by Mary Grow Vassalboro Planning Board members unanimously approved all four applications on their May 3 agenda. They also discussed increased town permit fees, an item that will appear on the May 12 select board agenda. Two shoreland permits were approved, for John Northrop to replace a house at 78 Three Mile Pond Road with […]
by Mary Grow The May 9 China Select Board meeting began with a half-hour public hearing on three of the items to be submitted to voters on June 14: the Large Scale Solar Facilities Moratorium Ordinance (Art. 37), the updated town comprehensive plan (Art. 38) and the 2022-23 municipal budget (Arts. 2 through 21, and […]
by Mary Grow Waterville, Winslow, Windsor The Samuel Osbornes discussed in last week’s article were not the only Black family in 19th-century Waterville. Various sources mention several others, though details are often scanty and/or confusing. Local historians did not consistently state the race or nationality of people they wrote about. For example, the index to […]
by Mary Grow Vassalboro select board members had a varied agenda at their April 28 meeting, discussing topics that included the upcoming June 6 and June 14 annual town meeting; town committees; PFAS (per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances) that might have been in sludge that might have been spread in the 1990s; and upcoming celebrations. Board members […]
by Mary Grow China Planning Board members spent a second meeting the evening of April 26 mostly discussing new and revised ordinances they hope to ask voters to approve in November (see The Town Line, April 21, p. 3). They made two unanimous decisions about ordinance revisions. One recommended change, in the Land Use Ordinance, […]
Majority does not support lowering taxes by Mary Grow At their April 19 meeting, Vassalboro Budget Committee were faced with a proposed 2022-23 budget, including municipal and school requests and an estimated Kennebec County tax, which (if approved by voters) would be expected to result in a slight decrease in the town tax rate. The […]
by Mary Grow Vassalboro Records tell of a Kennebec Valley slave-owner, Captain Abiel or Abial Lovejoy (Dec. 15, 1731 – July 4, 1811), who lived in Vassalboro from 1776 and in Sidney after the west side of the Kennebec River became a separate town in 1792 (see the Feb. 3 issue of The Town Line). […]
by Mary Grow The three China Select Board members present at the April 25 meeting unanimously approved new transfer station hours. Town Manager Rebecca Hapgood hopes to implement the change by the middle of May, when summer people begin arriving. The new hours are Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. and […]
by Mary Grow CHINA, ME — China Road Committee members met April 12 to discuss Road Foreman Shawn Reed’s proposed repaving schedule for 2022. They expressed no objections. Reed’s list totals just under six miles in the north end of town. It includes about 1.5 miles on Pleasant View Ridge Road, starting from Lakeview Drive […]
by Mary Grow Black Kennebec Valley residents The first two Black men recorded in Augusta, according to Anthony Douin, one of the contributors to H. H. Price and Gerald Talbot’s Maine’s Visible Black History, were “York Bunker and Cuff.” They were in the garrison at Fort Western, built in 1754, “listed as servants and paid […]