By now it should we well known that the Bucksport Town Council has again demonstrated its rapier wit by ignoring a petition signed by more than 1,700 citizens, a clear majority of Bucksport adults. This carefully screened petition demanded the Town Council to tell Applied Energy Services to withdraw from their quest to build a coal-burning power plant here.

Regardless of how AES chooses to digest these findings they really have but two choices. They can blatantly renege on their promise of not going where they are not wanted. This could make people question what other little half truths they have been told. Or they could honor their word and skeedadell. Either way I think AES is finished here, they may just not know it yet.

For the record, remaining councilors did not even second Councilor Don White’s motion to accept the petition. They did not even suggest that the idea be studied. They looked surprisingly like those “men in gray suits” during their vain attempt to save Mother Russia from the evils of democracy.

Councilor Jeff Robinson, who with Councilor Oliva Jacques, at least had the guts to stick around and explain their strange judgment. The others fled the scene with police escorts. Robinson, elected to the council on a plan of calling the council “unapproachable,” defended his dismissal of the petition by saying that the “… next thing they’ll petition for is a 20 percent tax cut or to get rid of the Police Department.” Well, councilor, even if the majority of us were to make such a ludicrous request as to disband our police force, I would hope the majority would still prevail. It’s that darned Democracy Thing the council seems uncomfortable with.

People were understandably upset and I feel badly that that was about all the television news cared to address. The council made the whole town look bad. The council rolled over. The state? Well, their recent rejection of a plan to establish a toxic waste dump on wetlands between two lakes that supply the drinking water for most of Hancock County was encouraging but that danger was so obvious it would have been tempting total revolt if they had not. The threat of AES is much more insidious. Besides, that was Ellsworth, the county seat and local hub of democracy. This is Bucksport and we have precious little to brag about, politically speaking.

That leaves the Bucksport Planning Board. Now we’re talking. All they will have to say is, “Nope. We don’t think do.” The council said just that to 1,700 constituents and made it look easy.

If the people of Bucksport will just try and comprehend what has just happened to them, against them, by the council we can begin to heal as a community. If not, we are destined to wake up to steam blasts from an unneeded power plant saying, “How in hell did this happen?” Robert L. Patterson Bucksport