In response to Mark Carney’s letter, “Way life shouldn’t be?” (BDN, April 30-May 1).

As a former resident, who entered the Navy after graduating from the University of Maine, I have been deployed and stationed all around this great country. While home recently visiting my parents while on leave, I was sympathetic yet dismayed to read Carney’s letter. I have spent two tours in Florida, both in Jacksonville and Pensacola, and often found myself pondering the same question as to why my parents pay so much more in property taxes.

However, almost every night in Florida, when I watched the local news, I would hear of the countless crimes committed and each morning I would find myself listening to those same reports as I sat in the I-95 traffic jam wasting 45-55 minutes to drive the seven miles from my house to the base in Jacksonville.

On my most recent trip home, I traveled with my father to Springfield one morning, counting only 12 vehicles north- and southbound from the Bangor Mall exit north – approximately 70 miles. The next day, my wife, daughter and I drove to visit family in Greenville and saw more deer and other wildlife than we saw in vehicular traffic, not to mention the large expanses of trees and greenery that are almost extinct up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

After 10 years of proudly serving and being able to visit and live in areas that I never believed possible while growing up in Maine, the more I see, the more I know that somebody at the Maine Publicity Bureau had it right – Maine truly is the way life should be.

If a better way of life does cost a little more, that is the price some of us will gladly pay.

Todd Libby

Newburgh