Published in the Current
In Thailand, Christmas isn’t the national holiday it is here in the U.S. In the mostly Buddhist country, only a small percentage of people are Christians. But the Rev. Phil Gage said the country is increasingly embracing the commercial aspects of the holiday.
“You hear Christmas carols, you see Christmas lights,” on the streets of the major cities, he said. Part of that is because the king’s birthday is Dec. 5, and that is a cause for great national celebration.
Christmas, he said, “sort of fits right into that.”
Gage, now the pastor of Scarborough’s Free Baptist Church at Eight Corners, and his wife spent 25 years as missionaries in Thailand.
They were there for four years at a stretch before returning home to the U.S. for a year of traveling to speak at various churches.
They served as spiritual advisers to villagers, city-dwellers and other missionaries, and helped make Christmas a special time.
“Here we’d normally gather as families,” Gage said. In Thailand, “people come together and celebrate as a church family.”
Many Christians in Thailand are not estranged from their Buddhist families, Gage said, but they have big church community events to celebrate the holiday.
There are pageants, caroling and worship. And while Christians make up less than five percent of the population of Thailand, they travel to the houses of church members, singing and having fun at each home. One year, Gage said, they took two minivans and started caroling at 10 p.m. They finished the next morning at 5 a.m., when they ate a giant meal of boiled rice with all sorts of side dishes, a favorite Thai meal.
The Thais don’t tend to exchange gifts, but they will give each other cards, Gage said. And decorations aren’t the same as we would expect. “It is more apt to be the traditional sort of decoration,” Gage said.
In his time in Thailand, Gage traveled all over the country. Some tribal groups, he said, have converted to Christianity en masse, but in a way that has allowed them to retain tribal customs.
Before they became Christian, they would hold large parties for each new year, but would get drunk and fights would erupt.
After they became Christian, they stopped having the celebrations for a time, but realized they missed dressing up in traditional costumes and doing their dances and other cultural performances. So they decided to have their traditional celebrations but substituted tea for the alcohol, making the events more peaceable.
Thais, he said, tend to focus more on people and relationships than on material objects the way Americans do, especially around the holidays, but Gage has also seen parallels between Thai Christmas celebrations and the way his church members observe the occasion.
“(Thais) will act out the birth of Christ a lot,” he said. Recently some of the members of his church wanted to do a live nativity scene outside the church. “That really clicked with me,” Gage said.
But Thais also will bring their own culture to church. “They would perform their cultural dances,” he said, as well as songs.
Like in the U.S., Thai holiday church services often feature children performing.
Gage and his wife adopted two Thai children, who are now 30 and 25. Gage became a grandfather for the fourth time Nov. 30, when his daughter gave birth to his first granddaughter in Massachusetts.
His daughter, Missy, makes crèches for the holidays, including a special Maine themed one, with a fisherman and woodsman, among other figures. She also makes crèches or ornaments that she gives to each family in Gage’s church during Advent.
And now, back in the states, Gage has an easier time decorating his home and the church as well. Over there, he said, “you had to really be creative in terms of decorating.”
But even so, lights and candles were common, and through the 1980s more and more Christmas decorations came to Thailand, appearing in storefronts and advertisements, primarily in cities around the Buddhist nation.
Thursday, December 6, 2001
Mainers remember Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941
Published in the Current
Infantryman Albert Riopel
Albert Riopel, 84, spends most of his days in the Maine Veterans Home on Rt. 1 in Scarborough. And though he is in the company of a great many veterans of World War II, he hasn’t found anyone else who was at Pearl Harbor the day the Japanese attacked.
He volunteered for the infantry in 1940 and after training he went to Pearl Harbor, to prepare for an attack on Japanese positions on Corregidor, an island stronghold in the Pacific.
Preparations were under way as negotiations deteriorated between the Japanese and U.S. governments, and war appeared more probable. But nobody expected the attack that peaceful Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941.
He was just getting up when the attack began.
“It was a fiasco. (The Japanese) knew what they were doing,” Riopel said. They bombed the harbor, the barracks and the airfield, destroying much of the military hardware in Hawaii.
Riopel’s unit was sent to Clark Field to defend it from attack.
Everyone expected the Japanese to land and try to take the island, and Riopel thinks they might have succeeded. But they didn’t try.
“They wanted to cripple the Navy,” he said. “It was over in no time at all.”
After the attack, the invasion force, including Riopel, headed for Corregidor, but found it surrounded by enemy submarines.
So they invaded New Guinea instead. Fighting in the jungle was merciless, he said, and difficult because of the thick underbrush.
The Japanese would hide all over the place and attack from any direction, Riopel said.
“Every time we’d go on patrol the first one (in line) would get killed—the first one and the last one,” Riopel said.
He doesn’t like to remember the scenes he saw, but did say he watched many of his friends die over the four years he spent fighting in the jungle.
“It was rough,” Riopel said. “I lost a lot of my friends there.”
He said fighting in the Pacific was brutal. “Many times I wished I was in Europe,” he said, where soldiers would capture a city and then celebrate.
Riopel especially envied the access to wine the European soldiers had.
But in the Pacific things were different.
“You capture one island and you go on to the next,” he said.
Even worse, General MacArthur wouldn’t let his unit go back to the U.S. “He wouldn’t let us leave because we had experience,” Riopel said.
He especially respected the Australian soldiers, whom he described as tough and skilled fighters, though they would stop for tea twice a day, he said, “no matter where they were.”
He wasn’t a career soldier, and after the war ended he came to Maine and worked in mills for more than 40 years. He lived in Westbrook and two weeks ago sold the house he owned in that town for over 55 years.
His daughter lives in Cape Elizabeth, and he gets a lot of visits from his family, but when he sits alone sometimes, he said, memories of what he saw in the war come flooding back.
Nurse Revella Guest
Revella Guest was born Nov. 8, 1912, in Brownville Junction to a Canadian mother and an English father. She went to high school in the town, and then went to Portland to study nursing at Maine General Hospital, graduating in 1935.
Her papers, now in the care of a relative in Scarborough, tell the story of her life, including her experience as a nurse at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
Restless with private duty work around Portland, she became an Army nurse on Jan. 30, 1930. By March of 1941 she was heading to Tripler Army Hospital near Honolulu, the capital of the then-territory of Hawaii. She was lodged at Hickam Field, which would suffer serious damage in the Dec. 7 attack. On Dec. 5, though, the nurses were moved from their four-person apartments back to rooms at Tripler.
That night, she and some of her nursing friends went to dinner on the battleship USS West Virginia with some warrant officers serving
on that ship.
As they ate and watched a movie, it never crossed their minds that Japan could attack. “Everybody was just having a good time and doing their duty. We never thought anything about that,” Guest said.
On Dec. 7, just like the day before, she was scheduled for the morning shift.
The attack
At 7 a.m., Dec. 7, she reported for work at the hospital, and was doing routine work on the ward, when it happened.
“All of a sudden the radio started blaring for all military people to report back to their stations. We had porches and I was out looking on the back porch, and I saw some, heard some guns, and I saw black smoke coming up. I thought, ‘My goodness! I’ve never seen that before!’” she said.
“Then the radio started to blare that we were being attacked by the Japanese. Then I called down to my friends where they were, and I told them to get up and get dressed because everybody was going to be working, because we were being attacked by the Japanese,” Guest said.
The hospital had fewer staff on duty over the weekend, with some people having time off and even some patients out on a pass. But she knew it would be a busy day.
“We knew that when we were being attacked that we were going to have casualties because we were the largest general hospital on the island. In fact, we were the only general hospital,” she said.
She spent the first few minutes getting the walking wounded out of the hospital to make room for more seriously injured people. When she was done, only two patients remained, both of whom were in traction, but they were not about to let that stop them.
“I had to watch those guys like a hawk,” she said, “because they were going to cut themselves out of traction and go to war.”
Her ward became a post-operation ward, where patients went after surgery. “You had amputees, abdominal wounds, head injuries. You name it, and it was there,” Guest said.
She and one other nurse were racing around caring for 65 patients, changing intravenous fluids and providing other care to the men, as
they came out from under anaesthesia. They didn’t have time to do proper charts, but instead scribbled the time of the last morphine injection a patient received on a scrap of paper at the head of each bed.
As night fell, the hospital was blacked out to protect against air raids. She needed to give a shot to a patient on the porch, and removed the piece of blue carbon paper from the front of the flashlight, so she could see the vein. “I’d take that thing off and some guard would holler, ‘Put out that light or I’ll shoot!’ I’d yell, ‘Shut up until I give this shot!’” she laughed.
She worked through the whole night and into the next day without any sleep. She was first able to change into a clean uniform at 6 a.m. Dec. 8.
A few days after the attack, she and a friend went to the local telegraph office to deliver their first news to their families that they were OK. Her telegram just said, “Revella.”
The first shipload of patients headed back to the mainland on Christmas Day, after Guest and her colleagues spent a lot of time Christmas Eve bandaging patients to be ready for travel.
Still tied to Maine
Her family remembers her as having loved Maine and returning as often as possible.
Her papers and other effects were distributed among the family. Many of her World War II records and items are now with her sister-inlaw’s
cousin, Ken Dolloff of Scarborough.
Infantryman Albert Riopel
Albert Riopel, 84, spends most of his days in the Maine Veterans Home on Rt. 1 in Scarborough. And though he is in the company of a great many veterans of World War II, he hasn’t found anyone else who was at Pearl Harbor the day the Japanese attacked.
He volunteered for the infantry in 1940 and after training he went to Pearl Harbor, to prepare for an attack on Japanese positions on Corregidor, an island stronghold in the Pacific.
Preparations were under way as negotiations deteriorated between the Japanese and U.S. governments, and war appeared more probable. But nobody expected the attack that peaceful Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941.
He was just getting up when the attack began.
“It was a fiasco. (The Japanese) knew what they were doing,” Riopel said. They bombed the harbor, the barracks and the airfield, destroying much of the military hardware in Hawaii.
Riopel’s unit was sent to Clark Field to defend it from attack.
Everyone expected the Japanese to land and try to take the island, and Riopel thinks they might have succeeded. But they didn’t try.
“They wanted to cripple the Navy,” he said. “It was over in no time at all.”
After the attack, the invasion force, including Riopel, headed for Corregidor, but found it surrounded by enemy submarines.
So they invaded New Guinea instead. Fighting in the jungle was merciless, he said, and difficult because of the thick underbrush.
The Japanese would hide all over the place and attack from any direction, Riopel said.
“Every time we’d go on patrol the first one (in line) would get killed—the first one and the last one,” Riopel said.
He doesn’t like to remember the scenes he saw, but did say he watched many of his friends die over the four years he spent fighting in the jungle.
“It was rough,” Riopel said. “I lost a lot of my friends there.”
He said fighting in the Pacific was brutal. “Many times I wished I was in Europe,” he said, where soldiers would capture a city and then celebrate.
Riopel especially envied the access to wine the European soldiers had.
But in the Pacific things were different.
“You capture one island and you go on to the next,” he said.
Even worse, General MacArthur wouldn’t let his unit go back to the U.S. “He wouldn’t let us leave because we had experience,” Riopel said.
He especially respected the Australian soldiers, whom he described as tough and skilled fighters, though they would stop for tea twice a day, he said, “no matter where they were.”
He wasn’t a career soldier, and after the war ended he came to Maine and worked in mills for more than 40 years. He lived in Westbrook and two weeks ago sold the house he owned in that town for over 55 years.
His daughter lives in Cape Elizabeth, and he gets a lot of visits from his family, but when he sits alone sometimes, he said, memories of what he saw in the war come flooding back.
Nurse Revella Guest
Revella Guest was born Nov. 8, 1912, in Brownville Junction to a Canadian mother and an English father. She went to high school in the town, and then went to Portland to study nursing at Maine General Hospital, graduating in 1935.
Her papers, now in the care of a relative in Scarborough, tell the story of her life, including her experience as a nurse at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
Restless with private duty work around Portland, she became an Army nurse on Jan. 30, 1930. By March of 1941 she was heading to Tripler Army Hospital near Honolulu, the capital of the then-territory of Hawaii. She was lodged at Hickam Field, which would suffer serious damage in the Dec. 7 attack. On Dec. 5, though, the nurses were moved from their four-person apartments back to rooms at Tripler.
That night, she and some of her nursing friends went to dinner on the battleship USS West Virginia with some warrant officers serving
on that ship.
As they ate and watched a movie, it never crossed their minds that Japan could attack. “Everybody was just having a good time and doing their duty. We never thought anything about that,” Guest said.
On Dec. 7, just like the day before, she was scheduled for the morning shift.
The attack
At 7 a.m., Dec. 7, she reported for work at the hospital, and was doing routine work on the ward, when it happened.
“All of a sudden the radio started blaring for all military people to report back to their stations. We had porches and I was out looking on the back porch, and I saw some, heard some guns, and I saw black smoke coming up. I thought, ‘My goodness! I’ve never seen that before!’” she said.
“Then the radio started to blare that we were being attacked by the Japanese. Then I called down to my friends where they were, and I told them to get up and get dressed because everybody was going to be working, because we were being attacked by the Japanese,” Guest said.
The hospital had fewer staff on duty over the weekend, with some people having time off and even some patients out on a pass. But she knew it would be a busy day.
“We knew that when we were being attacked that we were going to have casualties because we were the largest general hospital on the island. In fact, we were the only general hospital,” she said.
She spent the first few minutes getting the walking wounded out of the hospital to make room for more seriously injured people. When she was done, only two patients remained, both of whom were in traction, but they were not about to let that stop them.
“I had to watch those guys like a hawk,” she said, “because they were going to cut themselves out of traction and go to war.”
Her ward became a post-operation ward, where patients went after surgery. “You had amputees, abdominal wounds, head injuries. You name it, and it was there,” Guest said.
She and one other nurse were racing around caring for 65 patients, changing intravenous fluids and providing other care to the men, as
they came out from under anaesthesia. They didn’t have time to do proper charts, but instead scribbled the time of the last morphine injection a patient received on a scrap of paper at the head of each bed.
As night fell, the hospital was blacked out to protect against air raids. She needed to give a shot to a patient on the porch, and removed the piece of blue carbon paper from the front of the flashlight, so she could see the vein. “I’d take that thing off and some guard would holler, ‘Put out that light or I’ll shoot!’ I’d yell, ‘Shut up until I give this shot!’” she laughed.
She worked through the whole night and into the next day without any sleep. She was first able to change into a clean uniform at 6 a.m. Dec. 8.
A few days after the attack, she and a friend went to the local telegraph office to deliver their first news to their families that they were OK. Her telegram just said, “Revella.”
The first shipload of patients headed back to the mainland on Christmas Day, after Guest and her colleagues spent a lot of time Christmas Eve bandaging patients to be ready for travel.
Still tied to Maine
Her family remembers her as having loved Maine and returning as often as possible.
Her papers and other effects were distributed among the family. Many of her World War II records and items are now with her sister-inlaw’s
cousin, Ken Dolloff of Scarborough.
Moose on the loose in Cape
Published in the Current
School bus drivers and neighbors have spotted two moose wandering around in the Great Pond area of Fowler Road, often in the early morning.
Out of concern for the well being of the animals and the safety of drivers on the road, the Cape Elizabeth Police Department asked a wildlife biologist from the state to take a look at the area and help determine whether the moose should be tranquilized and relocated or left alone.
The biologist visited Fowler Road Tuesday afternoon, and didn’t see the moose, one of which is reportedly smaller than the other. But he did make a recommendation to Police Chief Neil Williams about what to do.
“His feeling is that they’re going to move on,” Williams said. With the warm weather and the apples on the ground nearby, they have food for the moment. But when it cools off, and when the snow comes, Williams said, “they’ll move on with the supply of food.”
The police will continue to keep an eye on the area, and have ordered signs be put up warning drivers to watch out for moose.
If the moose are a mother and a calf born in the spring, the little one could weigh as much as 400 pounds. The mother would weigh between 700 and 900 pounds, and could stand as much as six feet tall at the shoulder.
Moose are especially dangerous to drivers because their coats are dark and their eyes are higher than most headlight beams, so drivers don’t see their reflections the way they do with deer or other smaller animals.
Also, moose tend to be active between dusk and dawn, when visibility is lowest. And they can be unpredictable, sometimes darting out in front of an oncoming car.
For now, Cape’s moose will have a temporary home, but will move where nature supplies the food.
“They should be up north, but they’re not,” Williams said.
School bus drivers and neighbors have spotted two moose wandering around in the Great Pond area of Fowler Road, often in the early morning.
Out of concern for the well being of the animals and the safety of drivers on the road, the Cape Elizabeth Police Department asked a wildlife biologist from the state to take a look at the area and help determine whether the moose should be tranquilized and relocated or left alone.
The biologist visited Fowler Road Tuesday afternoon, and didn’t see the moose, one of which is reportedly smaller than the other. But he did make a recommendation to Police Chief Neil Williams about what to do.
“His feeling is that they’re going to move on,” Williams said. With the warm weather and the apples on the ground nearby, they have food for the moment. But when it cools off, and when the snow comes, Williams said, “they’ll move on with the supply of food.”
The police will continue to keep an eye on the area, and have ordered signs be put up warning drivers to watch out for moose.
If the moose are a mother and a calf born in the spring, the little one could weigh as much as 400 pounds. The mother would weigh between 700 and 900 pounds, and could stand as much as six feet tall at the shoulder.
Moose are especially dangerous to drivers because their coats are dark and their eyes are higher than most headlight beams, so drivers don’t see their reflections the way they do with deer or other smaller animals.
Also, moose tend to be active between dusk and dawn, when visibility is lowest. And they can be unpredictable, sometimes darting out in front of an oncoming car.
For now, Cape’s moose will have a temporary home, but will move where nature supplies the food.
“They should be up north, but they’re not,” Williams said.
Students hear the call for fire and rescue work
Published in the Current
While their friends and classmates are playing sports, hanging out with friends or doing homework, some high school students in Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth would rather be out fighting fires, directing traffic or administering medical care to sick and injured people in their communities.
They learn skills they will use as police officers, firefighters and emergency medical personnel, and they begin serving their communities from a young age.
It is a crucial opportunity, according to Cape Elizabeth Fire Chief Philip McGouldrick, who got his start as a firefighter in South Portland’s student program 40 years ago.
“You get them when they’ve got some time and interest,” McGouldrick said, and before they go away to college and lose interest or no longer have the time to learn firefighting skills.
It offers another benefit to the towns, both of which are home to commuting workers. Fire and rescue volunteers are in shorter supply during the day, but the departments are bolstered by the students, who are nearly always around during school hours.
The students all must qualify for their extracurricular activities in the same way as student athletes do, by keeping grades up and by being responsible for any class work missed.
Going since the 1960s
The oldest program in the two towns is Scarborough’s student rescue squad, begun in 1968.
The program now involves seven or eight members each of the junior and senior classes at the high school.
They have weekly training sessions, in which juniors prepare for the Emergency Medical Technician training course mandated by the U.S. Department of Transportation. They learn basic first aid, CPR and how to splint broken bones. Seniors, who have taken the EMT course at Southern Maine Technical College in the summer after junior year, practice their skills.
The seniors also carry fire department pagers and can be paged out of classes at the high school to respond to an emergency.
They are responsible for all their class work and homework, and must keep their grades up.
While students used to respond to all fire and rescue calls during the school day, the recent growth of business in town has resulted in a change to that policy, according to program coordinator Bob Hawkes.
Because a number of daytime fire calls are from malfunctioning automatic alarm boxes at businesses, there is really no need for extra medical assistance. If the students left class for each of these calls, Hawkes said, they would never be in school at all. So the students are only paged out if the call is one that will require medical attention.
Several students plan to participate in rescue squads while in college, and some of them will be entering the medical field.
“It just opened a door for me,” said Karolina Kurka, who wants to be a doctor. Her colleagues echo her interest and dedication, even after spending a large part of the past summer in a classroom at SMTC studying to be an EMT.
“It was definitely worth it,” said Stephanie Byrne.
Scarborough Police Explorers
Scarborough students are not just working on the rescue squad.
Several are involved in law enforcement, through the 5-year-old Explorer post run by the town’s police department.
The group, while part of the Boy Scouts program, is open to both girls and boys between 15 and 21.
The program now includes about 10 people, according to community service officer Joe Giacomantonio.
The kids have a rank structure and uniforms, and get training in various aspects of law enforcement.
They do ride-alongs with town police officers, learn about dispatch and incident reporting, learn to direct traffic and perform various projects in the community, like putting up street signs required by the E-911 system.
Giacomantonio said they have no authority to make arrests, and do not carry firearms, though they do some firearms training on a shooting range.
The group is presently raising money to pay for a trip to Flagstaff, Ariz., in July 2002 for a conference of law enforcement Explorer posts. Among their activities will be a comedy night at the high school on Mar. 6, featuring local comedian Bob Marley.
The Explorer post provides a career-development opportunity for the students. “I really want to be in law enforcement,” said Explorer Lt. Ann Chaney. “My favorite part is a lot of the training.”
The group also sells Christmas trees at Bayley’s campground on Pine Point Road, and helps clean up a local YMCA campground.
Cape Elizabeth Student Firefighters
Several students at Cape Elizabeth High School also carry pagers and respond to calls during school hours. They take the Firefighter I course, a nationally required course for firefighters, one evening a week. They’re required to keep their grades up to stay in the program.
“It’s been very useful,” said Fire Chief McGouldrick. He said it’s a great way to make sure there are firefighters in the community.
The program offers the department additional personnel during the day, and though the students who haven’t completed their training can’t actually go into a burning building, they can help with opening and tending fire hydrants, getting drinks and tools for the firefighters, and doing other smaller, but no less important tasks around the fire scene, McGouldrick said.
“They’ve been real valuable to us,” he said.
Student firefighter Mike Walsh said he enjoys the work and the learning. He even comes to the Fire Department on his free periods to be available for calls or training.
Cape Elizabeth Student Rescue
The Cape firefighters have colleagues on the rescue side of things, as well. While they do not get certified as EMTs as part of the town’s Student Rescue program, they get exposed to a wide variety of emergency calls. They are not allowed to respond to calls involving suicide threats, people trapped in cars after accidents or other potentially disturbing scenarios.
The program is about 10 years old, according to the new coordinator, Mike Tranfaglia, a physician’s assistant who is also an ambulance driver for the squad.
Two students are on call each week when school is in session.
They wear radio pagers and respond to the fire station when a call comes in. They are allowed to decide whether to go.
“The ambulance is going to run whether they’re there or not,” Tranfaglia said.
When they go on a call, they don’t perform direct patient care, but instead observe what happens and help out by being go-fers for the EMTs, getting slings or other medical equipment from the ambulance.
They do learn to take vital signs and sometimes are asked to do that in the course of a call, Tranfaglia said.
At least once each month the group, which now numbers four, meets with Tranfaglia to discuss the past month’s runs. They go over general principles of medicine, and Tranfaglia uses calls about chest pain, for example, to teach about the risk factors for heart disease.
He said some of the students go on to further careers in medicine or join the squad as EMTs, but not all do.
“It’s supposed to be educational exposure. We’re not trying to get members for Cape Rescue out of this,” Tranfaglia said.
Christopher Roy is one of the students in the group, and has been a part of the program since his sophomore year. He is now a senior and said he wants to become a physician. He is not sure whether he’ll specialize in emergency medicine or not, but he’s learning.
“It seemed like a good way to try it out,” Roy said. He said there is also satisfaction in the way he’s learning. “I like helping others.”
He is considering taking an EMT course in the spring, and said he enjoys working with the other members on the rescue squad and learning from their experience, though sometimes that can be a little stressful during a call when a medic needs to do something without a lot of questions.
Roy also said he enjoys meeting members of the public and learning about general safety issues.
“You get all sorts,” he said. “Everybody you meet is an interesting person.”
While their friends and classmates are playing sports, hanging out with friends or doing homework, some high school students in Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth would rather be out fighting fires, directing traffic or administering medical care to sick and injured people in their communities.
They learn skills they will use as police officers, firefighters and emergency medical personnel, and they begin serving their communities from a young age.
It is a crucial opportunity, according to Cape Elizabeth Fire Chief Philip McGouldrick, who got his start as a firefighter in South Portland’s student program 40 years ago.
“You get them when they’ve got some time and interest,” McGouldrick said, and before they go away to college and lose interest or no longer have the time to learn firefighting skills.
It offers another benefit to the towns, both of which are home to commuting workers. Fire and rescue volunteers are in shorter supply during the day, but the departments are bolstered by the students, who are nearly always around during school hours.
The students all must qualify for their extracurricular activities in the same way as student athletes do, by keeping grades up and by being responsible for any class work missed.
Going since the 1960s
The oldest program in the two towns is Scarborough’s student rescue squad, begun in 1968.
The program now involves seven or eight members each of the junior and senior classes at the high school.
They have weekly training sessions, in which juniors prepare for the Emergency Medical Technician training course mandated by the U.S. Department of Transportation. They learn basic first aid, CPR and how to splint broken bones. Seniors, who have taken the EMT course at Southern Maine Technical College in the summer after junior year, practice their skills.
The seniors also carry fire department pagers and can be paged out of classes at the high school to respond to an emergency.
They are responsible for all their class work and homework, and must keep their grades up.
While students used to respond to all fire and rescue calls during the school day, the recent growth of business in town has resulted in a change to that policy, according to program coordinator Bob Hawkes.
Because a number of daytime fire calls are from malfunctioning automatic alarm boxes at businesses, there is really no need for extra medical assistance. If the students left class for each of these calls, Hawkes said, they would never be in school at all. So the students are only paged out if the call is one that will require medical attention.
Several students plan to participate in rescue squads while in college, and some of them will be entering the medical field.
“It just opened a door for me,” said Karolina Kurka, who wants to be a doctor. Her colleagues echo her interest and dedication, even after spending a large part of the past summer in a classroom at SMTC studying to be an EMT.
“It was definitely worth it,” said Stephanie Byrne.
Scarborough Police Explorers
Scarborough students are not just working on the rescue squad.
Several are involved in law enforcement, through the 5-year-old Explorer post run by the town’s police department.
The group, while part of the Boy Scouts program, is open to both girls and boys between 15 and 21.
The program now includes about 10 people, according to community service officer Joe Giacomantonio.
The kids have a rank structure and uniforms, and get training in various aspects of law enforcement.
They do ride-alongs with town police officers, learn about dispatch and incident reporting, learn to direct traffic and perform various projects in the community, like putting up street signs required by the E-911 system.
Giacomantonio said they have no authority to make arrests, and do not carry firearms, though they do some firearms training on a shooting range.
The group is presently raising money to pay for a trip to Flagstaff, Ariz., in July 2002 for a conference of law enforcement Explorer posts. Among their activities will be a comedy night at the high school on Mar. 6, featuring local comedian Bob Marley.
The Explorer post provides a career-development opportunity for the students. “I really want to be in law enforcement,” said Explorer Lt. Ann Chaney. “My favorite part is a lot of the training.”
The group also sells Christmas trees at Bayley’s campground on Pine Point Road, and helps clean up a local YMCA campground.
Cape Elizabeth Student Firefighters
Several students at Cape Elizabeth High School also carry pagers and respond to calls during school hours. They take the Firefighter I course, a nationally required course for firefighters, one evening a week. They’re required to keep their grades up to stay in the program.
“It’s been very useful,” said Fire Chief McGouldrick. He said it’s a great way to make sure there are firefighters in the community.
The program offers the department additional personnel during the day, and though the students who haven’t completed their training can’t actually go into a burning building, they can help with opening and tending fire hydrants, getting drinks and tools for the firefighters, and doing other smaller, but no less important tasks around the fire scene, McGouldrick said.
“They’ve been real valuable to us,” he said.
Student firefighter Mike Walsh said he enjoys the work and the learning. He even comes to the Fire Department on his free periods to be available for calls or training.
Cape Elizabeth Student Rescue
The Cape firefighters have colleagues on the rescue side of things, as well. While they do not get certified as EMTs as part of the town’s Student Rescue program, they get exposed to a wide variety of emergency calls. They are not allowed to respond to calls involving suicide threats, people trapped in cars after accidents or other potentially disturbing scenarios.
The program is about 10 years old, according to the new coordinator, Mike Tranfaglia, a physician’s assistant who is also an ambulance driver for the squad.
Two students are on call each week when school is in session.
They wear radio pagers and respond to the fire station when a call comes in. They are allowed to decide whether to go.
“The ambulance is going to run whether they’re there or not,” Tranfaglia said.
When they go on a call, they don’t perform direct patient care, but instead observe what happens and help out by being go-fers for the EMTs, getting slings or other medical equipment from the ambulance.
They do learn to take vital signs and sometimes are asked to do that in the course of a call, Tranfaglia said.
At least once each month the group, which now numbers four, meets with Tranfaglia to discuss the past month’s runs. They go over general principles of medicine, and Tranfaglia uses calls about chest pain, for example, to teach about the risk factors for heart disease.
He said some of the students go on to further careers in medicine or join the squad as EMTs, but not all do.
“It’s supposed to be educational exposure. We’re not trying to get members for Cape Rescue out of this,” Tranfaglia said.
Christopher Roy is one of the students in the group, and has been a part of the program since his sophomore year. He is now a senior and said he wants to become a physician. He is not sure whether he’ll specialize in emergency medicine or not, but he’s learning.
“It seemed like a good way to try it out,” Roy said. He said there is also satisfaction in the way he’s learning. “I like helping others.”
He is considering taking an EMT course in the spring, and said he enjoys working with the other members on the rescue squad and learning from their experience, though sometimes that can be a little stressful during a call when a medic needs to do something without a lot of questions.
Roy also said he enjoys meeting members of the public and learning about general safety issues.
“You get all sorts,” he said. “Everybody you meet is an interesting person.”
Thursday, November 29, 2001
Woodstove blamed for Thanksgiving fire in Cape
Published in the Current
On Thanksgiving night, firefighters’ pagers went off all over Cape Elizabeth. The home of Rudy,Teresa and Alex Tumidajski on Sweet Fern Road was ablaze.
The family was in Connecticut for the holiday, but relatives who live nearby came to the house.
They called Connecticut and the Tumidajskis headed back to Maine that night. Their beloved dog, an Australian terrier named Max, died in the fire. “He was 7 going on 2,” Teresa Tumidajski said. Rudy said he wasn’t sure if he would get another dog, after the heartbreak of losing Max.
As firefighters arrived, they saw a house “fully involved,” with flames shooting from
upstairs windows and licking the outside of the brick chimney.
“The fire had a real good jump on us,” said Fire Chief Philip McGouldrick. The beams holding up the second floor had already burned through, collapsing a bedroom into the living room. McGouldrick said the fire was due to prolonged use of a woodstove insert in the fireplace.
There is sometimes little a firefighter can actually do. Even rapidly extinguishing a blaze can leave only a sodden, ash-coated shell of a building, with a home, memories and treasured possessions destroyed.
In the effort, two firefighters were slightly injured, one by tripping over a planter sitting on the darkened lawn, and the other had his shoulder clipped by a piece of clapboard that fell off the building.
Within 25 minutes of the crews’ arrival, the fire was under control, and the home’s attached three-car garage was saved, McGouldrick said.
After that came what the crews call “overhaul,” when they tear apart the remains of the building’s interior to make sure there is no fire hiding between walls or in the rubble.
Investigators next comb through the wreckage, searching for the source of the fire.
The outside of the building gives a good clue. There is severe damage around the chimney and in the upper bedroom, where the fire burned through the exterior walls.
The house was originally built with electric heat, but due to the expense, there was a woodstove insert installed into the fireplace which McGouldrick believes caused the fire. Over 12 years, the Tumidajskis have used the insert primarily as a furnace.
“A fireplace is more aesthetic,” McGouldrick said, and should not be used as the primary source of heat in a home.
The sustained heat from the stove made the fireplace bricks hot. Those bricks were stacked right up against the wood frame of the house, which would be fine for a fireplace in occasional use, McGouldrick said, but is not appropriate for a furnace.
Over time, high heat affects the wood, creating a low-grade smoldering, which makes it more likely to catch fire.
A new two-by-four needs to be heated to between 300 and 400 degrees Fahrenheit before it will burn, McGouldrick said. But after years of heat contact like that in the Tumidajskis’ fireplace, it would only need to get up to around 100 degrees before catching fire.
McGouldrick said people who have woodstove inserts should have their fireplaces checked out by the local fire department. And people going through a house with a home inspector should ask about the possibility of installing a woodstove into the fireplace, rather than assuming it will be fine.
The family had banked up their woodstove so it would continue to heat the house over the long weekend.
And hours after they left, it heated the wood to its burning point.
With few neighbors home, and the fire on the side of the house and away from the street, nobody noticed the flames until it was too late.
The shell of the house remains, with its windows boarded up. The family said the insurance company may decide to repair the damage rather than start from scratch, but that remains to be seen.
The Tumidajskis are holding up well, staying with Teresa’s mother in South Portland, and focusing on “what’s important in life.”
“Your world as you know it is turned upside-down and disintegrated,” Teresa said.
She said they do plan to rebuild the house, but it could be several months in the process, notwithstanding winter.
She asked that people who want to help say prayers for the family.
Chief McGouldrick said his firefighters turned out in great numbers despite the holiday. The first people on the scene were there within five minutes of the call. “We had a good response,” McGouldrick said. And nobody really left early, either, even though, with cleanup included, the work took close to four hours. “The more people that stay and pitch in, the quicker everybody gets home.”
“It’s what firefighters do,” McGouldrick said, “and what their families have come to expect. It just seems to happen at inopportune times.”
On Thanksgiving night, firefighters’ pagers went off all over Cape Elizabeth. The home of Rudy,Teresa and Alex Tumidajski on Sweet Fern Road was ablaze.
The family was in Connecticut for the holiday, but relatives who live nearby came to the house.
They called Connecticut and the Tumidajskis headed back to Maine that night. Their beloved dog, an Australian terrier named Max, died in the fire. “He was 7 going on 2,” Teresa Tumidajski said. Rudy said he wasn’t sure if he would get another dog, after the heartbreak of losing Max.
As firefighters arrived, they saw a house “fully involved,” with flames shooting from
upstairs windows and licking the outside of the brick chimney.
“The fire had a real good jump on us,” said Fire Chief Philip McGouldrick. The beams holding up the second floor had already burned through, collapsing a bedroom into the living room. McGouldrick said the fire was due to prolonged use of a woodstove insert in the fireplace.
There is sometimes little a firefighter can actually do. Even rapidly extinguishing a blaze can leave only a sodden, ash-coated shell of a building, with a home, memories and treasured possessions destroyed.
In the effort, two firefighters were slightly injured, one by tripping over a planter sitting on the darkened lawn, and the other had his shoulder clipped by a piece of clapboard that fell off the building.
Within 25 minutes of the crews’ arrival, the fire was under control, and the home’s attached three-car garage was saved, McGouldrick said.
After that came what the crews call “overhaul,” when they tear apart the remains of the building’s interior to make sure there is no fire hiding between walls or in the rubble.
Investigators next comb through the wreckage, searching for the source of the fire.
The outside of the building gives a good clue. There is severe damage around the chimney and in the upper bedroom, where the fire burned through the exterior walls.
The house was originally built with electric heat, but due to the expense, there was a woodstove insert installed into the fireplace which McGouldrick believes caused the fire. Over 12 years, the Tumidajskis have used the insert primarily as a furnace.
“A fireplace is more aesthetic,” McGouldrick said, and should not be used as the primary source of heat in a home.
The sustained heat from the stove made the fireplace bricks hot. Those bricks were stacked right up against the wood frame of the house, which would be fine for a fireplace in occasional use, McGouldrick said, but is not appropriate for a furnace.
Over time, high heat affects the wood, creating a low-grade smoldering, which makes it more likely to catch fire.
A new two-by-four needs to be heated to between 300 and 400 degrees Fahrenheit before it will burn, McGouldrick said. But after years of heat contact like that in the Tumidajskis’ fireplace, it would only need to get up to around 100 degrees before catching fire.
McGouldrick said people who have woodstove inserts should have their fireplaces checked out by the local fire department. And people going through a house with a home inspector should ask about the possibility of installing a woodstove into the fireplace, rather than assuming it will be fine.
The family had banked up their woodstove so it would continue to heat the house over the long weekend.
And hours after they left, it heated the wood to its burning point.
With few neighbors home, and the fire on the side of the house and away from the street, nobody noticed the flames until it was too late.
The shell of the house remains, with its windows boarded up. The family said the insurance company may decide to repair the damage rather than start from scratch, but that remains to be seen.
The Tumidajskis are holding up well, staying with Teresa’s mother in South Portland, and focusing on “what’s important in life.”
“Your world as you know it is turned upside-down and disintegrated,” Teresa said.
She said they do plan to rebuild the house, but it could be several months in the process, notwithstanding winter.
She asked that people who want to help say prayers for the family.
Chief McGouldrick said his firefighters turned out in great numbers despite the holiday. The first people on the scene were there within five minutes of the call. “We had a good response,” McGouldrick said. And nobody really left early, either, even though, with cleanup included, the work took close to four hours. “The more people that stay and pitch in, the quicker everybody gets home.”
“It’s what firefighters do,” McGouldrick said, “and what their families have come to expect. It just seems to happen at inopportune times.”
Wednesday, November 21, 2001
Youth transition facility opens
Published in the Current
On a small dirt road off Mitchell Hill Road in Scarborough is a beautifully renovated house which will soon be home to six young adults in transition from the state’s youth services programs to systems serving adults.
On Dec. 1, the youths, between ages 17 and 21, will move in to their single bedrooms in the fully furnished house, along with a 24-hour support staff including social workers and psychiatrists. The program is run by Ingraham, the Portland-based human services agency.
All six bedrooms will be full, and the agency said there is a waiting list. This part of Ingraham’s programs helps troubled youths make transitions from youth to adult systems of state programs and helps teach them skills for living and working in a community.
The house existed before, but was significantly renovated with sprinklers, exit signs and other safety features added, as well as offices for staff, additional common space and landscaping.
“We wanted to keep it as homey as possible,” said Ingraham Executive Director Jane Morrison. “When you give (the residents) a beautiful atmosphere, they feel like they’re worth something.”
This is Ingraham’s seventh such home, but its first in Scarborough and the first in such a rural location.
There is a pond on the property for skating in winter, and trees and shrubs abound.
“It’s so serene,” Morrison said.
She said the agency could explore outdoor education and wildlife and ecology programs using the home as a base.
Neighbors have been supportive, Morrison said, adding that some are former Ingraham volunteers, which helped the community’s reception.
“We’ve always been a good neighbor,” Morrison said. Neighbors were also glad that there is 24-hour supervision, and that residents are carefully selected so as not to be a risk to themselves or others, Morrison said.
One challenge for the residents and staff alike will be transportation.
The house has a van, and can give residents rides to and from work, education and other programs. But since part of the program involves learning living skills, Morrison said sometimes the van will drive a group to the Maine Mall and they’ll have to take buses to their destinations.
On a small dirt road off Mitchell Hill Road in Scarborough is a beautifully renovated house which will soon be home to six young adults in transition from the state’s youth services programs to systems serving adults.
On Dec. 1, the youths, between ages 17 and 21, will move in to their single bedrooms in the fully furnished house, along with a 24-hour support staff including social workers and psychiatrists. The program is run by Ingraham, the Portland-based human services agency.
All six bedrooms will be full, and the agency said there is a waiting list. This part of Ingraham’s programs helps troubled youths make transitions from youth to adult systems of state programs and helps teach them skills for living and working in a community.
The house existed before, but was significantly renovated with sprinklers, exit signs and other safety features added, as well as offices for staff, additional common space and landscaping.
“We wanted to keep it as homey as possible,” said Ingraham Executive Director Jane Morrison. “When you give (the residents) a beautiful atmosphere, they feel like they’re worth something.”
This is Ingraham’s seventh such home, but its first in Scarborough and the first in such a rural location.
There is a pond on the property for skating in winter, and trees and shrubs abound.
“It’s so serene,” Morrison said.
She said the agency could explore outdoor education and wildlife and ecology programs using the home as a base.
Neighbors have been supportive, Morrison said, adding that some are former Ingraham volunteers, which helped the community’s reception.
“We’ve always been a good neighbor,” Morrison said. Neighbors were also glad that there is 24-hour supervision, and that residents are carefully selected so as not to be a risk to themselves or others, Morrison said.
One challenge for the residents and staff alike will be transportation.
The house has a van, and can give residents rides to and from work, education and other programs. But since part of the program involves learning living skills, Morrison said sometimes the van will drive a group to the Maine Mall and they’ll have to take buses to their destinations.
Remembering holidays spent on the Ice
Published in the Current
For the first time in three years, I'll be home for Christmas in more than just my dreams. I've spent the past two holiday seasons as a journalist in Antarctica, based at McMurdo Station, the main U.S. research and logistics base in the Antarctic.
Now this year, as I share meals and gifts with my family and friends in New England, I'll be thinking of my friends in the Antarctic.
Thanksgiving and Christmas are the major holidays celebrated at the U.S. bases, though the small Jewish populations do have Hanukkah. They have to violate bans on candles (fire is a big threat in the windy, dry Antarctic) but they light a few small menorahs anyway.
In 1999, I met an Egyptian at the South Pole trying to observe Ramadan. His problem was that Muslims have to fast between sunrise and sunset, and he was in a place where the sun was up all day for months. The solution was clever: With the advice of his family's cleric back home in Egypt, he used the sunrise and sunset time of Christchurch, New Zealand, a main support station for the U.S. Antarctic Program.
But because most of the folks at the stations are of Christian extraction, even if they don't all go to the church services, there are holiday parties, carol-singing events and a huge Christmas feast, which is the main event everyone looks forward to.
Big holiday meals are a long Antarctic tradition. Capt. Robert Scott even carried a special plum pudding for the Christmas feast while he and his companions were sledging toward the South Pole in 1912. They never made it home, and they weren't the first to the Pole, but their bellies were full that night for the first time in months. The man who led the expedition that first reached 90 degrees south latitude, Roald Amundsen, also had a big Christmas meal on his way home, two weeks after reaching the Pole.
I often think of those small groups of men in tiny tents on the high Antarctic plateau, celebrating in that great cold and solitude a holiday they had previously spent with their wives and children at home in Europe.
Nowadays, in the warmth of McMurdo and the other American bases, the kitchen staff and volunteers serve turkey, stuffing, hand-made breads, fresh vegetables specially shipped in from New Zealand, and glorious desserts.
When we walked into the dining room for the holiday meal, there were artificial trees, colored streamers, and ornaments, and the food was arranged beautifully. Even the old hands, who had spent more Christmases on the Ice than they had at home, were impressed and amazed.
People dress up for the holiday feast, a big change from the Carhartts and fleece jackets normally worn at mealtime. Wine is even allowed in the dining room during holiday meals, and people take their plates off the cafeteria-style trays, insisting they "eat civilized" for the special day.
Other spontaneous celebrations occurred. My first year, the dormitory hallway on which I lived was a close-knit crew. We couldn't have a real tree because we couldn't import non-native species, and we couldn't find a fake tree either. Somebody found a floor lamp, though, and we put on it as many decoratioins as we could find, including Thanksgiving and New Year's signs, and each of us hung a government-issue thermal sock on the wall as a stocking. On Christmas Eve, we sang a few carols and shared the quirky holiday spirit we had nurtured.
And despite all the festivities, there was a sad undertone. Folks who head to the Antarctic are strong and independent, but at the holidays, everybody would really rather be at home. Some are lucky and have their partners or spouses there with them. But most make phone calls home, touching base by voice with family members they wouldn't see that year.
The holidays are a time to think of loved ones near and far, and to remember that while we may be lucky to see many family members and friends this holiday season, there are those who will not. Think of them too, and send them your telepathic holiday greetings. I certainly will.
For the first time in three years, I'll be home for Christmas in more than just my dreams. I've spent the past two holiday seasons as a journalist in Antarctica, based at McMurdo Station, the main U.S. research and logistics base in the Antarctic.
Now this year, as I share meals and gifts with my family and friends in New England, I'll be thinking of my friends in the Antarctic.
Thanksgiving and Christmas are the major holidays celebrated at the U.S. bases, though the small Jewish populations do have Hanukkah. They have to violate bans on candles (fire is a big threat in the windy, dry Antarctic) but they light a few small menorahs anyway.
In 1999, I met an Egyptian at the South Pole trying to observe Ramadan. His problem was that Muslims have to fast between sunrise and sunset, and he was in a place where the sun was up all day for months. The solution was clever: With the advice of his family's cleric back home in Egypt, he used the sunrise and sunset time of Christchurch, New Zealand, a main support station for the U.S. Antarctic Program.
But because most of the folks at the stations are of Christian extraction, even if they don't all go to the church services, there are holiday parties, carol-singing events and a huge Christmas feast, which is the main event everyone looks forward to.
Big holiday meals are a long Antarctic tradition. Capt. Robert Scott even carried a special plum pudding for the Christmas feast while he and his companions were sledging toward the South Pole in 1912. They never made it home, and they weren't the first to the Pole, but their bellies were full that night for the first time in months. The man who led the expedition that first reached 90 degrees south latitude, Roald Amundsen, also had a big Christmas meal on his way home, two weeks after reaching the Pole.
I often think of those small groups of men in tiny tents on the high Antarctic plateau, celebrating in that great cold and solitude a holiday they had previously spent with their wives and children at home in Europe.
Nowadays, in the warmth of McMurdo and the other American bases, the kitchen staff and volunteers serve turkey, stuffing, hand-made breads, fresh vegetables specially shipped in from New Zealand, and glorious desserts.
When we walked into the dining room for the holiday meal, there were artificial trees, colored streamers, and ornaments, and the food was arranged beautifully. Even the old hands, who had spent more Christmases on the Ice than they had at home, were impressed and amazed.
People dress up for the holiday feast, a big change from the Carhartts and fleece jackets normally worn at mealtime. Wine is even allowed in the dining room during holiday meals, and people take their plates off the cafeteria-style trays, insisting they "eat civilized" for the special day.
Other spontaneous celebrations occurred. My first year, the dormitory hallway on which I lived was a close-knit crew. We couldn't have a real tree because we couldn't import non-native species, and we couldn't find a fake tree either. Somebody found a floor lamp, though, and we put on it as many decoratioins as we could find, including Thanksgiving and New Year's signs, and each of us hung a government-issue thermal sock on the wall as a stocking. On Christmas Eve, we sang a few carols and shared the quirky holiday spirit we had nurtured.
And despite all the festivities, there was a sad undertone. Folks who head to the Antarctic are strong and independent, but at the holidays, everybody would really rather be at home. Some are lucky and have their partners or spouses there with them. But most make phone calls home, touching base by voice with family members they wouldn't see that year.
The holidays are a time to think of loved ones near and far, and to remember that while we may be lucky to see many family members and friends this holiday season, there are those who will not. Think of them too, and send them your telepathic holiday greetings. I certainly will.
Thursday, November 15, 2001
OxyContin theft at Rt. 1 Rite Aid
Published in the Current
7
Scarborough police are looking for a man who threatened a Rite Aid clerk with a knife during a theft of OxyContin from the store’s pharmacy on Route 1 at about 6 p.m. Monday.
The man was a white male with possibly brown hair and possibly brown eyes, said Detective Ivan Ramsdell. He was wearing a hat pulled low and a bandanna over the lower part of his face, so only his eyes were visible, Ramsdell said.
Late last month, police told The Current that a general warning had gone out to all local drug stores because there was concern about OxyContin thefts in the New England area.
The Community Pharmacy in Oak Hill Plaza responded to the warning by posting a sign on its front door, telling would-be thieves, “we don’t have any OxyContin in stock; if you leave a prescription we can order for the next day.”
The pharmacies at the Scarborough branches of Hannaford and Wal-Mart said they had not changed any policies since Monday’s incident but continued to be concerned about theft of the drug.
“We will be verifying prescriptions,” said Hannaford pharmacist Barbara L’Heureux, noting that her procedures have been in place since the OxyContin theft in Yarmouth last year.
The CVS pharmacy in Cape Elizabeth has not put up signs about its stock.
Community Pharmacy pharmacist Bob Milligan said this week he is still concerned, but hopes there will be a solution. He said the problem is not just in Maine, but is a nationwide issue. The store’s warning sign is now posted above the pharmacy counter.
OxyContin is a synthetic opioid painkiller intended for use by cancer patients, Milligan said. It has a 12-hour dose in a single pill, which is covered with a time-release coating. Addicts crush the pills and snort or inject the powder, taking an entire 12-hour dose at once.
Milligan said the pharmacy had received a police warning a couple of weeks ago, cautioning them about possible thefts of OxyContin. He said he had not heard from the police since the Rite Aid theft, though he had thought he might.
7
Scarborough police are looking for a man who threatened a Rite Aid clerk with a knife during a theft of OxyContin from the store’s pharmacy on Route 1 at about 6 p.m. Monday.
The man was a white male with possibly brown hair and possibly brown eyes, said Detective Ivan Ramsdell. He was wearing a hat pulled low and a bandanna over the lower part of his face, so only his eyes were visible, Ramsdell said.
Late last month, police told The Current that a general warning had gone out to all local drug stores because there was concern about OxyContin thefts in the New England area.
The Community Pharmacy in Oak Hill Plaza responded to the warning by posting a sign on its front door, telling would-be thieves, “we don’t have any OxyContin in stock; if you leave a prescription we can order for the next day.”
The pharmacies at the Scarborough branches of Hannaford and Wal-Mart said they had not changed any policies since Monday’s incident but continued to be concerned about theft of the drug.
“We will be verifying prescriptions,” said Hannaford pharmacist Barbara L’Heureux, noting that her procedures have been in place since the OxyContin theft in Yarmouth last year.
The CVS pharmacy in Cape Elizabeth has not put up signs about its stock.
Community Pharmacy pharmacist Bob Milligan said this week he is still concerned, but hopes there will be a solution. He said the problem is not just in Maine, but is a nationwide issue. The store’s warning sign is now posted above the pharmacy counter.
OxyContin is a synthetic opioid painkiller intended for use by cancer patients, Milligan said. It has a 12-hour dose in a single pill, which is covered with a time-release coating. Addicts crush the pills and snort or inject the powder, taking an entire 12-hour dose at once.
Milligan said the pharmacy had received a police warning a couple of weeks ago, cautioning them about possible thefts of OxyContin. He said he had not heard from the police since the Rite Aid theft, though he had thought he might.
Scarborough’s a safe town, Cape is even safer
Published in the Current
Scarborough is the third-safest place in Maine, among towns and cities with populations greater than 10,000 people, according to the recently released FBI report, Crime in the United States 2000. It is one of only five towns or cities in Maine with a crime rate lower than the state’s overall rate.
Cape Elizabeth, with its population just below 10,000, had less crime than even the safest city.
The FBI analysis is based on reports from local law enforcement agencies, and indicates the number of serious crimes occurring in towns, cities, states and nationwide in 2000. Comparisons are possible between regions by calculating the crime index rate and the number of serious crimes in an area for each 1,000 inhabitants.
The FBI groups seven types of crimes into its crime index: murder and negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft
and motor vehicle theft. Larceny-theft is defined by law enforcement agencies as including shoplifting, pick-pocketing, thefts from motor vehicles, bicycle thefts and other thefts “in which no use of force, violence or fraud occurs.”
Maine, with a population of 1,274,923 in 2000, had 33,400 serious crimes, which is a crime index rate of 26.2 crimes per 1,000 residents, making it the fifth safest state in the country.
The national index was 41.24. North Dakota was the lowest with 22.88.
Scarborough’s 15,394 residents in the year 2000, had 284 crimes in town, a rate of 18.45. Nearly all were property crimes: 222 were larceny-theft, 39 were burglaries, 15 were motor vehicle thefts and one was a robbery. Regarding person-on-person crimes, there were seven aggravated assaults in 2000, but there were no murders, arsons or rapes reported to Scarborough police.
Police Chief Robert Moulton said Scarborough has tended to have a low crime rate, which he attributed to the staff of the police department. “We’ve got a lot of good people who are very committed to what we do,” he said.
Not only, he said, is community resource Officer Joe Giacomantonio being very successful at getting the word out about public safety programs, but the patrol officers are very visible on the streets of town and the detectives are excellent at catching lawbreakers when crimes occur.
“If they do come to Scarborough to do something bad,” Moulton said, “they’re going to get caught.”
Cape Elizabeth, with about 9,000 residents, does not have a large enough population to appear on the FBI report.
According to its 2000 records on file with the state, however, Cape has a crime rate of 15.15. Of the 140 serious crimes in town that year, 123 were larceny-thefts, 14 were burglaries, two were motor vehicle thefts and one was a rape. Two arsons were reported in town as well, but those are categorized separately in the Uniform Crime Report system.
Town Police Chief Neil Williams attributed the low incidence of crime in town to it being a residential area without many commercial buildings.
“We just don’t have much (crime), which is good, knock on wood,” Williams said.
The most dangerous town in Maine was Bangor, with a rate of 56.42. The safest town on the list was Orono with 16.02. Following Orono and just ahead of Scarborough was Gorham, with 17.88.
Maine compares favorably to nearby states. The state’s rate is 26.2 per 1,000, as contrasted with the national rate of 41.24. New Hampshire’s rate is 24.33. Vermont’s
is 29.87. Massachusetts’s rate is 30.26.
Scarborough is the third-safest place in Maine, among towns and cities with populations greater than 10,000 people, according to the recently released FBI report, Crime in the United States 2000. It is one of only five towns or cities in Maine with a crime rate lower than the state’s overall rate.
Cape Elizabeth, with its population just below 10,000, had less crime than even the safest city.
The FBI analysis is based on reports from local law enforcement agencies, and indicates the number of serious crimes occurring in towns, cities, states and nationwide in 2000. Comparisons are possible between regions by calculating the crime index rate and the number of serious crimes in an area for each 1,000 inhabitants.
The FBI groups seven types of crimes into its crime index: murder and negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft
and motor vehicle theft. Larceny-theft is defined by law enforcement agencies as including shoplifting, pick-pocketing, thefts from motor vehicles, bicycle thefts and other thefts “in which no use of force, violence or fraud occurs.”
Maine, with a population of 1,274,923 in 2000, had 33,400 serious crimes, which is a crime index rate of 26.2 crimes per 1,000 residents, making it the fifth safest state in the country.
The national index was 41.24. North Dakota was the lowest with 22.88.
Scarborough’s 15,394 residents in the year 2000, had 284 crimes in town, a rate of 18.45. Nearly all were property crimes: 222 were larceny-theft, 39 were burglaries, 15 were motor vehicle thefts and one was a robbery. Regarding person-on-person crimes, there were seven aggravated assaults in 2000, but there were no murders, arsons or rapes reported to Scarborough police.
Police Chief Robert Moulton said Scarborough has tended to have a low crime rate, which he attributed to the staff of the police department. “We’ve got a lot of good people who are very committed to what we do,” he said.
Not only, he said, is community resource Officer Joe Giacomantonio being very successful at getting the word out about public safety programs, but the patrol officers are very visible on the streets of town and the detectives are excellent at catching lawbreakers when crimes occur.
“If they do come to Scarborough to do something bad,” Moulton said, “they’re going to get caught.”
Cape Elizabeth, with about 9,000 residents, does not have a large enough population to appear on the FBI report.
According to its 2000 records on file with the state, however, Cape has a crime rate of 15.15. Of the 140 serious crimes in town that year, 123 were larceny-thefts, 14 were burglaries, two were motor vehicle thefts and one was a rape. Two arsons were reported in town as well, but those are categorized separately in the Uniform Crime Report system.
Town Police Chief Neil Williams attributed the low incidence of crime in town to it being a residential area without many commercial buildings.
“We just don’t have much (crime), which is good, knock on wood,” Williams said.
The most dangerous town in Maine was Bangor, with a rate of 56.42. The safest town on the list was Orono with 16.02. Following Orono and just ahead of Scarborough was Gorham, with 17.88.
Maine compares favorably to nearby states. The state’s rate is 26.2 per 1,000, as contrasted with the national rate of 41.24. New Hampshire’s rate is 24.33. Vermont’s
is 29.87. Massachusetts’s rate is 30.26.
Thursday, November 8, 2001
Per pupil spending separates Cape and Scarborough schools
Published in the Current
Scarborough spends 20 percent less than Cape Elizabeth does per student, but the two districts have very similar educational outcomes.
Looking at all the school districts in the state, the average per-pupil expenditure was $5,819 in 1999-2000. Cape spent $6,506, and Scarborough spent $5,224.
To compare the two towns only to similar districts, those paying for all grades, K-12, is more relevant.
The K-12 average, a breakdown the state does not provide but which was calculated by The Current, is $6,070 per student.
Cape Elizabeth spent $436 more than the average, while Scarborough spent $846 less.
Out of the 117 K-12 districts in Maine, Cape Elizabeth ranks 29th, while Scarborough is 100th.
While students in both districts perform generally above the state average on the Maine Educational Assessment tests, Cape Elizabeth students tend to score higher than Scarborough students. The margin between the two towns’ scores, however, is between one and four points in most categories.
Of the 146 graduates from Cape Elizabeth High School in 1999, 81.5 percent pursued postsecondary education. One hundred sixteen went to college or university, according to state statistics. Three went to vocational or technical schools.
Of Scarborough’s 144-strong class of 1999, 88.2 percent enrolled in post-secondary education. One hundred ten went to college or university, and five went to vocational or technical schools. One went to a post-secondary high school course and 11 went to junior colleges.
Superintendent William Michaud said Scarborough schools have a strong curriculum,
excellent staff, good educational outcomes and good facilities.
He said the enrollment growth does put pressure on the district’s finances, but it hasn’t adversely affected the education opportunities available to students.
“Scarborough gets a great return on its investment,” Michaud said. “Scarborough is known statewide as a progressive, high-achieving district.”
Cape Elizabeth school board chair George Entwistle said he is pleased with the education Cape Elizabeth students are receiving.
“The value you receive, using any metric you want, is a good value,” he said. One of the school board’s primary funding goals is helping teachers learn more and do better, he said.
“One of the biggest and best investments we can make is staff development. A highly energized teacher in the classroom is the best guarantee of good education for our kids,” Entwistle said.
By the numbers
Herb Hopkins, business manager for Scarborough’s schools, said the per-pupil spending numbers are not always an accurate reflection of a community’s commitment to education.
Some districts, for example, put buses in the operating budget of the schools, while Scarborough issues bonds to purchase buses. That makes the per-pupil spending appear lower in Scarborough than if the town’s buses were included in the school budget.
A big factor as well, Hopkins said, is that the modular classrooms were refitted by Scarborough as part of its capital improvement budget, rather than its operating budget. Since the state uses operating dollars, not capital improvement dollars, to figure per-pupil spending, that may further lower Scarborough’s ranking in the state.
Hopkins did say, though, that the state’s method is fairly good, and that while Scarborough may actually spend enough to be higher on the list, it wouldn’t be a big change.
“We might be 70th,” Hopkins said, rather than the 100th the district ranks in the state.
Hopkins said Scarborough’s town government supports its schools.
“They have treated the school department pretty well,” he said, allowing the ordering of two or three buses a year as growth requires, rather than the one many districts are able to purchase “if they’re lucky.”
Comparisons to similar districts
Both Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough traditionally compare themselves to K-12 districts in the Greater Portland area which are similar in socio-economic characteristics.
The districts themselves list Yarmouth, Falmouth, School Administrative District 51 (Cumberland and North Yarmouth) and Gorham. Each district also said it looks at the other. Cape said it looks at Freeport as well, while Scarborough looks at Windham and, “to some extent,” South Portland, said Assistant Superintendent David Doyle.
Taken in that context, Cape Elizabeth appears in the middle of the list of its comparison districts, behind Yarmouth and Freeport but ahead of Falmouth, S.A.D. 51 and Gorham.
Scarborough is at the bottom of the list of those districts with which it compares itself, spending less than Gorham by $73.
The district spending the most per student is S.A.D. 7 (North Haven), which spends $13,081 per pupil.
S.A.D. 64 (East Corinth) spends the least, $4,593 per student.
Cape Elizabeth’s business manager, Pauline Aportria, did not return calls requesting information for this story.
Scarborough spends 20 percent less than Cape Elizabeth does per student, but the two districts have very similar educational outcomes.
Looking at all the school districts in the state, the average per-pupil expenditure was $5,819 in 1999-2000. Cape spent $6,506, and Scarborough spent $5,224.
To compare the two towns only to similar districts, those paying for all grades, K-12, is more relevant.
The K-12 average, a breakdown the state does not provide but which was calculated by The Current, is $6,070 per student.
Cape Elizabeth spent $436 more than the average, while Scarborough spent $846 less.
Out of the 117 K-12 districts in Maine, Cape Elizabeth ranks 29th, while Scarborough is 100th.
While students in both districts perform generally above the state average on the Maine Educational Assessment tests, Cape Elizabeth students tend to score higher than Scarborough students. The margin between the two towns’ scores, however, is between one and four points in most categories.
Of the 146 graduates from Cape Elizabeth High School in 1999, 81.5 percent pursued postsecondary education. One hundred sixteen went to college or university, according to state statistics. Three went to vocational or technical schools.
Of Scarborough’s 144-strong class of 1999, 88.2 percent enrolled in post-secondary education. One hundred ten went to college or university, and five went to vocational or technical schools. One went to a post-secondary high school course and 11 went to junior colleges.
Superintendent William Michaud said Scarborough schools have a strong curriculum,
excellent staff, good educational outcomes and good facilities.
He said the enrollment growth does put pressure on the district’s finances, but it hasn’t adversely affected the education opportunities available to students.
“Scarborough gets a great return on its investment,” Michaud said. “Scarborough is known statewide as a progressive, high-achieving district.”
Cape Elizabeth school board chair George Entwistle said he is pleased with the education Cape Elizabeth students are receiving.
“The value you receive, using any metric you want, is a good value,” he said. One of the school board’s primary funding goals is helping teachers learn more and do better, he said.
“One of the biggest and best investments we can make is staff development. A highly energized teacher in the classroom is the best guarantee of good education for our kids,” Entwistle said.
By the numbers
Herb Hopkins, business manager for Scarborough’s schools, said the per-pupil spending numbers are not always an accurate reflection of a community’s commitment to education.
Some districts, for example, put buses in the operating budget of the schools, while Scarborough issues bonds to purchase buses. That makes the per-pupil spending appear lower in Scarborough than if the town’s buses were included in the school budget.
A big factor as well, Hopkins said, is that the modular classrooms were refitted by Scarborough as part of its capital improvement budget, rather than its operating budget. Since the state uses operating dollars, not capital improvement dollars, to figure per-pupil spending, that may further lower Scarborough’s ranking in the state.
Hopkins did say, though, that the state’s method is fairly good, and that while Scarborough may actually spend enough to be higher on the list, it wouldn’t be a big change.
“We might be 70th,” Hopkins said, rather than the 100th the district ranks in the state.
Hopkins said Scarborough’s town government supports its schools.
“They have treated the school department pretty well,” he said, allowing the ordering of two or three buses a year as growth requires, rather than the one many districts are able to purchase “if they’re lucky.”
Comparisons to similar districts
Both Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough traditionally compare themselves to K-12 districts in the Greater Portland area which are similar in socio-economic characteristics.
The districts themselves list Yarmouth, Falmouth, School Administrative District 51 (Cumberland and North Yarmouth) and Gorham. Each district also said it looks at the other. Cape said it looks at Freeport as well, while Scarborough looks at Windham and, “to some extent,” South Portland, said Assistant Superintendent David Doyle.
Taken in that context, Cape Elizabeth appears in the middle of the list of its comparison districts, behind Yarmouth and Freeport but ahead of Falmouth, S.A.D. 51 and Gorham.
Scarborough is at the bottom of the list of those districts with which it compares itself, spending less than Gorham by $73.
The district spending the most per student is S.A.D. 7 (North Haven), which spends $13,081 per pupil.
S.A.D. 64 (East Corinth) spends the least, $4,593 per student.
Cape Elizabeth’s business manager, Pauline Aportria, did not return calls requesting information for this story.
Thursday, November 1, 2001
Cape and Scarborough above national average for web access
Published in the Current
Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth are among the most-wired towns in the U.S. Some of it is due to demographics, while part of the two towns’ connection to the Internet came by accident.
When TimeWarner Cable introduced its RoadRunner high-speed Internet access over cable television wires here in 1996, it was not because the company was looking for a test market, or even had much of a plan for the Portland area.
The system the company ordered for installation in San Diego was too small for that city.
Scrambling to find a home for equipment it couldn’t otherwise use, TimeWarner looked at Portland, and brought RoadRunner to Maine, according to Maine’s RoadRunner general manager, Rick Preti.
That ordering mistake kicked Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth into the elite bracket of high-speed, easy-installation Internet access early in the Internet boom, according to analyst Antony Parchment of Internet Commerce Systems in Scarborough.
The relative affluence of the two towns meant people could purchase Internet access. High educational levels of town residents meant they wanted to see what was out there on the newly-dubbed “information superhighway.”
Many people had moved to Maine for improved quality of life, but wanted to continue
working in their previous career fields.
The Internet allowed them to do that, and high-speed connectivity made it even easier. Rather than a one-lane dirt road full of potholes, the Internet over a cable connection was at least a two-way street covered in blacktop.
“We were fortunate,” Parchment said. And there was a ready market of ex-city people.
“People had made their lifestyle choices and wanted to be in Maine,” Parchment said.
It caught on, and passed via word-of-mouth among Internet users in the area.
“Now people are hooked,” Parchment said.
And Internet access in both Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth is well above national norms.
One-fourth of the households in the two towns are connected to RoadRunner, Preti said.
Business advantage
One Scarborough business is capitalizing on the Internet connectivity in town.
Rob Doehler of Scarborough’s Foodzy.com said his business would not be located in Scarborough if the town’s demographics did not support an Internet food-ordering business.
With a high concentration of families in which both parents work, and with a high household disposable income, Scarborough is well-positioned to support a food take-out and delivery business which accepts orders over the Internet, he said.
Foodzy.com, Doehler said, takes advantage of the Internet to allow busy professionals to order healthy food quickly. It is an example of his vision for the next phase of Internet business development.
“The Internet at this stage needs to come to the brick-and-mortar business,” Doehler said. The real potential, he said, is to make transactions between existing customers of existing businesses more efficient.
People can order food on-line or over the phone, and can either pick it up or have it delivered in Scarborough.
Customers can also come in and eat at the Foodzy.com store on Route 1.
Other local businesses say the Internet has a positive impact on them, too. Car dealerships traditionally draw most of their business from local residents, but Michael Pierter of Scarborough-based Portland Volvo said he gets interest from as far afield as Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
Those prospective customers, he said, look at the dealership’s on-line used car inventory and call to express interest in a certain car.
“It opens up our inventory to a new group of people,” he said.
Many walk-in customers also are better informed as a result of the Internet, Pierter said. They have done on-line research into cars’ safety ratings, reliability and options packages, as well as prices.
“We have a fair amount of customers who do research before they come in,” he said.
Tom Hall of Hall Marketing in Scarborough said he has web development clients in various businesses, including retail stores, software dealers and consultants.
“It doesn’t matter what kind of business you have,” Hall said.
He said a lot of people locally use the Internet to research items before purchasing, and many take advantage of Internet access at work.
“You’ll see a big spike (in web site traffic) from like 11:45 to 1:15,” Hall said, when people are at their desks eating lunch and checking out the web.
He said web site statistics also show local businesses can succeed on-line.
“Server stats show that businesses that offer local services are getting found” during Internet searches, Hall said.
Wired houses
Not only are most households in the two towns equipped with some form of Internet access, but more of those connections are high-speed hookups than would be expected by looking at national data.
RoadRunner, Preti said, has over 30,000 subscribers in Maine, serving 18 communities in Cumberland County, including Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth.
He would not give specific subscriber numbers in the two towns. He did say that out of the homes in Scarborough which are passed by cable service, 26 percent are subscribers to RoadRunner. In Cape Elizabeth, the subscriber base is between 28 and 29 percent of households passed by cable, he said.
This, he said, is “very high by national standards.”
Still, the medium has room for growth. By contrast, Preti said, 85 percent of homes passed by cable connections subscribe to cable television service.
Nua Internet Surveys show that 70.7 million households in the U.S. have Internet access, or just over two-thirds of all households nationwide.
Nua said less than 1 percent of Internet access in the U.S. is provided over cable television systems, which is due, in part, to the fact many areas are not served by cable Internet services. But the sector is growing, with cable Internet connections increasing 153 percent to 3.6 million in 2000, Nua statistics show.
Schools and government
Gary Lanoie, technology coordinator for Cape Elizabeth’s schools and for the town, has two mobile labs—carts with laptops and printers—which can move from classroom to classroom to assist with teaching.
“You can bring the technology to the classroom,” Lanoie said.
Teachers and parents use the web site extensively, Lanoie said, to get information about school activities and programs. “We try to keep things current and up-to-date,”
Lanoie said.
Both Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth have extensive town government web sites, providing 24-hour access to forms and information, as well as databases of town ordinances.
Stephen Tewhey, Scarborough’s director of information systems, which is also a school-town combination position, said the town will be expanding its four-year-old web site, offering real-time signups for community services events. Tewhey said the town will continue to put meeting agendas and minutes on the web, as well as other information.
“We really want to be able to put the public information out where the public is able to view it,” Tewhey said.
He said town residents do use the web sites, often in the evening when town offices are closed. And people notice if there’s a delay.
“The few times that we have been late putting out agendas, the phone rings,” he said.
The Scarborough Police Department also uses the Internet to distribute information. The department has a list of e-mail addresses to which community officer Joe Giacomantonio sends road closings, emergency advisories and general information.
The list is constantly growing, Giacomantonio said, and now includes between 30 and 40 addresses.
Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth are among the most-wired towns in the U.S. Some of it is due to demographics, while part of the two towns’ connection to the Internet came by accident.
When TimeWarner Cable introduced its RoadRunner high-speed Internet access over cable television wires here in 1996, it was not because the company was looking for a test market, or even had much of a plan for the Portland area.
The system the company ordered for installation in San Diego was too small for that city.
Scrambling to find a home for equipment it couldn’t otherwise use, TimeWarner looked at Portland, and brought RoadRunner to Maine, according to Maine’s RoadRunner general manager, Rick Preti.
That ordering mistake kicked Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth into the elite bracket of high-speed, easy-installation Internet access early in the Internet boom, according to analyst Antony Parchment of Internet Commerce Systems in Scarborough.
The relative affluence of the two towns meant people could purchase Internet access. High educational levels of town residents meant they wanted to see what was out there on the newly-dubbed “information superhighway.”
Many people had moved to Maine for improved quality of life, but wanted to continue
working in their previous career fields.
The Internet allowed them to do that, and high-speed connectivity made it even easier. Rather than a one-lane dirt road full of potholes, the Internet over a cable connection was at least a two-way street covered in blacktop.
“We were fortunate,” Parchment said. And there was a ready market of ex-city people.
“People had made their lifestyle choices and wanted to be in Maine,” Parchment said.
It caught on, and passed via word-of-mouth among Internet users in the area.
“Now people are hooked,” Parchment said.
And Internet access in both Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth is well above national norms.
One-fourth of the households in the two towns are connected to RoadRunner, Preti said.
Business advantage
One Scarborough business is capitalizing on the Internet connectivity in town.
Rob Doehler of Scarborough’s Foodzy.com said his business would not be located in Scarborough if the town’s demographics did not support an Internet food-ordering business.
With a high concentration of families in which both parents work, and with a high household disposable income, Scarborough is well-positioned to support a food take-out and delivery business which accepts orders over the Internet, he said.
Foodzy.com, Doehler said, takes advantage of the Internet to allow busy professionals to order healthy food quickly. It is an example of his vision for the next phase of Internet business development.
“The Internet at this stage needs to come to the brick-and-mortar business,” Doehler said. The real potential, he said, is to make transactions between existing customers of existing businesses more efficient.
People can order food on-line or over the phone, and can either pick it up or have it delivered in Scarborough.
Customers can also come in and eat at the Foodzy.com store on Route 1.
Other local businesses say the Internet has a positive impact on them, too. Car dealerships traditionally draw most of their business from local residents, but Michael Pierter of Scarborough-based Portland Volvo said he gets interest from as far afield as Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
Those prospective customers, he said, look at the dealership’s on-line used car inventory and call to express interest in a certain car.
“It opens up our inventory to a new group of people,” he said.
Many walk-in customers also are better informed as a result of the Internet, Pierter said. They have done on-line research into cars’ safety ratings, reliability and options packages, as well as prices.
“We have a fair amount of customers who do research before they come in,” he said.
Tom Hall of Hall Marketing in Scarborough said he has web development clients in various businesses, including retail stores, software dealers and consultants.
“It doesn’t matter what kind of business you have,” Hall said.
He said a lot of people locally use the Internet to research items before purchasing, and many take advantage of Internet access at work.
“You’ll see a big spike (in web site traffic) from like 11:45 to 1:15,” Hall said, when people are at their desks eating lunch and checking out the web.
He said web site statistics also show local businesses can succeed on-line.
“Server stats show that businesses that offer local services are getting found” during Internet searches, Hall said.
Wired houses
Not only are most households in the two towns equipped with some form of Internet access, but more of those connections are high-speed hookups than would be expected by looking at national data.
RoadRunner, Preti said, has over 30,000 subscribers in Maine, serving 18 communities in Cumberland County, including Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth.
He would not give specific subscriber numbers in the two towns. He did say that out of the homes in Scarborough which are passed by cable service, 26 percent are subscribers to RoadRunner. In Cape Elizabeth, the subscriber base is between 28 and 29 percent of households passed by cable, he said.
This, he said, is “very high by national standards.”
Still, the medium has room for growth. By contrast, Preti said, 85 percent of homes passed by cable connections subscribe to cable television service.
Nua Internet Surveys show that 70.7 million households in the U.S. have Internet access, or just over two-thirds of all households nationwide.
Nua said less than 1 percent of Internet access in the U.S. is provided over cable television systems, which is due, in part, to the fact many areas are not served by cable Internet services. But the sector is growing, with cable Internet connections increasing 153 percent to 3.6 million in 2000, Nua statistics show.
Schools and government
Gary Lanoie, technology coordinator for Cape Elizabeth’s schools and for the town, has two mobile labs—carts with laptops and printers—which can move from classroom to classroom to assist with teaching.
“You can bring the technology to the classroom,” Lanoie said.
Teachers and parents use the web site extensively, Lanoie said, to get information about school activities and programs. “We try to keep things current and up-to-date,”
Lanoie said.
Both Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth have extensive town government web sites, providing 24-hour access to forms and information, as well as databases of town ordinances.
Stephen Tewhey, Scarborough’s director of information systems, which is also a school-town combination position, said the town will be expanding its four-year-old web site, offering real-time signups for community services events. Tewhey said the town will continue to put meeting agendas and minutes on the web, as well as other information.
“We really want to be able to put the public information out where the public is able to view it,” Tewhey said.
He said town residents do use the web sites, often in the evening when town offices are closed. And people notice if there’s a delay.
“The few times that we have been late putting out agendas, the phone rings,” he said.
The Scarborough Police Department also uses the Internet to distribute information. The department has a list of e-mail addresses to which community officer Joe Giacomantonio sends road closings, emergency advisories and general information.
The list is constantly growing, Giacomantonio said, and now includes between 30 and 40 addresses.
Wednesday, October 31, 2001
OSA becomes ManageSoft
Published in Interface Tech News
NASHUA, N.H. ‹ Open Software Associates changed its name to ManageSoft Corporation on Oct. 1 in an effort to clarify its brand and message. The move was underscored by the renaming of the company's flagship NetDeploy Global product‹ now ManageSoft version 6.0 ‹ the major change of which is in the name.
Bob Thaler, director of product marketing, said the decision stemmed from market research that produced disappointing results.
"We found that we were limited in our marketing reach," Thaler said. "We needed to develop a name and brand that was more closely related to what we do."
With the help of branding consultant Jack Trout, who heads up Old Greenwich, Conn.-based Trout & Partners, the company chose a new name, to showcase its focus on software management and deployment.
While the names have changed, not much about the product or the company is new, Thaler said. The software employs the metaphor of a warehouse for software, showing users that there are receiving, inventory, picking, and shipping aspects to the program.
"It is a place where a customer does everything they need to do," he said, pointing out that the system can be set to deploy software over a network to remote users whenever they are connected. This allows reliable updating of laptops, as well as desktop machines, according to Thaler.
Neal Goldman, a research director at the Boston-based Yankee Group, said the product doesn't seem to have any major improvements over its competition. He said there are existing software-audit programs and those that deploy software, but they are largely independent and used in that way.
"Not everybody has both (systems)," Goldman said, although he liked the warehouse model for its possibilities. "If you could actually return stuff to the warehouse (that would be new)," he added.
According to Goldman, the market for this type of software is not large. "It's never been a huge market in terms of absolute dollars," he explained. Software auditing is less than a $400 million business, and other aspects of the ManageSoft software are included in larger systems-management packages like OpenView, he said.
NASHUA, N.H. ‹ Open Software Associates changed its name to ManageSoft Corporation on Oct. 1 in an effort to clarify its brand and message. The move was underscored by the renaming of the company's flagship NetDeploy Global product‹ now ManageSoft version 6.0 ‹ the major change of which is in the name.
Bob Thaler, director of product marketing, said the decision stemmed from market research that produced disappointing results.
"We found that we were limited in our marketing reach," Thaler said. "We needed to develop a name and brand that was more closely related to what we do."
With the help of branding consultant Jack Trout, who heads up Old Greenwich, Conn.-based Trout & Partners, the company chose a new name, to showcase its focus on software management and deployment.
While the names have changed, not much about the product or the company is new, Thaler said. The software employs the metaphor of a warehouse for software, showing users that there are receiving, inventory, picking, and shipping aspects to the program.
"It is a place where a customer does everything they need to do," he said, pointing out that the system can be set to deploy software over a network to remote users whenever they are connected. This allows reliable updating of laptops, as well as desktop machines, according to Thaler.
Neal Goldman, a research director at the Boston-based Yankee Group, said the product doesn't seem to have any major improvements over its competition. He said there are existing software-audit programs and those that deploy software, but they are largely independent and used in that way.
"Not everybody has both (systems)," Goldman said, although he liked the warehouse model for its possibilities. "If you could actually return stuff to the warehouse (that would be new)," he added.
According to Goldman, the market for this type of software is not large. "It's never been a huge market in terms of absolute dollars," he explained. Software auditing is less than a $400 million business, and other aspects of the ManageSoft software are included in larger systems-management packages like OpenView, he said.
Sycamore aims to buoy sales with Insight launch
Published in Interface Tech News
CHELMSFORD, Mass. ‹ In a bid to keep customers buying during a time of declining capital expenditures, Sycamore Networks released in early October its SILVX InSight product, which integrates planning, design, and testing for optical networks.
InSight was designed to work with Sycamore's existing network management system, SILVX NMS, to take an inventory of existing network infrastructure, and propose upgrades and equipment purchases to improve the efficiency of carrier networks.
"It's a simulated network," said Wade Rubinstein, Sycamore's director of professional services. "It's much cheaper to put this software on a PC than to buy another switch."
The key to InSight, according to company officials, is a database that includes specifications on networking hardware, permitting capacity planning and load simulation, as well as cost-benefit analysis and testing prior to purchase.
Analyst Maribel Dolinov of Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, said the database could be hard to keep updated. "You can't just call up a company and ask for its specs," she said.
With monthly updates to its database, Sycamore said it will be able to keep current, enabling the linking and design possibilities the company identified as its target service.
"We want to enhance productivity and help the next generation of intelligent optical networks," Rubinstein said.
The driving force behind the product's release, is a good idea, Dolinov said. Across the networking industry, she said, "sales are becoming much more complex." Not only are orders smaller and more specific, but they're reducing in volume and dollar amounts, she added.
In Dolinov's view, another specter looming on the horizon for optical networking is a revelation like the recent one from Qwest, stating that it is finished building its network.
"That's a scary sort of thing for an equipment provider," Dolinov said. Further, she continued, if a supplier is feeling a crunch from one customer, it's hard to make up the difference in new business right now.
"At the end of the day," Dolinov said, "tools are still pretty company specific."
CHELMSFORD, Mass. ‹ In a bid to keep customers buying during a time of declining capital expenditures, Sycamore Networks released in early October its SILVX InSight product, which integrates planning, design, and testing for optical networks.
InSight was designed to work with Sycamore's existing network management system, SILVX NMS, to take an inventory of existing network infrastructure, and propose upgrades and equipment purchases to improve the efficiency of carrier networks.
"It's a simulated network," said Wade Rubinstein, Sycamore's director of professional services. "It's much cheaper to put this software on a PC than to buy another switch."
The key to InSight, according to company officials, is a database that includes specifications on networking hardware, permitting capacity planning and load simulation, as well as cost-benefit analysis and testing prior to purchase.
Analyst Maribel Dolinov of Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, said the database could be hard to keep updated. "You can't just call up a company and ask for its specs," she said.
With monthly updates to its database, Sycamore said it will be able to keep current, enabling the linking and design possibilities the company identified as its target service.
"We want to enhance productivity and help the next generation of intelligent optical networks," Rubinstein said.
The driving force behind the product's release, is a good idea, Dolinov said. Across the networking industry, she said, "sales are becoming much more complex." Not only are orders smaller and more specific, but they're reducing in volume and dollar amounts, she added.
In Dolinov's view, another specter looming on the horizon for optical networking is a revelation like the recent one from Qwest, stating that it is finished building its network.
"That's a scary sort of thing for an equipment provider," Dolinov said. Further, she continued, if a supplier is feeling a crunch from one customer, it's hard to make up the difference in new business right now.
"At the end of the day," Dolinov said, "tools are still pretty company specific."
Monday, October 29, 2001
MerryGo borrows P2P name for Internet timeshare exchange
Published in Interface Tech News
MANCHESTER, N.H. ‹ MerryGo launched its new Web site in late September. It will use a peer-to-peer (P2P) method, permitting owners of timeshare properties to deal directly with each other, rather than going through a difficult-to-use central clearinghouse system which is not available on the Internet.
MerryGo is not harnessing the power of computers, but the power of individuals, and is providing central-server traffic direction on its Web site.
The standard timeshare exchange process involves a large group of people, each of whom has an asset: a week of time at a timeshare resort property. Those people pay annual membership fees to resorts and to associations that permit them to exchange their time at one location for someone else's time at another spot.
At present, that process is complex and overly centralized, said Forrest Milkowski, company co-founder and executive vice president for sales and marketing at MerryGo. "We're going to change the way the timeshare industry works," Milkowski said.
That's a big statement for a two-person company targeting the $1.5 billion timeshare exchange sector, but mirrors the changes P2P technology has threatened in the music industry via sites like Napster.
MerryGo's service involves one-to-one trading, with owners posting properties on MerryGo's searchable site. When they find an interesting property, prospective exchangers can e-mail the timeshare owners directly.
Milkowski said this way is not only cheaper, with fees based on transactions rather than annual memberships, but more personal. "I can actually contact the person who owns the property," he said.
This permits travel tips to be passed on from person to person, including which restaurants are the nicest or directions to a pleasant picnic spot. Milkowski said MerryGo's method takes the information out of the hands of a telephone representative for a large company and puts it into the hands of timeshare owners and exchangers.
The company is also partnering with major timeshare resort companies to offer discounts for vacationers exchanging within one company's properties, rather than seeking out other destinations. Although Milkowski said MerryGo Web site visitors would be free to choose any location that fits their needs.
MANCHESTER, N.H. ‹ MerryGo launched its new Web site in late September. It will use a peer-to-peer (P2P) method, permitting owners of timeshare properties to deal directly with each other, rather than going through a difficult-to-use central clearinghouse system which is not available on the Internet.
MerryGo is not harnessing the power of computers, but the power of individuals, and is providing central-server traffic direction on its Web site.
The standard timeshare exchange process involves a large group of people, each of whom has an asset: a week of time at a timeshare resort property. Those people pay annual membership fees to resorts and to associations that permit them to exchange their time at one location for someone else's time at another spot.
At present, that process is complex and overly centralized, said Forrest Milkowski, company co-founder and executive vice president for sales and marketing at MerryGo. "We're going to change the way the timeshare industry works," Milkowski said.
That's a big statement for a two-person company targeting the $1.5 billion timeshare exchange sector, but mirrors the changes P2P technology has threatened in the music industry via sites like Napster.
MerryGo's service involves one-to-one trading, with owners posting properties on MerryGo's searchable site. When they find an interesting property, prospective exchangers can e-mail the timeshare owners directly.
Milkowski said this way is not only cheaper, with fees based on transactions rather than annual memberships, but more personal. "I can actually contact the person who owns the property," he said.
This permits travel tips to be passed on from person to person, including which restaurants are the nicest or directions to a pleasant picnic spot. Milkowski said MerryGo's method takes the information out of the hands of a telephone representative for a large company and puts it into the hands of timeshare owners and exchangers.
The company is also partnering with major timeshare resort companies to offer discounts for vacationers exchanging within one company's properties, rather than seeking out other destinations. Although Milkowski said MerryGo Web site visitors would be free to choose any location that fits their needs.
Thursday, October 25, 2001
Things that go bump in the night
Published in the Current
Scarborough’s Black Point Inn plays host not only to visitors from out of state, but from the realm of the paranormal, employees say.
The hotel, the last of close to a dozen of the original inns in Prouts Neck, has a lot of ghost stories surrounding it, according to housekeeping supervisor Angel Bechtold.
One recounts that a kitchen worker lived in the employees’ dormitory above the barn, now the garage. When the man’s fiancée broke up with him, he hanged himself. Now his spirit, Bechtold said, haunts the room he lived in.
“I have lived in that dorm and have felt things in the dorm, right beneath the widow’s walk,” she said.
While living there, she said, she would make her bed in the morning and come back to find it unmade after work. Smaller items, like a hairbrush, would be moved around, too.
“It’s pretty haunted,” Bechtold said.
She said she has experienced various presences in the inn and its outbuildings, but mostly during the winter when fewer people are around. At busier times, she said, taking care of guests distracts her from any ghosts which may be around.
She said she has never felt unsafe in the inn, but has been unsettled a few times.
“It’s like a creepy feeling, but nothing scary,” Bechtold said. “Walking through you can get really creeped out.”
Because the inn is so old, she said, it is more likely to have ghosts in it.
One housekeeper, Bechtold said, hears whispers and a cat meowing in the attic, which is used as a storage area.
Several small children have talked of ghosts when on the third floor of the main building, she said, including the young child of an employee, barely able to talk, who pointed up at the widow’s walk and said “ghost.”
Whether it’s because of battles between whites and Native Americans in the 18th century, or ghosts from the area’s other hotels needing a new home after those inns were torn down, or events at the Black Point Inn itself, Bechtold said there’s something there, but only for those who believe in ghosts.
She said she knows people who do not believe in ghosts and they haven’t seen or heard anything they can’t explain.
“I think if you believe, it’s really there,” Bechtold said.
Cape Elizabeth is also home to a haunted house, the Gothic-style Beckett’s Castle, at 7 Singles Road.
Built from 1871 to 1874 by publisher Sylvester Beckett, the house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but not for being haunted.
Indeed, the current owner, Nancey Harvey, said, “The previous owners said it was haunted, but (the ghosts) have gone away with me.”
But if it is no longer haunted by ghosts, the house is perhaps haunted by its own former haunting. Harvey said she gets frequent calls inquiring about the house being haunted.
The ghosts which previously inhabited the house were said to be Beckett himself and possibly a child. Among their antics were creating cold spots in the house, removing sheets and blankets from beds, moving paintings and never allowing one door to remain closed, even when nailed shut.
Beckett built the house largely with his own hands, according to the building’s listing in the National Register, from local fieldstone. Its trademark feature is a three-story tower in the southeast corner of the building. It is a four-bedroom house with a parlor, dining room and kitchen. The house has a number of diamond-shaped and triangular windows.
Scarborough’s Black Point Inn plays host not only to visitors from out of state, but from the realm of the paranormal, employees say.
The hotel, the last of close to a dozen of the original inns in Prouts Neck, has a lot of ghost stories surrounding it, according to housekeeping supervisor Angel Bechtold.
One recounts that a kitchen worker lived in the employees’ dormitory above the barn, now the garage. When the man’s fiancée broke up with him, he hanged himself. Now his spirit, Bechtold said, haunts the room he lived in.
“I have lived in that dorm and have felt things in the dorm, right beneath the widow’s walk,” she said.
While living there, she said, she would make her bed in the morning and come back to find it unmade after work. Smaller items, like a hairbrush, would be moved around, too.
“It’s pretty haunted,” Bechtold said.
She said she has experienced various presences in the inn and its outbuildings, but mostly during the winter when fewer people are around. At busier times, she said, taking care of guests distracts her from any ghosts which may be around.
She said she has never felt unsafe in the inn, but has been unsettled a few times.
“It’s like a creepy feeling, but nothing scary,” Bechtold said. “Walking through you can get really creeped out.”
Because the inn is so old, she said, it is more likely to have ghosts in it.
One housekeeper, Bechtold said, hears whispers and a cat meowing in the attic, which is used as a storage area.
Several small children have talked of ghosts when on the third floor of the main building, she said, including the young child of an employee, barely able to talk, who pointed up at the widow’s walk and said “ghost.”
Whether it’s because of battles between whites and Native Americans in the 18th century, or ghosts from the area’s other hotels needing a new home after those inns were torn down, or events at the Black Point Inn itself, Bechtold said there’s something there, but only for those who believe in ghosts.
She said she knows people who do not believe in ghosts and they haven’t seen or heard anything they can’t explain.
“I think if you believe, it’s really there,” Bechtold said.
Cape Elizabeth is also home to a haunted house, the Gothic-style Beckett’s Castle, at 7 Singles Road.
Built from 1871 to 1874 by publisher Sylvester Beckett, the house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but not for being haunted.
Indeed, the current owner, Nancey Harvey, said, “The previous owners said it was haunted, but (the ghosts) have gone away with me.”
But if it is no longer haunted by ghosts, the house is perhaps haunted by its own former haunting. Harvey said she gets frequent calls inquiring about the house being haunted.
The ghosts which previously inhabited the house were said to be Beckett himself and possibly a child. Among their antics were creating cold spots in the house, removing sheets and blankets from beds, moving paintings and never allowing one door to remain closed, even when nailed shut.
Beckett built the house largely with his own hands, according to the building’s listing in the National Register, from local fieldstone. Its trademark feature is a three-story tower in the southeast corner of the building. It is a four-bedroom house with a parlor, dining room and kitchen. The house has a number of diamond-shaped and triangular windows.
Police have plan for dealing with anthrax
Published in the Current
Scarborough’s police and fire departments have dealt with several suspicious packages in town, and though they have not yet encountered anthrax spores, they are ready.
In the past two weeks, as anthrax scares have occurred in Westbrook and Portland, four suspicious packages or envelopes have arrived in the mail at Scarborough addresses, including Town Hall. None of them actually contained hazardous material, said Police Chief Robert Moulton.
Cape Elizabeth Police Chief Neil Williams said only one suspicious letter has been reported to his department. It turned out to be a thank-you note from a local resident. Another situation in which a postal carrier was concerned about a skin condition turned out to be a damp magazine cover that rubbed against his arm and shredded, Williams said.
He said the police will typically respond first to a report of suspicious mail, “to determine why it’s suspicious.” A contaminated package or area would be dealt with by the town’s fire department, Williams said.
People should respond differently to this new type of threat, Scarborough Chief Moulton said. It’s a big change from the “pull the fire alarm and leave” response people have traditionally had to an emergency.
Instead of evacuating a building that could be contaminated, Moulton said, the procedure should be to isolate the people within the area.
“You go to a lockdown state, when everybody stays where they’re at.”
While it could be hard on people who are quarantined and for their loved ones, who may want to see them, Moulton said the isolation of possibly-exposed people is to prevent the spread of any contaminant and does not pose a risk to those isolated.
“You’ve either been exposed or you haven’t,” he said. But a contaminant on someone’s clothing could be spread if the person evacuated the building and came in contact with other people.
Once a substance or package has been identified, Moulton said, it will be contained and removed by the police or firefighters.
In the case of the Town Hall package, it was still sealed and not leaking. It was suspicious, however, because it was sent from India with excessive postage and was about the size of a hardback book.
The police evidence technician went to Town Hall, Moulton said, and sealed the package in several layers of plastic before coming back to the police station, where it was examined in a contained environment.
The Town Hall packet was found to be from a civil engineer in India looking for business.
“It was junk mail, basically,” Moulton said.
When a package is opened or if a substance escapes from it, the incident would be treated as a hazardous materials event, Moulton said. Firefighters would show up in protective gear to contain the substance and collect it.
If a powder or residue needs analysis, Moulton said, it would be contained in several layers of plastic and sealed in a canister before being taken to the Maine State Police lab in Augusta. It would be taken in a town police car, which could use its lights and sirens along the way, Moulton said.
When you encounter a suspect package or letter, Moulton said, leave it alone and call 911. The dispatcher will ask you a series of questions to help determine the appropriate response. Among those questions will be: Is the package opened? What kind of area is it in? Is anything leaking or protruding from it? Is it irregularly
shaped?
Depending on the answers to those and other questions, the police and fire department will respond with appropriate personnel and equipment, Moulton said.
The most important thing to remember is after you call 911, don’t evacuate, but instead stay put until authorities say it is OK to leave. This is counter to fire-safety training, and even the opposite of the normal response to a bomb threat, Moulton admitted, but he said it is a very different sort of threat.
“It’s a different mindset than we’ve been used to,” he said.
Scarborough’s police and fire departments have dealt with several suspicious packages in town, and though they have not yet encountered anthrax spores, they are ready.
In the past two weeks, as anthrax scares have occurred in Westbrook and Portland, four suspicious packages or envelopes have arrived in the mail at Scarborough addresses, including Town Hall. None of them actually contained hazardous material, said Police Chief Robert Moulton.
Cape Elizabeth Police Chief Neil Williams said only one suspicious letter has been reported to his department. It turned out to be a thank-you note from a local resident. Another situation in which a postal carrier was concerned about a skin condition turned out to be a damp magazine cover that rubbed against his arm and shredded, Williams said.
He said the police will typically respond first to a report of suspicious mail, “to determine why it’s suspicious.” A contaminated package or area would be dealt with by the town’s fire department, Williams said.
People should respond differently to this new type of threat, Scarborough Chief Moulton said. It’s a big change from the “pull the fire alarm and leave” response people have traditionally had to an emergency.
Instead of evacuating a building that could be contaminated, Moulton said, the procedure should be to isolate the people within the area.
“You go to a lockdown state, when everybody stays where they’re at.”
While it could be hard on people who are quarantined and for their loved ones, who may want to see them, Moulton said the isolation of possibly-exposed people is to prevent the spread of any contaminant and does not pose a risk to those isolated.
“You’ve either been exposed or you haven’t,” he said. But a contaminant on someone’s clothing could be spread if the person evacuated the building and came in contact with other people.
Once a substance or package has been identified, Moulton said, it will be contained and removed by the police or firefighters.
In the case of the Town Hall package, it was still sealed and not leaking. It was suspicious, however, because it was sent from India with excessive postage and was about the size of a hardback book.
The police evidence technician went to Town Hall, Moulton said, and sealed the package in several layers of plastic before coming back to the police station, where it was examined in a contained environment.
The Town Hall packet was found to be from a civil engineer in India looking for business.
“It was junk mail, basically,” Moulton said.
When a package is opened or if a substance escapes from it, the incident would be treated as a hazardous materials event, Moulton said. Firefighters would show up in protective gear to contain the substance and collect it.
If a powder or residue needs analysis, Moulton said, it would be contained in several layers of plastic and sealed in a canister before being taken to the Maine State Police lab in Augusta. It would be taken in a town police car, which could use its lights and sirens along the way, Moulton said.
When you encounter a suspect package or letter, Moulton said, leave it alone and call 911. The dispatcher will ask you a series of questions to help determine the appropriate response. Among those questions will be: Is the package opened? What kind of area is it in? Is anything leaking or protruding from it? Is it irregularly
shaped?
Depending on the answers to those and other questions, the police and fire department will respond with appropriate personnel and equipment, Moulton said.
The most important thing to remember is after you call 911, don’t evacuate, but instead stay put until authorities say it is OK to leave. This is counter to fire-safety training, and even the opposite of the normal response to a bomb threat, Moulton admitted, but he said it is a very different sort of threat.
“It’s a different mindset than we’ve been used to,” he said.
Friday, October 19, 2001
Lucent slashes staff in survival play
Published in Interface Tech News
NORTH ANDOVER, Mass. ‹ Lucent Technologies cut nearly 1,000 job at its Merrimack Valley Works plant in a recent effort to save itself. The cuts were part of a 50 percent job reduction effort at Lucent, resulting from reduced revenue and changing customer demands.
The company-wide cutbacks will reduce the Lucent workforce from 123,000 at the beginning of 2001 to about 60,000 at the end of 2002, the company said. The Merrimack Valley plant's employment will drop from 3,750 to 2,800, said Lucent spokeswoman Mary Ward, who would not give a time frame for coming reductions.
"We're always reviewing what we need in terms of staffing levels," she said. Now that Lucent is moving toward outsourcing tasks, she said, jobs in the company have to go.
"(The reduction is) a response to the new business model of using outside contractors," Ward said. "Most of it is in response to the current market conditions."
Those conditions, according to Forrester Research analyst Maribel Dolinov, are difficult.
While many carrier companies are publicly saying they are moving from circuit-switching to packet-switching, those same companies had been placing sizable orders for circuit-based equipment. Now the carriers are cutting back their purchases of older technology, leaving companies like Lucent trying to bridge the gap while dealing with reduced revenue.
Lucent said it is working hard to continue its relationships with carriers. "We're doing whatever we can to help our customers," Ward said.
Dolinov said Lucent might be handicapped by the sense that the company is in bad shape.
"A lot of the good folks have gone out with the natural brain drain (that follows job reductions)", Dolinov said.
But those with good ideas don't have anywhere to go, with Nortel also laying off and start-ups experiencing financial droughts. In some cases, Dolinov said, laying low might be the best course of action. "You might as well just stay at Lucent and try and make it happen," she said.
The next six to eight months will show whether Lucent and its competitors will be successful, Dolinov said, and it could take longer than that for real results to appear. Lucent itself said it doesn't expect to see profits until fiscal 2003.
NORTH ANDOVER, Mass. ‹ Lucent Technologies cut nearly 1,000 job at its Merrimack Valley Works plant in a recent effort to save itself. The cuts were part of a 50 percent job reduction effort at Lucent, resulting from reduced revenue and changing customer demands.
The company-wide cutbacks will reduce the Lucent workforce from 123,000 at the beginning of 2001 to about 60,000 at the end of 2002, the company said. The Merrimack Valley plant's employment will drop from 3,750 to 2,800, said Lucent spokeswoman Mary Ward, who would not give a time frame for coming reductions.
"We're always reviewing what we need in terms of staffing levels," she said. Now that Lucent is moving toward outsourcing tasks, she said, jobs in the company have to go.
"(The reduction is) a response to the new business model of using outside contractors," Ward said. "Most of it is in response to the current market conditions."
Those conditions, according to Forrester Research analyst Maribel Dolinov, are difficult.
While many carrier companies are publicly saying they are moving from circuit-switching to packet-switching, those same companies had been placing sizable orders for circuit-based equipment. Now the carriers are cutting back their purchases of older technology, leaving companies like Lucent trying to bridge the gap while dealing with reduced revenue.
Lucent said it is working hard to continue its relationships with carriers. "We're doing whatever we can to help our customers," Ward said.
Dolinov said Lucent might be handicapped by the sense that the company is in bad shape.
"A lot of the good folks have gone out with the natural brain drain (that follows job reductions)", Dolinov said.
But those with good ideas don't have anywhere to go, with Nortel also laying off and start-ups experiencing financial droughts. In some cases, Dolinov said, laying low might be the best course of action. "You might as well just stay at Lucent and try and make it happen," she said.
The next six to eight months will show whether Lucent and its competitors will be successful, Dolinov said, and it could take longer than that for real results to appear. Lucent itself said it doesn't expect to see profits until fiscal 2003.
Thursday, October 18, 2001
Sunrise launches new marketing push
Published in Interface Tech News
MANCHESTER, N.H. ‹ In its first big self-promotion move, 10-year-old design engineering services firm Sunrise Labs is gearing up to unveil its new facility on Oct. 19. The company moved from the Ammon Center at the Manchester airport to Auburn, N.H.'s Wellington Business Park.
"This is really our first foray into marketing," said John MacGilvary, Sunrise's vice president of sales and marketing. The grand opening will give the company a chance to woo existing clients and prospects, in a bid to continue its rapid growth.
The privately held company has been growing about 40 percent per year, and needs the new space to continue expanding its workforce apace, according to MacGilvary. Sunrise Labs presently employs 35 people in the new facility ‹ occupied in January and now "fully ramped up," he said.
In 1999, the company won a "Decade of Design" award from Businessweek magazine for its part in designing an electronic voting machine accessible to people in wheelchairs. The machine, first sold in 1990, is now standard equipment at polling places, according to Businessweek.
MacGilvary said that was just one example of the company's design capabilities. Targeting customers in mature industries, Sunrise Labs has also built valves, valve actuators, and software valve controls for industrial applications, and is now working on the next generation of controllers for mammography equipment, he said.
With many companies working to reduce the cost of goods and moving toward more efficient design, the company said it is doing well, even in the economic downturn.
"Companies are using this time to regroup," MacGilvary said, which means more business for Sunrise Labs. He added that many of the company's clients say they outsource a lot of business, with mixed results, but often say Sunrise Labs exceeds expectations.
The company is seeing some effects from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as well, MacGilvary said. Companies that had been moderately interested in security and military applications for some of Sunrise Labs' work have increased orders, in some cases, doubling them. The company thought interest had spiked in June, MacGilvary said, but "now it's really taking shape."
MANCHESTER, N.H. ‹ In its first big self-promotion move, 10-year-old design engineering services firm Sunrise Labs is gearing up to unveil its new facility on Oct. 19. The company moved from the Ammon Center at the Manchester airport to Auburn, N.H.'s Wellington Business Park.
"This is really our first foray into marketing," said John MacGilvary, Sunrise's vice president of sales and marketing. The grand opening will give the company a chance to woo existing clients and prospects, in a bid to continue its rapid growth.
The privately held company has been growing about 40 percent per year, and needs the new space to continue expanding its workforce apace, according to MacGilvary. Sunrise Labs presently employs 35 people in the new facility ‹ occupied in January and now "fully ramped up," he said.
In 1999, the company won a "Decade of Design" award from Businessweek magazine for its part in designing an electronic voting machine accessible to people in wheelchairs. The machine, first sold in 1990, is now standard equipment at polling places, according to Businessweek.
MacGilvary said that was just one example of the company's design capabilities. Targeting customers in mature industries, Sunrise Labs has also built valves, valve actuators, and software valve controls for industrial applications, and is now working on the next generation of controllers for mammography equipment, he said.
With many companies working to reduce the cost of goods and moving toward more efficient design, the company said it is doing well, even in the economic downturn.
"Companies are using this time to regroup," MacGilvary said, which means more business for Sunrise Labs. He added that many of the company's clients say they outsource a lot of business, with mixed results, but often say Sunrise Labs exceeds expectations.
The company is seeing some effects from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as well, MacGilvary said. Companies that had been moderately interested in security and military applications for some of Sunrise Labs' work have increased orders, in some cases, doubling them. The company thought interest had spiked in June, MacGilvary said, but "now it's really taking shape."
Cape students adopt service members
Published in the Current
A group of eighth graders at Cape Elizabeth Middle School has adopted recent Cape high school graduate Pvt. Brendan Sweeney of the 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg, N.C. The students will be writing him letters to help keep his morale up during the war on terrorism.
Sweeney visited the middle school while home on a recent leave, and found the students’ reception warm and welcoming.
The students are in teacher Rachel Guthrie’s advisory group.
“They were so kind to him, so concerned,” said his father, Kevin, a member of the town’s School Board.
The advisory group and other middle school students have organized car washes to raise money for the American Red Cross, raising over $1,000, which has been matched by the school’s student council for a total donation nearing $3,000, the students said.
Kevin Sweeney is compiling a list of Cape residents who are serving in the military, so students will be able to adopt them as well. He said each member of the uniformed services is important, whether they serve in the U.S., or bases around the world, or are personally involved in fighting.
“Whether or not they wind up in a combat zone is irrelevant,” Sweeney said.
He said the list now includes eight people serving in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard, who have a Cape connection.
Either they grew up in town or have a direct Cape connection, Sweeney
said. He also said he knows of three others and is working to get permission from their families to give out their addresses to adopters.
The middle school also has a bulletin board with pictures of the people on the list, in uniform and in some cases as they appeared while in school in Cape Elizabeth.
Sweeney said supporting members of the armed forces is an important activity for all students to engage in.
“I want every school in Maine to do this,” he said.
A group of eighth graders at Cape Elizabeth Middle School has adopted recent Cape high school graduate Pvt. Brendan Sweeney of the 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg, N.C. The students will be writing him letters to help keep his morale up during the war on terrorism.
Sweeney visited the middle school while home on a recent leave, and found the students’ reception warm and welcoming.
The students are in teacher Rachel Guthrie’s advisory group.
“They were so kind to him, so concerned,” said his father, Kevin, a member of the town’s School Board.
The advisory group and other middle school students have organized car washes to raise money for the American Red Cross, raising over $1,000, which has been matched by the school’s student council for a total donation nearing $3,000, the students said.
Kevin Sweeney is compiling a list of Cape residents who are serving in the military, so students will be able to adopt them as well. He said each member of the uniformed services is important, whether they serve in the U.S., or bases around the world, or are personally involved in fighting.
“Whether or not they wind up in a combat zone is irrelevant,” Sweeney said.
He said the list now includes eight people serving in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard, who have a Cape connection.
Either they grew up in town or have a direct Cape connection, Sweeney
said. He also said he knows of three others and is working to get permission from their families to give out their addresses to adopters.
The middle school also has a bulletin board with pictures of the people on the list, in uniform and in some cases as they appeared while in school in Cape Elizabeth.
Sweeney said supporting members of the armed forces is an important activity for all students to engage in.
“I want every school in Maine to do this,” he said.
Thursday, October 11, 2001
Cape School Board gets test results
Published in the Current
The Cape Elizabeth School Board heard the town’s schools are ahead of state averages across the board, but the schools’ principals see room for continued improvement in performance on the Maine Educational Assessment test.
The results are of last year’s MEA tests, taken by students in fourth, eighth and eleventh grade. All of the principals said it is a flawed test and can raise more questions than it answers, but acknowledged its standardization across time and across the state makes it a useful evaluation tool.
Tom Eismeier, principal of Pond Cove Elementary School, said the school needs to work on its science curriculum, but was pleased with the results of students’math
scores. He said the school teaches test savvy as well as material specifically on the test.
Eismeier said 75 percent of the students are reading at or above grade level, and most of the rest of the students are near the standards and do not fall into the category labeled “does not meet standards.”
Jeff Shedd, principal at the high school, said data for specific other schools might be more helpful than the statewide average data supplied with the test results.
Shedd said the school’s difficulties in science are a result of time constraints on teaching material, but may also indicate an increased need for lab time in science courses. The slow decline in math scores, Shedd said, while still above the state average, is due to what he called “a demographic fluke,” rather than any problem with the curriculum.
He was concerned about meeting the needs of students who do not meet standards in one or more of the areas examined by the test, and said he would like to investigate adding programs for that portion of the student body.
Middle school principal Nancy Hutton said her students have been having problems with justifying answers in science, though they often know the correct answer. She also said the science curriculum covers some topics in fifth grade on which students are tested in fourth grade.
In other business, the school board:
-Heard from the high school student representatives about the stink-bomb detonated at the high school’s homecoming dance.
-Heard from the middle school student representatives that fifth and sixth grade students will be taking field trips in the area soon, and that the middle school’s gift
wrap sale is complete.
-Received a report from Superintendent Tom Forcella that the music department was invited to participate in the Grammy Foundation program for 2002; the Cape Elizabeth Education Foundation will look at a fundraising campaign to establish an endowment.
-Approved a list of 19 people to serve on the building/renovation project committee, including members of the School Board and Town Council, school administrators, community representatives, teachers, the athletic director and three parents.
-Heard that School Board member Kevin Sweeney’s son Brendan was enthusiastically
greeted at the middle school last week while on leave from the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, N.C.
-Learned the exchange trip to France planned by teacher David Peary will be cancelled due to lack of a participating school in France.
-Approved, with the condition that the State Department’s travel guidelines be adhered to, an exchange program with a school in Costa Rica which will bring 16 Costa Rican students and two teachers to Cape in January and send 12 Cape students to Costa Rica in April. The board said they wanted a report from the students in the program, led by teacher Mark Pendarvis, when they returned.
The next school board meeting will be at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 13 in the Council Chambers in town hall.
The Cape Elizabeth School Board heard the town’s schools are ahead of state averages across the board, but the schools’ principals see room for continued improvement in performance on the Maine Educational Assessment test.
The results are of last year’s MEA tests, taken by students in fourth, eighth and eleventh grade. All of the principals said it is a flawed test and can raise more questions than it answers, but acknowledged its standardization across time and across the state makes it a useful evaluation tool.
Tom Eismeier, principal of Pond Cove Elementary School, said the school needs to work on its science curriculum, but was pleased with the results of students’math
scores. He said the school teaches test savvy as well as material specifically on the test.
Eismeier said 75 percent of the students are reading at or above grade level, and most of the rest of the students are near the standards and do not fall into the category labeled “does not meet standards.”
Jeff Shedd, principal at the high school, said data for specific other schools might be more helpful than the statewide average data supplied with the test results.
Shedd said the school’s difficulties in science are a result of time constraints on teaching material, but may also indicate an increased need for lab time in science courses. The slow decline in math scores, Shedd said, while still above the state average, is due to what he called “a demographic fluke,” rather than any problem with the curriculum.
He was concerned about meeting the needs of students who do not meet standards in one or more of the areas examined by the test, and said he would like to investigate adding programs for that portion of the student body.
Middle school principal Nancy Hutton said her students have been having problems with justifying answers in science, though they often know the correct answer. She also said the science curriculum covers some topics in fifth grade on which students are tested in fourth grade.
In other business, the school board:
-Heard from the high school student representatives about the stink-bomb detonated at the high school’s homecoming dance.
-Heard from the middle school student representatives that fifth and sixth grade students will be taking field trips in the area soon, and that the middle school’s gift
wrap sale is complete.
-Received a report from Superintendent Tom Forcella that the music department was invited to participate in the Grammy Foundation program for 2002; the Cape Elizabeth Education Foundation will look at a fundraising campaign to establish an endowment.
-Approved a list of 19 people to serve on the building/renovation project committee, including members of the School Board and Town Council, school administrators, community representatives, teachers, the athletic director and three parents.
-Heard that School Board member Kevin Sweeney’s son Brendan was enthusiastically
greeted at the middle school last week while on leave from the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, N.C.
-Learned the exchange trip to France planned by teacher David Peary will be cancelled due to lack of a participating school in France.
-Approved, with the condition that the State Department’s travel guidelines be adhered to, an exchange program with a school in Costa Rica which will bring 16 Costa Rican students and two teachers to Cape in January and send 12 Cape students to Costa Rica in April. The board said they wanted a report from the students in the program, led by teacher Mark Pendarvis, when they returned.
The next school board meeting will be at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 13 in the Council Chambers in town hall.
Wednesday, October 10, 2001
Global-Z returns to Bennington with expansion plans
Published in Interface Tech News
MANCHESTER CENTER, Vt. ‹ Data processing company Global-Z is relocating for the second time in five years, returning to nearby Bennington, where the company was founded in 1989. The company is expanding to meet demand for direct-mail advertising in Asia, and expects to triple its payroll within five years.
The company is finishing financial arrangements for purchasing land and building a 5,000 square foot facility in Bennington. It expects to be in its new home by March 2002.
"Bennington is really hungry for new business," said company co-founder and vice president of operations Dimitri Garder. "A lot of the legwork is being done for us."
Several state, county, and municipal programs are working together to help the company remain in Bennington County and form part of what Garder hopes will be a critical mass of area technology businesses.
"If Bennington can promote themselves as really advantageous to high-tech business, we'd love to be a part of that," Garder said.
Global-Z began as a database consulting firm. Its clients ran into trouble when entering international addresses into databases that were expecting U.S.-style address formats.
In 1993, Garder said, the company began processing international address data for marketers. The benefit for the customers, Garder said, is fewer duplicates, faster delivery, and fewer pieces of returned mail. "It improves the deliverability of the mail piece," he said.
One of the company's employees works in Beijing, opening up services with Asian clients and working with the region's postal services. Global-Z has offered services in Japan for two years, and the next few countries to see Global-Z services, according to Garder, will be Taiwan, South Korea, and Thailand.
Guy Creese, research director at the Aberdeen Group, said there are big bucks in international direct mailing and address handling.
"That's quite a brisk business," he said.
There is room for improvement in addressing, Creese said, noting that even small improvements can have significant payoffs.
"If you can improve addresses by two percent, and you have a million addresses, that's big," he said.
The U.S. direct-mail market is saturated, Creese said, leading many companies, especially multi-nationals, to seek abroad the levels of success they have had with U.S. campaigns.
"The business demand for this is growing," he said.
Global-Z, planning to follow the trend in its sector, expects to add 35 jobs within the next five years, and offer training and internships collaboration with programs at Mt. Anthony Union High School's career center and Bennington College's foreign-language programs.
MANCHESTER CENTER, Vt. ‹ Data processing company Global-Z is relocating for the second time in five years, returning to nearby Bennington, where the company was founded in 1989. The company is expanding to meet demand for direct-mail advertising in Asia, and expects to triple its payroll within five years.
The company is finishing financial arrangements for purchasing land and building a 5,000 square foot facility in Bennington. It expects to be in its new home by March 2002.
"Bennington is really hungry for new business," said company co-founder and vice president of operations Dimitri Garder. "A lot of the legwork is being done for us."
Several state, county, and municipal programs are working together to help the company remain in Bennington County and form part of what Garder hopes will be a critical mass of area technology businesses.
"If Bennington can promote themselves as really advantageous to high-tech business, we'd love to be a part of that," Garder said.
Global-Z began as a database consulting firm. Its clients ran into trouble when entering international addresses into databases that were expecting U.S.-style address formats.
In 1993, Garder said, the company began processing international address data for marketers. The benefit for the customers, Garder said, is fewer duplicates, faster delivery, and fewer pieces of returned mail. "It improves the deliverability of the mail piece," he said.
One of the company's employees works in Beijing, opening up services with Asian clients and working with the region's postal services. Global-Z has offered services in Japan for two years, and the next few countries to see Global-Z services, according to Garder, will be Taiwan, South Korea, and Thailand.
Guy Creese, research director at the Aberdeen Group, said there are big bucks in international direct mailing and address handling.
"That's quite a brisk business," he said.
There is room for improvement in addressing, Creese said, noting that even small improvements can have significant payoffs.
"If you can improve addresses by two percent, and you have a million addresses, that's big," he said.
The U.S. direct-mail market is saturated, Creese said, leading many companies, especially multi-nationals, to seek abroad the levels of success they have had with U.S. campaigns.
"The business demand for this is growing," he said.
Global-Z, planning to follow the trend in its sector, expects to add 35 jobs within the next five years, and offer training and internships collaboration with programs at Mt. Anthony Union High School's career center and Bennington College's foreign-language programs.
Tuesday, October 9, 2001
Centra takes e-learning offering to China
Published in Interface Tech News
LEXINGTON, Mass. ‹ E-learning software firm Centra has signed a deal with New Modern Technology (NMT), based in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China, under which NMT will be Centra's distributor in China.
Centra has worked with a Japanese distributor for its eLearning framework for two years, and has several customers in that country.
In the past year, the company has expanded to serve Australia, Singapore, and India, adding Taiwan, China, and Korea in the past six months, according to Chris Reed, the company's vice president of corporate strategy.
"You really have to start in Japan," Reed said. Expansion to Australia, Singapore, and India often follow, he said.
With the new partnership, NMT will undertake the Chinese localization and marketing of Centra's software, which permits live interaction with an instructor via the Internet using video cameras, voice over IP, electronic whiteboards, and other tools.
Reed said the early adopters of this type of training platform are multi-national corporations, who are frustrated by delays between product launches in the U.S. and training for Asian offices, which often occur several months later.
Reed described Centra's platform as a "control panel around a content window," which allows multiple teaching tools to be used as part of a training session. Reed said this offers value and depth of understanding.
"The most effective learning experiences are a combination of these learning methods," he said.
Market research agrees. In August 2000, Forrester Research published a report entitled "Online Training Needs A New Course." The report indicated not only that lack of interactivity was the key obstacle to online learning, but that trainee resistance is the next largest problem.
Reed said Centra gets around these problems by offering lots of interactivity and with a simple analogy: "a class over the Internet."
Reed said people already have a sense of what a class entails and what it should be like. Centra's software, he said, gives them this without forcing companies to fly trainers all over the world, exhausting the people and the training budget.
With a distributor in China, Reed said, the company has an agent committed to a couple of years of market building, leaving Centra itself to continue working on its software and on other expansions.
LEXINGTON, Mass. ‹ E-learning software firm Centra has signed a deal with New Modern Technology (NMT), based in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China, under which NMT will be Centra's distributor in China.
Centra has worked with a Japanese distributor for its eLearning framework for two years, and has several customers in that country.
In the past year, the company has expanded to serve Australia, Singapore, and India, adding Taiwan, China, and Korea in the past six months, according to Chris Reed, the company's vice president of corporate strategy.
"You really have to start in Japan," Reed said. Expansion to Australia, Singapore, and India often follow, he said.
With the new partnership, NMT will undertake the Chinese localization and marketing of Centra's software, which permits live interaction with an instructor via the Internet using video cameras, voice over IP, electronic whiteboards, and other tools.
Reed said the early adopters of this type of training platform are multi-national corporations, who are frustrated by delays between product launches in the U.S. and training for Asian offices, which often occur several months later.
Reed described Centra's platform as a "control panel around a content window," which allows multiple teaching tools to be used as part of a training session. Reed said this offers value and depth of understanding.
"The most effective learning experiences are a combination of these learning methods," he said.
Market research agrees. In August 2000, Forrester Research published a report entitled "Online Training Needs A New Course." The report indicated not only that lack of interactivity was the key obstacle to online learning, but that trainee resistance is the next largest problem.
Reed said Centra gets around these problems by offering lots of interactivity and with a simple analogy: "a class over the Internet."
Reed said people already have a sense of what a class entails and what it should be like. Centra's software, he said, gives them this without forcing companies to fly trainers all over the world, exhausting the people and the training budget.
With a distributor in China, Reed said, the company has an agent committed to a couple of years of market building, leaving Centra itself to continue working on its software and on other expansions.
Friday, October 5, 2001
$15 million to advance NetNumber's VoIP plans
Published in Interface Tech News
LOWELL, Mass. ‹ NetNumber recently drew a $15 million infusion from Mountain View, Calif.-based VeriSign and Science Applications International Corporation's venture capital subsidiary, SAIC Venture Capital Corp., located in Las Vegas, Nev.
NetNumber is betting the injection of cash will enable continued expansion of its e-numbering services for voice-over-IP (VoIP) providers.
E-numbering translates international-standard phone numbers into IP addresses for connecting with IP phones, according to NetNumber CEO Glenn Marschel. He said the company will use the money for general operations and expansion of its marketing efforts.
At present, the company has one client, Webley Communications of Deerfield, Ill., and between 12 and 20 companies working to incorporate NetNumber's products, Marschel said.
An IDC report in late August stated that the recent economic downturn will "slow but not stall" the trend toward adopting VoIP technology. The report confirmed that several companies in the VoIP sector have also received additional rounds of venture capital funding.
Marschel said VeriSign and Science Applications had previously announced their intentions to compete with one another. He attributed the new collaboration to the firms' work together on standards and regulatory issues.
LOWELL, Mass. ‹ NetNumber recently drew a $15 million infusion from Mountain View, Calif.-based VeriSign and Science Applications International Corporation's venture capital subsidiary, SAIC Venture Capital Corp., located in Las Vegas, Nev.
NetNumber is betting the injection of cash will enable continued expansion of its e-numbering services for voice-over-IP (VoIP) providers.
E-numbering translates international-standard phone numbers into IP addresses for connecting with IP phones, according to NetNumber CEO Glenn Marschel. He said the company will use the money for general operations and expansion of its marketing efforts.
At present, the company has one client, Webley Communications of Deerfield, Ill., and between 12 and 20 companies working to incorporate NetNumber's products, Marschel said.
An IDC report in late August stated that the recent economic downturn will "slow but not stall" the trend toward adopting VoIP technology. The report confirmed that several companies in the VoIP sector have also received additional rounds of venture capital funding.
Marschel said VeriSign and Science Applications had previously announced their intentions to compete with one another. He attributed the new collaboration to the firms' work together on standards and regulatory issues.
Thursday, October 4, 2001
New home for Cape Police takes shape
Published in the Current
The Cape Elizabeth Police Department’s new home is taking shape and should be enclosed by winter, Chief Neil Williams said.
The new building, on the site of the old police and fire station on Ocean House Road in the town center, will have 9,300 square feet of space. That is roughly the same
size as the old building, but with the fire department in its new station across Jordan Way, “We’re going to have it all to ourselves,” Williams said.
Williams said the decision to build a new station, rather than renovate the old one, was a matter of bringing that structure into compliance with current building codes, including the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“The corridors and ramps that they were going to have to put in were going to need a lot more space,” Williams said.
The town invited bids to raze the police station, and build a new fire station and a new police station, as one project, for a total of $2.5 million, Williams said.
The new station will not only be built on one level for easy access, but also will have an appealing entrance area, including a small courtyard between the road and the building.
“It’s going to be more customer service focused,” Williams said, describing the dispatch area, with its split desk so people entering the station can speak face-to-face with a dispatcher or other officer.
The officers also will have better space, with stronger security and more computers and office space, as well as better space for processing witnesses and suspects.
“We will have a larger hold-down area,” Williams said.
Other amenities will make the building more welcoming to officers and members of the public alike, Williams said. The building will be air-conditioned, and there will be a conference room for police meetings as well as community use.
“We’re all looking forward to it,” Williams said.
The Cape police department also is working with the FBI, as are most U.S. police departments, to investigate the events leading up to the attacks on Sept. 11 in New York and Washington, D.C. Williams said.
The Cape Elizabeth Police Department’s new home is taking shape and should be enclosed by winter, Chief Neil Williams said.
The new building, on the site of the old police and fire station on Ocean House Road in the town center, will have 9,300 square feet of space. That is roughly the same
size as the old building, but with the fire department in its new station across Jordan Way, “We’re going to have it all to ourselves,” Williams said.
Williams said the decision to build a new station, rather than renovate the old one, was a matter of bringing that structure into compliance with current building codes, including the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“The corridors and ramps that they were going to have to put in were going to need a lot more space,” Williams said.
The town invited bids to raze the police station, and build a new fire station and a new police station, as one project, for a total of $2.5 million, Williams said.
The new station will not only be built on one level for easy access, but also will have an appealing entrance area, including a small courtyard between the road and the building.
“It’s going to be more customer service focused,” Williams said, describing the dispatch area, with its split desk so people entering the station can speak face-to-face with a dispatcher or other officer.
The officers also will have better space, with stronger security and more computers and office space, as well as better space for processing witnesses and suspects.
“We will have a larger hold-down area,” Williams said.
Other amenities will make the building more welcoming to officers and members of the public alike, Williams said. The building will be air-conditioned, and there will be a conference room for police meetings as well as community use.
“We’re all looking forward to it,” Williams said.
The Cape police department also is working with the FBI, as are most U.S. police departments, to investigate the events leading up to the attacks on Sept. 11 in New York and Washington, D.C. Williams said.
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