Dear Readers,

There are a lot of topics to cover this week, so here goes.

First of all: Can't we all get along? Or if we can't, is there a way to keep the cost of our disagreements under $100,000?

For months, the rumors have been swirling around our town surrounding the firing of Jody Lewis, the former Boothbay Harbor Public Works director.

Officially, mum’s the word. And town officials have been very closed-mouth about the real story.

Now, because of dogged reporting by your favorite newspaper, and intrepid staff reporter Sue Mello and journalist Ryan Leighton, we know at least some of the story.

And, dear readers, what we learned makes us want to gag.

In our system of government the public's business is supposed to be done in public. But our friends in Augusta enacted more than 300 exceptions to the Maine Freedom of Access Act (FOAA).

One is the right of privacy for town employees and the right of our selectmen to discuss certain sensitive measures behind closed doors.

Sorry voters. Sorry taxpayers. The door is closed. “Keep out.”

Sue Mello's fine story in this week's Boothbay Register will let you know all the details the newspaper could gather based on the FOAA documents we received.

The bottom line is that to settle the matter cost the taxpayers over $100,000.

Jobs

Last week, we mentioned it would be great to find a way to create some jobs in our neighborhoods that would fit in with our local environment and landscape.

Our friends at the Bigelow Lab in East Boothbay are working with the Maine Technology Institute to develop a strategic plan to develop the state's algae industry. This might just foster a way to use the nutrients in our coastal seaweed to augment the pharmaceutical, dietary supplement, food product and biofuel industries.

Bigelow has won a $50,000 grant to plan how to use algae, and we can think of no one better qualified to do this job.

No one knows what the future holds, but in most cases, I'll bet on the smartest folks in the room to figure it out.

And the Bigelow folks fit the bill.

Solar energy

Solar energy is real. Everyone knows you can use the “Lucky Old Sun” to heat solar panels and create electric energy.

The problem is how to store and bank this electricity for the days (and nights) when the sun doesn't shine.

Up at the Boothbay Industrial Park, there are three white shipping containers that house a bunch of batteries that will store the electricity generated by the sun.

They are a part of a complex project that is touted as New England's first utility-scale electricity storage system.

While it is fine and dandy to hope and wish the power industry would scrap polluting fuels, like coal, oil and nuclear, it is another thing to figure a way to do achieve that goal it in real life. The Boothbay test could be a first step in this direction.

You can bet that as soon as the smartest folks in the room figure out how generate and store lots of power and eliminate fossil fuels, the folks in the energy business will jump on the technology ASAP.

Getting rid of the expense and headaches created by the coal, oil and nuclear plants would turbo charge their bottom line.

And the bottom line, not hopeful wishes, is what drives our economy.