Coming together

Westbrook will hold its 26th annual Together Days festival this weekend. Thanks to the work of many volunteers who help organize the event, this year’s festival appears as though it will be as good as or better than previous years. Those who have never been to the two-day event that ushers in the summer every year in Westbrook should come downtown to check out the food, friends and entertainment.

A chicken barbecue and music in Riverbank Park will kick off the event Friday night. Most of the festivities will take place on Saturday, starting with a fun run at 8 a.m. and a parade at 10 a.m. At the same time, Boy Scout Troop 81 will be serving up a pancake breakfast in Riverbank Park.

On Saturday afternoon, the entertainment will include a great lineup of local bands playing in Riverbank Park and the Great Westbrook Duck Race on the Presumpscot River. There will be plenty of entertainment for children as well, with the children’s tent featuring a performance by the Warren Kids theater company, a jukado demonstration, folk dances performed by local students from Canal and Congin and a Wacked Wizard Show.

At noon, Superintendent Stan Sawyer and resident Al Juniewicz will be auctioning off items donated by local businesses under a tent in Riverbank Park. All the proceeds from the auction will go toward supporting Westbrook Together Days.

At 1 p.m. at the main stage in the park, the American Journal will be paying tribute to its former editor and publisher, Harry Foote, who is now the paper’s editor emeritus. This year is the 40th anniversary of the year Foote purchased two weekly papers and merged them into the American Journal. Please join us in honoring him for devoting so many years to reporting local news.

The festival will conclude Saturday evening with a bean supper from 5 to 7 p.m., a performance by the Tony Boffa Band from 7 to 9 p.m. and fireworks at 9:30 p.m. Don’t miss out on a festival that has grown in popularity over the years and thrived largely because of the many people who participate in it.

The American Journal will have a booth in Riverbank Park. Please come by and meet the staff and get a copy of our special Westbrook Together Days pull-out section, which went to subscribers of the paper last week. We hope to see you there, and, in the meantime, pray for some sunny skies.

Puzzling release

We were puzzled by a release from the state Department of Education last week that listed how much local school districts would lose if state aid to education were cut by 5 percent.

As we report this week, Education Commissioner Susan Gendron said the department released the figures in response to a people’s veto organized by Republicans to repeal the state’s plan to borrow $250 million to fill a gap in its operating budget.

Republicans have called the release a scare tactic aimed at keeping people from supporting the veto. The numbers were certainly alarming for local school districts, especially coming as they were at the end, rather than the beginning, of work on local budgets. Westbrook stood to loose more than $500,000, and Gorham stood to lose more than $600,000.

Gendron said she learned since the release of the spreadsheet that state aid to education would not be affected this year by cuts to the state’s budget, rendering the information practically useless. Even she called the timing of the release “regrettable,” coming on the same day the governor announced he would look for a way to avoid borrowing $250 million as a part of the state’s budget – a reversal of his earlier position.

We question why the Department of Education bothered sending this list out before finding out whether state aid to education would be affected this year by the people’s veto. Local school districts are in need of plenty of guidance from the state. We reported recently on differing local applications of the state’s new Essential Programs and Services school funding formula. While the state didn’t offer schools a clear direction on that, it did find the time to put out an unneeded and misleading spreadsheet.

We also question the wisdom of allowing budget cuts to affect the amount of money the state gives to local school districts – something that hasn’t been ruled out for next year. Citizens voted last June to increase the state’s share of the cost of education to 55 percent. With the state only halfway toward meeting that obligation, why go backward rather than forward?

Brendan Moran, editor

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