MILLINOCKET, Maine — Town leaders will meet Thursday to suggest sounding the town’s fire horn at 9 p.m. daily as a compromise to end protests against the horn no longer sounding twice per day, officials said Tuesday.
To handle the crowd the issue is expected to draw, the regular Town Council meeting will be at the Stearns High School auditorium but at the usual time, 4:30 p.m., said Town Clerk Roxanne Johnson, who was assembling the meeting’s agenda Tuesday.
Tricia Cyr, one of the organizers of the 758-member Bring Back Our Horn social media group that formed in response to the horn’s shutdown, said she found the compromise acceptable. It sounded at 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. — and during daylight savings time, at 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. — before Town Manager John Davis ordered its shutdown on Aug. 12, organizers have said.
“I think it will settle the issue for most people. We are not unreasonable. We can comprise,” 46-year-old Cyr, a fulltime mom, said Tuesday. “But there are more issues that have been brought to our attention that we may be addressing.”
Davis and Town Council Chairman Richard Angotti Jr. have not returned several telephone messages or emails since Aug. 18. The council did not respond to an email sent Tuesday seeking comment.
An average of nearly 50 cars have assembled nightly in downtown since Aug. 17 honking horns in protest of the horn’s silencing. The protesters said the horn is a utilitarian part of the town’s character — it still acts as a curfew warning for town youth — and that Davis erred in discontinuing without public discussion. With the closure of the town’s paper mill in 2008 and its dismantling last spring, the loss of nearly half its population, the loss of the horn is one loss too many, protesters said.
Other residents have described the protests as trivial in comparison to the town’s problems, saying the protesters should direct their energies in more beneficial ways. But the problem goes deeper than the horn, said protester Susan D’Allesandro, who wasn’t sure whether she would support Thursday’s compromise.
“I’m really struggling with it. I’m all about compromise, and that’s also how democracy works. And that’s how negotiations work. Each one gives a little to get a little,” D’Allesandro said. “What I’m struggling with is that, in my opinion, this has also become a power struggle.”
In several actions, town officials have become autocratic, she said. Information that Town Manager Peggy Daigle used to post to the town website, the packets of documents councilors review before meetings, is no longer available on the site. Too many groups of town residents, D’Allesandro said, are talking past one another instead of listening or compromising.
She said the horn issue “is the shot heard around the world” in the way it has galvanized residents to become more involved in town politics. She said she knows of two residents taking out papers to run for the council in response to the horn silencing and other issues and hopes the protest will lead to more democratic town leadership.
“It’s been a building frustration for years that the few are ruling the many. That was able to get by when times were good,” D’Allesandro said. “We have been hemorrhaging for 20 years, and the hysterectomy came when the mill stacks came down. It took awhile to take your breath and go, OK, so where are we now?
“People can criticize that we have bigger fish to fry,” she added. “But this this is the first issue that people feel they can have a say in. It may or may not be the case, but that’s how people feel.”