The go-to gang: PSC's dramaturgy and education interns

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Perhaps you actually read the programs when you go to the theater. Maybe you even read a bulletin board in the lobby, with a little more information on the play, the playwright, and the setting or topics, and you appreciate the historical authenticity of the performance. At Portland Stage Company, those are wonderful snacks for the public brain, but there is real meat around too: Hanging next to the bulletin board at PSC is a resource guide, and there are copies available for $5 from the box office, the concession stand, or by subscription.

They include information on the history of the play, detailed research and write-ups on themes in the play — even ones just barely touched on or alluded to. The guide is the result of exhaustive work, online, in libraries and archives, and in interviews with people who know a lot more about specific topics than the rest of us (like nuclear physics, say, for Copenhagen).

The elves who put together all this information, used by teachers and students, as well as both serious and casual theatergoers, work in an office they call " the Nerdery, " home to PSC’s five education and dramaturgy interns and their fearless leader, intern alumna Lindsay Cummings. When it comes to learning more about anything that’s in the script, this group is the go-to gang.

Set designers want to know about period architecture, actors want to know what has happened to their characters before the play’s action begins, directors need help planning loosely scripted dance performances, or audiences just ask the question: " What’s it about? " For all of those and more, the answers come from the interns.

Three of them, James Kittredge, Corey Atkins, and Alicia Reid, are the directing and dramaturgy interns, working closely with the directors of each show at PSC. They take turns being the primary dramaturg and learning about directing by watching the rehearsals. It’s a fun job, but a lot of work. A dramaturg basically performs the role of " a surrogate audience member in the rehearsal process, " says Kittredge, giving feedback on what’s working and what’s not.

But when a question comes up, it’s their time to shine. The dramaturg’s job, based on an 18th-century German theater reviewer, is also described as " applied theater history and criticism, " Cummings says.

Reid is working closely with director Ron OJ Parson on Fences, now running at PSC. One character performs a spiritual atavistic dance in a closing scene, and neither Parson nor the actor, Charles Michael Moore, knew really what to do. They had an idea of what they wanted — incorporating elements of African and Native American dance traditions — but didn’t know how to get there. So they turned to Reid. She went to the Center for Cultural Exchange to look at videos of different dances, and talk to dancers in the Portland area.

She also chanced to walk past the doors of MECA one day not long ago and see that Oscar Mokeme, of the Museum of African Tribal Art, was performing. She introduced herself and talked to him, too, before going back to the theater to talk with Parson and Moore about what the dance should look like.

The dramaturg also gets to work with the director to make sure all of the actors know the basic situation of the time and place in which the play occurs, what Atkins called " the solid framework that a play is built around. "

For Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, earlier this season, Kittredge had to research two different time periods, as well as do historical and ethnographical work, particularly learning about a 19th-century system of sending messages by the way a woman holds and uses her fan. " I always like learning new things, " Kittredge says. " It’s really neat to influence the production process. "

In addition to helping out their colleagues, R.J. McComish and Jennie Wurtz do different forms of research. McComish helps pick the new scripts that PSC receives, including the Clauder competition entries. Immersed in new theater writing, he keeps track of what’s come in that really sings, and what could use some work. From this vantage point, he helps plot the direction of PSC’s performances into future seasons, and he calls the job a " scarily perfect " fit.

Wurtz, for her part, puts together the resource guides, the program insert material, the bulletin boards, information for press releases and grant requests, and anything else that allows readers " to have a context for what’s happening " on stage, she says. It’s a job she loves — " you don’t ever get bored " — and has helped hone her research and writing skills.

" Theater doesn’t end when the lights go down, " says Wurtz. It ends when the experience stops, when people stop thinking about it.

Column: Live in Maine? Pay me

Published in the Current and the American Journal

I’m 29 years old, I hold a master’s degree, and I live in Maine. The state should pay me to stay here.

In November 2001, the State Planning Office issued its “30 and 1000” report, saying that the two keys to improving and stabilizing Maine’s economy, income level and state tax revenue are having 30 percent of adults over age 25 with a four-year degree, and spending $1,000 per worker on research and development into new products and possibilities.

Evan Richert, who was director of the SPO when that report came out, spoke in Cape Elizabeth recently and continued his push toward that goal.

In terms of the 30 percent goal, he said about 23 or 24 percent of adults in Maine now have four-year degrees, up from 19 percent in 2001.

As for research and development money, it can be hard to come by in a state with a big budget crunch. The Maine Technology Institute, which provides seed money for R&D, is losing 10 percent of its funding under Gov. John Baldacci’s proposed spending for 2004-2005.

There is a lot of talk, but little action yet, about spending a few million to retool the state’s technical colleges into community colleges, and the UMaine system is also looking for money to spend on R&D, even as its budget belt tightens.

But there is an easy way to move closer to the “30” benchmark: Help the Mainers who already have four-year degrees.

We’re already looking to other states for opportunities, especially those of us who are young. It’s cheaper to live in other states, and incomes are higher too.

Why should we stay in Maine, and why should people move here from elsewhere, when the cost of living is substantially similar, wages are much lower and there are fewer good jobs?

I would like to feel that the state recognizes my presence here as contributing to its economic well-being both now and in the future. Right now, I feel unappreciated by the state that is my home.

The simple solution is money, but how do you allocate it fairly?

One way would be through the state income tax. The state and individuals already use the income tax to exchange money. If I paid too much, the state gives it back; if I didn’t, I write the state a check.

Maine should add a box to the income tax form: “Check here if you are over the age of 25 and have a four-year degree.” Checking that box would permit a taxpayer to add, say, $500 to the standard deduction amount. For single filers, that would bump the amount of money exempt from taxes up from $7,550 to $8,050.

Married filers would go up from $6,775 to $7,275 per person. If the state wanted to, it could require a photocopy of a college transcript be filed with the return – most of us have one somewhere, and I’d find it if it meant money in my pocket.

The tax rate on taxable earnings after the first $16,950 is 8.5 percent. By offering an increase in the standard deduction, the state would be losing in tax revenue 8.5 percent of that $500, per person with a degree, or $42.50 a head.

If one-fourth of the 1,275,000 people in Maine have a degree, there are just under 320,000 of us. It’s a rough estimate, but that would cost $13.6 million in lost revenue for the state. That’s far less than the $43 million being allocated for R&D, and less than the $50 million to assist students in paying for higher education. It would be about 1 percent of what the state now collect in income tax – just over $1 billion – and less than 0.2 percent of what the state spends.

That $42.50 wouldn’t hurt the state budget much, or permit me to buy a lot, but it would say Maine’s government was thinking about me and valued my presence here. If Maine is trying to up the number of folks with college degrees, it should look at keeping what it has as a starting point.

White picket Fences: Dreams -- broken and fulfilled -- not just for Anglo homes

Published in the Portland Phoenix

When plays are in previews, in a sense they’re still under construction, but finished enough to let people take a tour and see how it goes. After some preview performances at Portland Stage — usually the Wednesday before opening night — the audience gets to weigh in, asking and answering questions about the play and its performance, to help the director better understand what more needs to be done.

Performing August Wilson’s FENCES, with its all-black cast, before a Maine audience is an act of faith in itself, and allowing people to talk to the director about it afterwards is courageous. FENCES is not a play about race per se, but more about, as the New York Times series was titled, how race is lived in America.

It’s a piece of August Wilson’s 10-play cycle about each decade in the 20th century, and looks at the life of a 1950s black man who was one of the best Negro League baseball players ever, but who was left behind as black baseball fans went to watch the slowly integrating major leagues. So Troy Maxson (Cedric Young) becomes a garbageman to provide for his wife and family.

But Troy and his family situation are more complicated than that. An ex-con with a wandering eye, Troy wants to be settled down, and fights for control of his family and the world immediately around him. A small victory comes when he asks his boss why the white men get to drive and the black men have to haul the garbage cans: Troy gets the driving job but finds it lonely. His family longs for his love and attention, but his mind is often elsewhere, searching for peace.

At the director’s talkback session after the play, about a dozen members of the all-white audience stuck around to talk to Ron OJ Parson, a friend of August Wilson, and whom Wilson specifically asked to direct this play in Portland. Also present was PSC artistic director Anita Stewart.

Parson asked about the general feeling people had of the play, and the audience members talked less about race than humanity. Parson himself likened the play to the movie Gangs of New York, which taught him that white people could be prejudiced against other whites, not just blacks.

Language and history also come into this play. Black-to-black vernacular, both in the 1950s and today, includes the word " nigger " used in the way whites — and blacks, too — might say " man " or " dude. " And though the audience remarked upon it, none of them could bring themselves to utter the word, even in an discussion of its artistic value. It remains a word that has political power and a racial charge many want to avoid.

Troy’s story illustrates the personal impacts of other major historical trends, though they may be ones white Maine teachers don’t touch in school — Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball, but the change destroyed the Negro League, where stars like Robinson, Satchel Paige, and Hank Aaron had honed their talents. Other Negro League standouts, like Troy in this play, were left behind and resentful. To the day he died, Troy kept a baseball bat outside and a batting-practice ball tied to a tree, to ease his tension and bring him back to his ball-playing days.

The audience talked with Parson and Stewart about various elements in the play, and how they identified with some of the emotions and some of the characters in Wilson’s script. " Theater to me is like a painting, " Parson said. " Everyone is going to see something different. "

But none of them remarked upon the one major feature of the set that even regular PSC fans rarely see: The back of the actual theater space is visible to the audience this time, bricks and all.

Fences
Written by August Wilson. Directed by Ron OJ Parson. With A.C. Smith, Cedric Young, Mimi Ayers, Clifton Williams, Charles Michael Moore, and Robert Lee Taylor. At Portland Stage Company through May 4. Call (207) 774-0465.

BACKSTAGE

• Be sure to get a glimpse of some of Maine’s newest theater work at Portland Stage’s Little Festival of the Unexpected April 23 to 26, including work by John Cariani and Laura Shaine Cunningham, as well as Women and the Sea by Shelly Berc.

• The " best friend of the St. Lawrence, " Bob Lipps, has lived on Munjoy Hill all his life and his 50th birthday is April 25. The party starts at 7 p.m., and costs $10, which will be donated on Bob’s behalf.

• Stacy Begin, managing director of the Children’s Theatre of Maine, has written Les Acadiens, based in part on her own Franco-American upbringing. It opens May 9 and explores the life of a 17-year-old boy in 1942 Waterville.

• Check out local theater geniuses Craig Bowden and J.P. Guimont and the excellent theater thoroughbreds at Mad Horse Theatre Company’s production of Suburban Motel, a comedy about four different events in the same seedy motel room, starting May 8 at Portland Performing Arts Center’s Studio Theater.

• Sharpen those pencils: Cocheco’s Michael Tobin is accepting original plays throughout 2003 for jurying and performance next March.

• BlueSky Theater is a new nonprofit company formed to encourage Seacoast youth and adults to create theater together. Call Linda Finkle at (603) 926-0700.

• A tip o’ Shylock’s hat to Merrill Bank for supporting the Penobscot Theatre Company/Maine Shakespeare Festival’s Shakespeare-in-schools program. If you want them to come to your school, call (207) 947-6618.

Fake drunk driving crash raises concerns, awareness By Kate Irish Collins Staff Writer It’s a weekend night in Scarborough. A group of three freshmen girls are making plans to hang out together and watch a movie. One of the friends says she has been invited to go to a party by a senior boy she’s had a crush on all year. Cut to the party where a group of kids are smoking pot and drinking. Beth, the freshman girl, and Andy, the senior boy, sneak off together and go to an upstairs bedroom. This is the scenario that was enacted by a group of high school students at a Scarborough High School teen forum held Tuesday. The forum was designed to make parents and members of the community aware of risky teen behaviors from drinking to smoking marijuana to casual sex. “These things are happening in Scarborough every weekend,” kids in the theater troupe told parents. More than 50 attended the forum and principal Andrew Dolloff and other organizers said they were thrilled to see so Teens talk about drug use and sex By Rich Obrey Staff Writer It’s the calm between the storm in Cape Elizabeth, as boys basketball coach Jim Ray prepares to appeal his dismissal before the school board. Ray, a teacher at the high school for 18 years and head coach of the varsity team since 1994, was fired as coach at the end of March. High School Principal Jeff Shedd evaluated Ray and did not recommend to school Superintendent Tom Forcella that Ray be rehired – a decision Forcella accepted. Bruce Smith, the attorney for the board, said Wednesday morning he was scheduled to meet with members in executive session later in the day to discuss the case. “After the meeting we may have a better idea of what’s going to happen and when,” he said. Representing Ray during his appeal will be longtime Cape resident Gerald F. Petruccelli, an attorney with a practice in Portland, who also works as adjunct professor at the University of Maine Law School. Asked what would be the crux of Ray’s appeal, Petruccelli said, “In general terms, we think this decision (to fire Ray) was wrong. We also think that it was the result of a process which I will suggest in a number of respects was not as well-designed or operated as it should have been.” “The process” has been at the center of the controversy ever since most Cape residents first learned of Ray’s firing by reading a help wanted ad for a new coach in the Maine Sunday Telegram. “Budgets” see page 10 “Crash” see page 10 Margaret Palmer focuses on her juggling skills at last week’s Gym Dandies community performance. Staff photo by Rich Obrey The fake accident scene. Staff photo by Jeff Inglis “Teens” see page 10 Supt. Tom Forcella. Cape coach appeals firing as super explains actions “Forcella”

Published in the Current

Despite last-minute “concessions” required by adults nervous about causing unnecessary anxiety, a fake drunk-driving car crash that “killed” two kids and “injured” five in Cape Elizabeth made its point.

“At first it was going to be a surprise,” said Katie Tammaro, one of the student organizers and an accident victim. They had approval and assistance from town and school officials.

“Under a week left, that was changed on us,” said another student organizer, Alex Weaver.

In a meeting with high school Principal Jeff Shedd, it became clear that an explanatory letter would have to go home with all students in advance. “It had been a surprise everywhere else” the program was conducted, including Deering High School, Old Town and Wells, Weaver said.

A local lawyer had also called the Cape Coalition – the group of parents and students organized in town to address substance abuse who organized last week’s crash – to express concern that a surprise event would cause “unnecessary trauma or unnecessary anxiety.”

Weaver said they had expected hurdles and challenges, but were not prepared for feedback on the event two days before it happened, before people had a
chance to see it unfold.

In the end, advance notice may not have made much difference. “It worked anyways, and we’ll never know,” said Tammaro. “People were still captured and were very emotional,” Weaver said.

At the accident scene
One student, who asked that her name not be used, was in tears.

“There’s so many kids that do this (drink and drive) and don’t even think about it,” she said.

She had known about the event beforehand, but was unexpectedly overcome by emotions, memories and fear. “I thought I’d be fine with coming up
here” to see the accident, she said through her tears. “This really affects you.”

“It’s so scary,” she said. “People just don’t think that this sort of thing can happen. They think Cape is small – they can make it home” after being out drinking.

Superintendent Tom Forcella was at the crash scene. “I’m hoping the kids get the message,” he said. “Not drinking, versus not drinking and driving. A designated driver is not enough.”

“It was scary. I felt it was real,” said Tammaro, who had been inside one of the cars. She was showered with glass, but not injured, when rescue workers cut the roof off the car she was in.

During the school day, to drive home the point that every 15 minutes a person in the U.S. dies in an alcohol-related accident, student volunteers were pulled out of class, handed a tag with a time of death and given a black shirt to wear. Now considered “dead,” the student was not supposed to talk all day.

At lunch, however, a table filled with black-shirted people played blackjack.

After school, the “dead” students and their parents wrote letters to each other to describe their feelings. The letters began, “Today I died. I never got the chance to tell you…”

The morning after
At a school-wide assembly the following morning, the two students who had “died” in the accident, and their parents, read their letters aloud.

Many seniors were not there to hear. Attendance was not mandatory, but the lack of seniors didn’t worry Tammaro, as long as the younger students were there.

“Those are the people we’re going to affect the most,” she said.

Weaver said he had feared more would skip the assembly. “There were a lot of naysayers,” he said. “When it actually came (to the event), a lot of those same people were there.”

Derek Roy told his parents, “Of all the thankless things you have done for me over the years, not a single one went unnoticed.”

His mother said, “We’re relieved that we told you that we love you because yesterday morning was the last time that we saw you.”

Chris Owens, who had played the part of drunk driver in the accident, read his letter. “Many of us have chosen to drink,” he said. This time was different: “My friend is dead.” He backed away from criticizing teen drinking, saying “I don’t want to intrude on your lifestyle,” but asked students not to drink and drive.

Then Emily McConnell got up to speak, to tell Cape students about her own experience, when her brother Nathaniel and two other teens were killed when their friend, driving drunk, flipped a car off Tukey’s Bridge in January 2002.

“I woke up on the morning of Jan. 13 to hear my mother screaming, ‘Nathaniel and Crystal are dead. Nathaniel and Crystal are dead.’”

“At 18 years old I had to help write my brother’s obituary,” she said. At the funeral home, “I tried to stroke his cheek, but it was cold.”

“Now we have two lives,” she told the audience. “The one before the accident and the one we are left with. Nathaniel and Crystal are dead.”

Weaver closed the meeting. “Cape Elizabeth has had a tragic history” with its youth and substance abuse. “Many people have learned to expect a tragedy like this every couple of years.”

A number of students have told Tammaro the program made them think about the consequences of their actions, not just for themselves, but for others.

The assembly hit home. “The place was dead silent the whole time (McConnell) was talking,” Weaver said.

Coalition organizer Bob Flynn said parents have told him they have been talking about the issues with their kids, and some are getting more involved with the Cape Coalition as well.

“We’d much rather it be something like this than have it be an actual tragedy,” Weaver said.

Signs of the times: Theater painter Roland Borduas, 1908-2003

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Roland Borduas, born in Biddeford in 1908, spent summers at his father’s cottage in OOB, making signs for local businesses. He didn’t know then that he would end up painting show cards and posters for theater and movie houses in New York and in Maine. He describes his work simply: " I used to paint posters in Old Orchard Beach, " he said.

One man told him he should head to New York because he was such a good artist. " My father didn’t want me to go to New York. I was 20 years old and I’d never left home, " Borduas said. A friend who lived in the city assured Borduas’s father that the young man would get to church every Sunday, so his dad relented. (He fulfilled his promise, too — Borduas was involved in church activities for his whole life.)

Borduas was close to show business from the get-go: His friend was an acrobat in one of the troupes set up by then–Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt to promote fitness among the men on the police force. And his friend’s wife was a Tiller Girl, one of the predecessors of the Rockettes.

Shortly after arriving in the city, he picked up a copy of the New York World to check out the help-wanted section. " There was an ad in there on a Sunday for a banner man for a theater, " Borduas remembers. His friends told him not to apply because the market was tight; they didn’t want Borduas to get discouraged. He went anyway, and had to make a sample poster. On his application he said he was from OOB, figuring folks might know that town better than Biddeford.

" Wednesday, I got a call. I had the job, " he said. After a week of work, his boss, Joseph Jowett, asked if he ever went fishing or hunting. As it turned out, Jowett loved Maine and had been several times to hunt and fish in the state’s wilderness, and had hired the young artist as much for his talent as for his connections to the Pine Tree State.

The job was hard. Much of the work was promoting movies, and turnaround times were fast. " If they said ‘Charlie Chaplin,’ I had to remember the name of the picture he was in, " as well as whether it was sound or silent. " I was young and I had a good memory then, " said Borduas.

He worked around the New York area for several years, painting for theaters, movie houses, and businesses, until a doctor told him to go " somewhere with a lake " to relax for a month. Borduas went home to Old Orchard instead, and kept working. The man who owned the Palace Ballroom hired him to promote events there. " I got to meet a lot of the big orchestras, " Borduas said, and painted portraits of their leaders and stars.

He also worked at the Ogunquit Playhouse, and remembers that when Ethel Barrymore came to do a show, " she came down one Saturday and ordered everyone out of the theater so she could rehearse. " It made his job a bit harder: " I had to make the poster that day on the hood of an automobile, " he said.

He was about ready to head back to New York when the State Theatre opened in Portland. The regional manager, Arthur Morrow, hired him to do the posters. He ended up working for the Strand, the Jefferson, the Empire, and the Maine Theater as well.

To keep his income up, Borduas also " made cards " for local businesses. He opened his own shop and kept trying new things. " I was the first one to do silk-screen work in Maine, " he said. He also made the first airplane banner in the state.

He continued to paint for theater and music halls for years, including the Lycaeum Theater on Stevens Avenue. " I used to do the stage scenery when they’d have a play, " Borduas said. He made signs for a play in Biddeford, too, and knew the actors. " I never thought that guy would play a duke, " he said of one old friend who made it up on stage. He loved watching theater, and used to sit through auditions to see how different people did.

And even after he retired, he kept painting. He took watercolor lessons with local painter Sarah Knock and painted over 50 scenes of the homes of his family and friends, to give them as gifts. But he was a sign-maker, not a showman. " I did a lot of work for orchestras and I never learned how to dance, " he said.

Author’s note: Roland Borduas died March 2, less than two weeks after the interview for this story was conducted. His work can still be seen in St. Patrick’s Church in Portland.

Opinion: Live in Maine? Pay me

Published in the Current

I’m 29 years old, I hold a master’s degree, and I live in Maine. The state should pay me to stay here. In November 2001, the State Planning Office issued its “30 and 1000” report, saying that the two keys to improving and stabilizing Maine’s economy, income level and state tax revenue are having 30 percent of adults over age 25 with a four-year degree, and spending$1,000 per worker on research and development into new products and possibilities.

Evan Richert, who was director of the SPO when that report came out, spoke in Cape Elizabeth recently and continued his push toward that goal.

In terms of the 30 percent goal, he said about 23 or 24 percent of adults in Maine now have four-year degrees, up from 19 percent in 2001.

As for research and development money, it can be hard to come by in a state with a big budget crunch. The Maine Technology Institute, which provides seed money for R&D, is losing 10 percent of its funding under Gov. John Baldacci’s proposed spending for 2004-2005.

There is a lot of talk, but little action yet, about spending a few million to retool the state’s technical colleges into community colleges, and the UMaine system is also looking for money to spend on R&D, even as its budget belt tightens.

But there is an easy way to move closer to the “30” benchmark: Help the Mainers who already have four-year degrees. We’re already looking to other states for opportunities, especially those of us who are young. It’s cheaper to live in other states, and incomes are higher too.

Why should we stay in Maine, and why should people move here from elsewhere, when the cost of living is substantially similar, wages are much lower and there are fewer good jobs?

I would like to feel that the state recognizes my presence here as contributing to its economic well-being both now and in the future. Right now, I feel unappreciated by the state that is my home.

The simple solution is money, but how do you allocate it fairly?

One way would be through the state income tax. The state and individuals already use the income tax to exchange money. If I paid too much, the state gives it back; if I didn’t, I write the state a check.

Maine should add a box to the income tax form: “Check here if you are over the age of 25 and have a four-year degree.” Checking that box would permit a taxpayer to add, say, $500 to the standard deduction amount. For single filers, that would bump the amount of money exempt
from taxes up from $7,550 to $8,050. Married filers would go up from $6,775 to $7,275 per person.

If the state wanted to, it could require a photocopy of a college transcript be filed with the return – most of us have one somewhere, and I’d find it if it meant money in my pocket.

The tax rate on taxable earnings after the first $16,950 is 8.5 percent. By offering an increase in the standard deduction, the state would be losing in tax revenue 8.5 percent of that $500, per person with a degree, or $42.50 a head.

If one-fourth of the 1,275,000 people in Maine have a degree, there are just under 320,000 of us. It’s a rough estimate, but that would cost $13.6 million in lost revenue for the state.

That’s far less than the $43 million being allocated for R&D, and less than the $50 million to assist students in paying for higher education. It would be about 1 percent of what the state now collects in income tax – just over $1 billion – and less than 0.2 percent of what the state spends.

That $42.50 wouldn’t hurt the state budget much, or permit me to buy a lot, but it would say Maine’s government was thinking about me and valued my presence here. If Maine is trying to up the number of folks with college degrees, it should look at keeping what it has as a starting point.

Hospitals struggle to care for patients, selves

Published in the Current

Healthcare costs are so high that one of Greater Portland’s major hospitals is considering dropping its private insurance coverage and setting up its own in-house insurance plan for employees.

Medical service and insurance costs are heading up, primarily because of rising demand for and increasing costs of healthcare, decreasing state and federal payments for Medicaid and Medicare and public demands that all levels of medical services be available everywhere.

Eileen Skinner, president and CEO of Mercy Health System of Maine, which runs Mercy Hospital and other facilities, including a Westbrook primary care center, said her company is considering saving money by self-insuring its staff. Mercy Hospital’s staff already has voted to up health insurance premiums for most of the staff, to keep premiums constant for the lowest-paid employees.

And it’s not alone in looking for ways to deal with the rising costs of care.

“We are struggling, like all hospitals in the state and in the country for that matter,” said Vincent Conti, president and CEO of Maine Medical Center, which has facilities in Scarborough and Portland.

Pressure is coming from a wide range of sources, including rising costs of technology, skyrocketing health insurance, government bioterrorism initiatives and the falling stock market, which is gutting non-profit endowments nationwide.

Medical technology continues to advance, making saving lives more expensive, though more effective. “All this wonderful technology doesn’t come at no price,” Conti said.

Staffing shortages have driven many medical jobs’ salaries higher, too. Nurses, pharmacy technicians and radiology technicians are among those who are seeing wages rise because of hospitals’ competition for employees.

An aging Maine population means more demand on services. With more and more people on Medicare and Medicaid, hospitals are feeling the pinch from state and federal budget cuts. “We get paid less than it costs us” to provide services, Conti said.

For every dollar the hospital bills Medicare and Medicaid – together 70 percent of the hospital’s patients – Maine Med only receives 80 cents. At Mercy, 57 percent of patients are on either Medicare or Medicaid. The difference has to be made up by charging more to people who have private insurance. “We’ve got to make money on that,” Conti said.

They also have to make enough from private payers to cover the costs of government-mandated bioterror initiatives. “Bioterrorism is a national security issue, and one would think that the cost of it should be borne by the general population,” said Mercy’s Skinner.

Higher premiums
This is where insurance companies come in. When HMOs came to Maine, they cut prices to attract customers. Their revenues were not enough to cover their costs, but by attracting more plan members the insurance companies were able to fill the gap temporarily.

Most left the state rather than face increased regulation and declining profits. Now that only Anthem is left, premiums are rising. “Premiums have gone up because health insurance companies are catching up,” Conti said.

Instead of charging discounted rates, they are trying to recoup their costs entirely from premiums, putting businesses and individuals in a financial crunch. The hospitals’ rising charges to private insurers only make that crunch worse.

Because the hospitals are raising prices to make up for shortfalls in government payments, they are effectively “taxing the people who walk through the front doors of the hospital” – the sick and the injured, Conti said.

To limit the impact, Maine Med is trying to cut costs where possible. It works with other hospitals to purchase services and devices in bulk, to keep costs as low as they can. Conti warns against cutting back in services and research.

Changing the system
Skinner, who came to Mercy a year ago from Louisiana, said the system needs to be changed.

“Conceptually, health insurance has become a pre-payment,” Skinner said. The only way people or employers can buy health coverage is to purchase a total plan, rather than the services that are needed at the moment. Employers who can’t afford a complete package don’t buy any coverage for their workers, and people who don’t need medical care now don’t pay for it either.

That leaves large numbers of people uninsured because the initial price point is too high. If there was a way to lower the entry price, many more people would have access to some care, Skinner said.

Each person should have a medical spending account, to which an employer could contribute, without having to shell out the full cost of total insurance. The state could put in some money to help poor people, and individuals could contribute to their own accounts. People who wanted more coverage could then buy a high-deductible insurance plan.

The improved access would reduce long-term costs, though initially more people than ever before would seek medical care they had postponed for lack of funding.

“When you insure a group of underinsured people, the utilization gets very high,” Skinner said. But that only lasts a short time. If, on the other hand, the structure remains the way it is, many people will only seek medical care when it becomes an emergency, at high costs to insurers and hospitals.

Doctors and nurses in emergency rooms are often stuck with an ethical dilemma. When faced with an uninsured person needing care, they either sign the hospital up to lose money or they turn away someone who is sick or injured.

“It’s not really fair for these people to make health care policy decisions on the spot,” Skinner said.

Planning medical services
Some of the long-term thinking could come from planning healthcare facilities intelligently, Conti said.

Though it may at first seem counterintuitive, putting a full range of medical services in every town would still not be the best thing to do.

“The distribution of (services) needs to be clinically appropriate,” Conti said. There is a balance that must be struck between geographic proximity to healthcare, and the cost and quality of that care.

When medical centers are more widely spread across an area, the staff at each location gets less practice, meaning lower quality care for its patients. And each center needs to purchase a certain basic amount of equipment to have on hand, increasing the overhead costs to pass on to patients.

Conti said some services should be widely available, such as first aid and delivering babies. Those will be used enough even in thinly populated areas to keep medical staff at the top of their games.

More specialized services like heart surgery, which is used less frequently than emergency care, should be in centralized facilities for a wider area, Conti said.

Choosing the locations for those centralized facilities should be based on medical needs, but often becomes a political discussion, Conti said. And requiring heart patients from all across Maine to come to Portland is not convenient, but ensures the best quality of care and the best price, Conti said.

Board questions Kertes’ commitment

Published in the Current

Cape School Board member Kevin Sweeney questioned the wisdom of appointing longtime teacher and coach Kerry Kertes to serve as eighth-grade softball coach this spring because Kertes has threatened to quit over the firing of hoop Coach Jim Ray.

Sweeney made his comments at Tuesday’s regular School Board meeting, during discussion of proposed spring sports coaches.

Kertes, who also coaches the award-winning swim team, said last week that he would resign from his teaching and coaching jobs if Ray was not reinstated.

Sweeney said that statement called into question Kertes’ status as softball coach this season, because it was unclear whether Ray would be reinstated. “It would be unfair to that team to appoint a coach” who might walk away, Sweeney said.

Board members Jennifer DeSena and George Entwistle III spoke in defense of Kertes. DeSena said, “I would be surprised if he would leave the team
high and dry in the middle of the season.” She expected Kertes would give notice if he did decide to leave.

“This coach is committed to the team,” said Entwistle, who also noted the softball season had already started. Middle School Principal Nancy Hutton said the team’s first meeting was Tuesday.

Board member Susan Steinman agreed with Sweeney, but no other board members did, and Kertes was appointed to the position, along with a slate of other middle school spring-season coaches.

Software helps students build skills

Published in the Current

CEHS math teacher Charlotte Hanna is piloting a computer program being eyed by school district officials as a way to help students who need extra help with specific skills in math and language arts.

As many as 15 percent of CEHS students will need additional help to meet the Maine Learning Results required for high school graduation beginning with the class of 2007. Most of those who will need help in math are students who enter high school either in tutorial math or pre-algebra. This year, those two classes are in one group of about 14 students, Hanna said.

She received a grant from the Cape Elizabeth Education Foundation to purchase software and a test-scanning device from the Renaissance Learning Company of Wisconsin.

Rather than being computer-based instruction with students sitting in front of keyboards, the software helps Hanna and special education teacher Ben Raymond, who is also in the classroom, keep track of the students’ individual needs and progress. It also customizes tests and homework.

“It generates individualized sets of problems for the students,” Hanna said. That alone would take hours of human time to create. Grading them is also computerized: A scanner accepts the test forms and gives feedback to students, while simultaneously updating the database with information on what learning objectives each student has mastered.

The problems, while answered on a multiple-choice form, are word problems or regular math problems testing over 200 skills, including place value, multiplication and common factors.

“Everybody’s test is on different stuff,” Hanna said. She can also get a report on every student’s progress, allowing her to work with each student on what he or she needs most. She can see easily if several people need help with the same topic, too. “I can do an individualized (work session) or a small group,” she said.

Students who don’t understand concepts can’t “hide” in her classroom. Each test or homework assignment shows what they know or haven’t yet learned.

The students also like the instant feedback. “When they scan, they get feedback right away,” Hanna said. There was a brief hiccough, after pipes broke in the high school building, soaking the scanner. A replacement took two months to arrive, during which Hanna and Raymond hand-graded and hand-entered the scores.

When they scan their tests, students can see what skills they have mastered, and can track their own progress over time.

It helps these students, some of whom have had trouble staying motivated. “The kids are pretty well focused on their work all the time,” Hanna said.

And beyond the specific skills they are learning, the program’s constant feedback and close monitoring of progress has another payoff. “We’re getting some positive attitudes toward math” in students who have historically ignored the subject, Hanna said.

When students come into the room at the beginning of the class period, they begin asking her questions about their homework, seeking help and wanting to learn. “That’s a wonderful thing,” Hanna said.

Many kids are catching up, getting closer to the proficiency considered normal for their actual grade level. Hanna credits the software for that change, and for some changes in her teaching style.

“I would do a lot more whole-class instruction,” she said. Now, “there’s much more one-on-one and small-group instruction.”

She said the school is planning to purchase additional modules for the software, adding pre-algebra and algebra. The company makes modules from kindergarten level through calculus, she said.

This type of monitoring does not take the instructional role away from a teacher, but offers powerful assistance where teachers are already crunched: test creation and monitoring individual progress.

“This is what the computer is designed to do,” Hanna said.

Truck spills fuel in South Portland

Published in the Current

A tanker truck carrying 8,000 gallons of fuel flipped over early Monday morning, spilling jet fuel into the street and into storm drains leading to the Fore River and Casco Bay. At least one oil-covered bird has been found dead, and several birds coated with oil have survived, though the full environmental impact remains to be seen.

The truck overturned right outside the South Portland Central Fire Station at the corner of Broadway and Route 77, and closed the Casco Bay Bridge for hours, delaying traffic heading from Portland to South Portland.

Jon Woodard of the state Department of Environmental Protection said the truck was carrying 8,000 gallons. “All of it was released from the truck,” he said. Some was contained on the street and some went into storm drains leading to the water.

“We have collected a lot of it,” Woodard said. The DEP and Clean Harbors, a South Portland-based environmental company handling the cleanup, are using booms to contain the jet fuel that got into the water.

Woodard said the state Department of Marine Resources is sampling the water in the Fore River and Portland harbor to make sure no fuel escaped. He said there have been a few small sheens reported in both of those areas, but does not believe any significant amount escaped.

A spokesman for Clean Harbors said the amount of the spill was “sizeable.” The company said the cleanup is basically complete, but they will continue
to monitor the booms for the next several days.

Woodard said the level of environmental damage remained to be seen. He said the plants “are not really out yet,” and may not suffer much damage, while marine animals and shellfish have different levels of sensitivity to contaminants.

Dunkin’ Donuts wants Cape location

Published in the Current

If developers have their way, a Dunkin’ Donuts will open in Cape Elizabeth, just across the high school entrance road from the Community Center.

George Valvanis, a Dunkin’ Donuts franchisee and operating partner with eight stores in Southern Maine, said a Cape Elizabeth store is on his plan, right after one at Dunstan Corner in Scarborough, one in South Portland’s Cash Corner and a third on Route 1 in Saco.

Those three are all in various stages of planning and approval, and he expects them to open within the next year. He hopes to have the Cape one open by summer 2004.

“We’re planning on putting a Dunkin’ here,” Valvanis said.

The property is now occupied by a building that used to house real estate agent Tom Tinsman’s office. “We would probably be tearing it down,” Valvanis said.

The building that replaced it would be a “colonial-type,” with “a couple thousand square feet” of space, Valvanis said.

Cape Elizabeth does not allow drive-through windows in the downtown, according to Town Manager Mike McGovern, and Valvanis said the business wouldn’t include one.

On Nov. 18, 2002, Fernando Cafua of North Andover, Mass., bought the property at 349 Ocean House Road for $288,750, according to Cape Elizabeth town records.

Valvanis said Cafua is his business partner, and owns “about 80” Dunkin’ Donuts stores in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York and Florida.

When the building was purchased, they planned to start the development process immediately, but corporate priorities forced a delay.

Valvanis owns a new Scarborough Dunkin’ Donuts that opened on Payne Road recently, another on Route 1 in Scarborough, one in Saco, one in Old Orchard Beach, one at Woodfords Corner in Portland and three in South Portland.

He said a Cape store may cut into the business at his Broadway store in South Portland, but he isn’t worried.

“I think it’s needed,” Valvanis said. “Obviously a lot of people like Dunkin’ Donuts.”

He said word is starting to get around Cape about the idea. “All I’ve had is positive feedback,” he said. “We’re a good neighbor,” donating to community organizations and fund-raising efforts, he said.

And Cape isn’t the last place he’ll look. “There are other properties we’re trying to purchase,” Valvanis said, though he would not give specifics. Demand is strong.

“Just about everyone drinks coffee.”

Suit filed in deaf man’s killing

Published in the Current

The daughters of a man killed in a March 2001 encounter with Scarborough
police have filed a federal lawsuit alleging the officers, the department and the town violated their father’s civil rights and did not properly adapt their procedures to account for his disability.

The daughters’ attorney foresees a trial by year’s end, but the town’s attorney expects the suit will be dismissed by midsummer.

On Friday, attorneys will begin interviewing Scarborough Police Chief Robbie Moulton and officers Ivan Ramsdell and Robert Moore about their roles in the incident.

James Levier of Scarborough was deaf from early childhood and was 60 years old when he drove his van to the Shop ‘n Save parking lot in Scarborough March 16, 2001, to protest the sexual abuse of former students at the Baxter School for the Deaf, including himself.

He put a rifle on his shoulder and began marching back and forth in the parking lot, near his van, painted with protest slogans, and wearing a T-shirt with a slogan of protest on it.

After an hour-long standoff during which police had trouble communicating with Levier because he was deaf, he made the sign of the cross and pointed his rifle at police. Three Scarborough officers and a state trooper fired their weapons.

“It’s about as clear-cut a justification as I’ve seen for deadly force,” said Edward R. Benjamin Jr., the attorney representing the town of Scarborough and Moulton, Ramsdell and Moore. He will file a motion for summary judgment. A decision could be made by early July, he said.

The incident was complicated by the fact that Levier had filed a lawsuit earlier in the year against the Scarborough Police Department alleging civil rights violations because they did not provide an interpreter when they arrested him on an out-of-town warrant for assault.

The department’s only officer fluent in sign language was unable to participate in the armed standoff because of the lawsuit. Police were eventually able to locate another interpreter and were in the process of deciding how to safely arrange communications when Levier pointed his rifle at officers and they fired, killing Levier.

The new lawsuit, brought by Levier’s daughters Susan Vincent and Christina Cookson, alleges that police did not do enough to communicate with Levier before shooting him and did not try to use non-lethal force before using regular weapons with regular ammunition.

All the officers were cleared of any wrongdoing by the state attorney general’s office, which investigates all use of deadly force by law enforcement officers.

The suit also says that by not providing him with an interpreter, police were in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990.

Benjamin said that police are obliged to provide an interpreter, “once we’ve taken away the immediate danger.” Further, providing an interpreter for a deaf person is different from providing one for someone who speaks another language. “A deaf guy with a gun is still a guy with a gun and he has to be treated like that,” Benjamin said.

While a language interpreter could be positioned behind a car, say, with a bullhorn, a sign interpreter must be seen to communicate, Benjamin said. That’s dangerous when there is a gun involved.

The suit also alleges police used too much force too soon. “Alternatives such as police dogs, bean-bag rounds and other non-lethal use of force tactics and devices although available and feasible, were not used,” the suit says.

Benjamin said that’s disingenuous. “(Police) have the right to use deadly force when confronted with deadly force,” he said. “It was a suicide by cop case. (Levier) went out to provoke” police into shooting, he said. “Now these guys have to live the rest of their lives with that event.”

Benjamin said police officers have limited immunity from prosecution under federal law, if they “acted reasonably in the totality of the circumstances.”

Portland attorney Dan Lilley, who filed the suit on behalf of Levier’s daughters, said he is studying 30 to 40 audio and videotapes of the event, including radio transmissions from police officers and dispatchers.

He is asking the court for more time to continue his investigation, including questioning the officers involved and reviewing the records of the attorney general’s investigation.

“We have a lot more questions than we have answers,” Lilley said. One of the issues may be police confusion about the person they were dealing with. One call from dispatchers indicated to Lilley that police may have thought they were responding to an armed robber, who had taken a hostage.

“The police thought they had themselves a real criminal on their hands,” as opposed to a person conducting a public protest, Lilley said.

The suit does not request a particular amount of money, and Lilley said he has not yet determined what might be appropriate to ask for. He said he will base that decision on the results of his investigation, which is still in progress.

If the investigation wraps up by the end of June, which he expects it will, the case could go to trial before the end of the year, Lilley said. He said settling out of court was possible, but not probable.

Silenced Cape crowd calls for coach’s reinstatement

Published in the Current

At a Tuesday Cape School Board meeting packed with 100 people largely supporting fired basketball coach Jim Ray, board Chairman Marie Prager told the crowd that only two would be able to speak.

Among the audience were about 25 basketball coaches from throughout Southern Maine, standing in the balcony overlooking the meeting space, silent but all wearing pins reading “J Ray Must Stay.” Most other audience members also wore the pins.

Only two people, who had contacted the board ahead of time, were allowed to express their views. Grady Stevens, father of three former athletes coached by Ray, read a statement signed by 238 people in support of Ray, and also read email messages from three recent graduates.

“To say the least, his termination is bewildering,” Stevens said. “The community deserves an explanation.” His remarks were followed by thunderous applause. Prager gaveled the meeting back to order, saying “please stop, please stop.”

Tom Tinsman, also the father of three former Ray players, was the other speaker. He said he wants to see the evaluation.

“I’m hoping as a citizen in this town that we find out what is in that report,” he told the board.

Tinsman said he supports Superintendent Tom Forcella, Principal Jeff Shedd and the School Board, and wants Ray to improve his coaching.

“He has some attributes which are not conducive to good learning,” Tinsman said. “Over the years I’ve been treated with total disrespect,” he said.

“My hope is that Jim Ray can come before this board, admit his mistakes, apologize for them, accept the recommendations given to him by his boss and go on,” he said.

“Only (Ray) knows why he chose not to do those things,” Tinsman said. “We need to know where he stands.” Two people applauded Tinsman’s


Discussion cut short
When those two people had spoken, Prager said that ended the discussion for now.

“This is not something that is on our agenda,” she said. She promised that a future meeting would be scheduled where people could be heard. “It’s very important that everyone interested in this matter be heard,” she said.

“The board realizes it must review this matter in detail. Right now we are sitting here before you not having any information in this matter,” Prager said. “Everyone needs to calm down and know that the School Board will approach this matter with an open mind.”

Prager said after the meeting she did not know when a followup meeting would occur.

According to Ray’s attorney, Gerald Petruccelli, the next step is to wait for the School Board and its attorney to define the appeal’s process for fired coaches, because none appears to exist.

What people wanted to know at the meeting was what prompted Ray’s evaluation and dismissal as coach of the Cape Elizabeth boys varsity basketball team.

That’s the question Ray and supporters hope to answer as Ray begins his appeal before the Cape School Board – a process he hopes will lead to his reinstatement.

Many of the answers are cloaked in the name of “it’s a personnel matter,” and may remain that way. Some, however, believe, as one Ray supporter put it Friday night, it may not be a personnel matter so much as it is a personal one.

Friday night rally
About 100 people attended a rally Friday night in the high school cafeteria and spent two hours speaking calmly but emotionally in support of Ray. While many were involved with the basketball program, a number of speakers also knew Ray from his work in the community or as classroom teacher.

Several of the speakers thanked Principal Shedd for being the only school administrator to attend the meeting. It was Shedd’s evaluation of Ray that led to the coach’s dismissal by Superintendent Forcella. Shedd declined to answer any of the questions put to him on that topic.

Absent from the meeting were Forcella, his two sons, Dan and John, who play for Ray, long-time Cape Athletic Administrator Keith Weatherbie, and Coach Ray.

Early in the rally, a motion to file a statement with the School Board in support of Ray passed unanimously, with Booster President Tim Thompson designated to read it during Tuesday’s board meeting. When asked if he was comfortable reading the statement, Thompson replied he might not have the honor because he expected a vote for new officers later in the meeting would remove him.

Later, Thompson, who was not perceived to be a strong Ray fan, was, in fact, voted out of office. Two Ray supporters, Dave Reid and John Doherty, were elected president and vice president, respectively.

Kertes threatens to quit
Just a few weeks after coaching his team to its second consecutive girls swim championship, Kerry Kertes surprised the rally by announcing, “I’ll resign as teacher and coach” if Ray is done. “I’m very, very tired,” Kertes said, “of two or three unhappy people, a vocal minority” driving away “good people.”

Several people asked Shedd about the evaluation process and how it was conducted, a question he wouldn’t answer. Kertes addressed that directly, saying he’s never been evaluated as coach, and only for 20 minutes as teacher. “No one’s ever told me if I’m a good coach, no one’s ever told me if I’m a good teacher,” Kertes said.

Kertes said he told Shedd, “it’s a very lonely job being a coach at Cape Elizabeth. Even when you win, it’s not enough.”

Bob Brown, another well-known and respected local basketball coach, spoke at the rally. Brown, who coached the Cheverus boys to the Class A final game this year, also spoke earlier in the year at a hearing on behalf of Bonny Eagle coach TJ Hesler. (Hesler was suspended by Bonny Eagle administrators after disciplining a player for inappropriate conduct during a
game. After sitting out two games, Hesler was reinstated, but resigned at the end of the season.)

Brown earned a standing ovation with a rousing speech that had most in attendance ready to lace up the sneakers and take to the court for him. Brown said that Ray is one of the most respected coaches in the state, and his firing “is almost a joke. No one can believe it.”

Truck spills fuel in S.P.

Published in the American Journal

A tanker truck carrying 8,000 gallons of fuel flipped over early Monday morning, spilling jet fuel into the street and into storm drains leading to the Fore River and Casco Bay.

The truck overturned right outside the South Portland Central Fire Station at the corner of Broadway and Route 77, and closed the Casco Bay Bridge for hours, delaying traffic heading from Portland to South Portland.

Jon Woodard of the state Department of Environmental Protection said the truck was carrying 8,000 gallons. “All of it was released from the truck,” he said. Some was contained on the street and some went into storm drains leading to the water.

“We have collected a lot of it,” Woodard said. The DEP and Clean Harbors, a South Portland-based environmental company handling the cleanup, are using booms to contain the jet fuel that flowed into the water.

Woodard said the state Department of Marine Resources is sampling the water in the Fore River and Portland harbor to make sure no fuel escaped. He said there have been a few small sheens reported in both of those areas, but does not believe any significant amount escaped containment.

A spokesman for Clean Harbors said the amount of the spill was “sizeable.” The company said it would not have a good handle on how long the cleanup will take before the American Journal’s deadline.

It will take at least until Wednesday afternoon, according to the South Portland Police Department. A cruiser has been assigned to block the right-turn lane coming off the bridge onto Broadway through Wednesday afternoon. That will allow cleanup workers to use the road as they collect contaminated dirt from the area around the spill.

Woodard said the level of environmental damage remained to be seen. He said the plants “are not really out yet,” and may not suffer much damage, while marine animals and shellfish have different levels of sensitivity to contaminants.

PWD not interested in lease plan

Published in the Current and the American Journal

A legislative bill that caused a big stir in Standish now appears unlikely to have any real impact on the town’s tax rolls.

Rep. Janet McLaughlin, D-Cape Elizabeth, proposed a bill that would allow water and sewer districts, including the Portland Water District, to raise ready cash under a lease-and-lease-back arrangement. Under the proposal,
district-owned buildings and equipment would be leased to a private entity, which could then take depreciation of the assets off their taxes.

Standish residents and officials were excited that the town might be a beneficiary of private control of the district’s assets, worth as much as $50 million, because they would no longer be tax exempt as they are now under PWD ownership.

Not only is the bill now tabled pending the input of the Legislature’s finance committee, but it could be revamped to excise any portions that would result in the transfer of ownership of any PWD equipment or buildings, leaving Standish’s hands empty of any new taxes.

Rep. Larry Bliss, D-South Portland, who heads the Legislature’s utilities committee, said last week that state law would require the state to pay half of the tax liability for any private property it exempts from tax. Under the proposal, the state would have granted that exemption.

A letter circulated to Standish town councilors suggested that PWD property is now worth $50 million. At Standish’s $20.48 per thousand tax rate, half of its potential property tax is $512,000, which the state would have to reimburse under the proposal.

That would be unlikely to pass in this tight budget season, Bliss said.

And the district is not interested anyway. PWD trustee chairman Howard Littlefield of Cape Elizabeth said there was nothing in the proposal the district would be likely to use.

The lease-and-lease-back arrangement was designed to provide ready cash to districts, paid by investors, who would take depreciation tax deductions on the district’s assets over time.

The tax-exempt district does not now receive any credit for depreciation. The bill would not allow the lease or sale of water rights, and transactions would be unlikely to include much real estate, because land does not depreciate.

Biode puts high-tech twist on measuring thickness

Published in the Current and the American Journal

What Biode Inc. has to sell is only slightly larger than a postage stamp, and the company hopes to reach as diverse a range of buyers. Their solid-state digital viscometer, built to measure the thickness of liquids from motor oil to shampoo, is in the testing phase and has generated interest from prospective buyers including the U.S. Navy and Procter and Gamble.

Biode’s office hides in the back of a building on Larrabee Road in Westbrook. Chief Technology Officer Kerem Durdag of Scarborough said the company was founded in 1986 to do research and development on ways to detect contaminants in liquids.

In the mid-1990s, the company chose to focus on commercializing one of the products it had developed, the viscometer. Most viscometers are mechanical instruments requiring very precise environmental conditions for proper measurements, Durdag said.

“The viscometry market is very mature,” he said. The successful companies in the sector have been around for 60 years or more, making the same type of equipment now as then.

They have a broad market base, though, one that is attractive to Biode.

“Anything that is gooey, (someone) will measure viscosity on it,” Durdag said. The usual method in industry today involves taking a sample of a fluid, like shampoo, somewhere in the manufacturing process, taking it to a lab for testing, and reading the results some time later to make adjustments in the process.

Real-time viscosity measurements are not possible most of the time because of the equipment required to take the measurements, Durdag said. Biode’s digital viscometer has no moving parts, which prevents it from “gumming up,” he said.

Biode’s device can fit in a pipe to give real-time data feeds, or can be used on a tabletop to handle samples from vials or test tubes. Connected to a standard PC laptop using a commercially available data-acquisition card and software, the viscometer can start reading data immediately and requires no power source.

Instead, it is what is called a “surface acoustic wave device,” which operates by vibrating on an atomic level, Durdag said. When the measuring surface is exposed to a fluid, the vibration changes as a result of “viscous damping,” allowing the device to measure how easy it is to shake the fluid around.

Biode has approached companies that are traditionally early adopters of technology, as well as large operations that might want in-stream process measurements.

Among the interested clients are Procter and Gamble’s shampoo manufacturing, beer companies that want to know how their malt syrup is doing, and the U.S. Navy.

“They like to do oil sampling on their ships at very frequent intervals,” Durdag said. Mechanical devices can’t work on ships because they require a level surface to base their readings on. So the Navy, at great expense, flies helicopters between ships and land-based laboratories carrying jars of oil to be tested.

The Navy is now testing Biode’s device, which would allow real-time readings even aboard ship, and may phase it in over time, Durdag said.

The company has taken advantage of a number of state business-assistance programs in the four years since it started work to bring the viscometer to market.

One of the most important services was the patent program at the UMaine School of Law in Portland, Durdag said. It allows companies to get access to patent attorneys at reasonable charges to protect their intellectual property rights.

“Maine tends to be fairly risk-averse to tech, when it comes to startups,” Durdag said. That makes it hard to get money, but the Maine Technology Institute has grants for this type of activity, and the Maine Seed Capital Tax Program is also useful, giving investors in qualifying companies 40 percent of their money back in tax credits. Maine Investment Exchange and the Small Enterprise Growth Fund also have played large roles in helping Biode raise the money it needed to continue development.

Part of the problem in the private sector was that Maine investors are used to short business cycles, more in line with agricultural or marine businesses, in which increased investment leads to higher yield almost immediately. Technology is slower, which can make it harder to find money, Durdag said.

Durdag was, however, able to turn to other state companies as component suppliers. The circuit boards are from Enercon Technologies in Gray and Knox Semiconductor in Rockland. “We’re leveraging a good amount of Maine stuff here,” Durdag said.

Maine companies may also be good buyers for it, he said. When the device goes on the market in the summer, the company plans to approach paper companies to see if they want to use it in their manufacturing process. Durdag is already working on a test at the UMaine paper mill test center in Orono.

“We’re crazy enough to think wecan do it,” Durdag said.

Join the hunt: Chase away lions, wherever they be

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The future of Maine theater is here. The people in Lewiston still haven’t put their Somali neighbors’ experiences on stage, but the Children’s Theatre of Maine has. Lion Hunting on Munjoy Hill is the most important, relevant play on Maine stages this season, a brilliant show that all Mainers should see, the better to understand ourselves and our neighbors, both new and old.

Within the confines of a simple set combining a market, Congress Street, and the Portland Observatory, Portland playwright John Urquhart crystallizes the immigrant experience in Maine, sharply portraying harassment by local teens, police insensitivity and recalcitrance, proud and strong immigrants, overbearing social-service workers, lost dreams, and identity crisis. It is a world white Maine too rarely sees, and often prefers to ignore.

Urquhart based the script on interviews conducted with Portland’s immigrants and lays out their lives in strong, vibrant characters. The actors bring their own experiences to the roles, making them uniquely authentic and powerful, even beyond their clear talents. And the simplicities required by children’s theater do not preclude deep, layered meanings that are great for parent-child conversation.

There are warning bells clanging loudly here. In this play, Portland’s cops are shown as do-nothing buffoons, complete with red clown-noses, who have no desire or ability to help the most vulnerable Portlanders. Social service workers are exposed as dithering do-gooders who want to mold kids into a sad American " ideal. "

Immigrants’ own contradictions are also put on display, from the frustration of Long (Hue Edwards) with her mother’s refusal to label products in English to attract tourist buyers, to the false, but lucrative, American patriotism of Ivan, the Russian street vendor (Eli Doucette).

Small vignettes illuminate other aspects of immigrant life, showing the hardships of interracial puppy love and the sacrifices immigrants must make, leaving respected professions to become housecleaners. These are real: Ask the woman who runs the Vientiane Market what she used to do for work in Bangkok.

This play should open lines of dialogue throughout the city, and open eyes in every neighborhood in Maine. Even a benign lack of knowledge of other cultures can be painful for newcomers to bear. An innocent child’s question, " Where are you from? " turns into a geography lesson, complete with world map. And " What is that ‘S’ on your shirt? " becomes a confession of immigrant vulnerability, because, as the response instructs, " Everyone knows who Superman is. "

Not Asad, the Somali boy who arrived two weeks ago and is played powerfully by 11-year-old Somali-born Mohamed Abdirahman, cast just three weeks before the show opened. CTM Managing Director Stacy Begin said the challenge of finding actors who met the show’s ethnic requirements was not small.

It took weeks to find Mohamed’s family, and, even then, the two weeks of explaining and negotiating had to go through an interpreter. Cultural mores prevented his sister from performing by his side.

The whole casting process took a hurried three months for this play, as contrasted with the usual seasonal auditions casting three or four shows in one weekend. Even so, CMT couldn’t find a Cambodian girl, so they changed two characters to be Vietnamese. And they couldn’t find a Russian teenager, picking instead an Anglo teen, Doucette, with an excellent Russian accent. " I hope it will encourage other kids to (audition), " Begin said.

It should — a recent show’s audience included a smattering of ethnic backgrounds, though, as the play points out, even native-born Americans call themselves something else. Danny (Jared Mongeau) is Irish, but it is the immigrants who worry most about identity, and have dreams far removed from those of their US-born friends.

When violence strikes, the immigrants bond together to make it right, though still cowed by their newness in town. It takes Asad, who wants to help but knows he can’t take on bully white teens alone, to come up with the idea. " Superman only helps white people. We need another superhero on Munjoy Hill, " Asad says. He remembers a time, before Somalia was torn apart by war, when villagers would have to protect themselves against lions by repeatedly scaring them away.

He teaches the kids, who come into their jubilant and powerful own with this task, how to hunt lions. They dress up in hilariously cute costumes and race about the theater empowered, yelling " hunt! hunt! hunt! " until their unity and strength drive away the bullies. But even after success, Asad is wary: " Lions always come back. "

Lion Hunting on Munjoy Hill
Written by John Urquhart. Directed by Pamela DiPasquale. With Mohamed Abdirahman, Jared Mongeau, Catherine Wallace, and Hue Edwards. At the Children’s Theatre of Maine, through April 6. Call (207) 878-2774.

BACKSTAGE

• The free workshop showing of Tim Rubel’s Eggs Over Eric just wound up. A longish one-act with strong interaction and dialogue and excellent emotional moments, it has been entered in PSC’s Clauder competition.

• Michael Tobin, formerly at MainePlay Productions, has started Cocheco Stage Company in Dover, New Hampshire, in what was the Edwin Booth Theater. Shows are already under way, and a full summer season is planned. Watch this space for more.

• Theater in crisis: You can help prevent the next casualty in Maine’s tough theater business from being the Oddfellow Theater in Buckfield. Visit www.oddfellow.com to keep this lively operation going, and get John Baldacci to help, too.

From the stagefront lines: Maine theater folk react to war

Published in the Portland Phoenix

As life for nations on the world stage gets more complicated, and as we get more scenes from the Iraqi theater of military operations, it has become clear how much thespian language ties in to everyday life, how tightly linked life and theater are.

At Cocheco Stage Company, in Dover, New Hampshire, Michael Tobin reports that he got some calls to cancel reservations and others to confirm the show was still on, after war broke out. " One woman challenged me with, ‘How can you perform a show when we have men and women fighting a war, risking their lives to save ours?’ " Tobin says. His reply? " It’s a matter of emotional survival " in the face of non-stop war coverage and in-our-faces violence. Attendance was " near capacity " even when the war was just beginning, which he attributed to the audience’s need to " escape. "

Tobin and Michael Miclon, at the Oddfellow Theater in Buckfield, agree that they want to provide lighter shows just now. Tobin said he would have changed his scheduled show if it had been a heavy one, and Miclon said the theater’s philosophy is to bring people together for laughter and joy, even in hard times.

Actors, too, need their escape. " It’s nice to have something to do to stop sitting in front of the TV, " says Craig Bowden, who is rehearsing for the upcoming Mad Horse show Suburban Motel. He sees hope in this time of turmoil. " There’s going to be a big change in the way the world is because of these events, " he says. " Maybe people will get motivated to take advantage of the freedoms that we have. "

The freedoms to speak, to act, and to assemble are all crucial to a lively theater scene, and are constitutional guarantees that will only continue to exist if defended.

Bowden warns that the role of theater in that changed world may change, too. He took heart that the actors at the Academy Awards ceremony " were sort of humbled, brought back down to reality. " That perspective is important for actors, who both create and reflect reality while onstage. " There’s nothing more real than war, " Bowden says.

Two other Maine groups are going the other way, bringing the reality of war to the stage. Two Lights Theatre Ensemble has submitted La Promise to the New York International Fringe Festival. It was performed at the St. Lawrence in September, 2002, as a thematic anniversary piece for September 11. The question posed by French playwright Xavier Durringer is, " What is just, in times of war? "

It is the story of simple villagers who have their village destroyed by war, and their women raped and people killed. The war changes fighters, too. Zeck was a loving fiancé before he went off to the front. When he returns, he is faced with his bride’s pregnancy, the child conceived by an enemy rapist. The play looks at the role of non-violence in war time and shows the complexities of victim and tormentor within one heart.

Without taking sides, La Promise explores what war means for humans, rather than the video game now on television, where we can see a missile-eye-view of a bunker containing, we are told " 200 Iraqi paramilitaries " moments before its destruction in a much-heralded US " successful strike. " Those 200 people inside, paramilitaries or not, have mothers and fathers, too.

It is to his forefathers that Frank Wicks has turned to create Soldier, Come Home!, a " readers’ theater " piece based on the letters between his great-grandfather, a Union soldier in the Civil War serving in Grant’s VI Army Corps, and his wife back home in Pennsylvania. Preserved in a shoebox, the letters open to a world of war closely paralleling today’s events.

Soldiers far from home sent letters regularly, supplying loved ones with fresh evidence that their father, brother, son or husband had survived another day. And yet the telegraph allowed instant communications of news, letting Wicks’s great-grandfather cheer for the success of the siege of Vicksburg just a day later, despite a distance of hundreds of miles.

Wicks had worked on Soldier off-and-on for 15 years, but was moved to finish it by the events of September 11. Now he wants to perform the play, which has had one-time productions at several locations and continues to tour as interest arises.

" I wish we could be doing this play immediately, " Wicks says. He wants the play to have a full run somewhere, but isn’t sure where or when that might happen.

Now could be the time. The letters have been distilled into the " nugget " of truth and meaning in each, making them more like the dense-but-brief emails now flashing from military bases in the Middle East to homes in Maine and throughout the nation.

Wicks said the letters offer a glimpse at the difficult answers to questions nobody should have to ask: " What do you write when you’re separated? What do you write when you start to worry? "

Cape and S.P. in the Civil War

Published in the Current

Paul Ledman is, in one sense, a strange person to have completed a history of Cape Elizabeth and South Portland during the Civil War. Born and raised in New York City, he has a background in geology and law. When he moved to Maine a few years ago, he got certified to teach science and social studies.

He is now the advanced placement U.S. history teacher at Scarborough High School and is taking history classes at the University of New Hampshire. As part of those classes, he became interested in what is called “quantitative history,” or history based in data and records compiled over time, like census data.

“You could use it as a tool to learn things you may not see” in personal records like letters or even old newspaper reports.

He wanted to “take a town and look at how that town responded to war,” Ledman said. He’s a Cape resident, so he picked his own town. He will be speaking about the results and his book, “A Maine town responds: Cape Elizabeth and South Portland in the Civil War,” at the Cape Elizabeth Historical Preservation Society meeting April 7, at 7:30 p.m., in the meeting room at Thomas Memorial Library.

Using computer databases, he compared the now-public 19th century census data for Cape Elizabeth with the roster of Cape residents who served in the Civil War.

He looked at how enlistments in the Union Army changed as the war progressed and also looked at the socioeconomic data indicating how different groups in town responded to the pressures of war.

In the South Portland City Hall boiler room, Ledman found original documents and photos from before the two towns separated.

“This stuff is incredible,” he said. One of the things that makes the story of Civil War enlistments interesting is that “at that time you could buy your way out of service” with the military, Ledman said. Rich people did not have to serve, but could choose to.

The book tracks the fortunes of the war and the role of Cape residents in it. A young man from Cape was killed at Gettysburg, Ledman said. And Scott Dyer Jordan served on a gunboat on the Mississippi River.

Letters home from those men and other soldiers “give you a human side to the war,” which is enhanced by the data gathering, Ledman said.

Reports from soldiers or newspapers about changing fortunes of war resulted in changes in enlistments, Ledman said. If things were going well, more people signed up. As the war faltered, so did recruiting.

National politics played in as well. After the Emancipation Proclamation, election results show a change of opinion in Cape. “A lot of sentiment turned against Lincoln when he made it about abolition,” Ledman said.

Also, Ledman found some early differences between the areas of town that are now Cape and South Portland. They weren’t as different as they became by the time the towns split in 1895, but farms were smaller in South Portland and there were more small-business people, Ledman said.

Trash costs boost Cape budget

Published in the Current

Citing higher-than-expected waste disposal fees, fuel prices and inflation rates, Cape Elizabeth Town Manager Mike McGovern told the Town Council Monday that their request for a 2 percent tax increase cap was too small, and asked for more for both the town and the schools.

He had previously presented a budget that raised taxes 1.7 percent, but that was based on an assumption of $115 per ton for trash disposal, already an increase over this year’s $110 per ton. The total spending in that budget was up $83,176.

Before Monday’s workshop council meeting, McGovern met with Regional Waste Systems Manager Chuck Foshay, who told him to expect the price to be more like $128 per ton, resulting in additional cost of $46,800 to the town.

“Half the municipal budget increase is already going to extra dumping fees,” McGovern said.

He expressed serious concern that much-needed infrastructure maintenance was left out of the budget. “A smaller tax increase might be preferable,” he said, but asked, “at what cost?”

Cutting things now will make it even worse in the future, he said. “There aren’t going to be any chances for reinstatements” in the next few years. “It really worries me,” he said.

He proposed a municipal budget increase of 2.25 percent, adding $77,000 back into the budget. Much of that would cover RWS fees, and the rest would restore the town’s hazardous materials collection.

Leaving out the hazardous materials money could result in environmental damage from illegal dumping in town, McGovern said. A further $15,000 would be “in play to go somewhere into the system,” if unforeseen expenses arise, he said.

McGovern also went to bat for the School Board, which has approved a budget with a 2.5 percent tax increase.

The school budget is $61,000 above where councilors had asked for. “It’s not really all that much money,” McGovern said.

“Is it realistic to adopt a school budget that is 1 percent less than inflation?” McGovern asked councilors.

The impact of inflation, reduced debt costs, future space needs and school enrollment all need careful consideration, McGovern told the councilors, as many members of the School Board listened from the audience.

There remains a need for kindergarten space, as well as “a significant issue with the aging of the high school,” he said.

Several members of the public also spoke. Three encouraged increased fiscal restraint, and one targeted the county budget as a particular problem.

“I think the spending is way out of control,” said Herbert Dennison. He urged an overall 3 percent decrease in town spending.

Gerald Sherry, a former teacher, told councilors many people in town do not have the proper stickers required for access to the town dump. McGovern later agreed, telling the council he was one of those people.

Patrick Babcock told the council he supported reinstating the hazardous waste collection, but remained concerned about the elimination of DARE, which he called “the only program, I believe, that addresses the issue of substance abuse in the Cape Elizabeth school system.” In a town that has a tendency to overlook the problems its children have with drugs and alcohol, he said canceling DARE was sending the wrong message to children and parents.

Superintendent Tom Forcella and School Board Finance Chairman Elaine Moloney also spoke, saying the schools had cut quite a bit and tried to be “creative” with how money was spent. Forcella defended additional school spending to help marginal students graduate from high school, saying other towns are worse off already.

“In some of those towns, 50, 60, 70 percent of kids just aren’t going to graduate from high school,” he said. Cape has projected that 15 percent of its students won’t graduate from high school without additional help.

Moloney said she is concerned about the long-term impact of low school funding. “Treading water,” she said, is not what the schools want to be doing. She also urged council support of the school building projects.

“You can delay capital improvement, but it never really goes away,” she said.

Susan Spagnola spoke “on behalf of the children,” and asked councilors to approve the schools’ budget request. When coming up with the 2 percent cap, she asked, “did you take into account the quality of education?”

She acknowledged the tough budget times, but said, “this does not mean we should abandon the needs of our children.”

The council will hold workshops on various parts of the budget April 2 and 7, at 7:30 p.m., and April 17, at 6 p.m., to accommodate people who no longer drive at night. The School Board will present its budget April 28 at 7:30 p.m.

Fifth-graders write to local serviceman

Published in the Current

Students in Sally Connolly’s fifth-grade class at Cape Elizabeth Middle School are writing letters to Senior Airman Matt Janson, a 2000 graduate of CEHS now serving in Qatar with the Air Force.

“I think it’s nice that he went,” said one member of the class. “I think he’s being really brave,” another said. The letters they wrote included “positive things,” one student said. Others wrote about baseball season, the snow melting and, above all, “we’re thinking of you.”

They send him letters regularly. Last week’s shipment was on paper headed with the word “spring,” which students colored in. They also sent him Valentines in February, to help keep his spirits up, and many of the kids are closely on top of what he is doing.

E-mail messages from Janson’s parents, now living in Maryland, keep the class up-to-date. The kids know Janson is living in the desert in a tent and loads bombs on airplanes for work, though he wants to be a pilot.

The students are also on top of the war, for as young as they are. They know where Iraq is on a world map and know that Iraqis are surrendering in some places and fighting in others. They watch TV with their parents and have trouble with “foreign names” and “big words.” The kids think there is too much coverage of the war, and that it has become “boring” to watch.

It’s not just a faraway war, either. “My babysitter’s husband is a medic,” said one boy.

They also know there are kids their age in Iraq, who are scared and don’t have food or clothes.

“Nobody wants war,” said one student, who went on to say that it’s important to support the troops.

The students want other classes in the school, and elsewhere, to adopt service members. “I think more people should write letters,” said one student.

Portland cop pleads to OUI

Published in the Current

Portland Police Lt. Ted Ross, a resident of Cape Elizabeth, pled guilty Tuesday to a misdemeanor charge of OUI in connection with a car accident Dec. 17, when Ross was driving home from an evening of drinking in Portland’s Old Port.

Deputy Attorney General William Stokes filed the charges in Cumberland County Superior Court last week, after an investigation lasting several months. Ross was charged with having a blood alcohol level of 0.15 percent, nearly twice the legal limit of 0.08 percent, Stokes said. Tests done on Ross at Maine Medical Center following the accident showed he had a blood alcohol level of 0.253 percent, more than three times the legal limit, but under state law he is simply charged with being at or above 0.15.

“Ted, from the outset of this episode, has been planning to accept responsibility for what occurred on Dec. 17,” Ross’ attorney, Michael Cunniff, said last week. “He has accepted responsibility all along. He would like to move on with his life and his career.”

Ross was given the mandatory minimum sentence, a $400 fine and a 90-day driver’s license suspension.

And because he pled guilty to having a blood alcohol level of 0.15 percent, he also faces 48 hours in jail. There is a program that could allow him to serve his time without being behind bars, instead doing community service while technically “in custody.”

Stokes called the class D charge, which hits most people charged with OUI unless they have a prior record, “a higher-end misdemeanor.”

Ross does not have any prior OUI convictions, Stokes said.

He said the next-highest OUI charge is “aggravated OUI,” a class C crime, which applies only when an intoxicated driver causes “serious bodily injury” or death.

Ross started the evening of Dec. 17 at an open-bar party hosted by Portland Police Chief Michael Chitwood, and left that party for a Fore Street bar with two senior police officials. When he left the bar, he picked up his unmarked police car, assigned to him as head of the detective bureau, and headed home toward Cape Elizabeth.

On York Street, near the Casco Bay Bridge, Ross’s car collided with a pickup truck, driven by Kevin Hardy of Scarborough, waiting for a parallel parking space to open. The pickup hit a Land Rover, driven by Kimberly McLellan of Gorham, pulling out of the space.

McLellan and Hardy refused medical treatment at the scene.

Ross was not tested for alcohol in his system at the accident scene, and officers and rescue workers at the scene later told investigators that they did not suspect Ross had been drinking.

Ross was taken to Maine Medical Center, where a diagnostic blood test showed the alcohol in his blood.

Hardy and McLellan have filed a lawsuit against Chitwood under the state’s Liquor Liability Act. They are also suing the City of Portland and the Portland Police Department under the state’s Tort Claims Act.

Mark Randall, an attorney handling their case, said the criminal charge “doesn’t really affect us,” though the conviction could be a help to the civil lawsuit.

Ross is on paid administrative leave pending resolution of the case, and could face additional disciplinary action through the police department, Cunniff said.

Chitwood did not return phone calls by the Current’s deadline.

Unum fires CEO after stock slide

Published in the Current, the American Journal, and the Lakes Region Suburban Weekly

Facing as many as 13 class-action securities fraud lawsuits, profit restatements, downgrades from investment rating firms and a crisis of employee morale, UnumProvident fired long-time chairman and CEO Harold Chandler and replaced him March 27 with interim president and CEO Thomas Watjen, Chandler’s right-hand man.

Layoffs and organizational restructuring are not on the table, said the company’s spokeswoman in Portland, Linnea Olsen. “We need everyone that’s here,” she said. UnumProvident, which sells disability insurance, is headquartered in Chattanooga, Tenn.

The board’s firing of Chandler “is not something that was caused by any one event,” Olsen said. Instead, it was “the cumulative effect of many things.”

Among those were a $29.1 million restated reduction in earnings for 2000, 2001 and 2002, the result of a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into its investment disclosures. And in the past three weeks, several investment-rating firms, including Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s, have downgraded UnumProvident stock, citing concerns the company is over invested in high-risk companies.

The company recently sold $500 million worth of these below-investment-grade bonds specifically to placate rating agencies, Olsen said.

But the company still believes in its business plan and will continue to implement it quickly, Watjen told analysts in a Monday conference call briefing.

A crisis of confidence and leadership led to Chandler’s ouster, Olsen said. He will get $8.5 million in severance pay, roughly four times his annual pay in 2000, and $8.5 million in pension benefits.

Chandler joined Provident as its CEO in 1993, and presided over the merger with the Portland-based Unum in 1999, after which he remained CEO of the combined company. One analyst said in the conference call that she was glad that Watjen would stay on “to provide continuity,” while another expressed surprise that one architect of the company’s plan would be fired and the other would take his place.

Watjen said he would keep the plan moving, but would have a different leadership style from Chandler, who he said was less decisive, less inclusive and less communicative than Watjen will be. He said his new style would become evident very shortly, and pointed to the increased disclosures in the company’s annual report, filed with the SEC Monday, as an example of more communications.

He said company employees were notified of the management change over the weekend and would be involved in further company-wide discussions
in the coming days, to allow them to understand what happened.

In the coming months, UnumProvident will be “out in the marketplace” seeking to raise as much as $1.5 billion, according to a November 2002 filing with the SEC. Olsen said the company would be looking for between $500 million and $1 billion, while Watjen told analysts Monday that the figure would be between $750 million and $1 billion.

The money is not earmarked for spending but instead will be used as capital on hand to offset concerns held by investment analysts, Olsen said.

“We will continue to have investment losses,” she said. Rating agencies are therefore looking for additional capital on hand to cushion those losses, she said.

Some of the capital will come from internal processes, such as regrouping some old individual disability policies into group policies, and there may be further sales of below-investment-grade bonds, she said.

Also, inter-company loans from the insurance subsidiaries to the holding company will be repaid, giving the subsidiaries more ready cash, Olsen said.

She expects there will be a combination of stock sales and convertible bonds. “We will not be issuing straight debt,” Olsen said.

Initial indications from investment banks lead her to believe the company will raise the money it needs, she said.

The company also faces 13 class-action lawsuits alleging the company committed securities fraud by failing to truthfully disclose financial performance information to shareholders and prospective shareholders.

Olsen discounted the lawsuits, saying, “it’s an annoyance.” She said many of them were filed by law firms that specialize in stock-price collapses. The last group of suits was filed after the price dropped 62 percent, bottoming out below $6 per share.

“None of those classes have been certified,” Olsen said. Without a judge’s certification that a broad class of people was harmed, the suits cannot proceed.

The company also was fined $1 million by Georgia’s insurance commissioner for violations of that state’s insurance code during the merger of Unum and Provident in 1999.

“It was a slap on the wrist,” Olsen said.

The company’s search for a new, permanent CEO will begin shortly, and interim CEO Watjen will be considered for the position, Olsen said. “We have a real sense of urgency about this,” she added.

Cape assessments to skyrocket

Published in the Current

Cape Elizabeth property owners with homes along the coast could see their property values triple, and other town residents could see their values nearly
double, when the town-wide revaluation process is completed in late April.

Town Assessor Matt Sturgis is in the final phase of number-crunching that will lead up to the revaluation report he will give to town councilors April 30. Notices of new assessments will go out the first week of May, and the tax rate based on the new property values will take effect in August, Sturgis said.

Those values will be higher across the board, he said. “The assessments on pretty much all properties are going up,” Sturgis said. The primary cause is
the increase in land values since 1994, the last time the entire town was reassessed.

Sturgis said his job does not have to do with setting the town’s tax rate, but making sure the tax load is spread fairly across all of the town’s property owners.

He is working to bring the assessed values of property in line with the market value. On waterfront properties, the valuation is now close to one-third the actual market worth, Sturgis said. Owners of inland property have values about 60 to 65 percent of market value, which means “people who do not have waterfront property are paying a disproportionate amount of taxes more than they should be,” Sturgis said.

When the valuations come out, homeowners will be able to discuss with Sturgis the amounts and possibly get them adjusted, though adjustments are based on value, not the property tax rate itself, Sturgis said.

Another problem for Cape homeowners could be the recent state budget, which lowered the homestead exemption from property tax. In the past, the property tax on the first $7,000 of value of a primary residence was paid by the state.

With the state budget enacted last week, the exemption was reduced for properties worth more than $125,000. Homes valued between $125,000 and $250,000 have $5,000 of their value exempted, and those worth more than $250,000 will only have $2,500 of value exempted.

Sturgis said that is a tax directed at Southern Maine. “How many houses do you know in Cumberland County that are worth under $125,000?” he asked, saying home values are lower in the northern part of the state.

That means Cape homeowners as a group will pay as much as $127,000 more in property tax that would previously have been picked up by the state, according to Town Manager Mike McGovern.

Last year, every homestead owner in town, 2,558 of them, received a tax discount of $158.48, regardless of the value of the home, Sturgis said. That money was paid to the town coffers by the state.

Now, people with homes worth more than $125,000 will save closer to $100, and people with homes worth more than $250,000 will only save $55 on their property tax.

It connects property value and ability to pay, Sturgis said. “That’s not fair and that’s not right,” he said.