This is the year repairs will finish on the Wawenock block on Main Street, some project will be announced for Mason Station and it will not snow much.

I put that last prediction in there for me, but also to show – this week’s somewhat snowy forecast aside – you never know. The pre-winter months that ended 2023 turned out to be a mud season, sometimes frozen, but no blankets of snow. 

Given the Wawenock repairs have already taken nearly three years since the building shed bricks onto the then-new sidewalk, we could say we’ll believe it when we see it. But as 2023 neared its end, the work was getting Wiscasset government’s close monitoring and the owner was regularly updating the town and Wiscasset Newspaper. That was progress and, based on the momentum, I predict 2024 is the year the job finishes and the sidewalk and nearby businesses return to the pre-incident look the state intended for this piece of Route One.

About Mason Station, with so much cleanup work put in around it and the town having an economic development director for the first time in years, 2024 could be, and I cautiously predict will be, when a tax base-boosting, job-creating enterprise throws in. Another time to believe it when we see it, for sure, because we have seen on the Birch Point peninsula over the decades, not every development sticks. 

Selectmen’s care we have witnessed, in their trying to keep the economic developer job from again becoming heavy on prep for, and participation in, municipal meetings is encouraging. So is the town manager’s landing of outside funds for projects like the big culvert job on Old Ferry Road. He knows who to reach out to and how to make Wiscasset’s best case; so that is something else that does not have to rest largely with the director. The director can focus on attracting property buyers and lessees who will hopefully give the world more reasons to spend time and money in Wiscasset.

Week’s positive parting thought: Whatever challenges, wins, losses, tulips and surprises each day brings, something good and forward-moving – sometimes tiny, sometimes a leap – can come out of each week of 2024. Let us all move the mountain together, shall we?