Stolen boat beached with lobsters aboard

Published in the Current

SOUTH PORTLAND (Sep 22, 2005): A boat stolen from a Portland pier Saturday night was beached early Sunday morning on Willard Beach, with live lobsters crawling around the boat.

The “Thorfinn Olaf,” named after the father of owner Mark Nordli of Portland, had been left at Hobson’s Wharf at 2 p.m. Saturday when Nordli finished hauling his traps.

When he returned to the wharf at 5 a.m. Sunday, he found the boat missing. Nordli called the Portland police and then the Coast Guard.

While he was on the phone with the Coast Guard, they were also getting a call from the South Portland police saying the boat had been found on Willard Beach.

Officer Kevin Battle, also the city’s deputy harbormaster, estimated, based on the location of the boat, that it was beached around the time of the high tide, between 1 and 2 a.m.

Nordli said when he arrived at about 7:30 a.m. Battle was already there, and there were “lobsters running around the boat,” leading Battle and Nordli to believe the thieves had pulled some traps overnight. Nordli corraled the lobsters and took them away.

The only thing missing was a battery-powered drill, and the boat did not sustain much damage, at least some of which Nordli attributed to wave action rather than vandals.

Several unmarked gas cans with fuel in them were on Nordli’s boat, leading him to suspect the people who stole his boat lifted gas from other boats first. Police have no suspects in the theft.

“People get drunk on Saturday night, and they say ‘let’s go steal a boat,’ I guess,” Nordli said.

With help from his son, Nordli was able to refloat the boat around 9 a.m. on the incoming tide that same day. He said he might be out fishing that afternoon.

Cigarettes stolen from local store

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (Sep 22, 2005): The night after Maine’s cigarette tax increase took effect, a Scarborough business felt the effects.

Thieves bashed in the glass door of Eight Corners Pizza at 2:02 a.m. Tuesday morning and in about 45 seconds made off with $750 to $800 worth of cigarettes, according to owner Peter Walsh Jr.

Two minutes after the store’s alarm went off, Scarborough police Officer Jeff Greenleaf arrived, and found the thieves already gone.

The thieves had driven right up to the door, smashed it in with “a bowling-ball-sized rock,” and one person jumped onto and then over the counter to get to the cigarette rack, Walsh said.

He guessed the person had a large bag and just shoveled packs of cigarettes into the bag, because there were cigarette packs on the floor that had been stepped on.

Walsh estimated that 150 to 200 packs were taken, with a retail value – including the new $2 tax, double the old tax – of between $750 and $800. He blamed the tax increase for the theft, saying he pays about $50 a carton, but a thief could sell a stolen carton “for 20 bucks and people will but it.”

He said police estimated the thief was in the store for 30 to 45 seconds, while a getaway driver waited outside. Scarborough and South Portland police were alerted immediately, but did not spot a car.

Walsh said the thief did not touch the lottery tickets or alcoholic beverages right next to the counter, and said there is no cash ever kept in the store after closing.

The thieves did $1,500 in damage to the store, Walsh said. He is considering installing a steel gate across his door, but thinks that’s a little much for Scarborough. “I don’t want to see it, do you?” he asked.

It is the second time thieves have hit the store. In 2002, people who broke in and stole cigarettes were caught red-handed that night, he said.

Police got various pieces of evidence from the store after Tuesday’s break-in, Walsh said. “We’re going to catch them.”

Portland Players celebrate 75th season

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (Sep 22, 2005): As the curtain rises Friday evening at the Portland Players in South Portland, the historic theater will be starting its 75th season, with residents of Scarborough, Cape Elizabeth and South Portland appearing throughout the show, as always.

The theater opened in 1931 as the Portland Dramatic Guild in a playhouse in Portland. No productions were performed from 1942 to 1946 as a result of World War II, but after the war the theater came back to life.

“When I first came here it was the only show in town – that and the symphony,” said Betty Longbottom, who has been involved with the theater since the 1950s.

“We’ve just kept going and going,” said Longbottom, now the theater’s vice president for artistic development.

The theater world has changed in Maine. Now, “the competition for the theatrical dollar is fierce,” she said.

In the late 1960s, the theater, which had been in a building on Preble Street in Portland, was told by the landlord that it would have to move.

“Before we knew it the seats were gone," Longbottom said.

She was in the last show in the Preble Street theater – “Fallen Angels” by Noel Coward – and the first one in its home ever since, a former movie theater on Cottage Road in South Portland, “Royal Gambit” by Hermann Gressieker.

The theater has never had an endowment, but has managed to keep going year-to-year. “There were times when we would worry about it, but we’re still hanging in there,” said Longbottom, who recently moved to Portland from a home in Cape Elizabeth near the South Portland line.

A key has been finding good directors who know how to cast, she said. That has remained constant, though audience demands have changed.

The theater used to do two musicals a season, and now does three. “Straight plays are not that well attended,” Longbottom said.

Donations and ticket sales used to cover most of the expenses, but the theater is now seeking grants for projects, including roof repair.

And they know “anything with kids in it is going to sell,” she said.

Jean Maginnis, a South Portland resident who is on the theater’s board of trustees, got involved through her son, who is now 21 and a college senior studying theater.

When he was 12, Maginnis was looking for a summer activity for him that he could walk to. Having gotten so much from the theater, “I feel like I need to give back,” she said.

There are no longer any summer kids’ programs, but Maginnis is considering restarting them.

As it is, of the 49 people in “Oliver!” which opens Friday, about half are kids, who “have given up most of their summers,” Maginnis said. Their parents have, too, driving them to and from rehearsals.

She is planning a large celebration event in April, and at that time may kick off an endowment fund-raising drive.

The charm of the theater is the local people in it, she said. “It’s your insurance man by day who comes out in a costume and sings and dances by night.”

In another 75 years, the theater may still be performing the shows now considered classics: “Nobody’s writing anything,” Longbottom said.

But there are always new possibilities. The upcoming season includes the theater’s first-ever production of “Gypsy” and its first female version of “The Odd Couple.”

“We do it because we love it,” Maginnis said.

Local cast members in “Oliver!” are:

From Cape Elizabeth, Sam Spicer, Alanah Lockwood, Ana Ryden, Griffin Carpenter, Tim Hartel, Chris Bowman and Brianna Bowman;

From Scarborough: Stephanie Hughes, Martha Lopez, Colin Swords and Owen Kelley;

From South Portland: Lisa Rockwell, Jaimie Schwartz, Jamie Lupien, Jennifer Eaton-Burke, Eliza Schwartz, Ali Schwartz, Jonny Lewis, Jack Cutler, William Cleaves and Mark Crawford.

Hotel room catches fire

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (Sep 19, 2005): A room on the third floor of the Extended Stay America hotel caught fire Monday afternoon, sending three people to the hospital to get checked out after inhaling smoke.

Scarborough Fire Chief Mike Thurlow said a contractor working in the room put a tool bag on an electric stove that had been left on. The contractor then left the room.

The smoke detector in the room alerted the hotel manager, who went up to check on the third-floor room. By the time the manager got there, smoke was collecting in the hallway, sounding the building-wide fire alarm at the hotel, just off Payne Road.

The manager was able to put out the fire before firefighters arrived, Thurlow said. The fire was put out so fast the room's sprinklers did not go off, he said.

Police Officer Doug Weed suffered minor injuries while carrying a dog down the stairs. He was checked at a hospital and was released, Thurlow said.

The other two people, the hotel manager and another person, were also released from the hospital after being checked out, he said.

Weed will have to replace the pants he was wearing, which suffered a tear in one leg.

The dog, a cocker spaniel with no name on its tag, had been left alone in its room. The dog was unhurt, and was cared for by another guest.

Hotel staff refused to comment on the fire.

Paulette and Ron Flaherty of Sebring, Fla., were staying in a room on the first floor while visiting family in the area. Ron is a retired South Portland firefighter, and the couple has children in Cape Elizabeth, Scarborough, South Portland and Saco.

When firefighters began cleaning up outside, Paulette was able to peek through the window into the couple's room, and said everything appeared to be undamaged.

Editorial: Respect others’ land

Published in the Current

CAPE ELIZABETH (Sep 15, 2005): If Paul Woods walked up his neighbor’s driveway and started clearing vegetation along her front path, she would be livid, and rightly so.

But that is, effectively, what the Broad Cove Association has done to Woods, as we learn on Page 1.

Wednesday morning, a worker showed up on Woods’s land, saying he had been hired by the association to clear some vegetation along a path Woods owns.

The path crosses an easement that is in dispute, with the association claiming all neighborhood homeowners have a right to cross Woods’s property to get to Maxwell Point Beach, also called “Secret Beach,” and Woods saying just a few families have that right.

Lawyers are already involved, the police say a court will have to resolve it, and the association is raising money for a legal battle. The language and drawings in decades-old subdivision plans are being dug out and scrutinized.

It’s true that Woods owns the land. It’s also true that neighborhood residents have been using the path and the beach for years, and have kept the path clear of brush and debris. The permission granted by the easement appears clear to both parties, though in different ways.

But it’s Woods’s land, and he is entitled to protect it. More than that, he must defend his rights against outside claims or risk losing them in a dispute just like this one.

Everyone in the neighborhood – and certainly everyone involved in the association – knows the property is in dispute, and everyone is waiting for someone to sue someone else, to get this disagreement where it belongs: in front of a judge.

But in the meantime the neighborhood association is demonstrating disrespect for the same property rights its members say they are defending.

The association has passed out flyers urging neighbors to continue using the disputed pathway, and has now sent a workman to do maintenance on it. That’s outrageous. The neighbors should respect Woods’s rights as the owner of the property, and not use it until this case is sorted out in court.

Let them retire

It would be easy to dismiss the concerns of Cape Elizabeth Police Officers Vaughn Dyer and Allen Westberry, if they hadn’t each spent 30 years on the force.

The two men, and their fellow officers, sergeants and dispatchers, want a better retirement package included in the contract now being negotiated with the town. The town has offered to increase from 7 percent to 10 percent its contribution of an officer’s pay to a private retirement account, while the officers want a guaranteed two-thirds pension after 25 years of service, no matter how old they are.

Dyer and Westberry – one 58 with a bum knee and the other 64, a triple-bypass patient last summer now waiting for Medicare to kick in before he retires – are prime examples of why police officers should have a different retirement package than other municipal workers.

They are both smart, capable, articulate men. And if they had any other job, they should be encouraged to keep it, bringing their experience and passion for the work to other, younger co-workers.

But to ask a man with arthritis in both knees, or one with three arterial bypasses, to run after a suspect – whether a teen escaping a party in the woods or a drunk driver whose car leaves the road – is ridiculous.

The police union contends that while the first three years of the new retirement plan would be more expensive for Cape taxpayers than what the town has offered, after that the cost would be lower than the town’s offer. The union has also offered to help offset the cost for those first three years, by giving up cost-of-living increases.

For the long term, whether considering the town’s finances or the physical state of its police officers, letting police officers retire with pensions after 25 years – no matter their age – makes good sense.

Jeff Inglis, editor