From the Editor
Homeless, still
The York High School Arts Wing went down by just over 400 votes. No doubt the damaging flood of the previous week gave numerous voters pause, as did the public hammering the project took from sitting members of the Board of Selectmen, campaigning against it as they did, well outside their required role. Likewise, there were the aggressively public and late-arriving critics who appeared to have saved their input for a conspicuously timed date just before the election. This after having remained silent for the prior year and a half when comments and input from the public had been actively sought. (Effective as guerrilla politics perhaps, but still poor form, really.)Beyond that, perhaps the project was simply more than the town of York was willing to accept, and the vote was simply a true reflection of the dollar value the town as a whole is willing to place on the arts and the students who pursue them.
Regardless, at the bottom, nothing has been solved by this vote. The problem still remains. There is still no room for the affected students in their own school, and they are still in a position of having to rely on outside facilities for their programs. There are hundreds of these students, and they are still in our care and looking to us.
Who now steps forward? From our view, among all other town leaders, Selectmen Macdonald, Bardwell and Dorrian have clearly obligated themselves to a proactive role in seeking a solution here. Having gone so far in their efforts to deep-six the proposed project, they are now without excuse for walking away from finding a solution to the problem itself. We suspect that they may find the job far more difficult than they bargained for, but bargained for it they have, and they should not expect to be let off the hook after having done only the lightweight work of tearing the proposal down.
Unconscionable
There is really no other word for the $96,500 per student cost that is being dumped on the citizens of Ogunquit. Yes, those in charge of the Wells-Ogunquit School District can point to the state funding formula and claim that this is simply how the numbers work out. But we are not buying it and neither should Ogunquit. If the town of Wells honestly wants to keep Ogunquit within their school district then now is the time for leadership there to do the right thing and make a proactive effort to bring some semblance of fairness to the issue. Absent any such showing, Ogunquit ought to look to the example of the community of Frye Island that, facing a similar situation, has brought suit against the state for committing them to an inequitable financial burden. Inequitable, unconscionable, indefensible, it is certainly all of those.Welcome home, Virginia
With this issue, The Independent welcomes back to its pages the work of Virginia Woodwell, longtime York resident and journalist. Virginia's return to the paper marks another step in our efforts to make sure that our community continues to have a newspaper that is local in more than name only. Virginia will be contributing her column "York Corner" and also regular feature articles to The Independent. We look forward to publishing them, and we are sure that you will enjoy reading them.
