street is not a secret this time of year. The amount of candy that moves out of Belfast’s ten-block Halloween landing strip is the stuff of lore. The unprepared homeowner runs through a…
Financing would consolidate existing debt, make future projects possible
BELFAST - Front Street Shipyard has been selected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development to receive a $10 million Business & Industry Guaranteed Loan.
Speaking on Oct.…
BELFAST - The parking lot of Belfast Area High School was filled on Oct. 23. The occasion wasn’t a home football game. It was the…
Council approves City Park improvements, zoning odds and ends, introduces Washington Street redevelopment
BELFAST - Sewer bills will be going up by 7-percent in 2015 and another 7-percent in 2016. The City Council approved the request from Wastewater Superintendent John Carman on Tuesday, but not…
Elections 2014
At the Penobscot Bay Pilot, we’ve been working hard to put together great election resources. But if you were only going to read one thing before you went to the polls on Nov. 4, we would have to…
