Hotel room catches fire

Published in the Current

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hotel staff refused to comment on the fire.

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

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

Editorial: Respect others’ land

Published in the Current

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let them retire

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jeff Inglis, editor

Maietta drops reelection bid

Published in the Current

SOUTH PORTLAND (Sep 15, 2005): There will be contested elections for all three open South Portland City Council seats, but not for the two School Board seats or one Portland Water District seat.

Three people will run for the District 1 City Council seat on the Nov. 8 ballot: David Bourke, Claude Morgan and Quirino “Skip” Lucarelli, according to the city clerk's office.

In District 2, Kay Loring will run against R. Anton Hoecker for the seat being vacated by Thomas Maietta, who told the clerk's office Tuesday that he would not seek reelection.

In District 5, Brian Dearborn will challenge incumbent James Hughes.

William Harris and incumbent Mark Reuscher will seek two at-large seats on the School Board.

And for the Portland Water District seat representing South Portland and Cape Elizabeth, incumbent John Brady will run unopposed.

Reunion brings pilots together

Published in the Current

CAPE ELIZABETH (Sep 15, 2005): A retired Air Force pilot held a reunion at his Cape Elizabeth home Sunday, for members of his flight school class from 1969.

Fred Robinson and his wife, Janet, hosted the third class reunion, which was attended by men who flew for the Air Force during the Vietnam War.

The group met in April 1968 at Laughlin Air Force Base, just outside Del Rio, Texas. “Pilot training is 53 weeks and in Del Rio there is nothing” to do, said Fred Robinson. “We made our own fun.”

They did so again this weekend, with a tour of the Cape Elizabeth Lighthouse – the east light of Two Lights – and a lobster bake for dinner at the Robinsons' home on the coast.

The longtime friends caught up on the news of kids, grandkids and retirement adventures, and reminisced about old times, too.

“A lot of guys started families while they were there,” Robinson said. Many of the men got married, and 17 children were born – all of them girls, according to one woman who married her husband and had a child there, Janice Danahy, the wife of retired Maj. Gen. John Danahy.

They became friends during the class, and in subsequent survival schools before being sent “in the pipeline” to fly cargo planes, forward air spotters or fighters in Vietnam.

“After the Vietnam War we had quite a few guys that stayed in” on active duty or in the reserves, as did Robinson for 21 years, while also working in the airline industry.

Some members of the group flew in the first Gulf War.

The group began meeting again in 1999, after a chance meeting between Robinson and class member Bobby Fullerton. Robinson was flying for the United shuttle when an American Airlines pilot came aboard and asked if he could ride in Robinson's “jump seat,” a spare seat in the cockpit where airline pilots often fly free of charge, as a professional courtesy.

The American pilot looked at Robinson and said, “I think I know you.” Robinson recognized Fullerton, and the pair began planning to get their pilot class together.

They were able to find many of the class with old addresses, military and commercial pilot connections, and even a federal database: One of the class, Tony Liguori, works for the Federal Aviation Administration, and searched names for the group.

They have met every three years since 1999. Members of the group came from as far as the country of Norway, though most came from across the United States, including Arizona, Minnesota, Florida, Cape Cod, Delaware and a couple from Louisiana who had “just the most beautiful weather” at their home while Hurricane Katrina ravaged the coast.

Cianchette launches bid for Blaine House

Published in the Current

SOUTH PORTLAND (Sep 15, 2005): Republican Peter Cianchette began his campaign for governor Tuesday, with rallies in Bangor, Lewiston and South Portland.

Cianchette, a South Portland resident who in the past represented the city in the Maine House, lost to Democrat John Baldacci in 2000, and is up against state Sen. Peter Mills, who is also seeking the Republican nod to challenge Baldacci.

Cianchette’s South Portland kickoff was attended by several local Republican leaders, including Rep. Darlene Curley, R-Scarborough, who has decided not to seek the Republican nomination for governor; Cape Elizabeth Town Councilor Paul McKenney, who failed to unseat Sen. Lynn Bromley, D-South Portland, Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough, in 2004; and Paul Nixon, who did challenged Rep. Larry Bliss, D-South Portland, in 2004 and lost. Nixon also withdrew his name from consideration for the South Portland City Council Monday.

He was introduced by his wife, Carolyn, who works as the executive director for communication and development at Southern Maine Community College.

Peter Cianchette, who was the Maine chairman of the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign in 2004 (Maine went for challenger John Kerry), and the Maine national committeeman for the Republican Party, came out firing against Baldacci, saying the governor increased Maine’s tax burden, raised health care costs and failed to lead in a time of great challenges in state government.

Cianchette laid out eight points he wants to work on if elected: improving Maine’s business climate, making government more efficient, limiting state spending, passing on additional state school spending to local taxpayers, rewriting the income and sales tax laws, revitalizing the health insurance market, improving educational accountability, and regionalizing local government.

He said he will spend time focusing on each of those issues, starting with educational accountability for the rest of September, and moving on to the economy for October, and spending a month on each of the other issues as well.