The Kennebec County Budget Committee shaved some spending, identified additional revenue and reduced what will have to be raised through property taxes.
Waterville area officials have been contacting the three Kennebec County commissioners to urge their continued support for the redevelopment of the Lockwood-Duchess Mill that has been delayed.
Kennebec County commissioners have bought 73 Winthrop St., the former home of the Maine Primary Care Association, to house the administrative offices of the Kennebec County Sheriff's Office.
Among the county officials sworn in Tuesday at the Kennebec County commissioners meeting were two Republicans after years of dominance by Democrats at the county level, but one political expert said that's likely due to the lack of well-known incumbents seeking reelection and the habit of Maine voters to vote for split tickets.
Among the county officials sworn in Tuesday at the Kennebec County commissioners meeting were two Republicans after years of dominance by Democrats at the county level, but one political expert said that's likely due to the lack of well-known incumbents seeking reelection and the habit of Maine voters to vote for split tickets.
The monument honors the Augusta-born former chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, who was part of the majority in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision that maintained racial segregation with the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine.
The unanimous decision at Tuesday's commissioners meeting is not the end of the process, as a committee is expected to be named to make a recommendation where the statue will go.
Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal AUGUSTA The Kennebec County commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to remove a controversial statue from county property six months after the state’s judicial branch raised the issue. The statue, which was erected outside the Kennebec County courthouse in 2013, depicts Augusta native Melville Fuller, who served as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court when it decided a case that institutionalized racial discrimination in the United States for more than five decades. “I do not believe that Kennebec County should convey to others that we in any way support that court decision,” Patsy Crockett, chairwoman of the commissioners, said at the commissioners’ meeting. “That’s not to say we’re not proud that he was born in Augusta and the other good things he did in his life. But I, therefore, believe that the Melville Weston Fuller statue should be moved to a location more appropriate that would serve educational purposes and where the full history of his life could be discussed.”
The statue of Melville Weston Fuller, the U.S. Supreme Court chief justice who led the 1896 ruling that legally supported more than half a century of racial segregation, will be moved from the lawn of the Kennebec County Courthouse in Augusta. The Kennebec County Commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to move the statue to a spot where it can serve an educational purpose. The three-member board will appoint a committee that will decide where the statue will go and other logistics of the move. Melville Fuller presided over Plessy v. Ferguson, a decision that allowed separate but equal race-based discrimination across the country. In 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation violated the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which ensures equal protection under law, overruling the Plessy decision.
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