You can pretty much copy paste this for hockey and soccer too. It sucks.

Maybe this was a local requirement? I was in highschool very close to 2010 and creationism never came up in a science course.

That was my guess too. I don't know enough about the install to trouble shoot over reddit and I don't want to ask you 100 questions, but your theory tracks.

The biggest thing I would wonder is if your pump is configured for 220v and now it's only getting 120v when the solar kicks in.

Are you on well or municipal water? I'm incredibly intrigued by this lol

State Congress is SIGNIFICANTLY different than Federal Congress. Federally all members make $174k or more as their pay. Considering Congressional sessions are not a full time job (the rest of the year they spend fundraising for re-election which doesn't count), that is plenty for them to live very comfortably. They just want MORE. If they want to play the stock market and build personal wealth, they can retire from Congress.

Most of the tech jobs paid like shit compared to national competition though. Unum, Tyler Tech, Idexx, Delorme all paid worse than similar jobs in other states. The pay was good for Maine but it's a hard sell when you can move and get a 30% bump with the same skills. It's got a bit better as they realized they had to compete with out of state hiring, but it's still not great.

Idexx is... Weird. I don't work there but know a lot of folks who do/have. They did bump salaries for devs to be more competitive, but non dev folks don't seem to get the same attention unless they're director or higher.

Starlink can help but it's still prohibitively expensive for people in Maine who need it the most.

Unfortunately more serious build outs starting about 20 years ago was the real answer but we can't fix that. Fiber is coming and helpful, but even a WISP with a decent backbone could have done a lot in some areas.