Changing Cape begins to plan for future

Published in the Current

CAPE ELIZABETH (Aug 25, 2005): More than one-third of the homes in Cape Elizabeth are occupied by a single person.

That is just one aspect of a 30-year trend in Cape Elizabeth that has more homes being built even as the number of people living in town remains about the same.

“We’ve grown in housing units but not in population,” Town Manager Mike McGovern told the Comprehensive Plan Committee last week, as part of a discussion of the history of town efforts to plan for the future.

In 1972, when the town took its first shot at a comprehensive plan, the population was about 7,000. The 1972 plan was rejected by the Planning Board then, but remains as a reference for town leaders, McGovern said. The Comprehensive Plan Committee is just beginning its work updating the town's plan for the future, last updated in 1994.

Since 1972, more than 1,000 homes have been built in town, bringing the total of single-family houses to over 3,300 in 2000 Census figures. That’s nearly half as many as existed in 1972. But the number of people climbed more slowly, reaching just over 9,000 in the 2000 Census, well below the 1972 projection that there would be 15,000 Cape residents, McGovern said.

“The population in the 1970s did not increase despite 320 new housing units,” he said. The main reason for that is “there’s far fewer people per household.”

McGovern noted also that the town more than doubled its land holdings between 1972 and 2005, and that the number of farms increased from nine to 10, though “they’re different types of farms.”

He said his numbers showed that “as much as things don’t seem to change much in Cape Elizabeth, there is in fact a lot of change that is going on.”

Recreational life in town has definitely changed. “In 1972 there was absolutely no Community Services program,” McGovern said, and “Fort Williams was just a bunch of buildings. … It had not yet been designated a park.”

He urged the committee to “challenge every assumption” in the present comprehensive plan, created in 1994 and under review this year by a committee of citizens and elected officials.

He asked whether the vacant lot next to the Inn by the Sea should remain zoned for business, as it now is, and also suggested the group look at housing needs, saying “affordable housing is disappearing” from the town.

“The community needs more than just single-family homes,” McGovern said.

He also suggested the committee review the desire, stated in several town planning documents, that the “rural character” of Cape Elizabeth be preserved. He noted that since that phrase first appeared, 1,000 homes have been built.

“Maybe it’s time to segment” the town, focusing rural-protection efforts in some areas while not in others, he said.

He asked them to consider what changes might mean for residents’ property rights, particularly on the Sprague estate, a vast parcel of land in the southwestern part of town that is privately owned and governed by a town-approved master plan for future development and conservation.

Survey in the works

A survey of town residents is in the planning stages, with Critical Insights, a Portland firm owned by Cape resident MaryEllen FitzGerald, slated to conduct a phone survey of a random sample of residents, pending approval of sufficient funding, according to Town Planner Maureen O’Meara. The survey will cost just shy of $15,000.

The last comprehensive plan is based on a town-wide written survey mailed to all residents, of whom just over 100 chose to respond.

The Critical Insights survey will randomly select 400 residents, a sample that because of its randomness and its size will be large enough to make the results statistically representative of the entire town population, FitzGerald told the committee last week.

Editorial: No laughing matter

Published in the Current

(Aug 18, 2005): There is not a huge amount of difference between “Giggles and Grins” and “Grins and Giggles,” but what difference there is should provide room for two companies to keep their names.

Scarborough businesswoman Kristi Stanley, who owns Giggles and Grins, named after some of her young son’s personality traits, says one name is the reverse of the other and shouldn’t cause a problem.

But, as we see on Page 1, the Gerber baby food company seems to think the two are so confusingly similar that it is demanding Stanley change her business’s name.

There are laws and court rulings about this type of dispute, and lawyers are already involved. But common sense and an innate sense of right and wrong should also be in play: Just because someone is bigger than you doesn’t mean they should get their way.

And in this case, the companies should agree to keep their names. They sell items and product lines that are different enough that customers should be able to keep them straight: If you went to buy a blanket (from Giggles and Grins) and instead selected a shampoo (from Grins and Giggles), you’d figure out your mistake long before getting to the cash register.

Perhaps as a safeguard against future disputes like this, the companies could agree that if either is going to sell products similar to the other’s, it must be done under a different product name. So if Stanley decides to make homemade baby soaps, she would have to find a different name for that group of items.

The Internet is the one place where customers could be easily confused, and might unintentionally visit one company’s site when looking for the other.

Because of the mechanics of Internet searches, someone looking for the words “giggles” and “grins” would find both companies’ sites – as well as countless other sites completely unrelated to any products for babies and young children.

So it seems reasonable that to dispel potential customer confusion, at the top of each company’s Web site should be a line saying it is not the other company’s site, and providing a link to the other site.

That sort of solution is quite common in situations where organizations and companies have similar names and want to mutually avoid confusion, and that’s really where the companies’ negotiations should focus.

New inside

I want to call your attention to two items in this week’s issue that are of particular note: the Religion page, on Page 6, and the local school bus schedules, on Pages 20 and 21.

Both are part of our continuing efforts to be the best newspaper serving this territory, and to better serve you, our readers.

This issue marks the second appearance of the Religion page, which will appear every other week as a venue for news, views and information about our local churches and religious groups. Please send contributions, feedback, story ideas and other comments to me by e-mail at jinglis@keepmecurrent.com, or call me at 883-3533.

This issue also includes the school bus schedules for Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth for the upcoming year. (South Portland’s were not available before press time, but will be posted on our Web site, www.KeepMEcurrent.com, as soon as we get them from the school department.) Scarborough’s, in particular, may cause some concern, because of a new district policy consolidating bus stops. Please let us know what you think of the new routes, again by e-mailing me at jinglis@keepmecurrent.com or by calling 883-3533.

As always, we welcome your comments, feedback and ideas on all aspects of the paper. If you would prefer to write or fax, those addresses are just below this column, on the same page.

Thanks so much for reading the Current! We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Jeff Inglis, editor

Editorial: Show up to speak

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (Aug 11, 2005): Next week, on Thursday, Aug. 18, parents will have an opportunity to speak to the Scarborough Board of Education about their views on sex education in the schools.

Every parent of a child in Scarborough schools should attend the meeting, at 7:30 p.m. in Town Hall, no matter their views on sex education.

Many parents are pleased with the curriculum, but others are not. Some object to lessons about condoms as a means of protection against sexually transmitted diseases, saying teaching about condoms is tantamount to approving of sexual activity for students. Other parents are concerned that their children might not learn about an effective way to prevent disease and unwanted pregnancy at an early enough age that the lessons will stick and be heeded.

We have had columns and letters to the editor on this subject, and postings on our Web site at www.KeepMEcurrent.com, and we invite more of each. Please write to let us know what you think.

Children in our society are exposed to sexual material almost constantly, in the movies, on television, online and elsewhere. We must find ways to help children keep themselves safe, both from dangerous influences and from ignorance of the dangers.

No matter how caring or thoughtful a parent is, children have to do a lot of growing up all on their own, out among their peers, where parents’ watchful eyes cannot go. What we teach them will affect their decisions in those situations.

Parents with ideas, concerns and wishes for all aspects of sex education should make their voices heard. Write to us, and then go speak to the school board.

Making bus sense

Scarborough school officials should be commended for reacting swiftly to complaints from daycare owner Heidi McDonald, who was upset that a new policy reducing the number of school bus stops in town would require some two dozen of her charges to wait just off Route 1, rather than in her building, as has been the case so far.

McDonald’s immediate objections have been taken care of, at least pending further study by a school department committee: On Wednesday, McDonald met with Superintendent Bill Michaud and Transportation Director Scott Macomber, who told her the schools will keep the buses running to her driveway – though not her door – until the committee decides on a permanent solution.

Also, for this year, the schools will continue to transport students between Heidi’s House and all three of the town’s elementary schools, rather than just Eight Corners School, which serves the business’s region of town.

McDonald says she plans to fight the changes, to make permanent the special provisions the schools made this year, mainly because of the short notice to McDonald and to parents.

The schools should carefully consider the effects of this new policy on businesses and parents, as well as children. Parents painstakingly choose daycares for a wide range of reasons, but if the best daycare for a child is across town, that shouldn’t be a deal-breaker.

The idea of shortening bus trips by consolidating stops is a good one. But it would seem that the daycare centers have already created consolidated stops, by bringing together numerous children from separate homes to one location for pickup and drop-off.

The schools should be able to provide at least the larger daycare centers in town with bus service to and from all three elementary schools. Perhaps there should be a minimum number of students required before a bus route will include an out-of-region daycare, to avoid driving a town-owned bus all over town for a single student.

But there should be a way to meet the daycares’ needs while still achieving the school department’s goals. Bus service to daycares is, after all, a service to parents – just like bus service to homes.

Jeff Inglis, editor

Cape class of 1975 gets together

Published in the Current

CAPE ELIZABETH (Aug 11, 2005): About 60 members of the Cape Elizabeth High School class of 1975, and about 25 spouses, partners and significant others, gathered Saturday at the Purpoodock Club to celebrate the class’s 30th reunion.

Many of the attendees had not been to a class reunion before, according to organizer Keith Citrine. About half of the roughly 150-member class live in Maine, with 10 percent in Cape Elizabeth and about a third in Greater Portland, Citrine said. Other attendees came from as far away as California and Oregon.

The reunion was so successful that the class, which has previously had reunions only every 10 years, is planning to have another in five years.

“As we get older, more and more people are returning to Maine,” Citrine said.

Also improving turnout was the advent of e-mail. The correspondence for the last reunion was all by regular post, while nearly everything this time was by e-mail. “It really changed the way we’re able to communicate with classmates,” Citrine said.

The event was organized primarily by class members Lisa Norton of Scarborough, and Jon Chapman, Andy Strout and Citrine, all Cape residents.

In addition to Saturday night’s event, class members and their families gathered Sunday at a private beach owned by Strout’s family for a cookout and shore activities, including kayaking.

Boardman heads back to Afghanistan

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (Aug 11, 2005): Army Capt. Jeremy Boardman of Scarborough was home recently on a two-week leave from service in Afghanistan.

Boardman, a West Point graduate who has been stationed in Germany for five years, was last home at Christmas time. He was stationed in Iraq for a year from 2003 to early 2004.

A member of the 510th Personnel Services Battalion in the Adjutant General Corps, Boardman handles mail delivery, and processes paperwork for promotions, deployments, training and casualties.

He has been stationed in Afghanistan since March, mostly in Bagram, the main U.S. base, but more recently in Kandahar, in the southern area of the country. He is the only officer in his unit to be stationed in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

When he returns, he will serve there for eight more months before coming home to Germany, and then, he hopes, the United States.

Boardman scheduled his leave time in part to take a graduate-school admission test, part of his application process for the West Point teacher’s program. He hopes to be accepted to teach economics. If he is accepted to the program, the Army will decide what they want him to teach, and will pay to send him to graduate school for two years.

Then he will teach at West Point for three years, and will have to serve in the Army elsewhere in the world for another three years.

In Kandahar, “it’s a lot like Iraq,” Boardman said: hot and dry. “Get rid of the heat and the dust, it’s not that bad.”

But life is better there than in Bagram, which is at about 9,000 feet of altitude, which takes its toll on the body.

In Bagram, he was assigned a wooden hut to live in, but promptly improved it, with help from fellow soldiers.

“It felt like you were living in a toolshed,” he said. He called a sergeant friend from Iraq who is now building a house in Germany. The sergeant sent Boardman extra building materials, including floor tiles and wallpaper. Boardman also managed to score a real bed, rather than the folding cot the Army gave him.

“It’s 10 times better than it was,” he said.

In Kandahar he lives in modular housing, which is sturdier and more comfortable, he said.

“Our office is in what they call the ‘Taliban last stand building,’” where a contingent of Taliban fighters holed up until an American bomb blew a massive hole in the roof. Much of the building has been repaired for Army use, but the hole remains. A flagpole with a U.S. flag flying now sticks up through the hole.

Boardman signed up to go to Afghanistan, anticipating it would help him prepare for graduate school.

In Afghanistan, “your downtime isn’t really downtime” like it is in Germany, where his girlfriend is a short distance away and there are plenty of things to do.

Instead, “it’s kind of like ‘Groundhog Day,’” a Bill Murray movie in which a man wakes up every morning to find it is the same day over and over again, until he learns the lesson: Make the most of what you’re given.

While in Afghanistan, Boardman has been able to study and prepare for the West Point program and the Captain’s Career Course he needs to qualify for a future promotion.

He has also been working hard, helping handle 500,000 pounds of mail every month, as a primary task. “That’s only going to increase” as the holidays approach, Boardman said.

His unit takes “mobile post offices” to remote outposts in huge twin-rotor Chinook helicopters, as well as in trucks to nearby bazaars, where soldiers can buy local goods and ship them home right away.