Bangor’s yes or no

Bangor voters will be asked to answer this question at the polls next Tuesday: Shall the following Resolve Entitled “Establishment of a Methadone Clinic in the City of Bangor” be adopted? Be it Resolved, that the City Council of the City of Bangor, on behalf of the citizens of Bangor, shall request that the State of Maine and Acadia Hospital agree not to establish a methadone clinic in the City of Bangor until local law enforcement has been given sufficient time to address the issue of opiate addiction through enforcement actions and education; until a coordinated state policy on opiate addiction treatment is in place; and until all questions which have been raised about the presence and operation of such a clinic in Bangor are fully addressed and answered.

Whichever your opinion on the question, the key is to remember that voting yes is a vote to stop the facility, voting no is a vote to have it proceed. A little confusing, perhaps, but it is a complicated issue.

Voters do not actually have any direct authority over the facility and neither does the city – it’s a state issue – and the terms in the question itself are largely undefined, so that one person’s vote of yes or no may be based on an entirely different interpretation than another’s. Nevertheless, the city has been asked to get a sense of where voters stand on this issue, and there’s no sense in doing that if there’s confusion over what yes and no mean.