Legion hall gets a refit

Published in the Current

SOUTH PORTLAND (May 26, 2005): The bright blue landmark on Broadway is now a more gentle gray, though veterans are still hard at work fixing up the inside of the Stewart P. Morrill American Legion Post 35.

“We’re trying to really make this place viable for rentals,” said Post Commander Roger Sabourin, as he watched friends scrape and repaint kitchen cabinets and install a light fixture in the entryway.

The veterans group has spent nearly all of a $75,000 loan they got through a friendly loan officer – himself a Vietnam veteran – at Peoples Heritage Bank, insulating and residing the building, installing new windows, bringing in Internet access, fixing up ceilings and repainting walls in the building, which is also a South Portland polling place and a Red Cross emergency shelter.

Its bright blue color was created by accident, when an effort began to repaint the building blue rather than the previous olive-drab green, which had coated both the interior and exterior of the post.

The blue paint was not enough to cover the durable green hue, Sabourin said, and when the sun baked the colors together, it became the eye-catching (and eye-assaulting) almost-neon color familiar to many in the city.

The post’s meeting room, lined with the names and photos of veterans of wars past, was almost completely redone by the post’s oldest member, Clarence Howard, 85, including putting a new coat of paint on the extra-high ceiling.

Much of the money went to A-Best Window, which replaced all the building’s windows and re-sided it to improve energy efficiency.

“Before this thing, we were heating half of South Portland,” said Sabourin. Only half in jest, he said the post was responsible for local weather patterns. Looking out the windows at Mill Cove next to the Hannaford supermarket, Sabourin said, “you notice the bay froze over this year. We closed the windows.”

The post had owned the building outright, but now has to make monthly mortgage payments for the improvements, which will help keep maintenance costs down as well as make it more attractive as a rental space for groups to meet in.

There are three rooms that will be available for rent – two are complete now and work is about to begin on the third, mostly conducted by veterans themselves.

The building is also home to the U.S. Navy Sea Cadets program in South Portland, and the Portland Amateur Wireless Association.

It is now completely handicap-accessible, except for the small rooms on the third floor.

Sabourin had hoped the work would be done in time for Memorial Day, but now he is hoping it will be “July Fourth, or Veterans Day. We’ll get it done.”

He said the work is important to carry on the long history the city has of providing troops for the U.S. military, and helps to honor all who serve, including the four Medal of Honor winners he said are buried in the city’s cemeteries.

“South Portland has a great, great history of veterans,” Sabourin said.

Editorial: Where’s the relief?

Published in the Current

(May 26, 2005): Gov. John Baldacci is about to stick it to Maine taxpayers because he won't – or can't – make the hard choices we need our leader to make.

After proposing the state borrow nearly $450 million to cover day-to-day operating expenses, and getting it past legislators, who should have stood up to that kind of ploy, Baldacci has reversed himself.

He says his change of heart is because the federal Base Realignment and Closing Commission has proposed closing Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and downsizing Brunswick Naval Air Station. He should have said his change of heart was because running state programs on a credit card is bad government.

Either way, to get out of the borrowing hole, he and Democratic leaders in the Legislature have asked all state departments to submit revised budgets with 5 percent across-the-board cuts.

That’s not a bad start, but across-the-board isn’t the way to go. Specifically, cutting state aid to local schools – as proposed by the Department of Education Tuesday and described on Page 1 – is the opposite of what should happen.

Admittedly, those reductions are from amounts significantly higher than last year, and will still result in net increases in state aid for Cape Elizabeth, Scarborough and South Portland.

But by removing hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue from local school budgets – $108,000 from Cape, $254,000 from Scarborough and $209,000 from South Portland – Baldacci’s plan goes directly against the efforts of citizens, legislators and even his own initiatives to increase state aid to education.

He set out this budget season to ramp up state school funding – in response to statewide referenda demanding tax relief. He even made some headway toward that goal – though not enough.
And, now he's already backing away from the little ground the state has gained because he can't seem to balance the budget.

The problem is not that the state is giving too much money to Maine's towns – just the opposite. Rather, the problem with state government is that it spends too much money just running itself.

Surely the Department of Education can handle deep cuts in its staff, without backpaddling on aid to local districts. Many of the department's workers seem to be constantly revising the Byzantine rules of the Maine Learning Results, sending teachers, administrators, students and parents into expensive annual conniptions trying to figure out what state regulators want, and how to give it to them.

Other Education staffers, perhaps trying to save their own jobs, came up with this ridiculous proposal, which would tear down the fragile beginnings of tax reform in Maine. Their usefulness in state government – and that of anyone who directed them to do that work – should come under close scrutiny.

There are also 500 vacant positions in state government that are included in the budget and could be eliminated without hurting anyone. Baldacci could consolidate government departments, too. He could also raise more revenue by raising the cigarette tax or the sales tax.

Perhaps Baldacci already expects to pay for his budget antics in next November’s gubernatorial election. But that should not prevent a man who has spent much of his adult life in public service from listening to what the people want and need.

He needs to make hard decisions now. One of those decisions should be to act on what the people are saying. And this, in case he doesn't know, is what they say: Raise – not lower – state aid to education. Lower significantly – not some small amount like 5 percent – state spending on administration and overhead.

The people of Maine need tax reform. School funding, as one of the major cost-drivers, is a good place to start injecting more state money, to reduce schools’ pressure on local property taxes.

But as state school funding climbs more slowly, the goal of real tax reform is farther away. And what matters to most of us is not that Baldacci pays later, but that we end up footing the bill now.

Jeff Inglis, editor

Family welcomes injured soldier home

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (May 19, 2005): Just a month after being injured in a roadside explosion in Iraq, Army Cpl. Jack Howland returned to Maine to spend two weeks recuperating at home.

Howland, whose family is almost entirely in Scarborough but whose parents live in Porter, was the guest of honor Saturday at a surprise party at the Clambake Restaurant on Pine Point Road in Scarborough.

More than 50 friends, neighbors and relatives attended the gathering, including Howland’s three living grandparents, Philip and Sue Bayley and Gladys Howland.

There were four generations of each side of the family to welcome Jack home, just 24 hours after his delayed flight had landed in Portland.

Traveling with him was his girlfriend, Teena Sphar of Midway, Ga., and Teena’s daughter, Taylor. They had expected to arrive far earlier in the day, but bad weather and airline schedules delayed them for hours.

When the trio finally came through the gate, family members were there with a banner, and a crowd of strangers waiting for other loved ones let out a huge cheer.

Howland, 23, had been in an Army Humvee, protecting a convoy near Baghdad, when a roadside bomb exploded, burning his eyes and lungs and injuring another soldier in his vehicle.

He had spent four and a half months in Iraq, and found himself airlifted to a U.S. military hospital in Germany and then back to the States for more treatment.

Howland’s eyes are now fine, and his lungs have healed to about 60 percent of their normal function. They are continuing to heal, and Howland will return to Georgia for more medical treatment in a couple weeks.

His family’s surprise party was a simple subterfuge, with Howland’s mother, Mary (Bayley) Howland, saying she was going shopping with her daughter-in-law, Heather Howland, and Sphar, who was on her first trip to Maine and her first meeting of her boyfriend’s family.

They suggested to Jack that they should all meet up for dinner at the Clambake later on.

But instead of going shopping, the three women and other friends and relatives went straight to the Clambake in the mid-afternoon, and began setting up. One appropriate decoration was already in the room – a mounted “jackalope” on the wall, like a hunting trophy.

Jack’s uncle Dana Howland is the manager at the Clambake, and Jack worked at the restaurant for seven years before entering the Army three years ago. He is a member of the 94th Maintenance Company, 87 Corps Support Battalion, stationed at Fort Stewart, Ga., where he met Sphar.

The party grew as Jack’s arrival neared, and when he walked into the room he was totally surprised by the crowd.

“It’s a totally joyous celebration for us. It could have been totally different,” his mother said.

“I had no idea,” Jack said with a grin, amid shaking hands and hugging friends and relations.

His grandmother Sue Bayley was glad to see her grandson – and several other grandchildren who came to celebrate – but still had her mind on Jack’s comrades in Iraq. “I just wish they could all come home,” she said.

Short outage keeps police busy

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (May 19, 2005): An equipment failure caused a widespread power outage in Scarborough on Friday the 13th, shutting down traffic lights at busy intersections and interrupting electrical and Internet service for about 1,900 homes and businesses.

According to Central Maine Power spokeswoman Gail Rice, the outage, which lasted from about 10 a.m. to about 11 a.m., was caused by an equipment failure in a substation that took out two circuits.

Police scrambled to direct traffic at intersections all along Route 1, Gorham Road and Payne Road, and the Scarborough Fire-Police were also called out. But only one Scarborough fire-policeman responded, so Cape Elizabeth sent its fire-police unit to help as well.

The police department used its Code Red reverse-911 calling system to alert residents to the situation, and to ask people to drive carefully, especially through busy intersections.

Cape drivers win plow roadeo

Published in the Current

CAPE ELIZABETH (May 19, 2005): Two Cape Elizabeth Public Works drivers have won the Cumberland County Snowplow “Roadeo,” and will compete for the state championship June 2 in Skowhegan.

Jason Emery and Ron O’Brien won Cape’s first county championship, with the lowest combined score for their navigations of a snowplow truck and a wing – as much as 15 feet wide – through a closed course while avoiding fire hydrants, cones and parked vehicles.

The pair, who Emery said does “nothing” to train, doesn’t even drive plow trucks through the winter.

“We both plow on loaders,” O’Brien said. “What it boils down to is teamwork, just like our everyday jobs.” The pair are both seated in the cab of a plow truck, and take turns driving and being the spotter. “He watches the wing,” O’Brien said.

This is the pair’s fifth year competing, but their first as teammates. Last year, when both had low scores but on different teams, they decided to join up this year.

It paid off with the trophy. O’Brien also took second in the individual scoring, narrowly missing a personal win because “I clipped one of the vehicles.”