Limestone Rotary Forum draws nine speakers, only eight listeners

16 years ago
By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer

    LIMESTONE — On Feb. 17, the Limestone Rotary Club held a community forum. Out of 15 speakers invited, an impressive nine speakers attended the forum.

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Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet
    Community leaders Mark Albert, U.S. Border Patrol; Chris Doughty, U.S. Customs; Robert Clark, NMDC executive director; James Madore, County Sheriff; Carl Flora, LDA president and CEO; Michelle Albert, PTSA president; Walter Warner, MSSM executive director; Paul Durepo, Limestone Fire Chief, and Jesse Cormier, Limestone police officer attended the Rotary-sponsored forum in Limestone on Feb. 17.

    Mark Albert, U.S. Border Patrol; Chris Doughty, U.S. Customs; Robert Clarke, Northern Maine Development Commission executive director; James Madore, County Sheriff; Carl Flora, Loring Development Authority president and CEO; Michelle Albert, Parent Teacher Student Association president; Walter Warner, Maine School of Science and Mathematics executive director; Paul Durepo, Limestone fire chief, and Jesse Cormier, Limestone police officer answered the questions of the eight Limestone residents who attended the forum.
    Speakers who declined attending the forum included Donna Bernier, Limestone town manager; Leland Caron, Limestone Community School Principal; Jane Griffeth, Limestone Chamber of Commerce president; George O’Bar, Limestone Community School Board president; Dr. Stacy Jandreau, Crown Ambulance/TAMC, and Paul Adams, Aroostook County commissioner.
    Despite the low turnout of Limestone residents, the hour and a half long forum was informative to the extent that discussion went slightly over the allotted hour and a half and conversations were still lingering as the doors were closed.
    Each guest speaker gave a brief introduction about their position before the question-and-answer session started.
    Many residents had questions for Albert and Doughty; asked one community member, “are we still able to use the birth certificates and driver’s licenses, or do we need a passport?”
    “As of this point in time, you can still enter Canada with a drivers license and birth certificate,” explained Doughty. “As of June 1, 2009, adults and children will be required to have a passport,” he added.
    Another resident asked the difference between U.S. Customs and U.S. Border Patrol, to which a relatively lengthy answer was summarized in a humorously simplistic statement, “if you cross the border legally, you’re dealing with U.S. Customs,” Albert explained, “if you cross the border illegally, you’re dealing with the U.S. Border Patrol.”
    Fire Chief Durepo also answered a lengthy list of questions regarding the ambulatory services of Limestone, the creation of Limestone’s own ambulance services, the relationship of the Loring Fire Department with the Limestone Fire Department, and emergency response times.
    According to Adam Kohler, the Rotarian responsible for the event, the Limestone Rotary Club plans on providing the residents of Limestone with four community forums a year.
    “We had our very first community forum a few months ago, where we invited the community to come and listen to financial planners from several areas with the idea that we would do something like this four times a year,” Kohler said, “Something like this takes a little bit of time to grow on people,” he added. “You just don’t start having community forums and expect 100 people to show up; we have an annual town meeting in June and we’re lucky if 100 to 150 people show up for it and there’s 2,000 residents in the community,” Kohler explained. “The fact that we only had half a dozen community members show up for tonight was disappointing in some respects, but I think that we had just as many questions from a handful of folks than we would have if 100 people had been here tonight.”