WHEREAS, older adults contribute expertise, time, wisdom, and experience to our great State and deserve to be treated with respect and dignity; and

WHEREAS, June 15th marks World Elder Abuse Awareness Day to promote a better understanding of abuse and neglect of older adults and recognize the significance of elder abuse as a public health and human rights issue; and

WHEREAS, Maine communities endured severe damage from record-breaking riverine flooding, coastal storm surge, and high winds during three extreme storm events striking in rapid succession between December 18, 2023 and January 13, 2024; 

Hello, this is Governor Janet Mills, and thank you for listening.

In addition to being Governor, you know that I’m the daughter of a long time public school teacher in Maine. And I’m someone who raised five daughters who went to public schools in Maine. And I’m the grandmother of five children in Maine. I know how hard all of our teachers work every day to set our kids on a path to a bright and successful future.

Well, last week – which also happened to be Teacher Appreciation Week – I was very proud to welcome sixteen of Maine’s teachers to the State House in Augusta and to name them “County Teachers of the Year.”

Taken altogether, these County Teachers of the Year have taught thousands of students from kindergarten to grade 12 on every topic, from social studies and science to health and phys. ed to biology and technology.

All the colleagues, parents and community members who nominated these teachers spoke highly about their decades-long dedication to their classrooms, their commitment to holding their students to the highest standards, and their compassion for the children in their care.

For example, Teacher of the Year from Franklin County, my home county, is Vickie Lailer. Vickie has taught second grade students at the Mallett School in Farmington since 2019, but she’s been teaching overall for about 15 years. When she nominated Vickie Lailer, her principal Tracy Williams said Vickie is “a great example of finding ways to connect with each student all while she ups her game instructionally.”

I’m glad I was able to congratulate Vickie in person and thank her for the contributions she’s made to our state and our students. I hope that you send your thanks to the County Teacher of the Year from your hometown too. You can find the list on the Department of Education’s website at Maine.gov/doe. That’s Maine.gov/doe.

Maine teachers deserve our respect and our recognition every day, not just during Teacher Appreciation Week. And in my administration, they have it.

Just this session of the legislature, I’m proud to say we enacted a supplemental budget this year that provides an additional $22.6 million for Maine’s public schools in order to maintain the state’s commitment to pay 55% of the cost of education. And it was my administration that was able to meet that 55% of education funding for the first time in history, something I’m pretty proud of.

And over the course of my administration, we have invested in hands on learning opportunities, expanding computer science, outdoor education, technical education opportunities. In fact, we’ve seen a lot more students enrolling in the CTEs which is great because, you know, we need a lot more students entering these important, good-paying and in-demand jobs, plumbing, electrician, etc. These are the kinds of engaging learning opportunities that teachers and students truly value.

On behalf of the many children that you serve across Maine, I want to thank teachers across our state for everything you do. And I congratulate, again, our county teachers of the Year on this well-deserved honor.

This is Governor Janet Mills, and thank you for listening.

Maine's working waterfronts are the lifeblood of our coastal communities, and, you know, they were hit incredibly hard by last winter's devastating storms. So to help our communities rebuild, I proposed and the legislature has approved $60 million in storm relief.

Well, this week I was proud to announce that applications for some of that funding are now available.

Hello, this is Governor Janet Mills, and thank you for listening.

Through these Working Waterfront Resilience Grants, which are part of the Maine Infrastructure Adaptation Fund over at the Maine DOT, my administration will dedicate funds to projects that are rebuilding wharves and piers and that provide a significant and compelling community benefit to our commercial fishing and aquaculture industries.

We will measure that community benefit by how many fishermen use that property, as well as the number of people who work there. To make sure that we can support as many commercial fishing and aquaculture operations as possible, we will start by issuing grants of up to $2 million each to infrastructure projects that support 20 or more commercial fishermen and/or aquaculturists. If funding remains available after that, we'll look at the projects that support ten or more commercial fishermen and aquaculturists.

These grants can be used to reconstruct or improve damaged wharves and piers and buildings such as bait sheds, as well as electrical and fuel systems that support the commercial fishing industry. Applicants will be expected to match the grant funds they request and to show that the repairs they make on their properties will make them more resilient to future weather events.

You can apply for these grants at maine.gov/dmr/resilience. That's maine.gov/dmr/resilience. Applications are open from now until Monday, June 10th, 2024 at 4:30 p.m. Funds should be available sometime in August.

Two additional grant opportunities are also in the offing. Next week, the Department of Economic and Community Development will make applications available for $10 million of the same funding source through the Maine Business Resilience and Recovery Fund. Those grants will help businesses and organizations, including nonprofits that were affected by the storms.

Meanwhile, the Department of Transportation will also make grant applications available for the remaining funds in the Infrastructure Adaptation Fund to improve infrastructure such as culverts and drinking water systems and stormwater systems to reduce our climate impacts, especially flooding.

I hope this new funding, as approved by the Legislature, can provide some sense of certainty as we rebuild stronger and better to preserve our working waterfronts and other critical infrastructure across the state for years to come in the face of worsening weather.

I will continue to do everything I can to help rebuild damaged wharves and piers that commercial fishermen, our coastal communities and our entire state depend on for livelihoods and for our economy.

This is Governor Janet Mills, and thank you for listening.

WHEREAS, about every two minutes, a person in the United States is diagnosed with lung cancer; and

WHEREAS, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths for women and men; and

WHEREAS, although new case rates have dropped significantly in recent years, Maine still has the 5th highest lung cancer incidence rate in the country and an estimated 965 Mainers will be diagnosed this year alone; and