{"id":1165,"date":"2026-02-20T10:20:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T15:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/?p=1165"},"modified":"2026-02-20T10:21:36","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T15:21:36","slug":"2-20-26-local-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/20\/2-20-26-local-news\/","title":{"rendered":"2\/20\/26 Local News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sheriff won\u2019t run for re-election (WVII)<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Machias) \u2013 Washington County Sheriff Barry Curtis says he is not going to run for re-election this fall.\u00a0 Curtis has been the elected Sheriff since 2014.\u00a0 He served as a Maine State Trooper for 25 years, retiring from that job in 2010.\u00a0\u00a0 He began his law enforcement career as a game warden.\u00a0 Curtis said he\u2019s enjoyed the responsibility of being sheriff even with recent county financial issues.<\/p>\n

Brooklin Church (Ellsworth American)<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Brooklin) \u2013 Voters in Brooklin will cast ballots in April to decide whether the town will accept a gift of a former Baptist church and Bowden Hall.\u00a0 The offer comes with $100-thousand dollars for work on the properties.\u00a0 Residents answered a survey and architect Mike Sealander said they had 350-responses, so there is a lot of interest.\u00a0 The town will hold a public hearing in a month before the April 3rd<\/sup> referendum vote.<\/p>\n

Washington County Loan Payment<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Machias) \u2013 Cash strapped Washington County has made the final payment on a loan it took out in anticipation of taxes as all but 9-towns in the county agreed to pay their 2026 tax allocation early.\u00a0 The $1-point-8 million dollar payment this week avoids default on the loan.\u00a0 The Maine Legislature is considering a bill that would allow the unorganized territories to make an early payment.\u00a0 Lax accounting practices led to the budget shortfall and the resignation of the former county treasurer.<\/p>\n

(Bangor) \u2013 A judge has agreed to delay the trial for two people charged with murder following the death of a 10-year old Bangor boy.\u00a0 WABI TV reports Joshua Smith and his mother, Mistie Latourette are charged with killing his son, Braxtyn Smith.\u00a0 The attorney general\u2019s office reported that Smith\u2019s attorney was not ready for the trial and still awaits two expert witnesses.\u00a0 The boy\u2019s mother was charged with murder, but pled guilty to manslaughter a few days ago.<\/p>\n

Elver Lottery<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Augusta) \u2013 If you like getting up in the cold and dark, setting up fike necks with the hope of trapping baby eels, you\u2019ve got until 4:30 this afternoon to enter a lottery.\u00a0 The eels can fetch a lot of money, and Maine\u2019s Department of Marine Resources will draw names of 20-Maine residents to join the elver industry.\u00a0 The season starts on March 22nd<\/sup> and ends June 7th<\/sup>.\u00a0 There\u2019s a cap of 425 elver licenses, and the 20-license lottery came about by licenses not renewed in the past two years.\u00a0 It costs $35-dollars to enter the lottery.\u00a0 Entrants who choose not to submit an on-line application will have to travel to Augusta to submit one on paper.<\/p>\n

Sorrento Planned Outage<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Sorrento) \u2013 Folks who live on the East Side Road in Sorrento will be without power on Monday morning.\u00a0 Versant Power says they will turn off the juice at 9:30 in the morning to do scheduled maintenance work.\u00a0 They anticipate the outage will last about 4-hours.\u00a0 The work involves replacing equipment which will help prevent future outages.<\/p>\n

Mt. Desert Wharf (MD Islander)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>(Mt. Desert) \u2013 Voters in Mt. Desert will likely get to decide to approve working with engineers to replace the wharf at the Northeast Harbor Marina.\u00a0 The project could start construction in the fall of 2028 according to the Mt. Desert Islander.\u00a0 The town\u2019s harbor committee said engineering costs are higher than expected and the funding would hire a Camden based firm to design the replacement cement wharf which would be at least 3-feet taller to accommodate sea level rise.<\/p>\n

Suspicious Package<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Augusta) \u2013 The State Republican party headquarters in Augusta received a suspicious package which reportedly contained a while power.\u00a0 That prompted evacuation around 1-o\u2019clock yesterday afternoon and brought in city police and other law enforcement agencies.\u00a0 Authorities isolated the package and there are no reports of injury or illness.\u00a0 Investigators declined to identify what was in the package.<\/p>\n

Pharmacies raided<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Machias) \u2013 Drug agents raided two Washington County pharmacies earlier this month, seizing controlled substance records from both the Machias Family Pharmacy and Eastport Family Pharmacy.\u00a0 Benjamin Okafor of Bangor owns both businesses and has a history of running afoul of the Maine Board of Pharmacy.\u00a0 Most of the discipline incidents include controlled substance record errors.\u00a0 No one has been charged in connection with the raids.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sheriff won\u2019t run for re-election (WVII)\u00a0 (Machias) \u2013 Washington County Sheriff Barry Curtis says he is not going to run for re-election this fall.\u00a0 Curtis has been the elected Sheriff since 2014.\u00a0 He served as a Maine State Trooper for 25 years, retiring from that job in 2010.\u00a0\u00a0 He began his law enforcement career as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}