Vote no on SAD75 budget and fire the teachers 

 How many elderly people living on a fixed income are going to lose their homes due to the increase in property taxes in the towns that SAD 75 covers due to the greed of the district teachers and their union? One thing is clear and that is that neither the teachers nor their union care as long as the teachers stuff their pockets at the expense of these elders. It is time to fire the entire SAD 75 teaching staff, hire an outside contractor and replace them with contract teachers. Maybe then we can get a Mount Ararat graduate who can sign their own name and balance a check book upon graduation. Vote no on the proposed school budget on June 11. 

Raymond T. West, 

Topsham 

The Brunswick Town Council voted to raise our taxes almost 5%.  Anyone who wants to can stop our taxes from being raised by voting no before or on June 11. I’m not sure how many of the town’s population is homeless. But I believe getting homeless children into a home is more important than paying for their education. I do not believe raising Brunswick’s taxes is the answer to caring about our homeless children. 

Lucy Derbyshire, 

Brunswick 

Time for reasonable gun laws 

Several life-saving firearm bills are making their way through the Maine legislature. Readers, your own lawmakers will soon be voting on them.  Support for these bills is not to be taken for granted. They are hearing plenty from NRA and Sportsman’s Alliance members arguing against them. 

In particular, please ask your legislators to support LD 379, a safe gun storage bill. Such laws in 27 other states have been found to lower the rate of child death by firearm by as much as one-third. The American Academy of Pediatrics strongly recommends this practice, and yet less than 30% of households do it.  Did you know the risk of suicide is 17 times higher in homes with guns? Suicide is usually impulsive; keeping guns locked up and out of sight would surely prevent not only some suicides, but tragic unintended deaths of children who find loaded weapons in cars and backpacks. 

There would be no intrusion of privacy, no knocking on doors to check on gun storage. But if a child found a gun and took it to school, there would be legal consequences. The argument that we already have general child safety laws doesn’t hold water; why do states with safe storage laws have up to a third less unintended gun deaths? The state of Texas, big on gun owners’ rights, just passed its own safe storage bill this week. 

Please ask your legislators to also support LD  1276 (background checks on all private sales, family transfers and loans clearly excluded) and LD 1099 (72-hour waiting period during purchase). It’s time for some common sense gun legislation. 

Lorry Fleming, 

Bath