March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Posting a complaint

Shakespeare is said to have penned, “April is the cruelest month of all.” The bard is right on target. The posting of town and state-aid roads is slamming the commerce of Maine. Consider this example of economic harassment perpetrated by the public sector against the private.

Dave Roberts has a small sawmill in Aurora. Mud season fast approaches when it will be impossible to get wood out. Mr. Swanson gives L.A. Gray an order for rough lumber with which to build some floats for his fledgling aquaculture business.

Having survived the winter by consuming prior profits, L.A. Gray is hungry for spring business. We delivered one door to Mr. Batson on the Bangor Road (Route 1A), then trying to minimize delivery costs and make a profitable transaction, our driver hooked a left at Ellsworth Falls proceeding to Mr. Roberts’ sawmill up Route 179. Whoops! State Trooper Perkins tickets us $275 for being over weight limit on a posted road.

Maine’s business climate is worse than its weather. We are overburdened by taxes, fees, licenses, EPA and other onerous regulations that just drive up the cost of doing business. We can’t afford to sit out the month of April while the roads thaw out. This interference with our right and need to conduct legitimate commerce is lunacy. We pay more than enough excise and fuel taxes to mitigate what little damage we might inflict on the roadbed. The $275 fine would have been much more useful in the pockets of our employees. Dudley G. Gray, President L.A. Gray Co., Hancock


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