Do you remember that sign you’d see every time you went to the dump in Standish? (excuse me “transfer station.”) I first noticed it attached to the First Technology sign at the facility on Route 35 a few years ago. “United We Stand” with American flags on either side. It was a pretty great message to see in the wake of Sept. 11.

Then, in 2003, First Technology decided to close its Caribou plant and ship the rest of the jobs to Standish and the Dominican Republic. At the time, the company Web site reported the move this way. “There are currently 60 workers and staff at the Caribou facility and as many as possible will be offered employment in Standish, which has approximately 200 employees.”

Now I realize the company was from the UK and maybe they didn’t check Mapquest, but that would have been a nasty commute. A 600-mile round trip commute everyday from Caribou? Maybe the company thought that workers in Caribou would pack up their lives and move to Standish to keep their $7 to $15 an hour jobs. Or maybe they were just saying it because it sounded good.

This very paper wrote an article about the situation back in 2003. In the article, a Human Resource person at First Technology boasts that they can pay Dominican workers $4 an hour as opposed to American workers who at the time were paid $7-$15. The next week I wrote a letter to this very paper titled, “Sign should read ‘Divided We Fall,'” about how ironic it was to display patriotic signs and at the same time, ship jobs overseas. In the 2003 letter I asked, “And those jobs coming to Standish. How long will they stay here?” Fast forward almost four years, two company name changes later and you have your answer.

Sensata Technologies, which is owned by Massachusetts-based Bain Capitol LLC, is pulling up stakes and shipping all the jobs to the Dominican. If this glorified stock boy (excuse me, Shelf Replenishment Technician) asked questions back in 2003 about the longevity of the Standish jobs, why didn’t the politicians pick up on it back then as well?

That H.R. person pretty much laid it out in the 2003 article. I have a feeling that if people were paying attention and had at least some communication with the company during the last four years, this could have been avoided. And if I were a politician who liked my job, you better believe I would keep tabs on the town’s largest employer. Instead they are now scrambling last minute to keep some of the jobs here and pretending that they care.

The politicians are even offering the company corporate welfare to stay here. It’s kind of like your landlord showing up moving day to try and keep you there by offering to lower your rent and fix the heat. Didn’t you get it when I wrote, “I’M NOT HAPPY AND I WANT TO MOVE” in the memo section of every rent check I wrote you for the last four years?

Sensata pays 1 percent of the property taxes in Standish. That’s $117,000 dollars a year that’s gone. It will be very difficult to make up for that loss plus the loss of 200 jobs, but I have an idea that doesn’t include corporate welfare. Offering a company with $40 billion dollars in assets our money is never a good idea.

Instead of having the town of Standish spend money to build that new community center next door, why not use the Sensata building? With a few modifications it would be a great community center. And don’t pay for it either. Take advantage of some of those draconian eminent domain laws and take it for the good of the community. Then hire some of the displaced workers to help rehab the place.

In the meantime, has anyone seen the “United We Stand” sign? I better check the metal recycling bin at the dump next time I’m there.

Chris Clark lives in Standish.