A current Bangor city councilor is running in a special election for an open seat in the Legislature, which Rep. Joe Perry left to become Maine’s treasurer.

Carolyn Fish, who’s serving her first term on the Bangor City Council, announced in a Jan. 4 Facebook post that she’s running as a Republican to represent House District 24, which covers parts of Bangor, Brewer, Orono and Veazie.

“I am not a politician, but what goes on in Augusta affects us here and it’s time to get involved,” Fish wrote in the post. “I am just a regular citizen of this community with a lineage of hard work, passion and appreciation for the freedom and liberties we have in this community and state.”

Fish’s announcement comes roughly two weeks after Sean Faircloth, a former Democratic state lawmaker and Bangor city councilor, announced he’s running as a Democrat to represent House District 24.

The special election to fill Perry’s seat will take place on Feb. 25.

Fish, a local real estate agent, was elected to the Bangor city council in November 2023 and is currently serving a three-year term.

Fish previously told the Bangor Daily News that her family moved to the city when she was 13 and has worked in the local real estate industry since earning her real estate license when she was 28.

When she ran for the Bangor City Council in 2023, Fish expressed a particular interest in tackling homelessness and substance use in the community while bolstering economic development. To do this, she suggested reviving the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) Program in schools and creating a task force to identify where people who are homeless in Bangor came from.

Now, Fish said she sees small businesses and families of all ages struggling to make ends meet due to the rising cost of housing, groceries, child care, health care and other expenses. Meanwhile, the funding and services the government should direct to help is being “focused elsewhere,” she said.

“I feel too many of us are left behind and ignored,” Fish wrote in her Facebook post. “The complexities that got us here are multifaceted and the solutions aren’t always simple. But, I can tell you it’s time to try and I will do all I can to help improve things for a better future for all of us.”

Faircloth served five terms in the Maine House and Senate between 1992 and 2008, then held a seat on the Bangor City Council from 2014 to 2017, including one year as mayor. He also briefly ran for Maine governor in 2018 and for the U.S. House in 2002.

A mental health and child advocate, Faircloth founded the Maine Discovery Museum in Bangor and was the executive director of the city’s Together Place Peer Run Recovery Center until last year.

Fish did not return requests for comment Tuesday.

Evan Goodkowsy of Wiscasset snapped the picture he called “88% Chance of Rain” and submitted it to the Maine Lottery’s 50th Anniversary photo competition. And it won.

The picture of the rocky Maine coast was voted number one among 123 submissions.

The Maine Lottery had invited its social media (Facebook and Instagram) audience to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Lottery.

After the field was narrowed to 16, a bracket-style competition was set up with randomly selected pairs, and people could vote on their favorites. Each winner would move on to the next round, and, when it was over, “88% Chance of Rain” came out on top. Goodkowsky was sent a goodie bag.

Along with the winning entry, the remaining 15 finalists’ photos can be viewed here.

CUMBERLAND, Maine — When police asked Evan Casas if he was positive the drums for sale online were his beloved set, stolen from a storage unit last year, he didn’t hesitate.

“I told them I was 1,000 percent sure,” Casas said. They were like no other, and he’d know them anywhere.

The veteran percussionist had played the custom maple set at hundreds of gigs and recording sessions since a college friend made them for him 25 years ago, when they were both freshmen at the University of Southern Maine.

Casas’ positive identification led to a Hollywood-style police sting involving a wire, a secret code word and his old friend’s wife’s aunt. No one has yet been arrested, but Casas did get his drums back, which is all he really cares about.

The wild story started with a phone call in February from a security person making her rounds at the New Gloucester storage facility where Casas was storing the drums and other possessions while building a house. She told him the lock was missing from his unit, which was odd.

When he got to the unit, he immediately saw his drums were missing, along with several other items. It broke his heart.

Casas’ college friend and fellow drummer, Scott Ciprari, made the honey-colored set while both were music education students living in Robie-Andrews Hall on USM’s Gorham campus a quarter century ago. Ciprari went on to co-found the SJC Drum company which now counts drummers from Dropkick Murphys, Rancid and Sum 41 as clients.

“The third kit that he ever made was my kit,” Casas said. “They were very special to me — my first real drums.”

Casas filed a police report but doubted he’d ever see them again.

“I was devastated. I was emotionally attached to them,” Casas said. “I honestly grieved for them like I lost a family member.”

He got on with finishing his house, being a husband and raising his two daughters. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, SJC drum aficionados sprang into action.

Casas isn’t on social media, but his old pal Ciprari is, along with the 5,000-member SJC Drums Community Facebook group. There, members fanned out, scouring Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace and other online swaps, looking for anyone fencing the purloined drums. Eventually, in December — 10 months after they went missing — a member of Ciprari’s extended family located them.

“It was my wife’s aunt who found them,” Ciprari said, still somewhat surprised.

When Casas got the word, he used his wife’s social media account to look. Sure enough, there they were, offered for $1,500 on Facebook, just one town away from where they were stolen.

Resisting the urge to just buy them back and be done with it, Casas called the Cumberland County Sheriff’s detective assigned to his case. The detective assured him they’d get the drums back, then suggested an elaborate plan, if Casas was game.

He was and set up a meeting with the seller.

Reached for comment last week, the detective could only say the investigation was ongoing.

According to Casas, on New Year’s Eve morning, he met two deputies and a plainclothed detective behind the saltshed at a Maine DOT maintenance yard. The detective, a gun in his waistband and with a wireless microphone, got into Casas’ car. The deputies followed at a discreet distance as they headed for the house selling the drums.

“The plan was, once I could confirm that they were mine, I was to say, ‘These drums look legit,’” Casas said. “And then the detective would say, ‘Oh, they’re legit, huh, so you want to buy them?’ That was the code word for the deputies to roll up.”

When they got inside, Casas recognized the drums in an instant. His daughter’s pink baby blanket was still stuffed in the bass drum, where he’d put it to help deaden the sound. Casas then played his part, pretending to go out to his truck for the money while the deputies arrived.

Police later told Casas they didn’t arrest the woman selling the drums because she was conducting the transaction on behalf of a family member, according to Casas. Casas remembers the young woman looking stunned and very scared.

“I felt awful. I felt like a dad with daughters,” he said “I didn’t want to ruin anyone else’s day. I just needed to get my drums back.”

To celebrate their return, Casas’ daughters asked if he could take their picture with the drums. He did.

The original maker of the drums is also happy for their homecoming.

“I hope those drums get passed down as a family heirloom,” Ciprari said. “He was one of the first guys who supported me. Those drums mean a lot.”

His house now completed, Casas said he’ll now be keeping the drums at home, where he can play them.

“They’re not going back into storage,” he said.