Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins announced her reelection campaign in February by posting a video that showed her opening a box of New Balance running shoes. 

“This is perfect for 2026,” she said to the camera as she held up a sneaker. “Because I’m running.”

The video didn’t mention that New Balance’s owner and chairman, billionaire Jim Davis, gave $1 million to the super PAC supporting Collins’ campaign seven months prior. The company is based in Boston and has manufacturing facilities in Maine. It was one of four donations Davis made last year to the network of committees raising money for Collins.

Davis, who is worth an estimated $6.1 billion, is one of at least 79 billionaires who donated to Collins’ network between January 2025 and May 20, 2026, according to a Maine Monitor analysis of Federal Election Commission campaign finance data. If billionaires’ spouses are included in the tally, the number rises to 97.

Collectively, the group of nearly 100 billionaires and spouses has donated $9.8 million to the Collins network since the start of 2025, representing a third of what groups supporting Collins raised from all donors. 

The total from billionaires stands in stark contrast with the fundraising of her opponent, Democrat Graham Platner, whose campaign has mostly attracted smaller amounts of funds but from many more people. Platner, who won his party’s primary election Tuesday, has received at least $24,000 from five billionaires, a fraction of 1 percent of his total haul.

The breadth of billionaire funding for Collins shows how the race, which could decide control of the U.S. Senate, has drawn national interest and funding from some of the wealthiest people in the world, a group that has made up a growing share of election spending in recent years. Billionaires accounted for 19 percent of all federal election contributions in 2024, up from just 0.3 percent in 2004, according to a New York Times analysis from earlier this year. 

Billionaires and their spouses gave $529,000 to the Collins campaign directly; $370,000 to the Collins Victory Committee, a joint fundraising committee that has disbursed funds to the other committees; $100,000 to Dirigo PAC, the leadership committee Collins uses to raise money for other candidates; and $24,000 to Susan Collins for Maine, a joint fundraising committee. But the billionaires have mostly opted to send their donations, nearly $9 million, to Pine Tree Results PAC, a super PAC dedicated to electing Collins that, unlike the others, is not subject to contribution limits. 

Pine Tree Results PAC has financed attack ads against Platner since April and has booked $24 million in ads leading up to the general election in November, according to data from AdImpact.

The network of five groups supporting Collins is linked through a series of joint fundraising agreements, which are legal arrangements that allow them to raise money together and then disburse the funds according to a predetermined formula. For the first time in Collins’ career, a super PAC — Pine Tree Results — is linked to her fundraising apparatus through those agreements, an arrangement made possible thanks to a 2024 advisory Federal Election Commission opinion. The super PAC also shares a treasurer with the Collins Victory Committee and Dirigo PAC.

Counting all her donations, including both from billionaires and others, the Collins network has raised about $30 million since the beginning of last year, with $12 million going to her campaign. 

The Platner campaign, meanwhile, raised $16.3 million over that time. The total does not include the $200,000 his campaign said it raised in the 24 hours after The New York Times published a story last week detailing what it described as Platner’s “unsettling” behavior with three former girlfriends. The Platner campaign has no joint fundraising agreements with any other committees, according to federal campaign finance filings, and no super PAC dedicated to supporting his candidacy. (Platner has said that super PACs “should be outlawed.”) Experts speculated, however, that big outside money will likely move toward Platner now that he has clinched the Democratic nomination. 

The Monitor counted billionaire donors by comparing the names on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaire List to Federal Election Commission donor information, which included reviewing location and occupation information to eliminate the possibility of erroneous matches based on similar names. 

The Collins campaign did not respond to a request from The Monitor for an interview with the senator and then declined to answer questions over email.

The amount billionaires gave in support of Collins is similar to the amount that small-dollar donors — those giving $200 or less — contributed to the Platner campaign. Billionaires gave $9.8 million in support of Collins, while small-dollar donors gave $9.6 million to support Platner. The Collins campaign raised about $980,000 from small-dollar donations. 

“While Susan Collins’ campaign is backed by billionaire donors, our campaign is built on a movement funded by the people, with an average donation of $26,” wrote Ben Chin, Platner’s campaign manager, in an email. 

The majority of the billionaire donations to Collins this cycle are from billionaires who made their money in alternative investments, including hedge funds and private equity. Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel LLC, donated $2.5 million to the Pine Tree Results Super PAC, the largest individual donation backing Collins since 2025. Stephen Schwarzman, the founder and CEO of Blackstone dubbed “the king of private equity,” donated $2 million. Schwarzman and the private equity industry were some of Collins’ biggest boosters in her last campaign in 2020. 

Other billionaire Collins donors include Palantir co-founder Alex Karp; Melinda French-Gates, ex-wife of Microsoft founder Bill Gates; New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft; and Elizabeth Uihlein, husband of Richard Uihlein, the main financial backer of the effort to place a referendum question about trans athletes on Maine’s ballot this year.

The billionaire donors supporting Collins have a net worth of $888 billion, or nearly nine times Maine’s entire economic output in 2025. None are Maine residents.

The Platner campaign received donations from at least five billionaires. It received $1,500 from Jennifer Pritzker, a cousin to fellow billionaire and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker; a total of $12,000 from Jon and Pat Stryker, heirs to the Stryker medical equipment empire; $3,500 from Christy Walton, who married into the Walton family; and $7,000 from Democratic megadonor and hedge fund founder George Soros. Together, they are worth an estimated $42.3 billion. 

The difference between billionaire contributions to the two candidates is not surprising given Collins’ long Senate tenure, her position as chair of the powerful appropriations committee and Platner’s anti-billionaire message, said Mark Brewer, a political science professor at the University of Maine. 

“We generally know that, in contemporary American politics, big money from wealthy donors generally tends to head in the direction of Republicans more than Democrats,” he said. 

Meanwhile Democrats dating back to Howard Dean and Barack Obama have shown the possibility of raising huge sums from small-dollar donations, he added. 

“It’s two different ways to get there, but you both get there,” Brewer said. 

Just 3 percent of the total that Collins’ groups raised came from donors who gave $200 or less. In comparison, about 60 percent of donations to Platner’s campaign came from those smaller donations.

It’s not possible to track the state where smaller, “unitemized” donations came from. Committees are required, however, to provide the Federal Election Commission information about donors who contribute more than $200 across all federal campaigns, including their state of residence. These donations are called “itemized donations.” Both campaigns have relied heavily on out-of-state money for their itemized donations. 

Of those larger donations to the Collins network, about 3 percent came from Maine. 

Platner’s trackable donations were more likely to be from Maine: About 22 percent were from the state, according to the Federal Election Commission. 

That’s actually a large percentage of in-state donations for a Senate campaign, said Nicholas Jacobs, a professor of American government at Colby College who has studied out-of-state donations in Senate campaigns. Maine contributed more itemized funding to Platner than any other state through May 20, according to the Federal Election Commission. 

“That’s rare in general and exceptionally rare for a small state,” Jacobs said. 

But now that Platner has won his primary, big money may start flowing his way. Jacobs predicted that Platner will likely get the backing of a super PAC at some point this summer.

“That’s just the way politics works,” Jacobs said. 

In the wake of Citizens United 

This is the first time that Collins has been running for reelection since the Federal Election Commission issued an advisory opinion that allowed super PACs to join joint fundraising efforts, and Collins has taken advantage of the change.

Before 2024, campaigns — which are subject to donor limits — could not be connected to super PACs, which are not subject to limits on donor contributions. Super PACs were created in the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which ruled that groups independent of campaigns have a First Amendment right to raise and spend money supporting or attacking candidates without limits, so long as they aren’t coordinating with campaigns. 

In 2024, the Federal Election Commission issued an advisory opinion allowing South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s campaign to enter into a joint fundraising agreement with the super PAC supporting his candidacy. Commission members voted, 5-1, to permit the arrangement because Graham and his campaign told the commission they “will not discuss the nonpublic campaign plans, projects, activities, or needs of Senator Graham or his campaign with Super PAC,” according to the advisory opinion.

Critics, including the Democratic Party’s House and Senate fundraising arms, argued the arrangement was a clear violation of the ban on coordination, a ban that they argued has been regularly circumvented since the creation of the super PAC in 2010. 

In her dissent, former Democratic Federal Election Commission member Ellen Weintraub wrote that “the Commission has already created far too many holes in what should be a solid wall dividing candidates and their committees from the super PACs that support them.” In 2025, Trump fired Weintraub from the commission shortly after she became chair and didn’t name a replacement. Shortly after that, the agency lost a quorum of commissioners, effectively sidelining it from its election watchdog duties since April 2025. 

The 2024 advisory opinion opened the door for the Collins campaign to connect with the Pine Tree Results Super PAC. The campaign and the PAC each have a joint fundraising agreement with the Collins Victory Committee, which has transferred funds to both organizations. Most of this money, a total of $2.4 million, has gone to the Collins campaign.

The Pine Tree Results Super PAC and the Collins Victory Committee share a treasurer, and all three groups have paid the same fundraising and event planning consultant, the Morning Group, based in Washington, D.C., Federal Election Commission records show.

Other outside groups are also spending large amounts on the race. For example, the Senate Leadership Fund, which is the main fundraising vehicle for Senate Republicans, has raised $175 million since the start of 2025 and has booked $29 million in ads for the race pitting Collins against Platner. 

Many of the donors to the Senate Leadership Fund also donated to parts of the Collins fundraising network, including Schwarzman and hedge fund manager Paul Singer. Other billionaires have donated large sums to the Senate Leadership Fund as well, including casino magnate Miriam Adelson, who donated $30 million, and Elon Musk, who gave $10 million. 

On the other side of the aisle, Democratic super PAC WinSenate has booked $25 million in ads in Maine’s Senate race. WinSenate is funded by the Senate Majority PAC, the main fundraising vehicle for Senate Democrats. It has raised $115 million this cycle, and includes funds from billionaires such as Cable TV magnate Amos Hostetter Jr., who gave $2 million, and Netflix cofounder and chairman Reed Hastings, who contributed $1 million. 

Both the Republican Senate Leadership Fund and the Democratic Senate Majority PAC are beneficiaries of large amounts of funds contributed by 501(c)4 nonprofits that aren’t required to reveal their donors. That type of funding has been dubbed “dark money” due to the lack of transparency about its sources.

This cycle, the Senate Leadership Fund has raised $46 million from conservative dark money group One Nation, while the liberal dark money group Majority Forward has donated $33 million to the Democratic Senate Majority Fund. It’s unclear how much of that money came from billionaires. 

Voters in the western Maine town of Harrison will vote Tuesday on whether to begin the process of withdrawing from their school district in response to a far-off proposal to consolidate local elementary schools.

Residents will decide whether the lakeside town should file a petition to withdraw from South Paris-based School Administrative District 17 and form a committee to weigh the costs of switching districts or becoming a single-town district.

MSAD 17 has been consolidating its schools in a bid to save money, making Harrison the latest Maine town to face the question of whether it can keep its local elementary school as student populations dwindle, costs rise, and an older population is paying more to educate fewer kids.

Last fall, elementary schoolers in Waterford began attending Harrison Elementary School. Elsewhere in the district, West Paris voters elected to shutter their elementary school in a landslide vote last spring. The district had planned to vote in the fall on whether to accept state money to build a consolidated elementary school for students from Harrison, Waterford and Norway, but it currently doesn’t have a location nailed down.

“We’re still very early on in the process,” school board member Veronica Poland said. “We don’t even have a site selected yet for the voters to vote on.”

Harrison will decide whether to take the unusual step of leaving its district in a bid to pre-empt consolidation and preserve its elementary school. Even if Harrison votes “yes” next week, it’s only the start of a lengthy process that the town estimates may cost around $50,000.

The town has a head start at examining its choices. A “School Options Committee” formed in 2024 when a consolidation plan was first weighed by the district. It has been meeting for over a year to discuss the proposal to withdraw and save the local school.

“Closing would take our kids out of our community into a bigger school,” Amy Gerry, Harrison’s deputy clerk and the chair of the committee, said. “Parents weren’t happy with that.”

In May, the committee presented three basic options: staying the course and risking the closure, joining the smaller Bridgton-based MSAD 61 or going it alone. All three options will remain on the table if voters decide to move forward with the withdrawal process on Tuesday.

If a “no” vote prevails or if the withdrawal is blocked later in the process, Harrison Elementary School may close if a new school is built. It’s not clear whether the district will vote on accepting the new school funds this fall as previously planned.

Gerry said that despite annoyance at the possibility of consolidation among some parents, few have been turning up to meetings of the options committee.

“Our townspeople are mostly retired age, so it’s a small selection of families that are here, and they haven’t come out,” she said. “Obviously on June 9 we’ll see where the vote goes.”

The proposed expansion of the Juniper Ridge landfill in Old Town and Alton comes as Maine grapples with where to put the PFAS-contaminated sludge that piles up each day at municipal wastewater treatment plants. 

The landfill’s application for an expansion license is being processed by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, which recently determined for a second time that the expansion would have a public benefit. That determination remains under an ongoing appeal brought by the Penobscot Nation and the Conservation Law Foundation who argue that air and water pollution from the landfill is an environmental injustice to the surrounding communities and to the Penobscot River, which is central to the Penobscot Nation’s way of life.

Juniper Ridge currently handles about half of the state’s total landfilled waste and about 90 percent of the state’s sewage sludge, the biosolids strained out of wastewater. Three years ago, when the facility suddenly stopped accepting sludge for several months — saying the landfill’s structural integrity was at risk — Maine got a preview of a potential crisis.

The landfill is once again accepting sewage sludge but is set to reach capacity for all types of waste in 2028. If approved, the proposed 61-acre expansion would extend the facility’s capacity for approximately another decade.

The expanded landfill would be able to accept sludge at a similar rate as it does now until about 2040, according to Maine Department of Administrative and Financial Services spokesperson Sharon Huntley. The state owns Juniper Ridge, but it is operated day to day by NEWSME, a subsidiary of the publicly traded company Casella Waste Systems.

“From a biosolids perspective, the expansion would help ensure there is a long-term, secure, in‑state option available for the responsible management of material that can no longer be beneficially reused based on the banning of land application by the state legislature,” Casella spokesperson Jeff Weld wrote in an emailed statement.

Forever chemicals on farmland

Sewage sludge had long been spread on farmland as fertilizer. But testing over the past decade has revealed the practice was contaminating land with PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), often called forever chemicals. Some of these chemicals have been linked to a variety of health harms including increased risk of some cancers.

PFAS find their way into wastewater in large part because they are ubiquitous in everyday products such as food packaging, nonstick cookware, textiles, toiletries and outdoor gear. PFAS are also often concentrated near airports and military bases that have routinely used firefighting foam containing the chemicals.

In 2022, Maine became the first state to ban the spreading of sludge on land. So wastewater treatment plant operators had to send their sewage sludge to landfills, which in Maine by and large has meant Juniper Ridge. The practice has had “a significant impact in recent years” on the landfill’s capacity, according to the latest Maine Materials Management Plan for Solid Waste and Recycling, published in 2024.

According to Casella, the landfill operator needs to balance out wet sludge with more solid bulking material such as construction debris, furniture and appliances. Casella had been sourcing much of this type of waste from other states, but, in 2022, the Maine Legislature also banned imports of waste from out of state. Ultimately, because of the sewage sludge crisis, Maine allowed Juniper Ridge to continue importing waste from out of state to use as bulking material until 2027.

Expanding the landfill would help with the immediate problem of where to put sludge, said Rob Pontau, general manager of the Brunswick Sewer District. But it’s not a long-term fix. 

“We’re still under a clock,” he said.

From sewage sludge to landfill leachate

Once sewage sludge arrives at Juniper Ridge, the PFAS pollution isn’t over. When rain and snow enter landfills, that water mixes with whatever is in the landfill to create a liquid called leachate.

“The leachate is poisoned with a wide array of contaminants, no doubt, but certainly with forever chemicals, with PFAS,” said Nora Bosworth, a staff attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation.

Juniper Ridge sends its leachate to the wastewater treatment plant at the closed Nine Dragons paper mill. That facility does not treat the wastewater for PFAS before discharging it into the Penobscot River, which is at the heart of the Penobscot Nation.

“There is this constant ongoing cycle of toxic liquid being pumped from Juniper Ridge landfill ultimately into the Penobscot River, which then poisons the ecosystem there,” Bosworth said. 

“We just feel like the landfill has been disproportionately affecting the tribe here since it was put in,” said Chuck Loring, director of the Penobscot Nation’s Department of Natural Resources. 

“There’s a population of people here that rely on this area for subsistence. I think that’s another important consideration,” he said, “that needs to be weighed more heavily.”  

During its public benefit reviews, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection found that the proposed expansion would only ensure environmental justice for the surrounding community, including the Penobscot Nation, if Casella installs a PFAS treatment system for the landfill’s leachate.

The petition by the Penobscot Nation and the Conservation Law Foundation criticized this PFAS treatment condition as insufficient, saying the department’s requirements for Casella are “far too broad” and would not provide the public with enough transparency about the effectiveness of the treatment technology the company chooses to use.

Loring wants more details about what kind of treatment Casella is proposing to use, as well as more time to study and understand what effects PFAS from the leachate are having on water quality and wildlife in the river.

“Landfills need leachate treatment systems for PFAS. There’s no question,” said Bosworth. “It’s just that at this point it is disingenuous, it is false, to pretend that a PFAS treatment system is going to erase the harm that Juniper Ridge landfill will cause the Penobscot River. It will at best dampen the harm.”

Even if the Juniper Ridge landfill does expand, it may not be the primary destination for Maine’s sewage sludge for much longer if wastewater treatment plants begin rerouting their sludge to a forthcoming biosolids drying facility.

The state’s first drying facility is set to open this year at the Crossroads landfill in Norridgewock, owned by Waste Management. When fully operational, it should have capacity to receive and dewater 80 percent of the sewage sludge from Maine’s municipal wastewater treatment plants. Once dry, the biosolids would take up far less space and would remain at the Crossroads landfill long-term. 

But many wastewater plants have contracts to dispose of their sludge with Casella through the end of 2026 or 2027, according to Pontau, which could delay widespread use of the drying facility.

Pontau is also the current president of the Maine Water Environment Association, an industry group for wastewater treatment systems. The group recently published a report on the need for proactive, longer-term solutions for sewage sludge.

While the new drying facility at Crossroads “adds necessary processing capacity,” the report said, “relying on a single commercial entity for statewide management creates a monopoly-like dynamic with questionable redundancy. It leaves utilities vulnerable to price dictation and operational bottlenecks.”

Multiple regional facilities across New England are needed, Pontau said, adding that “sludge doesn’t care about a state line or a county line or a town line.”

Ultimately, he said PFAS needs to be dealt with at the source. 

“If we’re going to set limits on how we deal with it on the back end, then we’ve got to stop making it in the first place,” Pontau said.

Bosworth agreed. “The most important change we can make as a society is: Keep banning PFAS upstream,” she said. “As long as we’re trying to tackle it downstream in our sewage, in our waste, we’re going to be fighting a losing battle.” 

A quarter of rural voters in U.S. Senate battleground states said they are more likely to make voting decisions based on their faith than on their finances, according to a new poll. This includes voters in Maine — one of the most rural states in the country — where Democratic Senate candidates Graham Platner and Gov. Janet Mills are fighting for a chance to unseat longtime Senate Republican Susan Collins.

The poll, published April 21 by the Center for Rural Strategies and Democratic research firm Lake Research Partners, surveyed 600 voters in rural counties across 13 states with key Senate races this year, including Maine and New Hampshire.

According to the poll, independent and weak partisan rural voters were twice as likely to make voting decisions based on personal economic situations as on religion. Democrats put much more weight on their economic situations. Republicans slightly favored their finances over faith in choosing who to vote for but were the most likely of any group to be guided by faith. The poll had a 4-point margin of error.

Maine is among the least religious states in the country, and, while faith institutions have long played a central role in the state’s rural communities, rural Mainers are less likely to identify with a specific religion than voters in other parts of the country. 

Mark Brewer, a political science professor at the University of Maine in Orono, said religion helps explain Maine’s recent electoral history. President Donald Trump won Maine’s rural 2nd Congressional District by just 10 points in 2024, a much closer margin than he won rural voters nationally. Part of why rural Maine voters are less conservative than rural voters elsewhere, Brewer said, is because they are less religious.

“Rural Maine is not rural Alabama in terms of its faith profile by any means,” Brewer said. Even as the Republican Party has built up a voter registration edge in rural communities, Brewer said the state’s relative disinterest in religion has kept that trend less pronounced than in other parts of the country.

Churches have increasingly highlighted political divides in rural America, said Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies. The center opted to include several questions about faith in its recent poll to better understand how religious beliefs could influence upcoming elections.

When asked whether faith institutions unite or divide rural communities, Democrats were almost evenly split, but seven in 10 Republicans said those institutions united communities. Eight in 10 Republicans agreed that faith itself united communities, as did 55 percent of Democrats.

Republicans were more likely than Democrats to emphasize the importance of faith and faith institutions. Just two in 10 Democratic respondents said they attend a place of worship at least once a month, compared with nearly half of Republicans.

Still, respondents from both parties agreed that rural faith communities are important in times of crisis. 

Even though Democrats are less religious than Republicans, Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research, said the poll shows that they still largely view faith institutions favorably. Democratic leaders, she said, “should not cede that terrain to the other side.”

The poll also found that rural voters are largely pessimistic about both the U.S. as a whole and rural America, with a majority of respondents saying both are on the “wrong track.” More than 60 percent of rural voters backed Trump in 2024, but just 52 percent of poll respondents view him favorably today. 

Six in 10 rural voters support current immigration policies in the U.S., and nearly as many said they support mass deportation. Regardless of party, respondents rated the rising cost of living as their top concern, followed by health care.

TOPSFIELD — Jenna Stoddard is not sure where her son will spend his days when he starts preschool next fall.

Sending him to East Range II School would be convenient and continue a legacy. Stoddard lives just down the street and her husband graduated eighth grade there in 2007, one in a class of three. Topsfield’s population has dropped since then. The school now has five students, two teachers, few extracurricular activities and nobody trained to teach music, art, gym or health.

Stoddard’s son is too young for her to worry about that now. But the school may not be open by the time he is ready to go. Topsfield, a town of just 175 residents, will vote on whether to close the school on April 30. If it closes, the boy would likely be sent to preschool up to 30 minutes away in Princeton or Baileyville.

“That’s a pretty fair distance for a kid, a 4-year-old, who is now on a bus all by himself,” she said. “ school starts at , what time is the bus picking 4-year-olds up here? And what time is he going to get home at?”

Topsfield is an extreme example of how an aging, shrinking population and rising property taxes are forcing Maine towns to make difficult choices about their community institutions. Just over a dozen people came to a Wednesday hearing on the idea of closing the school. The crowd was mostly in favor of it.

“It is emotional to close the school in a town,” Superintendent Amanda Belanger of the sprawling Eastern Maine Area School System said then. “But we do feel it’s in the best interest of the students in the town.”

Teacher Paula Johnson walked a reporter through the building, which is small by Maine standards but cavernous for its five students. It has four classrooms, a small library, and a gymnasium. There is also a cook and a custodian for the tiny school.

A hallway trophy case serves as a reminder of when the school was big enough to field basketball teams. Topsfield’s student population has never been large, but the school’s population has dropped dramatically over the past few years. It had 25 students in 2023, with many coming from nearby Vanceboro, which closed its own school in 2015.

As the student population dwindled, the cost of sending students to Topsfield climbed. With fewer students to defray the costs, Vanceboro officials realized they would be paying $23,000 per student by the last school year. So they opted to direct students to nearby Danforth, where tuition was only $11,000 per student.

East Range lost seven students from Vanceboro, bringing its enrollment below 10. Under Maine law, that means the district may offer students the option to go elsewhere. Parents of the remaining students in grades 5 through 8 took the option and sent their kids to Baileyville. This school began the year with eight students; three have since pulled out.

In Topsfield, Johnson teaches four of the remaining five, holding lessons for pre-K through second grade in one classroom. Another one down the short hallway is home base for the other teacher. She focuses on the school’s lone fourth grader and occasionally teaches one of Johnson’s first graders, who is learning at an advanced level.

The other teacher, who holds a special education certificate despite having no students with those needs, plans to leave at the end of the school year. If the school stays open, that will leave Johnson responsible for educating Topsfield’s youngest students, though the school will need to budget for a part-time special education teacher just in case.

After 11 years at the school, Johnson is not sure what she will do if voters shut it down.

“We’ll see what happens here,” she said.

Topsfield’s school board, which operates as a part of the Eastern Maine Area School System, is offering its residents a choice: continue funding the school only for students between preschool and second grade at an estimated cost of $434,000 next year or send all students elsewhere, which would cost less than $200,000.

At Wednesday’s hearing, the attendees leaned heavily toward the latter option. Deborah Mello said she moved from Rhode Island to Topsfield years ago to escape high taxes.

“It’s not feasible for the town of Topsfield,” she said. “We cannot afford it and it’s not like the children don’t have a school to go to.”

Others bemoaned the burden of legal requirements for the small district, including the need to provide special education teachers even if they don’t need one. Board members also mentioned that in 2028, the district will become responsible for educating 3-year-olds under a new state law. That adds another layer of uncertainty to future budgeting.

“It sounds like we’ve been burdened something severely by this program and that program by the Department of Education, to the point where a small school can’t even exist,” resident Alan Harriman said.

“And that’s been happening for a long time,” East Range board chair Peggy White responded.

PARIS — In an emotionally charged meeting Monday night, the Select Board shelved long-standing discussions about restructuring or disbanding the Paris Police Department — at least for the coming fiscal year.

The board also voted Monday to send the department’s budget to voters at the annual town meeting in June.

Some who attended, including Budget Committee member and Paris Hill resident Robert Jewell, urged the town to explore alternatives to the Police Department and questioned the long‑term feasibility of continuing to operate it.

According to minutes from the Paris Budget Committee’s meeting April 7, Jewell outlined his efforts to investigate alternatives to the department.

Jewell told the Budget Committee that Oxford County Administrator Zane Loper estimated it would cost $695,950 to provide 12 months of police coverage through the Oxford County Sheriff’s Office, with four 24‑hour officers.

He also said informal talks between Paris and the Sheriff’s Office, as well as the Oxford Police Department, about restructuring the department have been underway since July 2025, according to coverage in the Sun Journal.

Paris Town Manager Natalie Andrews said in an email that at the 2025 town meeting, the Police Department requested an operational budget of $1,347,133.

Voters approved a reduced budget of $1,150,000, which required the department to cut staffing to stay within the appropriation.

For the 2026 town meeting, the department submitted an even lower operational budget of $1,090,719.45 to the Budget Committee — below the funding level previously set by voters.
The discussions prompted emotional responses.

Selectman Scott Buffington said the April 7 meeting grew “tense.” The discussion — and the emotion — returned Monday night.

Paris resident Lisa Billings Palmer said the Police Department is a vital part of the community.

“We need to have a sense of community and communication with our police department,” she said. “We need to have some solidarity here.”

As the conversation continued, Selectman Robert Ripley said, “I would prefer to keep our own Paris Police Department, but it has to be affordable and we have to be able to afford what we want and need.”

In the same discussion, Jewell said: “I believe in presenting facts, then people make decisions based on the facts. However, you need to understand, I’m not for or against. I made a comment in the Budget Committee meeting because I wanted to have a discussion.”

According to Jewell, talks with the Sheriff’s Office led him to believe that Paris could get by with “four, maybe five” officers, eliminating current overheads such as detectives, uniforms and fuel costs.

He also said that police union negotiations were driving up the department’s budgets.
“I just think it’s important that when we make a recommendation, we address it on the facts and what we see coming down the road. It’s not going to get any cheaper. It isn’t. In fact, we know it’s going to get higher. And we also know that statewide, the police unions that go in have 25 to 30 percent every single time to start,” Jewell said.

“Looking down the road, my concern for the taxpayer is that, at some point, (the department) becomes unsustainable.”

Budget Committee member Janet Jamison said that since the 2025 town meeting, at which Town Manager Andrews was asked by voters to investigate alternatives to the Police Department, the town has not made a serious effort to consider alternatives to the department.

“Natalie (Andrews) was given the direction to look for other alternatives to the Paris Police Department,” Jamison said. “Now, I never saw a report come out of there, so we never got what we asked for in the first place.”

Most in attendance agreed that it was too late in the budget process to make substantial changes to the Police Department’s budget for the coming year.

“This (discussion) should have happened way before the budget meeting happened,” Buffington said. “What happened last week at the budget meeting should never have happened.”

Jamison said the Budget Committee only agreed to this year’s police department budget because it was “too late” to make any changes.

But, according to Andrews, the emotional debate surrounding the Police Department will likely resurface every year.

“I mean, I don’t think it’s anything you ever put to bed,” Andrews said. “I’m just talking about part of the budget process, in my opinion, and the citizens will demand it like they did last year.”

Jamison also said rising Police Department costs are not going to “go away,” and the conversation is likely to return.

“Costs are going to keep rising, and we have to figure out if we truly can afford our own private police department, because we don’t have the resources that Oxford and Norway have,” Jamison said.

“So when I sit here and speak about this, it’s not that I have anything against the Paris Police Department. I’m thinking about the people I’ve seen come through the voting booth that are wearing rags, and I wonder how they afford their food, let alone their taxes. Those are the people I speak for.”

Selectman Steve Cronce said he supported consolidating departments to cover Oxford, Norway and Paris. He noted that the towns already share several services, including retail centers such as Walmart, interlocal solid waste agreements and ambulance services.

“We need each other. Paris needs Norway, Norway needs Paris, and Oxford needs both towns. We all need each other,” Cronce said. “And I think it’s a disservice to look only at the Sheriff’s Office as the alternative for the Police Department. I don’t think we’re looking far enough. I don’t think we’re doing enough research.”

But that possibility is apparently off the table. Andrews said the chiefs of the Norway and Oxford police departments told the town in a recent letter that they had “no interest” in forming a multitown response.

“I’m saying the townspeople voted, after a tense town meeting, for the Police Department,” Chief Mike Ward of the Paris Police Department said. “They gave us the budget number. We hit the number. Voters approved it. I don’t know why we’re doing this again.”

After a federal immigration enforcement surge began in late January, the Maine attorney general’s office set up an email tipline to collect information about potential civil rights violations and improper use of force amid reports that federal agents had smashed the car windows of people they detained and left them running in the street, followed observers home, and labeled one observer a “domestic terrorist.”

The Maine Monitor asked for the tips as part of a public records request to understand the types of concerns people were raising about agents’ treatment of immigrants or observers during the two-week operation in which agents detained about 200 people, only 11 of whom were recorded as having a criminal record. 

The tipline received about two dozen submissions related to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity that the attorney general’s office deemed too sensitive to release to The Monitor, according to Danna Hayes, a spokesperson for the office. She said she could not provide more details about these complaints under state laws that protect the identities of informants and that keep information confidential ahead of legal proceedings.

The tipline remains open for the foreseeable future.

“e do continue to get credible, relevant concerns intermittently and want concerned individuals to have an easy way to report to us. We are also in contact with organizations collecting similar information since we know some might not feel most comfortable sharing sensitive information with law enforcement agencies,” Hayes wrote to The Monitor.

The rest of the 98 submissions to the tipline between Jan. 26 and Feb. 26, which the state released, largely had nothing to do with potential ICE abuses. People wrote in to report on those they suspected to be immigrants. They wrote in to say ICE agents were doing a good job. One person sent a picture of feces, another an ice-fishing meme.

Two Maine people have since joined a federal class action lawsuit claiming the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and its subagencies retaliated against them for lawfully observing and recording federal immigration enforcement operations. A Maine man also filed a notice of claim against the same federal agency, requesting $7.5 million in damages after he said ICE agents threatened to pull him out of his car and arrest him if he continued to drive behind and watch enforcement vehicles.

The attorney general’s office announced the email tipline in an apparent attempt to tee up its own legal response to the action. But the tips that are currently public show what can happen when an email address is widely publicized. (Before providing copies of the tips to The Monitor, the attorney general’s office redacted the names and email addresses of private citizens.)

“My Ice wasn’t cold enough at the Irving in Freeport,” wrote one person. 

“I witnessed federal law enforcement actually enforcing the law. What the hell is going on here,” wrote another.

“Ice is causing problems at my house it is hanging from the eves and it may damage my shingles,” wrote a third.

Others applauded ICE. “The good men and women in ICE are to be welcomed here in Maine. If I see them here in Sedgwick, I will offer them a cup of hot coffee and cup cake,” someone wrote.

Fifteen emails came from people making unrelated complaints. One person tried to submit a complaint about Meta for disabling the person’s Instagram account for violating its standards.

Only a handful of the complaints made public raised concerns about immigration agents, though they mainly asked for legal advice or forwarded information reported in news outlets.

About 39 of the emails were listserv notifications where someone signed up the tipline email to receive updates and notices from various government agencies, including from the city of Bath and the state of New Hampshire. Hayes said someone at the office had to unsubscribe from each one. 

“Unfortunately I have heard anecdotally that the spamming is consistent with other tip lines/reporting portals,” Hayes told The Monitor. 

The Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition also receives calls from people expressing racist comments or “general meanness” to its hotline, which launched in the fall and receives between 80 and 200 calls per day, Senior Program and Community Engagement Manager Hunter Cropsey said. Some callers misunderstand the hotline’s purpose — to connect people with resources and track potential immigration enforcement sightings — and instead call to report their neighbors to immigration officials.

Bad faith callers account for less than 10 percent of all calls, Cropsey said, and volunteer operators curtail disruptions to the hotline by not picking up anonymous calls. They document and block bad faith callers who do not anonymize their numbers.

“There are many, many more Mainers out there who are trying to help their neighbors and help their community stay fed and safe,” Cropsey said. “That is really the thing I choose to look at.”

Staff reporter Rose Lundy contributed reporting.

Officials in western Maine town of Eustis are seeking ways to expand the local housing supply, and they’re the first to join a new initiative by a major state nonprofit.

The town is the first to host officials from GrowSmart Maine to discuss its new “Housing Forward Communities” initiative, which is based in Franklin County and aimed at building community consensus in favor of new housing projects.

The nationwide housing shortage has spiked property values and taxes across the state. As the tourist economy drives new growth in northwestern Maine, Eustis, where most properties sit empty for much of the year, has little housing available.

“If somebody wanted to move to town, they’re not going to find a place,” Town Clerk Rachel Williams said. “And they’re really not going to find … an affordable place.”

The donor-funded program aims to host community conversations around housing, create a local “housing action committee” and help the town draft resolutions guiding future planning decisions.

Rent in Eustis has more than doubled in just a few years, according to data in the state’s housing portal compiled from Zillow and the U.S. Census Bureau. The median rent in the town, which lies near the ski resort at Sugarloaf but an hour’s drive from the nearest major service center in Farmington, was $916 in 2024. It was about $450 in 2019.

Vacancy rates are also dropping, according to census data. In 2014, more than a quarter of rentals were available. In 2024, that number was 5.3%. It’s similarly hard to find a permanent home in the town, with 4.5% of owned homes vacant and for sale in 2014 compared with none in 2024.

The town’s thirst for more housing has come up repeatedly at local meetings as the limited tax base has strained budgets. In minutes from a February town meeting in which officials discussed a proposed school budget increase, the exchange is summarized by saying educators “have cut where they can.”

“We need more housing,” the minutes read.

Williams said that it’s difficult to find workers in Eustis. Stratton Lumber, the local sawmill, has had to hire workers from far away as a result. A manager there directed questions from a reporter to the mill’s owner, who could not immediately be reached for comment.

Voters in nearby Kingfield killed a housing project in 2024 that was planned for a 7-acre plot behind Dollar General, putting it among the towns that have resisted attempts to build more housing. GrowSmart Maine’s new program for Franklin County aims to preempt similar cases.

“There is often local resistance to new proposals,” GrowSmart Maine’s Associate Director Harald Bredesen said. “The purpose of this program is to kind of have discussion first … so that the community doesn’t have to say yes no to a particular proposal, but rather, can kind of help shape the kinds of proposals and attract, maybe, the kinds of developers that they want.”

MACHIAS — A Machias eighth-grader turned his passion for academic competitions into a trip to Washington, D.C. to represent Maine in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in May. 

Tristan Singh, who turns 14 in May, bested 13 other young spellers at the Maine State Spelling Bee at Bowdoin College last weekend. He’ll be one of about 250 young spellers competing for a first-place $50,000 prize at the national event, which is being held at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.

“I tied for fourth in the state spelling bee last year. So, of course I was eager to win this year,” said Singh. “And then I made a bet with myself that there’s a neon dance coming up, and I said that I would only go if I won.” And, if he lost, he would go beforehand to help set up the dance.

Singh won the state bee by correctly spelling “stratosphere.”

The teen can’t say how many hours he’s put in preparing for this competition. “If I kept track, that would take away time from well, in this case, studying, right?” he said.

There are books and apps that he uses, but his biggest piece of advice for other kids? “Just make sure you really want to do this. Have rocket fuel motivation. Be dedicated,” he said. 

That focus moved him from being one of 10 million students competing in bees in classrooms and auditoriums in schools across the country to heading for a national stage. 

His mother, Elizabeth Singh, who teaches fourth grade at Rose M. Gaffney Elementary School, is quick to point out that Tristan does more than study. 

“He’s the senior patrol leader in Boy Scouts. He runs cross country and likes to help keep stats for basketball and baseball,” she said. “He’s more well-rounded than he is letting on.”

The teen is also a finalist this year for the National Civics Bee, a competition sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation that encourages middle schoolers to think about solutions for community issues. His essay, “Website Wonder,” landed him the opportunity to compete in the Maine State Civics Bee in June, where he’ll answer quizzes and pitch community solutions. 

“When COVID hit, a lot of the academic stuff stopped and getting it back has been tricky,” said Elizabeth Singh. “That’s something he’s really been passionate about and thinking about — how can we get other schools to participate in this?” 

There are fees involved. Beginning in August, teachers and administrators can enroll their schools in bees for $199. Tristan worries the cost could prevent kids in small rural schools from getting to participate. If he should win a cash prize at Nationals, he’d like to use some of it to help other schools enroll.

In Washington County, only Rose M. Gaffney and Princeton elementary schools participate in the Scripps Spelling Bee. 

Newsrooms sponsor the Scripps Spelling Bees across the country and over 10 million children participate in school bees. In Maine, the bee was presented by the Maine Trust for Local News.

“We’re really proud to host the Maine State Bee. We think about it the same way we think about high school sports,” said Stefanie Manning, president and publisher at the Maine Trust. “The academic kids, the readers — they deserve their moments too.”

The Maine Trust also coordinates Maine’s school-level and county bees for Scripps. This year 73 schools registered from 14 counties, according to Manning. Each school was invited to send up to two spellers to the county bee and then each county could send one speller to the state bee.

The Scripps National Spelling Bee started in 1925 and the last Mainer to win nationally was Portlander Sarah Wilson in 1934.

Visit spellingbee.com starting May 1, 2026 to see the broadcast schedule and to follow Singh through the competition.

HARRINGTON — Voters enacted a Solar Energy Ordinance on Monday allowing personal and commercial solar installations for on‑site use within town limits, with Planning Board approval, while prohibiting utility‑scale solar farms and any for‑profit power generation.

The vote, held during the annual town meeting at Narraguagus High School, drew overwhelming support, with no one in the 35‑person audience raising an objection.

According to the ordinance, its intent is to preserve Harrington’s rural character and “prevent industrial encroachment incompatible with community values.”

The ordinance authorizes personal ground‑mounted systems and personal and commercial roof‑mounted solar installations, but it does not authorize power to be distributed to the grid for profit.

The commercial provision applies only to Harrington businesses that install systems to power their own operations.

“Net metering is permitted for energy offset, but no profit may be derived” from the system, according to the ordinance.

Ground‑mounted systems may not be taller than 25 feet, with minimum setbacks of 25 feet from all property lines. Setbacks increase to 45 feet from town roads and 70 feet from state roads, according to the ordinance.

The systems may not exceed 2,500 square feet of total project airspace.

Owners of ground‑mounted systems must keep them maintained, including clearing vegetation, and must “reasonably” screen them from public roads and neighboring properties with landscaping, fencing or other features.

Roof‑mounted systems are exempt from screening requirements.

Owners must remove any system that remains nonoperational for more than a year and restore the site to its reasonably original condition.

All personal and commercial installations are subject to Planning Board approval.