Storm hits hard

Published at KeepMeCurrent.com

SCARBOROUGH (June 29, 2005): As the Current went to press Wednesday, Scarborough, Cape Elizabeth and South Portland were experiencing a major thunderstorm with numerous local lightning strikes and heavy downpours.

Intermittent power outages took down traffic lights and forced local businesses to halt operations. The rainfall led to localized flooding, which covered parts of many roads, including Two Lights Road in Cape Elizabeth and Payne Road and Beech Ridge Road in Scarborough, with several inches of fast-moving water.

The edges of several roadways were reported by police as being eroded – in some places, significantly – by the water.

Several houses were reported as possibly struck by lightning, and emergency crews were going from place to place cordoning off fallen wires and trees, warning drivers about dangerous road conditions and checking on homes and residents.

More information will be available in the Current, which will be on newsstands Thursday morning.

Rosenfeld: Lots more work to do on Haigis

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (June 23, 2005): After $10 million in utility installation on Haigis Parkway, “it’s going to take developers with very deep pockets to get the sites ready.”

That's part of what Harvey Rosenfeld, president of the Scarborough Economic Development Corp., told members of the Scarborough Community Chamber of Commerce last week.

Rosenfeld addressed the chamber at its annual meeting Thursday at the Black Point Inn, telling chamber members a lot remains to be done to the parkway's parcels before they are ready for businesses to build on them.

The utilities, while present, are only in the street, and the lots will have to be surveyed, have roads and other infrastructure designed and most likely split up for smaller developments, Rosenfeld said in a follow-up interview. That process will likely involve developers buying the land, doing preliminary work and then reselling subdivided parcels to interested companies.

Rosenfeld told the chamber about his marketing plans for the area, saying Maine is not a good place for businesses to make money, but should sell its “quality of life” to major developers.

“The best reason for doing business in Maine” is “quality of life,” Rosenfeld said. “If profit’s the main goal, there are other better places to be.”

Maine has large numbers of elderly and poor people, and a low number of college graduates.

“We are not a particularly skilled population,” he said. “That, unfortunately, does not equip us to compete in the 21st century.”

Making matters worse are the state’s high taxes, long distance from the rest of the country and “limited financial resources” – a few people paying taxes for a very large statewide infrastructure and a lot of demand for increasing services.

But, he said, “Maine can become more prosperous” by investing in education and promoting how nice it is to live here.

He asked chamber members to help his promotional efforts. "Stop badmouthing the state," he said, suggesting they tell businesspeople from other areas of the country why they live here, why they raise their families here and why they are still here.”

Rosenfeld also suggested businesspeople get involved at all levels. At the state and regional level, he suggested supporting regionalization, noting that within 50 miles of Scarborough are more than 100 local governments serving over 600,000 people.

Comparing that to large metropolitan areas with consolidated municipal services, Rosenfeld – himself a former municipal manager – said “there is duplication of services.”

He also suggested people get involved locally, with the town’s Comprehensive Plan Update Committee. That group is reviewing the town’s zoning and will recommend changes to the Town Council. He said they are considering changes to zoning west of the Maine Turnpike, to possibly allow more businesses from Running Hill Road to Exit 42.

And Rosenfeld said business leaders should “help build the best educational system at all levels.”

“We simply can’t skimp on how we fund education and expect to be competitive,” he said.

He also outlined a marketing campaign that is just beginning to pitch development on Haigis Parkway to major developers around the country.

“These are people who can buy 40 acres anywhere in the country,” he said.

He gave out copies of a professionally designed marketing brochure for “Scarborough’s Professional Gateway,” the marketing name for the area near town's Turnpike exit. The road running through it “will always remain the Haigis Parkway,” Rosenfeld said.

He compared the future of the Haigis Parkway area with Research Triangle Park in North Carolina and the Route 128 technology corridor outside Boston, saying he wants to draw “cutting-edge research centers,” “precision manufacturing” and “world-class hospitality ventures” to the area.

To that end, SEDCO will be distributing more than 70,000 of the brochures locally, in “a national mailing to developers around the country” and at trade shows around the country.

Rosenfeld said the lots on Haigis Parkway, and a few along Payne Road that are also part of the region, will take lots of money to develop, even after the town spent $10 million installing water, sewer, gas and electricity.

Half of that cost is being charged to the landowners in a tax-increment financing district deal Rosenfeld authored and presented to state officials for review. He said they didn’t initially understand what he was proposing, because it had never before been done in Maine.

“The owners are sharing the cost of the infrastructure,” Rosenfeld said.

Two of the parkway’s largest landowners – Linwood Higgins’s Three Diamonds Realty and Scarborough Downs – are suing the town, saying the assessment of fees was done unfairly.

Rosenfeld dismissed concerns that the lawsuits could cause developers to be wary of getting involved, saying, “public-private partnerships are really the way to go.”

While he said “any lawsuit has a negative publicity,” the arrangement as it is “in the long run will pay off.”

Editorial: Bad for business

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (June 23, 2005): We hear a lot about Maine having a bad climate for business, and most notably we heard it again last week from Harvey Rosenfeld, Scarborough’s top person for drumming up business. It’s getting worse, and that needs to change.

“If profit’s the main goal, there are other better places to be” than Maine, Rosenfeld told members of the Scarborough Community Chamber of Commerce.

It was Thursday lunchtime when he told chamber members the real value for business in Maine is “quality of life” for workers, rather than actually making the owners money.

The following night, Maine’s lawmakers voted to accept a state budget that made Rosenfeld’s statement about profits ring even truer.

The Legislature did not just raise corporate income taxes, but also cut back on state reimbursements to companies for major investments in equipment. The state’s expected revenue from the changes? $16 million over two years – not nearly enough to be worth the loss of goodwill, or perhaps sympathy, from big businesses with a presence in Maine.

Gov. John Baldacci talks the good talk, saying he is defending Maine jobs and has a plan for developing Maine’s economy. If this is that plan, he needs to think again, and fast.

While the state is certainly in a budget hole, taxing business more is not the way to get out of it – especially not taxing large businesses that have invested heavily over the years and are longtime cornerstones of local, regional and state economies.

These businesses are the ones that employ large numbers of people in their own and surrounding communities. They are the barometers of Maine’s economy.

They should be expected to pay their fair share of the state’s expenses, but should not be looked at as a cash cow for state budgeters when other wells run dry.

The companies are rightfully upset and reconsidering future investments in Maine, which should have occurred to lawmakers before they voted.

UnumProvident, which has been shifting staff members and assets out of Maine in recently years, says it doesn’t like the message the state is sending. We can’t afford to shove companies like UnumProvident out the door without any plan for replacing the jobs and local investments they provide.

But an increased tax on business investment is worse than no plan for replacement – it’s a deterrent for companies that might be considering Maine’s quality of life in the future. They certainly won’t be considering making any money here.

And UnumProvident is not the only company angered by the new taxes.

National Semiconductor says the new budget has broken a promise made by state officials in their effort to get the company to invest here – a promise that the state would reimburse the company for every penny it pays in local taxes on business equipment.

States don’t break promises to big business without huge long-term consequences.

Rosenfeld shared with the chamber members a vision of Haigis Parkway as home to top-notch research centers, high-tech companies and precision manufacturing.

If Scarborough – or Maine – is to have a prayer of that vision coming true, the state’s increasing taxation of businesses has to be reversed now.

Jeff Inglis, editor

Historic ship gets refurbished home

Published in the Current

SOUTH PORTLAND (June 16, 2005): An important piece of American history and Maine lore has a refurbished home on Spring Point in South Portland, as well as a tribute to a man key in its preservation.

A portion of the clipper ship Snow Squall, launched in 1851 from the Cornelius Butler Shipyard on Turner’s Island in Cape Elizabeth (now South Portland), is part of the permanent collection at the Portland Harbor Museum.

The gallery has been refurbished and was reopened for the first time last week, showing off the new elements of the exhibit, including a display in memory of maritime historian Nick Dean, the man who rediscovered the wreck of the Snow Squall in the Falkland Islands in 1979 and spearheaded her return to Maine.

Dean, who was also the first director of the museum when it was called the Spring Point Museum, died in January at age 71. His widow, Zibette Dean, attended the gallery’s opening, as did Dave Switzer, who with Nick Dean wrote a history of the ship, called “Snow Squall: The Last American Clipper Ship.”

The ship was a fast freight ship carrying cargo around Cape Horn between the east and west coasts of the United States, as well as across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

In 1863, she escaped from the Confederate raiding ship Tuscaloosa near the Cape of Good Hope in an all-day race pitting crew skills and ship speed against each other.

In 1864, the Snow Squall was on her way from New York to San Francisco but ran aground near Cape Horn. She limped back into Port Stanley in the Falklands and was abandoned.

“It sat there for 114 years,” said Hadley Schmoyer, the museum’s new curator, who started the job April 20.

When it was discovered in 1979, it was one of a few remnants of the American clipper shipbuilding years, and a rare specimen of how the ships were designed and built, Schmoyer said.

Because clipper ships were built so quickly and with many changes from ship to ship – all in search of a few extra knots of speed – there were few models left to show how they were built.

Dean, an Edgecomb resident, recognized the value of the find, and coordinated the work required in returning her to Maine.

Other parts of her hull are in the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, South Street Seaport Museum in New York City and the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park in California.

The evening also saw the opening of the new seasonal exhibit at the Portland Harbor Museum, called “Old Salts and New Directions” and focusing on the people who work in and around the harbor.

Among the artifacts is a scale model of the Casco Bay Lines steamer Maquoit, handmade by Capt. Larry Legere of Cape Elizabeth. Legere, the operations agent for the lines, is the son of Capt. Edward Legere, who captained the ferry steamers for many years, and the father of Alexandra Legere, who also works for the ferry company.

Editorial: Hail and farewell

Published in the Current

CAPE ELIZABETH (June 16, 2005): As graduation season winds up for another year, we wish all of the graduates well, their parents too – and a special "good luck" to the graduates’ younger siblings, who now step up a rung in their own growth ladder.

Scarborough’s 202 graduates and Cape Elizabeth’s 129, all newly minted this week, join 221 of their neighbors in South Portland who became alumni last week, taking on new roles in the community and in their lives.

Many of them will leave town to attend college or other professional training, or to enter the military. Some will stay near home, either living in town while attending classes nearby, finding a new job or sticking with an old one.

To all of these – and any other subgroups – we offer hearty congratulations and wishes of good luck.

By now, you have chosen your role models and begun to follow them. But you will find still others who affect how you live your life. Choose cautiously those whose models you will follow, as no road is truly clear from the outset.

One example we hold up this week, not just to celebrate an extraordinary graduate making an unusual choice, but also to provide food for thought and discussion among parents, students and teachers, is Megan Barnes of Cape Elizabeth.

As we read on Page 1, while many of her classmates are headed to college, she is delaying that route – not forever, she says now, but perhaps. Instead, she is headed to Ecuador to work in an international school where she studied during part of her junior year, seeking out international experiences to enrich her learning and development. (Plus, it’s fun.)

It’s very common in this country to go directly from high school to college, and for many students, that’s the proper way to do it. But there are a whole lot of high school graduates for whom college right after school may not be the best idea.

Schools and parents should be open to the idea students who don’t follow any of the three traditional American paths for high school graduates: college, work or the military.

In other countries, from Europe to Australia and New Zealand, it is very common to take a year or more before college for what is sometimes called an “OE” – overseas experience. Some young people work, as Barnes is doing, while others just travel. Many do a mix – traveling until they run out of money and then working for a bit to make it back.

That type of experience is very valuable, and even those going directly to college should seek some sort of study abroad if they wish to truly understand this incredibly diverse and wonderful world we share.

People on an OE meet others in similar quests from other countries, visit faraway lands and explore not only other cultures but their own, and themselves.

High schools strive to prepare their students for the “real world,” but can go only so far – staff and teachers know it just as well as parents and students. Some sort of additional education or preparation is needed before these young adults are fully fledged.

There are a number of routes available – including college, work and the military. But there is another, and Barnes has found it, all on her own, and stuck to it despite advice to the contrary from teachers, guidance staff and administrators.

She should be proud for growing up to be the young woman that she is, as all the graduates should be proud of who they have become.

We look forward to hearing more of Barnes, and of all of the class of 2005. May they all grow to know their own minds, choose their counsel wisely, and refuse to take no for an answer, no matter how authoritative the rejection may seem.

Jeff Inglis, editor