Tighter dog rules on the way

Published in the Current

SOUTH PORTLAND (Oct 20, 2005): Clearer rules governing dogs in public spaces in South Portland got unanimous council approval in a preliminary vote Monday.

The changes include specifying that dogs not on leashes will be under “voice command,” which is for the first time defined in a city ordinance, as meaning the owner can see the dog and the dog comes when called.

Other changes require that dogs be leashed on public roads, sidewalks, parking lots and on the city’s Greenbelt walkway, and that leashes be no longer than eight feet unless it is a retractable leash, in which case the maximum length is 16 feet.

The council will hold a public hearing on the changes on Monday, Nov. 7, at 7:30 p.m. in City Hall, and is expected to take a final vote on the measures at that same meeting.

A committee created by City Manager Jeff Jordan will continue to meet to discuss revamping the city’s fines for violations of dog-control rules, as well as potential fees for dogs to use public spaces, and possibly restricting the hours dogs are allowed in parks and on Willard Beach. That committee will next meet on Friday, Oct. 28.

Claude Morgan, president of the South Portland Dog Owners Group and a candidate for the District 1 seat on the City Council, said he supported the measures given preliminary approval Monday. “This is born of compromise,” he said.

David Bourke, a leading proponent of dog control and also a District 1 candidate, said the proposals “will make it a lot easier for enforcement.” He also said it will “give non-dog-owners, people who want to be safe on the streets, peace of mind.”

Both Morgan and Bourke are members of the city manager’s task force on dog rules.

The proposals approved by the council gained endorsements from two other dog owners who have not been extensively involved in the discussions so far.

Marc Gup of Loveitt’s Field Road, who often takes his dog to Willard Beach, said “it sounds like a fair thing” to clarify the rules. He said Willard Beach is a safe place for his dog, but asked councilors to consider a speed bump on Preble Street to make the road safer for people who walk and bicycle there, including dog walkers.

“Those cars go 50 miles an hour down that road,” he said.

Rommy Brown of E Street said she had “no objection” to the proposals. She urged the committee studying dog issues to “expand enormously” to better reflect the interests of the wider community.

“There are people who do not own dogs or do not like dogs or who have physical challenges” who need representation going forward, she said.

Councilors disagreed on how to do that, with outgoing District 1 Councilor David Jacobs proposing a standing city committee based on “animal control committee” groups in other communities in other states.

In South Portland, “this has become an emotional issue,” he said. “Neither side is wrong.” He asked that the council hold off on additional changes to the dog-control rules to explore having a standing committee, appointed by the councilors, to address the recurring issues.

District 3 Councilor Rosemarie DeAngelis said she would explore such an idea, but did not want to delay the ongoing work of the committee, which she has recently joined.

At-large Councilor Linda Boudreau said she supported Jacobs’s idea, and also called for a council study of the proposal, saying dog-control problems have “come back every single year I’ve been on the council.”

She also asked the committee to discuss possible rules about people walking four or five dogs at a time, and said she was glad the council had moved forward to codify consequences “when you whistle or call your dog and he runs for the hills.”

Fire exhibit shows history

Published in the Current

SOUTH PORTLAND (Oct 20, 2005): As the city of South Portland prepares to close a decades-old neighborhood firehouse, the South Portland Historical Society has put on a special exhibit on the history of the city’s fire department.

“It’s hard to move out of a building you’ve been in for 40 years,” said Capt. Richard Cotton of the Pleasantdale Hose Company. The company was founded in 1893 in Palmer’s garage, and moved into its present digs on Robinson Street in 1921, after a community-wide effort built the firehouse.

At the end of this month, the firehouse will close and the call company will move to a new barn built behind the Cash Corner fire station. The exhibit at the Sawyer School Annex will be open to the public until the end of the month.

“It’s costing too much money to heat the building,” said Cotton, who joined the company in 1963 and took over as captain 15 years ago.

In the early days of the fire company, the fire truck was garaged in various buildings, and had no dedicated horse to pull it.

“Anybody’s horse that went by became the fire horse,” Cotton said.

The historical society’s exhibit was inspired by the discovery last year of a 1914 roster of the Knightville fire company, in an antique store in Freeport by society historian Kathy Onos DiPhilippo.

It may be the last exhibit in the society’s longtime home, the Sawyer School Annex on Braeburn Avenue. Congregation Bet Ha’am, which has been holding services in the school’s main building for some time, is buying the property, including the annex, which is slated to be demolished, according to society curator Mary Anne Wallace.

The society, which gets lots of support from the South Portland Lions Club, is looking for other places to call home and hold exhibits such as “Call Box 4215,” named for the alarm code that would sound in firehouses to tell firemen there was fire at the annex location.

The exhibit showcased historical firefighting equipment, including old water pipes made of wood that had to be replaced when modern pumper trucks were built. Those pumps pulled the water too hard, ripping the wooden pipes out of the ground.

Many items were loaned or donated by South Portland firefighters or their family members, such as a collection of badges and insignia used through the years.

“Firemen have a real sense of their own history,” Wallace said.

Other items included information about the department’s three Dalmatians, one of which, Tapper, lived at Engine 6 in Thornton Heights and was trained to stamp out cigarette butts.

Letters in a binder on display indicated that firemen had trouble getting around the city early in World War II because they lacked the proper permits to be out driving around during government-imposed blackouts, instituted to foil enemy attacks from the ocean.

In one test run described in an official letter from the period, some firemen were blocked by blackout wardens and others were only able to arrive at the intended destination by talking their way through roadblocks. The incident was just a test, but was used as an example of what could happen unless proper paperwork was issued.

One old photo on the wall sparked a more recent memory from Cotton. The photo showed the old Engine 10, a foam truck, whose door had the last hand-painted city seal on a fire truck’s door. Cotton found that door again in May, in the rafters of a chicken coop in Hope, now used to store old fire trucks and other fire memorabilia.

Editorial: Opening their eyes

Published in the Current

CAPE ELIZABETH (Oct 20, 2005): The Cape Elizabeth Land Trust is to be commended for developing ways to get young students outdoors and exploring the environment all around them. And the fourth-grade teachers at Pond Cove School should be applauded for taking advantage of such an interesting and fun program.

We all remember what it was like to learn about biology by looking at pictures in books and having speakers come into the classroom. And we all remember, too, how that world came alive when we first ventured outdoors with a knowledgeable person and began to really look at all that is there.

A group of Cape students – many of whom, no doubt, had already begun to explore the outdoors – are getting a very special treat, exploring land trust property in their hometown through the seasons, as we learn on Page 1.

In a time when schools and teachers are constantly pressured by governments and parents to cram more information into students’ minds, in preparation for regurgitation on multiple-choice exams taken in uncomfortable chairs in rooms blanketed in fluorescent light, an outdoor excursion to look, touch, smell, hear – and maybe even taste – Mother Nature is an increasingly rare opportunity.

As a society – not just during school hours – we need to do more to get students out of houses and classrooms and engaged in the world around all of us, whether in the context of nature, civic action or other endeavors.

We hear constantly – and we report on here in the pages of the Current from time to time – that Americans in general and children in particular are less fit and more overweight than ever before.

Getting kids outdoors, moving around, is one way many experts see to combat this dangerous and unhealthy trend. It’s not just the distance from the television, which benefits the body, but also the involvement with other people in experiences beyond the self, which expand the mind.

The land trust lesson, that if kids spend time outside, physically exploring nature, they can learn amazing things and have a lot of fun, will pay off for years – far beyond the last game of kickball or floor hockey.

Keep yours open, too

No doubt you’ve seen the posters and heard the pleas on TV and in print, but keep your eyes open for any sign of Lynn Moran, the 24-year-old Windham native who disappeared 10 days ago now after spending the day and evening in Portland.

One person said Moran was on Anthoine Street in South Portland at around 11 p.m. Oct. 10 – near the police station, of all places. Police and Moran’s family need the help of all of us.

South Portland police have said they turned up no leads in a city-wide search Tuesday, but residents should still be on the lookout.

Many of us remember the all-too-similar disappearance of Amy St. Laurent in 2001, and the tragic end to the search for her. But we also remember that the man who killed St. Laurent was brought to justice and is now behind bars.

We hope and pray Moran is safe and well, and we hope that her family will not have to wait weeks, as St. Laurent’s did, worrying, hoping and, worst of all, not knowing.

Information from anyone who was out and about in Portland and South Portland late on Oct. 10 will be useful in the search for Moran.

If you even think you might have seen her, please call Portland police at 874-8575.

Jeff Inglis, editor

Town's oldest resident turns 104

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (Oct 13, 2005): When Blanche Cook’s 98-year-old brother needed someone to look out for him at his Brunswick home, she was the one the family sent.

Cook, who turns 104 Oct. 13, just got back from spending a few weeks up there with him.

During the visit, she and a friend who helps out her brother around the house went shopping, and watched a lot of baseball – including staying up to watch all 18 innings of the Astros-Braves marathon game Sunday night.

She also watched the Red Sox-White Sox series, in which she got to watch her favorite Red Sox player, Johnny Damon, strike out with the bases loaded in what ended up as the final game in the series.

“I felt so bad for him,” she said.

Cook is Scarborough’s oldest resident, and was honored just over a year ago with the presentation of the town’s Boston Post Cane. She is 11 years older than the next-oldest qualifying resident, Joe Lothrop, now 93, according to Town Clerk Yolande Justice.

Born in 1901 in Nashua, N.H., Cook said she is “really a Mainer” because she has lived in the state since she was 1 – longer than almost every other person now living in Maine.

She grew up in North Pownal and Pownal, where she still goes to a bean supper every Saturday night when visiting her brother. She would go in Scarborough, but at home she doesn't have anybody to go with.

“When we were young, we used to go fishing every single day in the summer on the Royal River,” catching pickerel.

The world has changed since then, because “things kept being invented” – like airplanes and radios. “My father had a Stanley Steamer,” an early steam-powered automobile.

“Now they got the computer,” she said. “A kid 5 years old would know more about that than I do.”

She was a teenager when the Red Sox won the World Series in 1918. Last year she watched all the games. In 1918, “I didn’t have anything to watch it on or hear it on.”

In the winter, she walks one lap around the Maine Mall most mornings, and this summer even walked to a nearby store and back, “until I got lazy,” she said.

Even sitting down, she is in constant motion, tapping her fingers and rocking back and forth in her chair. Some of her movements appear related to her hearing problem, as she leans in to hear conversation.

Age has also caught up with her eyes. “I write, but I can’t read it,” Cook said. She can see the baseball game if she gets really close to the television.

So, she listens to the radio a lot (Howie Carr and Rush Limbaugh are favorites).

“She’d be living by herself if she could,” said her daughter, Lorraine Libby, now in her 70s. “I think she’s sharp as a tack.”

Though Cook didn’t go very far in school – only a couple years of high school in New Gloucester – she was a hard worker, packing sardines and dipping chocolates.

“I learned at Haven’s,” Cook said, and later worked at Len Libby’s and then Libby’s Candies, both in Scarborough. It was at Libby’s Candies that Cook’s daughter Lorraine met her husband, Leonard K. Libby.

“She was quick at what she did,” said Lorraine Libby.

The family lived in South Portland – after Cook met her husband, John, at Redmond’s dance hall in Ferry Village – and left Meetinghouse Hill only after Lorraine graduated from high school.

The couple moved to Scarborough, where they bought three acres on Westwood Avenue, where they built a house and farmed the land, selling strawberries, raspberries, vegetables and flowers.

It is where she still lives, now also with Lorraine and Leonard.

Cook also used to work at the cafeterias at Scarborough High School and Scarborough Middle School. “When I stop to think, it’s further back than I realize,” she said. “You forget things. It’s so long ago.”

“She’s quite active,” Lorraine Libby said. Cook is often at local activities for senior citizens, as often as she can get a ride.

“I’m always on the go,” Cook said. She even went strawberry picking this summer.

“When she was in her early 90s, that was her bowling average” at the Big 20 lanes, Libby said. In candlepin bowling, that is a very good score.

Cook said she does not know why she has lived so long.

“There’s no secret. You’re just lucky – or unlucky,” she said, noting that nearly all of her family is gone, including her husband, who died 27 years ago, and three of her four siblings.

“When you get to my age, all your old friends are gone,” she said.

She does try to “stay away from doctors” but goes once a year because her daughter insists. “I don’t worry about much,” she said. “I don’t plan nothing.”

She expects her birthday celebration “won’t be very exciting” – just a small gathering with some cake for her and a younger friend who also has a birthday coming up.

She will approach it the same way she does most things: “Take it as it comes and be thankful for what you get.”

Husband, lawmakers upset at trucker's lowered bail

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (Oct 13, 2005): A Scarborough widower is upset a judge has reduced bail for the driver whose 18-wheeler crushed his wife's car, killing her.

The driver, Scott Hewitt, was originally being held on $100,000 cash bail, but had his bail changed last month to allow him to post either that amount or $500,000 in liens on property.

Last week, Kennebec County Superior Court Justice Kirk Studstrup lowered Hewitt's bail, to $75,000 cash or $300,000 in property bonds, at the request of Hewitt's attorney, Joel Vincent. Vincent did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Hewitt is charged with nine misdemeanor charges stemming from the crash, including operating after suspension and operating a commercial vehicle that had been placed out of service.

Though his "inattention" was ruled at fault in the crash, Hewitt is not charged with anything that holds him responsible for causing the death of Tina Turcotte of Scarborough, whose car was crushed by Hewitt's 18-wheeler when he failed to slow down as other cars in front of him, including Turcotte's, were slowing for a traffic backup on I-95 in Hallowell July 29.

“While no amount of bail is going to bring Tina back,” Scott Turcotte feels lowering the bail is “a reflection of some sympathy for Scott Hewitt’s plight,” said Turcotte’s attorney, Michael Vaillancourt.

“There should be no sympathy shown” for a man with an extensive record of driving violations, Vaillancourt said, adding that his client believes Hewitt “should not be released from jail” until after the criminal charges are dealt with in court. Hewitt's trial is slated for Dec. 23.

Hewitt’s record includes more than 60 convictions, more than 20 license suspensions and involvement in two fatal crashes, including the July one in which Tina Turcotte died.

The changes to Hewitt's bail have also drawn criticism from legislators, who note that Hewitt was arrested on a charge of operating after suspension just days after the fatal crash in July, and worry that he might drive again if released from jail.

Rep. Darlene Curley, R-Scarborough, attended Hewitt’s bail hearing Friday. She said she was "disappointed they lowered the amount" of Hewitt's bail, and found it "unbelievable" that the judge said Hewitt could be released with no financial bond if a group or organization agreed to supervise him in advance of his December trial date.

Hewitt's record, which includes more than 60 traffic convictions, more than 20 suspensions, and involvement in two fatal crashes, including the July one in which Turcotte died, shows his disregard for the law, Curley said.

"I'm concerned that he would be behind the wheel as soon as he gets out of jail," she said.

Immediately after the bail hearing, she and Sen. William Diamond, D-Windham, went back to the Statehouse and added a provision in a bill they plan to present to the Legislature in January, she said.

The bill will increase penalties for people who drive on suspended licenses. Curley said they added the ability to hold such a person in jail before trial "for prevention." She said a similar provision is in federal law, but said she did not know if there was such an allowance elsewhere in Maine law.

Curley, who spoke Tuesday afternoon via telephone while driving on the highway from Augusta to Scarborough, said she was on the road with a number of large trucks. "You can't help but look left and right and wonder" if any of them are being driven by repeat violators of the state’s traffic laws, she said.

As of Wednesday, Hewitt had not posted bail from Kennebec County Jail.