Government and Schools
Bangor has had a Council-Manager form of government since 1931, with a nine-member City Council. Three city councilors are elected to three-year terms each year. Although Bangor has no elected "Mayor", the Chair of the City Council is elected by fellow councilors and often informally referred to as the City's Mayor, serving in this role when there is a ceremonial need for a Mayor.
In 1996, Bangor's City Council was the first in North America to unanimously approve a resolution opposing the sale of sweat-shop produced clothing in local stores.
Bangor and Augusta have together produced the largest number of Governors of Maine (nine each, including two non-consecutive terms by Edward Kent). This list includes immediate past governor, Democrat John Baldacci, and the last Republican governor, John McKernan. A number of others were born or lived in suburban towns such as Brewer, Hampden, and Orono.
Bangor has two major secondary schools, the publicly run Bangor High School and the private John Bapst Memorial High School. There are also two public middle schools and one private, and an extensive elementary school system.
Read more about this topic: Bangor, Maine
Famous quotes containing the words government and/or schools:
“There exists in a great part of the Northern people a gloomy diffidence in the moral character of the government. On the broaching of this question, as general expression of despondency, of disbelief that any good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act of fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel. Will the American government steal? Will it lie? Will it kill?—We ask triumphantly.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion—these are the most valuable coin of the thinker at work. But in most schools guessing is heavily penalized and is associated somehow with laziness.”
—Jerome S. Bruner (b. 1915)