Traffic plan in place for Maine Whoopie Pie Festival

DOVER-FOXCROFT — In less than a month thousands of people will be coming to downtownDover-Foxcroft for the 11th annual Maine Whoopie Pie Festival. Leading up to and during the event scheduled from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, June 22, several roads will be closed to vehicles and the selectmen reviewed the traffic plan with festival organizer/Center Theatre Executive Director Patrick Myers during a May 29 meeting.

“We have had our annual meeting with Patrick and the police department to go over plans for next month and a very similar plan to last year,” Town Manager Jack Clukey said.

Maine Whoopie Pie Festival events and vendors will be set up on portions of East Main and Pleasant streets. A pair of detours via Grove and Lincoln streets will again allow travelers to get around downtown.

“We are tweaking the schedule just a bit,” Myers said. He said two town vehicles will block half the road at the intersection of Court Street with Pleasant and East Main. The other half of the roads would be taken up by entrance gates, and the vehicles will be in place from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Seven staff members will positioned at the road closure locations to assist with directions, and let local traffic through when applicable. Emergency vehicles will be able to get downtown via Harvey Street.

Two large school buses will provide shuttle service from the Piscataquis Valley Fairgrounds to the 2019 Maine Whoopie Pie Festival.

Selectman Scott Taylor suggested to Myers that festival attendees park by the main gate of the fairgrounds, avoiding the wet conditions at the other gate.

In other business, Clukey mentioned several items in his report.

“We have sent requests for bids out to paving contractors for paving work this summer,” he said.

Clukey said the bids are due on Wednesday, June 12 and a tabulation of bids is scheduled for the next select meeting on Monday, June 17.

The town manager and Selectman Steve Grammont met with Kurt Penney of Revision Energy the week before to discuss municipal solar and some possibilities in Dover-Foxcroft.

“I think there’s a lot of opportunities here and I think it’s something we can talk about more in the coming months,” Clukey said, mentioning there is proposed legislation in Augusta that would be favorable for municipal solar projects.

“We went to all the large energy consumers, both municipal and private,” Grammont said. He said these sites included the Morton Avenue Municipal Building, the schools, the skating rink at the fairgrounds, the landfill hill and atop the Pine Crest Business Park campus.

“He was able to make preliminary engineering determinations if it would be economically viable,” Grammont said about Penney’s location visits.

“My takeaway is we’ll be able to have conversations when we know what the landscape is,” Clukey said.

The town manager also shared a thank you letter to Fire Chief Joe Guyotte from Piscataquis County Sheriff Bob Young for an incident response earlier in the month.

Young wrote, “On May 21, 2019, on Doughty Hill Rd., there was a single vehicle accident. DFFD responded, along with other emergency crews, to a complex extrication job. Your crew performed exceptionally, working with other responders to successfully remove the young woman and preserve her life.

“It is very apparent that Dover-Foxcroft’s firefighters are well trained and can use that training to work very efficiently with other departments.

“Please let your FF know that we greatly appreciate their work at this scene, and their overall efforts to protect the folks of our region.”