Le Journal

Réunis lundi 19 janvier sous la présidence conjointe des ministres en charge de la Transition écologique et des Sports, les membres du Comité stratégique de la « Feuille de route environnement » pour les Jeux Olympiques et Paralympiques d’hiver 2030 ont approuvé l’ossature d’un plan destiné à encadrer les enjeux environnementaux de l’organisation de l’événement dans les […]

AUGUSTA, Maine — A network of 12 volunteer mentors is linking up with Mainers looking for ways to start, grow or improve their businesses. The state’s northern chapter of Service Corps of Retired Executives, more commonly known as SCORE, provides free one-on-one assistance to local entrepreneurs from the southern end of Knox County to the Canadian border. International business consultant David Green of Bangor heads the chapter and travels to some of northern Maine’s most remote locations to help bring out the best in people, he said. Maine is a state of mainly small businesses and Green said he wants it to be a place where people can make a comfortable living and thrive. “The Small Business Administration says people with a mentor are twice as likely to succeed and that’s what we do,” Green said. What started out as a northern Maine road trip with Green and two other SCORE executives three years ago to meet people in places such as Caribou, Van Buren, Presque Isle and Houlton has grown into a network of partnerships and cooperative events with rural towns as a way to reach out to local businesses, Green said. The chapter works with local Chambers of Commerce, the Northern Maine Development Commission and the Southern Aroostook Development Corp., to name a few, and provides free business-related training sessions in addition to one-on-one mentoring. Additionally, they work with school programs and other community organizations to provide business-related training and assistance. The total in-person session attendance grew 30.2% last year, from 232 in 2024 to 302 in 2025; total services increased 28.4% from 1,165 in 2024 to 1,496 in 2025; and total local services from 836 to 934. This month, the Northern Maine Chapter earned the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 2026 National Chapter of the Year Award, ousting much larger metropolitan chapters this year. “The secret sauce is we have created partnerships in these areas and are doing more of what people need,” said Green. Green, like all SCORE volunteers, brings a wealth of career knowledge to entrepreneurs seeking guidance. An engineer, he worked with Hewlett-Packard and ITT in the UK before moving to Canada to work for Nortel for 25 years. He now owns Bangor-based WardGreen Group consulting with his wife, Ginger Ward-Green. He takes on a new SCORE client every week, he said. One woman, who owns a consulting business and does strategic planning, process improvement, leadership development and coaching, has been working with him to pivot her business to leverage AI, he said. “My help so far has been to introduce her to people who are on the leading edge of AI so she can refine her business model to focus on work she wants to do and where there is a market need,” Green said. Some of the contacts Green has helped with include a city development director, a nationally known entrepreneur embarking on her next big thing using AI, and one of SCORE’s AI subject matter experts. Another client in a small town had bought an old building with a commercial kitchen and asked for help starting a sandwich shop. “By the time I met with her she had changed her mind about the sandwich shop and thought instead of renting the kitchen to someone she knew,” he said. “We brainstormed other options and one was an event center using a range of catering options from self catering to a high-end chef.” Still, despite concerted outreach initiatives into Maine’s northernmost regions, many budding business owners, some struggling to stay afloat, are not aware of the help these executive volunteers offer. Others are reluctant to reach out for help, often because they don’t want anyone to know, said Houlton entrepreneur Fred Grant, who has been a volunteer SCORE mentor for nearly two years. “If that’s the case, the business can request a mentor from somewhere else,” Grant said. Fred Grant, owner of the Temple Theatre in Houlton, talks with patrons before a screening of the award-winning documentary “A Moment…

Bangor police are investigating complaints about a property management company that reportedly owed thousands to landlords when it abruptly closed last year. Roland “Chip” Foss told clients that he planned to file for bankruptcy when he shut down his company, Real Property Management Acadia, in January 2025. The sudden decision alarmed his clients, many of whom had been reaching out for months about missing rent payments, security deposits and other complaints about how the company managed their properties. Some of his former clients eventually contacted Penobscot County District Attorney Chris Almy, who confirmed the police investigation. A landlord who trusted Foss’s company to manage a rental home in Old Town, Michael Bunker of Cumberland, said a detective contacted him in December. It represents a major development in the effort by Foss’ former clients to recoup their money and hold him accountable for his conduct. There is no record that Foss or his company ever filed for bankruptcy in the year since he shuttered the business, a move that prompted at least seven former clients to describe their troubling experiences in a Bangor Daily News article. “The fact that he hasn’t filed for bankruptcy an entire year later? It shows he doesn’t plan on it,” Kristen Al-Sharafi, who told the BDN last year that Foss owed her more than $5,000, said. “It’s not showing any accountability. It feels like he’s getting away with it.” Foss could not be reached for comment. He did not respond to an email at a personal address, and an email sent to the address associated with his former company bounced back. The phone number he gave to his former clients has been disconnected. He did not respond to a message sent to his LinkedIn account. A Bangor police spokesperson declined to comment because the department does not confirm or deny ongoing investigations that have not resulted in criminal charges. Landlords mostly described positive experiences with Real Property Management Acadia when the company came online in 2018. But the relationship soured in the months leading to its closure as Foss gave vague answers for why he wasn’t sending them rental income. When he informed his clients in an email that he was closing for business and filing for bankruptcy, he acknowledged “financial obligations that we will work to resolve, as that is a [sic] something we find morally responsible, but that will take time.” He never provided a clear explanation of the company’s problems to landlords who followed up with him, according to interviews with former clients and corroborating documents they shared with the BDN. He eventually stopped responding to their questions entirely. Two former clients said in interviews last week that they had not heard from him since, although they suspect he remains in the Bangor area. Another former client sent them an email in December saying he had spotted Foss at the Bangor airport in a uniform signifying that he now works for a private company.

A Castine nonprofit tasked with providing health care to area residents is trying to establish a direct primary care center after Northern Light Health unexpectedly announced it would move its practice out of town. The Castine Community Hospital Corporation, which owns the health center building and had leased it to Northern Light for years, last year started a study to see if it could establish a free, independent direct primary care practice. That exploration was in response to the system facing financial problems, location closures, insurance disputes and other operating challenges. “We don’t want to be caught flat-footed if something bad happens, God forbid,” board chair Bobby Vagt said in October. Last week, Northern Light announced it would move operations to Blue Hill, half an hour away, by the end of next month. The Castine practice will be combined with the Northern Light Primary Care practice at Sussman Health Center on the campus of its Blue Hill hospital, health system officials said. In response, the Castine board has decided to speed up the process of opening a direct primary care center, according to Vagt. Independent direct primary care providers typically see patients for a flat monthly fee and don’t take most insurance. The model has been growing rapidly in Maine recently, often run by former Northern Light employees who say the direct approach lets them spend more time with patients and give them more personalized care. At the same time, eastern and northern Maine is facing a shortage of primary care providers that’s expected to get worse in the coming years. The Castine group may not be able to have a center up and running by Feb. 27, but now aims to announce the operating structure, timeline and staffing before the end of February. For now, the board is working to determine what the organization would look like structurally and legally. Northern Light said last week that its current Castine clinic faces similar challenges to other small health centers in Maine, including staffing challenges, smaller patient panels, high operating costs and “inconsistent access.” “We carefully considered all of our options before making this decision but ultimately found that combining the practices is necessary to best support long term access to high quality, coordinated primary care for all of our patients,” John Ronan, FACHE, president of Northern Light Blue Hill and Maine Coast Hospitals, said when the move was announced. The Castine group wasn’t necessarily shocked after the system’s closures and announcements in recent years, Vagt said, but the timing was a surprise. The clinic serves an older population, with almost half of its roughly 1,150 patients on Medicare. Patients who have called since the Northern Light announcement say they’ve been surprised by the sudden change and concerned about how they’ll get to Blue Hill. The initial feasibility study was also exploring the possibility of creating a community health plan, which is a form of group-based insurance typically anchored to an employer, in partnership with Maine Maritime Academy. That remains an option, but isn’t a focus area for the board now, Vagt said.

La liste citoyenne fait venir Virginie Malochet, sociologue et spécialiste des polices municipales et des questions de sécurité, ce jeudi 22 janvier.