Bass Park future
The last time Bangor got into the real estate business it lost a beautiful railroad station. Now they want to find a new use for historic Bass Park. I suggest they buy “Stinky Mountain” from Hampden and get into the downhill ski business.
Jim Barrows
Brownville
Roadside litter
In regards to where Doug Pooler travels in his July 10 BDN letter to the editor, I would like to invite him to travel to Ellsworth, particularly the Bayside and Beechland roads. As many people know, I am often found running throughout this city, so my “information” is accurate.
Although I have noticed a clean-up as of late, this area generally gets all the “trash” from High Street. Most every business is represented, especially after Saturday and Sunday nights. I try to keep the area around my home and driveway clean, but is it often a never-ending job.
Unfortunately with a growing city, whether new residents or just a general increase in traffic, this is the negative result. I’m sure these drivers throwing out their ” nips” are not just cleaning out their cars. Imagine being on the road with them at the same time? With that said, you could certainly have yourself quite a collection.
Amy Jordan
Ellsworth
Time to improve health system
Thanks to Sen. Susan Collins for standing up to the Republican leaders of Congress and looking for a bipartisan health care solution. Everyone needs health care, but not everyone has adequate insurance or can afford it. If you should happen to draw the unlucky health card, then health care can be unaffordable unless you have the right insurance or are very rich. Otherwise, this would mean bankruptcy for most hard-working American families.
I believe we are the greatest nation on Earth. But we are sticking our heads in the sand on this subject. This is not a political issue, this is a moral issue. We decided in 1986, with the law signed by Ronald Reagan, that we would not deny health care services to anyone, but we did not make arrangements to appropriately fund these services, choosing to pass the buck and basically have the insured pay for the uninsured through their premiums, a shell game of payments to largely nonprofit hospitals. We now seem to have the most expensive health care system in the world, but we do not have great results because so many of us are not covered.
This is now the perfect opportunity to look at best practices around the world to make changes to create the most efficient and effective health care system in the world. I know we can do it, with the leadership of people like Collins.
Jeffrey Jones
Bangor
Implement ranked-choice voting
In my view, ranked-choice voting should be used for all elections at every level, but especially when there are many contenders for an office, as there are bound to be in the next race for governor. In addition to ranked-choice voting’s most basic and important advantage of being more likely to produce a winner that is acceptable to more people than our current system, it has the following two benefits.
It encourages civility among candidates. It discourages dirty campaigning because every candidate must be mindful of how they’re seen by supporters of other candidates. If a candidate can’t be a first choice for some voters, maybe he or she can be a second or third choice, which is still valuable.
Second, ranked-choice voting allows us all to vote for who we really want rather than having to strategically vote via settling for someone who merely might be able to win over the candidate we really can’t tolerate. This is my favorite feature of the system. You can show support first for he or she who owns your heart, and then rank in order those you could live with. There is no danger of unintentionally helping anyone you vehemently oppose, as you don’t give any support to them at all.
It is a very simple system — no more complicated for voters than choosing what flavor of ice cream to buy from a store. I am proud of the people of Maine for choosing it. And I must wonder what are those in opposition to it afraid of?
Nancy O’Hagan
Portland