At look back at 2006 in Scarborough
At look back at 2006 in Scarborough
By Lucas Knowles
Editor
Another year has passed in Scarborough and the Leader was there, covering what was happening in the town.
Here is a look at some of the stories that were published in the Leader during the past year.
January
• Ellen Ross, a teacher who recently retired from working at Scarborough High School, was voted as the Leader’s Great Person Award winner for 2005.
• A draft of the future land use plan, which is considered to be the guiding document for how the town will grow in years to come, was available for the public to view during the comprehensive plan update process.
• Darlene Curley, a Republican who had represented Scarborough as a member of the Maine House for two terms, announced her intentions to run for Maine’s First District U.S. Congress seat.
• The Scarborough Land Conservation Trust announced its plans to submit a request for proposals for tenants of the Meserve Farm property. John Bliss and Stacy Brenner, who had previously been the caretakers at a farm property in Cape Elizabeth, were eventually chosen to be the primary tenants of the property.
February
• A court ruled that a 16-year old girl from Scarborough was not criminally responsible for an incident that occurred the year before that left her and another young woman, who was 20 years old at the time, injured from stab wounds. A suicide pact was alleged at the time of the incident, but the younger of the two women was eventually charged with elevated aggravated assault and attempted murder.
• After Kristi Stanley got word from a second large company that a potential lawsuit could be brewing over homemade products her company had made, she decided to close down her business and move on to other pursuits. Her line of homemade baby products, called Giggles and Grins, was alleged to be too close to the name of a Gerber line of baby hygiene products called Grins & Giggles. In addition, one of Stanley’s clients had told her she had been contacted by the company Taggies and was told that selling Tag Alongs, made by Stanley’s company, made her as liable for patent infringement.
• Mike Shaw, director of Scarborough Public Works, reported to the Town Council on automated solid waste collection bids and other recycling options. The council eventually gave its approval to starting automated curbside waste and recycling collection in Scarborough. The service will begin sometime this spring.
• A study that was completed about the possibility of consolidating dispatch services from Scarborough, Cape Elizabeth and South Portland. The study recommended the three communities consolidate services on their own instead of joining a county-wide dispatch consolidation.
March
• The Scarborough Public Library started its fundraising campaign to supplement the $6.9 million renovation referendum proposed for the June 13 ballot in town. The library’s Board of Trustees committed to raise $1.5 million toward the renovation and expansion project.
• The Scarborough High School boys hockey team made it to the Western Maine Class A regional title game and lost a heartbreaker to Cheverus in double overtime.
• The Scarborough High School academic decathlon team won its 17th state title.
• Jo Anne Sizemore, principal at Scarborough Middle School, was named Maine’s 2006 Middle Level Principal of the Year.
• Plans to downsize and subdivide the Black Point Inn property were first discussed before the Scarborough’s Planning Board. BPI Partners LLC, a group of local investors who own the inn, filed plans with the town that proposed to reduce the size of the inn from 84 rooms to 25, demolish and rebuild a smaller pool and divide portions of the property into lots for sale. The Planning Board eventually gave the go-ahead for improvements to begin.
April
• Ian Brauner, a native of New Orleans, talked to the Leader about relocating to Maine soon after hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. A graduate student at Health Sciences Center at Lousiana State University before the disaster, Brauner found work at the Maine Medical Center Research Institute once moving to Maine.
• Members of the public got their first chance to see the new comprehensive plan for Scarborough, in a draft form on the town’s Web site. The comprehensive plan is eventually adopted by the Town Council and an implementation committee is named.
• Helena Diodati, 18 and a senior at Scarborough High School, was able to rebound from a serious injury and competed in the USA Gymnastics Junior Olympic Women’s National Championships in Oklahoma City, Okla. She qualified for the nationals after finishing the top seven all-around in the regional competition. Helena also placed first in the Maine state gymnastics competition.
• Construction crews began work on a new right turn lane for the Dunstan intersection, where Pine Point Road, Route One and Broadturn Road meet.
May
• David Doyle, who had worked as assistant superintendent of schools in Scarborough for a number of years, was chosen to replace outgoing superintendent Bill Michaud. Andrew Dolloff, who had been working as the principal at Scarborough High School, was hired to replace Doyle as assistant superintendent.
• At a workshop, members of the Town Council were told that Old Orchard Beach had expressed interest in having Scarborough take on its public safety dispatching duties.
• The Scarborough Family YMCA acquired a new parcel of property located along Route One between Tim Horton’s and the Big 20 bowling alley. The YMCA was originally expected to be built on a piece of property behind the Bessey School in the Oak Hill area of town. Those plans were abandoned after YMCA officials said the property posed too many challenges to build on.
• Stephanie Smith of Scarborough made an appearance on the television quiz show Jeopardy!.
June
• The newest off-road portion of the Eastern Trail in Scarborough opened and people were led on a rain-soaked tour. The portion of trail is located on the Hillcrest Retirement Community property, which is owned by the Desfosses family. As part of a contract zoning agreement, the Desfosses family granted an easement that allowed an off-road portion of the Eastern Trail to be constructed.
• Carrlyn Bathe, a senior at Scarborough High School, was named as the winner of “Maine Model 2,” the second version of a competition organized by WPME, the local UPN affiliate.
• The Scarborough boys and girls lacrosse teams both win state Class A titles. In the state finals, the boys were victorious over Lewiston, while the girls won against Brunswick.
• Scarborough Community Services broke ground on its turf field project. The field was installed at the Oak Hill Athletic Complex. The Scarborough Town Council voted the previous month to include $400,000 for the turf field in the next fiscal year’s budget.
• Money for the Scarborough Public Library renovation/expansion project is rejected by voters at the polls.
July
• Scarborough’s Town Council and Planning Board received their first look at a development that was proposed to cover several parcels in the Haigis Parkway business development district. A contract zone was submitted to the town on behalf of New England Expedition-Scarborough LLC. The materials accompanying the contract zone application included a plan for seven lots of Haigis Parkway to be included in a development called The Gateway at Scarborough. The development’s anchor tenant was proposed to be Cabela’s, an outdoors store chain based in the Midwest.
• A new United States Postal Service distribution and processing center for southern Maine opened in Scarborough. The Southern Maine Processing and Distribution Center is housed in a building covering 429,000 square feet and was constructed at a site in the Walter C. Nielsen Business Park, which is located near the Scarborough/South Portland line off Mussey Road in Scarborough.
• Donna Schlieper of Scarborough prepares for her appearance in the Miss Teen USA pageant in California. Schlieper, a student at Scarborough High School, was the winner of the Miss Maine Teen USA Pageant and qualified for the national event as a result.
• Actor Kiefer Sutherland stopped by for a visit to Scarborough to promote his new music label’s first band, drawing hundreds to the Bull Moose store on Sunday afternoon.
August
• Scarborough Village Square, the new development plan for the vacant Orion Center, received its final approval from the town. The anchor tenant for the development was not revealed to those on the Planning Board. The Orion Center is a vacant group of buildings located off Route One near its intersection with Sawyer Road. The complex was recently home to a few light industrial companies and, at one time, housed a Mammoth Mart.
• A memorandum from Scarborough Schools Facilities Manager Norm Justice raising questions about the synthetic turf project in the athletic complex near Oak Hill was circulated. The memo drew responses from the turf company’s owner and town officials taking issue with Justice’s motives and questions. Justice later clarified his previous statements, saying his questions were answered when the town signed off on the project.
• “Finding Amy: A True Story of Murder in Maine” was published by the University Press of New England and was released in 2006. Kate Clark Flora, former assistant attorney general for the state of Maine and a mystery novelist, collaborated with Captain Joseph Joseph Loughlin of the Portland Police Department on the book, which tells the story of the murder of 25-year old Amy St. Laurent. The search for St. Laurent ended in Scarborough.
• The town hired a consulting company to receive feedback from residents concerned about the construction of a park off the Black Point Road. The meetings came after residents expressed frustration about plans for the park and not being given a voice in the planning process.
September
• Dana Bennett of Scarborough was the champion in the freehand division at the World Yo-Yo Contest. The event was held in Orlando, Fla. from Aug. 10 to 12.
• The campaign for a YMCA in Scarborough officially ended. The Cumberland County YMCA announced that it was “terminating its campaign to raise money for a new branch in Scarborough.” The major reason given for the decision was that only $1 million had been pledged toward a fundraising goal of $9 million for a facility.
• Public safety officials in Scarborough responded to not one, but two major accidents in town on the same day. The first crash occurred at approximately 6:30 a.m. when a bus carrying the University of Southern Maine cross-country team was hit by a Dodge Stratus at the intersection of Saco Street and Gorham Road. Later that same day, at approximately 3:20 p.m., public safety officials were called to the scene of a motor vehicle accident on Beech Ridge Road near its intersection with Dresser Road. Three vehicles were involved and several people were trapped in their vehicles. One of the drivers died at the scene, while another was transported to the hospital.
• A revamping of a point of access to the Spurwink River in the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge caused frustration among local residents who said they would no longer be able to back their boat trailers down to the water. According to the refuge manager, canoes and kayaks are welcome at the site beside the Route 77 bridge, but it had been against refuge rules to back a boat into the water there for more than ten years.
• After a seven-month study, the Scarborough Senior Advisory Committee issued a report recommending the town hire a senior programming coordinator, expand services available to seniors and eventually create a senior center.
October
• The Leader takes a look back at the storm that hit on October 20, 1996. Within a matter of hours on Oct. 20 and 21 of that year, Scarborough received more than 15 inches of rain. The storm caused a great amount of damage and left a trail of destruction in its wake.
• For the 20th year, students at Scarborough Middle School came together on the Columbus Day holiday to raise money for AIDS. The Ed Wimert Memorial Bike/Walk for AIDS has raised more than $120,000 for HIV and AIDS programming in Maine. Scarborough Middle School and the Frannie Peabody Center, which is located in Portland and provides services to clients living with HIV and AIDS, have partnered each year of the event’s existence.
• The so-called “senior center challenge” put forth by Town Councilor Jeff Messer led to a heated debate and a tie vote at the Oct. 4 Town Council meeting. Messer’s proposal, which was formulated in response to the report issued by the Senior Advisory Committee, involved raising $400,000 in private donations and $400,000 in in-kind donations to supplement a $400,000 bond that the council would authorize for the construction of a new senior center.
• Cabela’s, which was waiting for a ruling on a tax issue from the Maine Revenue Service before committing to a Maine location, withdrew its request for the ruling.
• The Scarborough High School boys and girls cross country teams capture the Western Maine Class A title. The boys went on to win the state Class A title.
November
• In the November election, voters in Scarborough rejected bonds that would pay for the construction of an addition to Scarborough Middle School and the construction of a new Wentworth Intermediate School. Lynn Bromley and Phil Bartlett were re-elected as state senators and John McDonough and Peggy Pendleton were chosen as state representatives. Carol Rancourt and Richard Sullivan were voted to the Town Council. In uncontested races, Ronald Ahlquist was elected to the Town Council and three residents were voted to the Scarborough School Board.
• Recounts are done in both of the races for state representative in Scarborough. The recounts both produce the same results – Peggy Pendleton was declared the winner over Sylvia Most and Leo Knighton Tallarico and John McDonough was named as the winner over Shawn Babine.
• Mike Beaudoin of Scarborough was named as the winner of the Snickers “Satisfaction Sing-Off Contest” and was awarded the $25,000 top prize. The contest asked participants to write a jingle for Snickers and make a music video to post online.
• Scarborough High School’s boys soccer team loses to Bangor in the state Class A final, while the girls soccer team comes up short to Gorham in the Western Maine Class A regional final.
December
• Jim Durant, 67, a Scarborough resident and a member of the Scarborough VIPS (Volunteers in Police Service), was hit by a vehicle while directing traffic at the intersection of Gorham Road and Running Hill Road. He died from his injuries a day after the incident.
• The search continued for the man who robbed the Maine Bank & Trust branch in Scarborough. Authorities believed that the incident was related to similar crimes committed in Maine and in other states. At approximately 11 a.m. on Nov. 28, a man entered the Maine Bank & Trust branch at 439 Route One, approached the counter, showed a gun, told everyone to put up their hands and demanded money. He then jumped behind the counter, went through drawers and asked for money from the vault. He stuffed the money in a duffle bag and then fled from the scene.
• Scarborough’s updated comprehensive plan got a nod of approval from the state when the Maine State Planning Office announced that it had found the plan to be consistent with the Maine Planning and Land Use Regulation Act. The planning office and several other state agencies provided the town with a number of suggestions, but had mostly positive comments.
By Lucas Knowles
Editor
Another year has passed in Scarborough and the Leader was there, covering what was happening in the town.
Here is a look at some of the stories that were published in the Leader during the past year.
January
• Ellen Ross, a teacher who recently retired from working at Scarborough High School, was voted as the Leader’s Great Person Award winner for 2005.
• A draft of the future land use plan, which is considered to be the guiding document for how the town will grow in years to come, was available for the public to view during the comprehensive plan update process.
• Darlene Curley, a Republican who had represented Scarborough as a member of the Maine House for two terms, announced her intentions to run for Maine’s First District U.S. Congress seat.
• The Scarborough Land Conservation Trust announced its plans to submit a request for proposals for tenants of the Meserve Farm property. John Bliss and Stacy Brenner, who had previously been the caretakers at a farm property in Cape Elizabeth, were eventually chosen to be the primary tenants of the property.
February
• A court ruled that a 16-year old girl from Scarborough was not criminally responsible for an incident that occurred the year before that left her and another young woman, who was 20 years old at the time, injured from stab wounds. A suicide pact was alleged at the time of the incident, but the younger of the two women was eventually charged with elevated aggravated assault and attempted murder.
• After Kristi Stanley got word from a second large company that a potential lawsuit could be brewing over homemade products her company had made, she decided to close down her business and move on to other pursuits. Her line of homemade baby products, called Giggles and Grins, was alleged to be too close to the name of a Gerber line of baby hygiene products called Grins & Giggles. In addition, one of Stanley’s clients had told her she had been contacted by the company Taggies and was told that selling Tag Alongs, made by Stanley’s company, made her as liable for patent infringement.
• Mike Shaw, director of Scarborough Public Works, reported to the Town Council on automated solid waste collection bids and other recycling options. The council eventually gave its approval to starting automated curbside waste and recycling collection in Scarborough. The service will begin sometime this spring.
• A study that was completed about the possibility of consolidating dispatch services from Scarborough, Cape Elizabeth and South Portland. The study recommended the three communities consolidate services on their own instead of joining a county-wide dispatch consolidation.
March
• The Scarborough Public Library started its fundraising campaign to supplement the $6.9 million renovation referendum proposed for the June 13 ballot in town. The library’s Board of Trustees committed to raise $1.5 million toward the renovation and expansion project.
• The Scarborough High School boys hockey team made it to the Western Maine Class A regional title game and lost a heartbreaker to Cheverus in double overtime.
• The Scarborough High School academic decathlon team won its 17th state title.
• Jo Anne Sizemore, principal at Scarborough Middle School, was named Maine’s 2006 Middle Level Principal of the Year.
• Plans to downsize and subdivide the Black Point Inn property were first discussed before the Scarborough’s Planning Board. BPI Partners LLC, a group of local investors who own the inn, filed plans with the town that proposed to reduce the size of the inn from 84 rooms to 25, demolish and rebuild a smaller pool and divide portions of the property into lots for sale. The Planning Board eventually gave the go-ahead for improvements to begin.
April
• Ian Brauner, a native of New Orleans, talked to the Leader about relocating to Maine soon after hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. A graduate student at Health Sciences Center at Lousiana State University before the disaster, Brauner found work at the Maine Medical Center Research Institute once moving to Maine.
• Members of the public got their first chance to see the new comprehensive plan for Scarborough, in a draft form on the town’s Web site. The comprehensive plan is eventually adopted by the Town Council and an implementation committee is named.
• Helena Diodati, 18 and a senior at Scarborough High School, was able to rebound from a serious injury and competed in the USA Gymnastics Junior Olympic Women’s National Championships in Oklahoma City, Okla. She qualified for the nationals after finishing the top seven all-around in the regional competition. Helena also placed first in the Maine state gymnastics competition.
• Construction crews began work on a new right turn lane for the Dunstan intersection, where Pine Point Road, Route One and Broadturn Road meet.
May
• David Doyle, who had worked as assistant superintendent of schools in Scarborough for a number of years, was chosen to replace outgoing superintendent Bill Michaud. Andrew Dolloff, who had been working as the principal at Scarborough High School, was hired to replace Doyle as assistant superintendent.
• At a workshop, members of the Town Council were told that Old Orchard Beach had expressed interest in having Scarborough take on its public safety dispatching duties.
• The Scarborough Family YMCA acquired a new parcel of property located along Route One between Tim Horton’s and the Big 20 bowling alley. The YMCA was originally expected to be built on a piece of property behind the Bessey School in the Oak Hill area of town. Those plans were abandoned after YMCA officials said the property posed too many challenges to build on.
• Stephanie Smith of Scarborough made an appearance on the television quiz show Jeopardy!.
June
• The newest off-road portion of the Eastern Trail in Scarborough opened and people were led on a rain-soaked tour. The portion of trail is located on the Hillcrest Retirement Community property, which is owned by the Desfosses family. As part of a contract zoning agreement, the Desfosses family granted an easement that allowed an off-road portion of the Eastern Trail to be constructed.
• Carrlyn Bathe, a senior at Scarborough High School, was named as the winner of “Maine Model 2,” the second version of a competition organized by WPME, the local UPN affiliate.
• The Scarborough boys and girls lacrosse teams both win state Class A titles. In the state finals, the boys were victorious over Lewiston, while the girls won against Brunswick.
• Scarborough Community Services broke ground on its turf field project. The field was installed at the Oak Hill Athletic Complex. The Scarborough Town Council voted the previous month to include $400,000 for the turf field in the next fiscal year’s budget.
• Money for the Scarborough Public Library renovation/expansion project is rejected by voters at the polls.
July
• Scarborough’s Town Council and Planning Board received their first look at a development that was proposed to cover several parcels in the Haigis Parkway business development district. A contract zone was submitted to the town on behalf of New England Expedition-Scarborough LLC. The materials accompanying the contract zone application included a plan for seven lots of Haigis Parkway to be included in a development called The Gateway at Scarborough. The development’s anchor tenant was proposed to be Cabela’s, an outdoors store chain based in the Midwest.
• A new United States Postal Service distribution and processing center for southern Maine opened in Scarborough. The Southern Maine Processing and Distribution Center is housed in a building covering 429,000 square feet and was constructed at a site in the Walter C. Nielsen Business Park, which is located near the Scarborough/South Portland line off Mussey Road in Scarborough.
• Donna Schlieper of Scarborough prepares for her appearance in the Miss Teen USA pageant in California. Schlieper, a student at Scarborough High School, was the winner of the Miss Maine Teen USA Pageant and qualified for the national event as a result.
• Actor Kiefer Sutherland stopped by for a visit to Scarborough to promote his new music label’s first band, drawing hundreds to the Bull Moose store on Sunday afternoon.
August
• Scarborough Village Square, the new development plan for the vacant Orion Center, received its final approval from the town. The anchor tenant for the development was not revealed to those on the Planning Board. The Orion Center is a vacant group of buildings located off Route One near its intersection with Sawyer Road. The complex was recently home to a few light industrial companies and, at one time, housed a Mammoth Mart.
• A memorandum from Scarborough Schools Facilities Manager Norm Justice raising questions about the synthetic turf project in the athletic complex near Oak Hill was circulated. The memo drew responses from the turf company’s owner and town officials taking issue with Justice’s motives and questions. Justice later clarified his previous statements, saying his questions were answered when the town signed off on the project.
• “Finding Amy: A True Story of Murder in Maine” was published by the University Press of New England and was released in 2006. Kate Clark Flora, former assistant attorney general for the state of Maine and a mystery novelist, collaborated with Captain Joseph Joseph Loughlin of the Portland Police Department on the book, which tells the story of the murder of 25-year old Amy St. Laurent. The search for St. Laurent ended in Scarborough.
• The town hired a consulting company to receive feedback from residents concerned about the construction of a park off the Black Point Road. The meetings came after residents expressed frustration about plans for the park and not being given a voice in the planning process.
September
• Dana Bennett of Scarborough was the champion in the freehand division at the World Yo-Yo Contest. The event was held in Orlando, Fla. from Aug. 10 to 12.
• The campaign for a YMCA in Scarborough officially ended. The Cumberland County YMCA announced that it was “terminating its campaign to raise money for a new branch in Scarborough.” The major reason given for the decision was that only $1 million had been pledged toward a fundraising goal of $9 million for a facility.
• Public safety officials in Scarborough responded to not one, but two major accidents in town on the same day. The first crash occurred at approximately 6:30 a.m. when a bus carrying the University of Southern Maine cross-country team was hit by a Dodge Stratus at the intersection of Saco Street and Gorham Road. Later that same day, at approximately 3:20 p.m., public safety officials were called to the scene of a motor vehicle accident on Beech Ridge Road near its intersection with Dresser Road. Three vehicles were involved and several people were trapped in their vehicles. One of the drivers died at the scene, while another was transported to the hospital.
• A revamping of a point of access to the Spurwink River in the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge caused frustration among local residents who said they would no longer be able to back their boat trailers down to the water. According to the refuge manager, canoes and kayaks are welcome at the site beside the Route 77 bridge, but it had been against refuge rules to back a boat into the water there for more than ten years.
• After a seven-month study, the Scarborough Senior Advisory Committee issued a report recommending the town hire a senior programming coordinator, expand services available to seniors and eventually create a senior center.
October
• The Leader takes a look back at the storm that hit on October 20, 1996. Within a matter of hours on Oct. 20 and 21 of that year, Scarborough received more than 15 inches of rain. The storm caused a great amount of damage and left a trail of destruction in its wake.
• For the 20th year, students at Scarborough Middle School came together on the Columbus Day holiday to raise money for AIDS. The Ed Wimert Memorial Bike/Walk for AIDS has raised more than $120,000 for HIV and AIDS programming in Maine. Scarborough Middle School and the Frannie Peabody Center, which is located in Portland and provides services to clients living with HIV and AIDS, have partnered each year of the event’s existence.
• The so-called “senior center challenge” put forth by Town Councilor Jeff Messer led to a heated debate and a tie vote at the Oct. 4 Town Council meeting. Messer’s proposal, which was formulated in response to the report issued by the Senior Advisory Committee, involved raising $400,000 in private donations and $400,000 in in-kind donations to supplement a $400,000 bond that the council would authorize for the construction of a new senior center.
• Cabela’s, which was waiting for a ruling on a tax issue from the Maine Revenue Service before committing to a Maine location, withdrew its request for the ruling.
• The Scarborough High School boys and girls cross country teams capture the Western Maine Class A title. The boys went on to win the state Class A title.
November
• In the November election, voters in Scarborough rejected bonds that would pay for the construction of an addition to Scarborough Middle School and the construction of a new Wentworth Intermediate School. Lynn Bromley and Phil Bartlett were re-elected as state senators and John McDonough and Peggy Pendleton were chosen as state representatives. Carol Rancourt and Richard Sullivan were voted to the Town Council. In uncontested races, Ronald Ahlquist was elected to the Town Council and three residents were voted to the Scarborough School Board.
• Recounts are done in both of the races for state representative in Scarborough. The recounts both produce the same results – Peggy Pendleton was declared the winner over Sylvia Most and Leo Knighton Tallarico and John McDonough was named as the winner over Shawn Babine.
• Mike Beaudoin of Scarborough was named as the winner of the Snickers “Satisfaction Sing-Off Contest” and was awarded the $25,000 top prize. The contest asked participants to write a jingle for Snickers and make a music video to post online.
• Scarborough High School’s boys soccer team loses to Bangor in the state Class A final, while the girls soccer team comes up short to Gorham in the Western Maine Class A regional final.
December
• Jim Durant, 67, a Scarborough resident and a member of the Scarborough VIPS (Volunteers in Police Service), was hit by a vehicle while directing traffic at the intersection of Gorham Road and Running Hill Road. He died from his injuries a day after the incident.
• The search continued for the man who robbed the Maine Bank & Trust branch in Scarborough. Authorities believed that the incident was related to similar crimes committed in Maine and in other states. At approximately 11 a.m. on Nov. 28, a man entered the Maine Bank & Trust branch at 439 Route One, approached the counter, showed a gun, told everyone to put up their hands and demanded money. He then jumped behind the counter, went through drawers and asked for money from the vault. He stuffed the money in a duffle bag and then fled from the scene.
• Scarborough’s updated comprehensive plan got a nod of approval from the state when the Maine State Planning Office announced that it had found the plan to be consistent with the Maine Planning and Land Use Regulation Act. The planning office and several other state agencies provided the town with a number of suggestions, but had mostly positive comments.
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