Bangor residents to decide school budget

Bangor voters will cast ballots inside the Cross Insurance Center for the first time on Tuesday to decide the fate of Bangor Public Library’s copper roof replacement bond and the city’s $42 million school budget.

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. June 18 at the new arena, 515 Main St. Voters should enter on Dutton Street and park in the lot on that street. Overflow parking will be available in the Hollywood Casino parking garage and golf carts will transport people across the street to the polls.

Superintendent Betsy Webb has called the budget “bare-bones” in a year when neither the school system nor city know for sure what severe fiscal challenges they might face when the state passes its own budget.

Question 2 asks whether voters want to continue to hold referendums on the school budget for the next three years. A yes vote means residents will continue to have to approve the school budget. A no vote means the City Council’s approval of the school budget will make it final without going before voters.

The final question is whether the city should take out a $3 million bond to replace Bangor Public Library’s failing 100-year-old copper roof. Officials say “Band-Aids” won’t work anymore.

For the bond to pass, a majority of voters in the election would need to approve the loan. However, if the total number of votes cast is less than 10 percent of the registered voters in the city, then the bond question will automatically pass, even if a majority of voters don’t approve.

The bond is one-third of a $9 million renovation and modernization project, according to library Director Barbara McDade. Stephen and Tabitha King have pledged $3 million toward the effort, but only if the bond passes and the library raises another $3 million on its own.

Alberto Santos-Dumont (he preferred the equals sign to a hyphen, so, what the hell, I’ll write it that way from here on out) was one of the pioneers of early aviation, developing the world’s first practical steerable powered dirigible blimps and later moving to heaver-than-air craft, making the first fixed-wing aircraft flight in Europe. These contributions are well-documented, but I want to focus more specifically on his unique personal transportation solutions, which I think represent the absolute best situation of any person in history, and possibly of any person in the foreseeable future.

I normally write about cars, and for most of us that represents the core of our personal transportation solution. For some of us, that solution also includes subways or rail travel for intra-city travel, and if we have to go long distances, we’ll take flights on large commercial airliners.

Santos=Dumont had a very different approach. He lived in Paris, and in addition to the petrol and electric automobiles he owned, he got around town in a small, powered, steerable dirigible of his own design. He did this mostly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, long before there were any inklings of ideas about air-traffic control laws, so Santos=Dumont had free run to float over the city at rooftop level, stopping in at cafés or even his own apartment, tooling around the Paris airspace like he fucking owned the place. Which he basically did, in any way that matters.

Just think about it for a second: say you live in one of the greatest cities in the world, but like all great cities, it’s dense, crowded, and a pain to get around in. What would be the ideal way to get around? Through the air! You wouldn’t need outright speed, but you would want something that could hover indefinitely, stop and manoeuvre with the agility of a car, and make you look like King Badass’s Boss’s cool Dad when you got in and out of it. A personal blimp fits all these criteria perfectly.

Some background on Alberto Santos=Dumont is probably worth talking about now, if only so you can make the inevitable Bruce Wayne/Batman associations in your head. Santos=Dumont was the son of a very wealthy Brazilian coffee grower. It was in his father’s extensive and highly innovative coffee fields that young albert first encountered steam driven machinery and even a locomotive, which fascinated him.

Dumont’s No.6 airship was used to win the Deutch Prize, which was to be awarded to the first steerable, powered airship to be able to make the 6.8 mile round trip between the Eiffel Tower and the Parc de Saint Cloud in Paris in 30 minutes or less. Santos=Dumont rounded the Eiffel Tower in only nine minutes and all was looking great when he had engine trouble, causing the engine to stall.

He couldn’t restart the engine from his control basket, so he had to shimmy across the flimsy, skeletal airframe to the engine, without any safety harnesses or anything, with only the raw badassium secreting from his pores to protect him. He eventually got the engine restarted, and managed to finish the course with only 30 seconds to spare.Read the full story at www.ecived.com/en!