Bangor, Maine News Update: June 12, 2018
It’s Election Day, with voters heading to the polls for a statewide primary election, including using ranked choice voting to sort through 11 gubernatorial candidates, among other races. All voters, including independents, can vote today on a referendum question about delaying the use of ranked choice voting in federal elections.
A Bangor woman who was shot three years ago for threatening a sheriff’s deputy with a metal object at the end of a rope is in trouble again, this time for allegedly grabbing the gun of a police officer. Alexis Lannon is once again charged with criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon for the incident that happened in a hospital emergency room. In 2015, she was found not competent to stand trial.
The Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles will start offering the option of a gender-neutral designation on driver’s licenses and ID cards by July of next year. Currently, a sticker can be used to change the gender until the technology is in place to actually place an X on the card, under the gender category.
Unseasonably cool temperatures are causing headaches in Northern Maine where some farmers are seeing pockets of frost. The cooling is slowing down germination for crops like corn, and any other seedlings that can’t be brought in at night. The cold, combined with the lack of rain, is making this a challenging growing season.
Two organizations in Rockport are working to save the statue of Andre the Seal, and have raised all but the final two thousand dollars to complete its restoration. Andre was a seal pup that was rescued by local tree surgeon Harry Goodridge in 1961, who would return to Maine, and his friend Harry every summer, after going south for the winter. The seal was the subject of a book and a 1994 film.