Published in the Current
Citing higher-than-expected waste disposal fees, fuel prices and inflation rates, Cape Elizabeth Town Manager Mike McGovern told the Town Council Monday that their request for a 2 percent tax increase cap was too small, and asked for more for both the town and the schools.
He had previously presented a budget that raised taxes 1.7 percent, but that was based on an assumption of $115 per ton for trash disposal, already an increase over this year’s $110 per ton. The total spending in that budget was up $83,176.
Before Monday’s workshop council meeting, McGovern met with Regional Waste Systems Manager Chuck Foshay, who told him to expect the price to be more like $128 per ton, resulting in additional cost of $46,800 to the town.
“Half the municipal budget increase is already going to extra dumping fees,” McGovern said.
He expressed serious concern that much-needed infrastructure maintenance was left out of the budget. “A smaller tax increase might be preferable,” he said, but asked, “at what cost?”
Cutting things now will make it even worse in the future, he said. “There aren’t going to be any chances for reinstatements” in the next few years. “It really worries me,” he said.
He proposed a municipal budget increase of 2.25 percent, adding $77,000 back into the budget. Much of that would cover RWS fees, and the rest would restore the town’s hazardous materials collection.
Leaving out the hazardous materials money could result in environmental damage from illegal dumping in town, McGovern said. A further $15,000 would be “in play to go somewhere into the system,” if unforeseen expenses arise, he said.
McGovern also went to bat for the School Board, which has approved a budget with a 2.5 percent tax increase.
The school budget is $61,000 above where councilors had asked for. “It’s not really all that much money,” McGovern said.
“Is it realistic to adopt a school budget that is 1 percent less than inflation?” McGovern asked councilors.
The impact of inflation, reduced debt costs, future space needs and school enrollment all need careful consideration, McGovern told the councilors, as many members of the School Board listened from the audience.
There remains a need for kindergarten space, as well as “a significant issue with the aging of the high school,” he said.
Several members of the public also spoke. Three encouraged increased fiscal restraint, and one targeted the county budget as a particular problem.
“I think the spending is way out of control,” said Herbert Dennison. He urged an overall 3 percent decrease in town spending.
Gerald Sherry, a former teacher, told councilors many people in town do not have the proper stickers required for access to the town dump. McGovern later agreed, telling the council he was one of those people.
Patrick Babcock told the council he supported reinstating the hazardous waste collection, but remained concerned about the elimination of DARE, which he called “the only program, I believe, that addresses the issue of substance abuse in the Cape Elizabeth school system.” In a town that has a tendency to overlook the problems its children have with drugs and alcohol, he said canceling DARE was sending the wrong message to children and parents.
Superintendent Tom Forcella and School Board Finance Chairman Elaine Moloney also spoke, saying the schools had cut quite a bit and tried to be “creative” with how money was spent. Forcella defended additional school spending to help marginal students graduate from high school, saying other towns are worse off already.
“In some of those towns, 50, 60, 70 percent of kids just aren’t going to graduate from high school,” he said. Cape has projected that 15 percent of its students won’t graduate from high school without additional help.
Moloney said she is concerned about the long-term impact of low school funding. “Treading water,” she said, is not what the schools want to be doing. She also urged council support of the school building projects.
“You can delay capital improvement, but it never really goes away,” she said.
Susan Spagnola spoke “on behalf of the children,” and asked councilors to approve the schools’ budget request. When coming up with the 2 percent cap, she asked, “did you take into account the quality of education?”
She acknowledged the tough budget times, but said, “this does not mean we should abandon the needs of our children.”
The council will hold workshops on various parts of the budget April 2 and 7, at 7:30 p.m., and April 17, at 6 p.m., to accommodate people who no longer drive at night. The School Board will present its budget April 28 at 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, April 3, 2003
Fifth-graders write to local serviceman
Published in the Current
Students in Sally Connolly’s fifth-grade class at Cape Elizabeth Middle School are writing letters to Senior Airman Matt Janson, a 2000 graduate of CEHS now serving in Qatar with the Air Force.
“I think it’s nice that he went,” said one member of the class. “I think he’s being really brave,” another said. The letters they wrote included “positive things,” one student said. Others wrote about baseball season, the snow melting and, above all, “we’re thinking of you.”
They send him letters regularly. Last week’s shipment was on paper headed with the word “spring,” which students colored in. They also sent him Valentines in February, to help keep his spirits up, and many of the kids are closely on top of what he is doing.
E-mail messages from Janson’s parents, now living in Maryland, keep the class up-to-date. The kids know Janson is living in the desert in a tent and loads bombs on airplanes for work, though he wants to be a pilot.
The students are also on top of the war, for as young as they are. They know where Iraq is on a world map and know that Iraqis are surrendering in some places and fighting in others. They watch TV with their parents and have trouble with “foreign names” and “big words.” The kids think there is too much coverage of the war, and that it has become “boring” to watch.
It’s not just a faraway war, either. “My babysitter’s husband is a medic,” said one boy.
They also know there are kids their age in Iraq, who are scared and don’t have food or clothes.
“Nobody wants war,” said one student, who went on to say that it’s important to support the troops.
The students want other classes in the school, and elsewhere, to adopt service members. “I think more people should write letters,” said one student.
Students in Sally Connolly’s fifth-grade class at Cape Elizabeth Middle School are writing letters to Senior Airman Matt Janson, a 2000 graduate of CEHS now serving in Qatar with the Air Force.
“I think it’s nice that he went,” said one member of the class. “I think he’s being really brave,” another said. The letters they wrote included “positive things,” one student said. Others wrote about baseball season, the snow melting and, above all, “we’re thinking of you.”
They send him letters regularly. Last week’s shipment was on paper headed with the word “spring,” which students colored in. They also sent him Valentines in February, to help keep his spirits up, and many of the kids are closely on top of what he is doing.
E-mail messages from Janson’s parents, now living in Maryland, keep the class up-to-date. The kids know Janson is living in the desert in a tent and loads bombs on airplanes for work, though he wants to be a pilot.
The students are also on top of the war, for as young as they are. They know where Iraq is on a world map and know that Iraqis are surrendering in some places and fighting in others. They watch TV with their parents and have trouble with “foreign names” and “big words.” The kids think there is too much coverage of the war, and that it has become “boring” to watch.
It’s not just a faraway war, either. “My babysitter’s husband is a medic,” said one boy.
They also know there are kids their age in Iraq, who are scared and don’t have food or clothes.
“Nobody wants war,” said one student, who went on to say that it’s important to support the troops.
The students want other classes in the school, and elsewhere, to adopt service members. “I think more people should write letters,” said one student.
Portland cop pleads to OUI
Published in the Current
Portland Police Lt. Ted Ross, a resident of Cape Elizabeth, pled guilty Tuesday to a misdemeanor charge of OUI in connection with a car accident Dec. 17, when Ross was driving home from an evening of drinking in Portland’s Old Port.
Deputy Attorney General William Stokes filed the charges in Cumberland County Superior Court last week, after an investigation lasting several months. Ross was charged with having a blood alcohol level of 0.15 percent, nearly twice the legal limit of 0.08 percent, Stokes said. Tests done on Ross at Maine Medical Center following the accident showed he had a blood alcohol level of 0.253 percent, more than three times the legal limit, but under state law he is simply charged with being at or above 0.15.
“Ted, from the outset of this episode, has been planning to accept responsibility for what occurred on Dec. 17,” Ross’ attorney, Michael Cunniff, said last week. “He has accepted responsibility all along. He would like to move on with his life and his career.”
Ross was given the mandatory minimum sentence, a $400 fine and a 90-day driver’s license suspension.
And because he pled guilty to having a blood alcohol level of 0.15 percent, he also faces 48 hours in jail. There is a program that could allow him to serve his time without being behind bars, instead doing community service while technically “in custody.”
Stokes called the class D charge, which hits most people charged with OUI unless they have a prior record, “a higher-end misdemeanor.”
Ross does not have any prior OUI convictions, Stokes said.
He said the next-highest OUI charge is “aggravated OUI,” a class C crime, which applies only when an intoxicated driver causes “serious bodily injury” or death.
Ross started the evening of Dec. 17 at an open-bar party hosted by Portland Police Chief Michael Chitwood, and left that party for a Fore Street bar with two senior police officials. When he left the bar, he picked up his unmarked police car, assigned to him as head of the detective bureau, and headed home toward Cape Elizabeth.
On York Street, near the Casco Bay Bridge, Ross’s car collided with a pickup truck, driven by Kevin Hardy of Scarborough, waiting for a parallel parking space to open. The pickup hit a Land Rover, driven by Kimberly McLellan of Gorham, pulling out of the space.
McLellan and Hardy refused medical treatment at the scene.
Ross was not tested for alcohol in his system at the accident scene, and officers and rescue workers at the scene later told investigators that they did not suspect Ross had been drinking.
Ross was taken to Maine Medical Center, where a diagnostic blood test showed the alcohol in his blood.
Hardy and McLellan have filed a lawsuit against Chitwood under the state’s Liquor Liability Act. They are also suing the City of Portland and the Portland Police Department under the state’s Tort Claims Act.
Mark Randall, an attorney handling their case, said the criminal charge “doesn’t really affect us,” though the conviction could be a help to the civil lawsuit.
Ross is on paid administrative leave pending resolution of the case, and could face additional disciplinary action through the police department, Cunniff said.
Chitwood did not return phone calls by the Current’s deadline.
Portland Police Lt. Ted Ross, a resident of Cape Elizabeth, pled guilty Tuesday to a misdemeanor charge of OUI in connection with a car accident Dec. 17, when Ross was driving home from an evening of drinking in Portland’s Old Port.
Deputy Attorney General William Stokes filed the charges in Cumberland County Superior Court last week, after an investigation lasting several months. Ross was charged with having a blood alcohol level of 0.15 percent, nearly twice the legal limit of 0.08 percent, Stokes said. Tests done on Ross at Maine Medical Center following the accident showed he had a blood alcohol level of 0.253 percent, more than three times the legal limit, but under state law he is simply charged with being at or above 0.15.
“Ted, from the outset of this episode, has been planning to accept responsibility for what occurred on Dec. 17,” Ross’ attorney, Michael Cunniff, said last week. “He has accepted responsibility all along. He would like to move on with his life and his career.”
Ross was given the mandatory minimum sentence, a $400 fine and a 90-day driver’s license suspension.
And because he pled guilty to having a blood alcohol level of 0.15 percent, he also faces 48 hours in jail. There is a program that could allow him to serve his time without being behind bars, instead doing community service while technically “in custody.”
Stokes called the class D charge, which hits most people charged with OUI unless they have a prior record, “a higher-end misdemeanor.”
Ross does not have any prior OUI convictions, Stokes said.
He said the next-highest OUI charge is “aggravated OUI,” a class C crime, which applies only when an intoxicated driver causes “serious bodily injury” or death.
Ross started the evening of Dec. 17 at an open-bar party hosted by Portland Police Chief Michael Chitwood, and left that party for a Fore Street bar with two senior police officials. When he left the bar, he picked up his unmarked police car, assigned to him as head of the detective bureau, and headed home toward Cape Elizabeth.
On York Street, near the Casco Bay Bridge, Ross’s car collided with a pickup truck, driven by Kevin Hardy of Scarborough, waiting for a parallel parking space to open. The pickup hit a Land Rover, driven by Kimberly McLellan of Gorham, pulling out of the space.
McLellan and Hardy refused medical treatment at the scene.
Ross was not tested for alcohol in his system at the accident scene, and officers and rescue workers at the scene later told investigators that they did not suspect Ross had been drinking.
Ross was taken to Maine Medical Center, where a diagnostic blood test showed the alcohol in his blood.
Hardy and McLellan have filed a lawsuit against Chitwood under the state’s Liquor Liability Act. They are also suing the City of Portland and the Portland Police Department under the state’s Tort Claims Act.
Mark Randall, an attorney handling their case, said the criminal charge “doesn’t really affect us,” though the conviction could be a help to the civil lawsuit.
Ross is on paid administrative leave pending resolution of the case, and could face additional disciplinary action through the police department, Cunniff said.
Chitwood did not return phone calls by the Current’s deadline.
Unum fires CEO after stock slide
Published in the Current, the American Journal, and the Lakes Region Suburban Weekly
Facing as many as 13 class-action securities fraud lawsuits, profit restatements, downgrades from investment rating firms and a crisis of employee morale, UnumProvident fired long-time chairman and CEO Harold Chandler and replaced him March 27 with interim president and CEO Thomas Watjen, Chandler’s right-hand man.
Layoffs and organizational restructuring are not on the table, said the company’s spokeswoman in Portland, Linnea Olsen. “We need everyone that’s here,” she said. UnumProvident, which sells disability insurance, is headquartered in Chattanooga, Tenn.
The board’s firing of Chandler “is not something that was caused by any one event,” Olsen said. Instead, it was “the cumulative effect of many things.”
Among those were a $29.1 million restated reduction in earnings for 2000, 2001 and 2002, the result of a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into its investment disclosures. And in the past three weeks, several investment-rating firms, including Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s, have downgraded UnumProvident stock, citing concerns the company is over invested in high-risk companies.
The company recently sold $500 million worth of these below-investment-grade bonds specifically to placate rating agencies, Olsen said.
But the company still believes in its business plan and will continue to implement it quickly, Watjen told analysts in a Monday conference call briefing.
A crisis of confidence and leadership led to Chandler’s ouster, Olsen said. He will get $8.5 million in severance pay, roughly four times his annual pay in 2000, and $8.5 million in pension benefits.
Chandler joined Provident as its CEO in 1993, and presided over the merger with the Portland-based Unum in 1999, after which he remained CEO of the combined company. One analyst said in the conference call that she was glad that Watjen would stay on “to provide continuity,” while another expressed surprise that one architect of the company’s plan would be fired and the other would take his place.
Watjen said he would keep the plan moving, but would have a different leadership style from Chandler, who he said was less decisive, less inclusive and less communicative than Watjen will be. He said his new style would become evident very shortly, and pointed to the increased disclosures in the company’s annual report, filed with the SEC Monday, as an example of more communications.
He said company employees were notified of the management change over the weekend and would be involved in further company-wide discussions
in the coming days, to allow them to understand what happened.
In the coming months, UnumProvident will be “out in the marketplace” seeking to raise as much as $1.5 billion, according to a November 2002 filing with the SEC. Olsen said the company would be looking for between $500 million and $1 billion, while Watjen told analysts Monday that the figure would be between $750 million and $1 billion.
The money is not earmarked for spending but instead will be used as capital on hand to offset concerns held by investment analysts, Olsen said.
“We will continue to have investment losses,” she said. Rating agencies are therefore looking for additional capital on hand to cushion those losses, she said.
Some of the capital will come from internal processes, such as regrouping some old individual disability policies into group policies, and there may be further sales of below-investment-grade bonds, she said.
Also, inter-company loans from the insurance subsidiaries to the holding company will be repaid, giving the subsidiaries more ready cash, Olsen said.
She expects there will be a combination of stock sales and convertible bonds. “We will not be issuing straight debt,” Olsen said.
Initial indications from investment banks lead her to believe the company will raise the money it needs, she said.
The company also faces 13 class-action lawsuits alleging the company committed securities fraud by failing to truthfully disclose financial performance information to shareholders and prospective shareholders.
Olsen discounted the lawsuits, saying, “it’s an annoyance.” She said many of them were filed by law firms that specialize in stock-price collapses. The last group of suits was filed after the price dropped 62 percent, bottoming out below $6 per share.
“None of those classes have been certified,” Olsen said. Without a judge’s certification that a broad class of people was harmed, the suits cannot proceed.
The company also was fined $1 million by Georgia’s insurance commissioner for violations of that state’s insurance code during the merger of Unum and Provident in 1999.
“It was a slap on the wrist,” Olsen said.
The company’s search for a new, permanent CEO will begin shortly, and interim CEO Watjen will be considered for the position, Olsen said. “We have a real sense of urgency about this,” she added.
Facing as many as 13 class-action securities fraud lawsuits, profit restatements, downgrades from investment rating firms and a crisis of employee morale, UnumProvident fired long-time chairman and CEO Harold Chandler and replaced him March 27 with interim president and CEO Thomas Watjen, Chandler’s right-hand man.
Layoffs and organizational restructuring are not on the table, said the company’s spokeswoman in Portland, Linnea Olsen. “We need everyone that’s here,” she said. UnumProvident, which sells disability insurance, is headquartered in Chattanooga, Tenn.
The board’s firing of Chandler “is not something that was caused by any one event,” Olsen said. Instead, it was “the cumulative effect of many things.”
Among those were a $29.1 million restated reduction in earnings for 2000, 2001 and 2002, the result of a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into its investment disclosures. And in the past three weeks, several investment-rating firms, including Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s, have downgraded UnumProvident stock, citing concerns the company is over invested in high-risk companies.
The company recently sold $500 million worth of these below-investment-grade bonds specifically to placate rating agencies, Olsen said.
But the company still believes in its business plan and will continue to implement it quickly, Watjen told analysts in a Monday conference call briefing.
A crisis of confidence and leadership led to Chandler’s ouster, Olsen said. He will get $8.5 million in severance pay, roughly four times his annual pay in 2000, and $8.5 million in pension benefits.
Chandler joined Provident as its CEO in 1993, and presided over the merger with the Portland-based Unum in 1999, after which he remained CEO of the combined company. One analyst said in the conference call that she was glad that Watjen would stay on “to provide continuity,” while another expressed surprise that one architect of the company’s plan would be fired and the other would take his place.
Watjen said he would keep the plan moving, but would have a different leadership style from Chandler, who he said was less decisive, less inclusive and less communicative than Watjen will be. He said his new style would become evident very shortly, and pointed to the increased disclosures in the company’s annual report, filed with the SEC Monday, as an example of more communications.
He said company employees were notified of the management change over the weekend and would be involved in further company-wide discussions
in the coming days, to allow them to understand what happened.
In the coming months, UnumProvident will be “out in the marketplace” seeking to raise as much as $1.5 billion, according to a November 2002 filing with the SEC. Olsen said the company would be looking for between $500 million and $1 billion, while Watjen told analysts Monday that the figure would be between $750 million and $1 billion.
The money is not earmarked for spending but instead will be used as capital on hand to offset concerns held by investment analysts, Olsen said.
“We will continue to have investment losses,” she said. Rating agencies are therefore looking for additional capital on hand to cushion those losses, she said.
Some of the capital will come from internal processes, such as regrouping some old individual disability policies into group policies, and there may be further sales of below-investment-grade bonds, she said.
Also, inter-company loans from the insurance subsidiaries to the holding company will be repaid, giving the subsidiaries more ready cash, Olsen said.
She expects there will be a combination of stock sales and convertible bonds. “We will not be issuing straight debt,” Olsen said.
Initial indications from investment banks lead her to believe the company will raise the money it needs, she said.
The company also faces 13 class-action lawsuits alleging the company committed securities fraud by failing to truthfully disclose financial performance information to shareholders and prospective shareholders.
Olsen discounted the lawsuits, saying, “it’s an annoyance.” She said many of them were filed by law firms that specialize in stock-price collapses. The last group of suits was filed after the price dropped 62 percent, bottoming out below $6 per share.
“None of those classes have been certified,” Olsen said. Without a judge’s certification that a broad class of people was harmed, the suits cannot proceed.
The company also was fined $1 million by Georgia’s insurance commissioner for violations of that state’s insurance code during the merger of Unum and Provident in 1999.
“It was a slap on the wrist,” Olsen said.
The company’s search for a new, permanent CEO will begin shortly, and interim CEO Watjen will be considered for the position, Olsen said. “We have a real sense of urgency about this,” she added.
Cape assessments to skyrocket
Published in the Current
Cape Elizabeth property owners with homes along the coast could see their property values triple, and other town residents could see their values nearly
double, when the town-wide revaluation process is completed in late April.
Town Assessor Matt Sturgis is in the final phase of number-crunching that will lead up to the revaluation report he will give to town councilors April 30. Notices of new assessments will go out the first week of May, and the tax rate based on the new property values will take effect in August, Sturgis said.
Those values will be higher across the board, he said. “The assessments on pretty much all properties are going up,” Sturgis said. The primary cause is
the increase in land values since 1994, the last time the entire town was reassessed.
Sturgis said his job does not have to do with setting the town’s tax rate, but making sure the tax load is spread fairly across all of the town’s property owners.
He is working to bring the assessed values of property in line with the market value. On waterfront properties, the valuation is now close to one-third the actual market worth, Sturgis said. Owners of inland property have values about 60 to 65 percent of market value, which means “people who do not have waterfront property are paying a disproportionate amount of taxes more than they should be,” Sturgis said.
When the valuations come out, homeowners will be able to discuss with Sturgis the amounts and possibly get them adjusted, though adjustments are based on value, not the property tax rate itself, Sturgis said.
Another problem for Cape homeowners could be the recent state budget, which lowered the homestead exemption from property tax. In the past, the property tax on the first $7,000 of value of a primary residence was paid by the state.
With the state budget enacted last week, the exemption was reduced for properties worth more than $125,000. Homes valued between $125,000 and $250,000 have $5,000 of their value exempted, and those worth more than $250,000 will only have $2,500 of value exempted.
Sturgis said that is a tax directed at Southern Maine. “How many houses do you know in Cumberland County that are worth under $125,000?” he asked, saying home values are lower in the northern part of the state.
That means Cape homeowners as a group will pay as much as $127,000 more in property tax that would previously have been picked up by the state, according to Town Manager Mike McGovern.
Last year, every homestead owner in town, 2,558 of them, received a tax discount of $158.48, regardless of the value of the home, Sturgis said. That money was paid to the town coffers by the state.
Now, people with homes worth more than $125,000 will save closer to $100, and people with homes worth more than $250,000 will only save $55 on their property tax.
It connects property value and ability to pay, Sturgis said. “That’s not fair and that’s not right,” he said.
Cape Elizabeth property owners with homes along the coast could see their property values triple, and other town residents could see their values nearly
double, when the town-wide revaluation process is completed in late April.
Town Assessor Matt Sturgis is in the final phase of number-crunching that will lead up to the revaluation report he will give to town councilors April 30. Notices of new assessments will go out the first week of May, and the tax rate based on the new property values will take effect in August, Sturgis said.
Those values will be higher across the board, he said. “The assessments on pretty much all properties are going up,” Sturgis said. The primary cause is
the increase in land values since 1994, the last time the entire town was reassessed.
Sturgis said his job does not have to do with setting the town’s tax rate, but making sure the tax load is spread fairly across all of the town’s property owners.
He is working to bring the assessed values of property in line with the market value. On waterfront properties, the valuation is now close to one-third the actual market worth, Sturgis said. Owners of inland property have values about 60 to 65 percent of market value, which means “people who do not have waterfront property are paying a disproportionate amount of taxes more than they should be,” Sturgis said.
When the valuations come out, homeowners will be able to discuss with Sturgis the amounts and possibly get them adjusted, though adjustments are based on value, not the property tax rate itself, Sturgis said.
Another problem for Cape homeowners could be the recent state budget, which lowered the homestead exemption from property tax. In the past, the property tax on the first $7,000 of value of a primary residence was paid by the state.
With the state budget enacted last week, the exemption was reduced for properties worth more than $125,000. Homes valued between $125,000 and $250,000 have $5,000 of their value exempted, and those worth more than $250,000 will only have $2,500 of value exempted.
Sturgis said that is a tax directed at Southern Maine. “How many houses do you know in Cumberland County that are worth under $125,000?” he asked, saying home values are lower in the northern part of the state.
That means Cape homeowners as a group will pay as much as $127,000 more in property tax that would previously have been picked up by the state, according to Town Manager Mike McGovern.
Last year, every homestead owner in town, 2,558 of them, received a tax discount of $158.48, regardless of the value of the home, Sturgis said. That money was paid to the town coffers by the state.
Now, people with homes worth more than $125,000 will save closer to $100, and people with homes worth more than $250,000 will only save $55 on their property tax.
It connects property value and ability to pay, Sturgis said. “That’s not fair and that’s not right,” he said.
Cape super allegedly berates then fires hoop coach
Published in the Current; co-written with Rich Obrey
In a Wednesday morning meeting at Cape Elizabeth High School open only to boys varsity basketball players and their parents, Superintendent Tom Forcella explained the process that led to the seemingly abrupt firing of longtime basketball coach Jim Ray.
Though no one contacted by the Current could confirm any details, the central issue of Ray’s dismissal appears to be an intense and demanding, sometimes harsh, coaching style that has alienated some players and parents.
At the same time, some Ray supporters are questioning Forcella’s objectivity.
After the meeting, parents and players unhappy with the firing of Ray told the Current that Forcella, a basketball coach himself with two sons on the varsity team, was openly critical of Ray during the season, which ended Feb. 15 with a quarterfinal playoff loss to Greely, 50-37, at the Augusta Civic Center.
According to parent Dave Reid, with Cape behind by a dozen points late in the playoff game, Ray took out two players who had been in most of the game, substituting with two seniors who hadn’t played much. “Dr. Forcella was heard by many fans in the stands, some players and our coach,” swearing, Reid said, and “asking (Ray) if he was quitting.”
“Forcella was livid,” said Reid, “and openly called (Ray) a quitter, yelled at him so that many people heard.”
One of those people, who requested anonymity, corroborated the swearing allegation.
Another parent, John Doherty, said he also saw Forcella after the Greely loss “from 10 yards away” and “he was out of control, I’ll just say that, out of control, livid.”
“Quite frankly,” Reid said, “I was appalled that a man in his position would be so publicly raking over the coach, prior to the end of the game. He continued it after the game, which is when (Forcella) spoke to me.”
Forcella denied swearing during any game, or ever. “I don’t swear. You can call my wife,” he said.
Cape Elizabeth School Board member Kevin Sweeney supported Forcella. “I have never heard a complaint” about Forcella’s behavior, Sweeney said. “If there was any intimation that that had happened, I think (the School Board) would have known about it.”
Sweeney also said that if Forcella had been misbehaving, parents should have alerted the board. “Were they going to let this slide?” Sweeney asked.
Forcella is involved in the story on many levels. His son, Dan, has been a varsity starter for three years, since he was a freshman, and without too much argument is the best player on the team. Another son, John, is the only freshman to make the varsity squad this year. Both boys play for AAU basketball teams in the summer, and Superintendent Forcella is their coach. All three went to national tournaments last summer.
In addition, Forcella coached a team of Cape underclassmen who took the YMCA league championship in Portland last year, a prestigious accomplishment that led to the Cape boys team being ranked high in pre-season polls. Despite the championship, Forcella was not asked to coach this year’s YMCA team, a decision made by Ray.
Firing surprises many
Ray’s firing caught many in town by surprise. Apparently, most people heard about Ray’s dismissal the same way, by reading the advertisement in the classified section in last Sunday’s Maine Sunday Telegram announcing a “coaching opportunity.”
Contacted at home Monday, Ray was reluctant to say much. “I’m not supposed to talk about this,” he said, “so let me just say this. I’m still interested in coaching at Cape Elizabeth. I’d like to talk about it, but I’ve been instructed by my principal and superintendent not to do so.”
“I did not resign,” he added, “and I do want to coach. I’m not pleased, as you can probably tell.”
A group of parents and players showed up at the high school Monday morning and demanded a meeting with principal Jeff Shedd and Forcella. Forcella was unavailable, so the meeting was scheduled for early Wednesday.
Attendance at the meeting was restricted to varsity players and their parents. Junior varsity players were turned away, as were the media and other interested parties.
“I don’t know where they get off doing that,” said School Board member Sweeney when told the doors were closed. “It’s a public building.”
Forcella told the Current “it’s like a parent conference,” and was therefore confidential. He promised another session with non-varsity players and parents “within the next couple days.”
For the most part, according to Reid, the 40-minute meeting was mostly calm. After Forcella explained the process that led to Ray’s dismissal, he fielded questions from the parents, many of which he wouldn’t answer because it concerned a “personnel issue.” According to Reid, Forcella indicated that there were a lot of “issues” with Ray even before the season, issues “that you all know about.”
When Forcella was interrupted by parents who “didn’t have any idea what he was talking about,” Reid said, Forcella declined to elaborate. Instead, Forcella told the group “this is a personnel issue, this is a school issue, it will be handled internally.”
Controversy stirred
Forcella told the Current after the meeting that he had expressly told interested School Board members not to attend, so that the meeting could take place behind closed doors.
He said the decision to fire Ray was based on a formal evaluation by high school Principal Jeff Shedd, who had developed pre-season goals and objectives with Ray. “(Shedd) did not recommend him for rehire,” Forcella said. That was just a recommendation, however. “The final say is with me,” Forcella said.
Shedd said he had recommended Ray not be rehired. “I didn’t feel able to recommend him at that time,” Shedd said. He would not say why. Shedd said the arrangement under which he evaluates Ray is “unusual,” and said he has not evaluated any other coaches.
Shedd said the arrangement is in place because Athletic Administrator Keith Weatherbie, who evaluates all other coaches, has a possible conflict of interest because Ray’s wife, Susan, works in Weatherbie’s office.
Ray said he received his postseason evaluation just before the McDonald’s all-star games in Bangor last month, which he attends as president of the Maine Association of Basketball Coaches, a post he’s held since 1999.
Ray said he took the evaluation with him to read and consider, “but didn’t sign (it) because I couldn’t agree with it.”
Controversy swirled publicly around Ray this season after he identified to two newspapers (including this one) a player suspended from the team for violating school policy. Colin Malone, 18, a starter and one of the team’s key players, was suspended for the season after attending a party at Sugarloaf on New Year’s Eve.
Forcella said a one-hour closed-door meeting between the School Board and Malone’s parents Jan. 16 “had no bearing at all” on the decision to fire Ray.
Malone himself spoke to the Current in support of Ray. “He knows more about basketball than anyone I’ve ever met,” Malone said. “He’s always treated me with a lot of respect.”
Students and parents who were excluded from the meeting Wednesday expressed frustration at being left out, with one asking why parents of JV players, “who were looking forward” to playing under Ray, were kept out. Ray himself was not in the meeting, either.
“I am definitely not happy now,” said Allie Knight, a senior. “Dr. Forcella shouldn’t even have a vote on this issue because he has two kids on this team.”
“(Ray) would have been the girls (basketball) head varsity coach if it weren’t for Dr. Forcella,” said Margie Reid, a senior on that team, which was coached by Ray for two weeks before the season began.
Forcella said Ray can appeal the decision to the School Board.
Ray a true Caper
Cut Ray and he’ll probably bleed maroon instead of red. A 1980 Cape graduate, he was a star on the basketball team himself.
He is third on the school’s all-time scorers list, with 966 points, and is the career leader in assists, with 420. He achieved similar success at USM before graduating in 1984.
He’s 18th on the all-time scorers list, and the career leader in assists with 624. In 1999, Ray was inducted into USM’s sports hall of fame.
Ray was an assistant coach for John Casey before taking over the girls program at Cape for two years. In 1994, Casey resigned after eight seasons, and Ray transferred to the boys program, where he’s been ever since.
“It was always my goal to become a varsity coach,” said Ray, in a Portland Press Herald article about his hiring. “I was anxious to get my own program.”
It’s been a tough year for basketball coaches in Maine. First, the boys varsity coach at Traip Academy, Matt Mitchell, was fired early this season when 10 of 13 players on his 5-2 team quit over their unhappiness with his methods.
Next, Bonny Eagle’s boys basketball head coach, T.J. Hesler, was suspended in mid-season while school administrators investigated complaints from parents and players. After sitting out two games, Hesler was reinstated, but resigned after the season.
Ray’s situation was a hot topic on a web site devoted to Maine basketball. More than 60 messages on the topic have been posted at www.MBR.org since Monday night, generating over 6000 “views” by people reading them. Little of the information was more than speculation or second-hand, however, and all of it delivered from behind anonymous user names.
In a Wednesday morning meeting at Cape Elizabeth High School open only to boys varsity basketball players and their parents, Superintendent Tom Forcella explained the process that led to the seemingly abrupt firing of longtime basketball coach Jim Ray.
Though no one contacted by the Current could confirm any details, the central issue of Ray’s dismissal appears to be an intense and demanding, sometimes harsh, coaching style that has alienated some players and parents.
At the same time, some Ray supporters are questioning Forcella’s objectivity.
After the meeting, parents and players unhappy with the firing of Ray told the Current that Forcella, a basketball coach himself with two sons on the varsity team, was openly critical of Ray during the season, which ended Feb. 15 with a quarterfinal playoff loss to Greely, 50-37, at the Augusta Civic Center.
According to parent Dave Reid, with Cape behind by a dozen points late in the playoff game, Ray took out two players who had been in most of the game, substituting with two seniors who hadn’t played much. “Dr. Forcella was heard by many fans in the stands, some players and our coach,” swearing, Reid said, and “asking (Ray) if he was quitting.”
“Forcella was livid,” said Reid, “and openly called (Ray) a quitter, yelled at him so that many people heard.”
One of those people, who requested anonymity, corroborated the swearing allegation.
Another parent, John Doherty, said he also saw Forcella after the Greely loss “from 10 yards away” and “he was out of control, I’ll just say that, out of control, livid.”
“Quite frankly,” Reid said, “I was appalled that a man in his position would be so publicly raking over the coach, prior to the end of the game. He continued it after the game, which is when (Forcella) spoke to me.”
Forcella denied swearing during any game, or ever. “I don’t swear. You can call my wife,” he said.
Cape Elizabeth School Board member Kevin Sweeney supported Forcella. “I have never heard a complaint” about Forcella’s behavior, Sweeney said. “If there was any intimation that that had happened, I think (the School Board) would have known about it.”
Sweeney also said that if Forcella had been misbehaving, parents should have alerted the board. “Were they going to let this slide?” Sweeney asked.
Forcella is involved in the story on many levels. His son, Dan, has been a varsity starter for three years, since he was a freshman, and without too much argument is the best player on the team. Another son, John, is the only freshman to make the varsity squad this year. Both boys play for AAU basketball teams in the summer, and Superintendent Forcella is their coach. All three went to national tournaments last summer.
In addition, Forcella coached a team of Cape underclassmen who took the YMCA league championship in Portland last year, a prestigious accomplishment that led to the Cape boys team being ranked high in pre-season polls. Despite the championship, Forcella was not asked to coach this year’s YMCA team, a decision made by Ray.
Firing surprises many
Ray’s firing caught many in town by surprise. Apparently, most people heard about Ray’s dismissal the same way, by reading the advertisement in the classified section in last Sunday’s Maine Sunday Telegram announcing a “coaching opportunity.”
Contacted at home Monday, Ray was reluctant to say much. “I’m not supposed to talk about this,” he said, “so let me just say this. I’m still interested in coaching at Cape Elizabeth. I’d like to talk about it, but I’ve been instructed by my principal and superintendent not to do so.”
“I did not resign,” he added, “and I do want to coach. I’m not pleased, as you can probably tell.”
A group of parents and players showed up at the high school Monday morning and demanded a meeting with principal Jeff Shedd and Forcella. Forcella was unavailable, so the meeting was scheduled for early Wednesday.
Attendance at the meeting was restricted to varsity players and their parents. Junior varsity players were turned away, as were the media and other interested parties.
“I don’t know where they get off doing that,” said School Board member Sweeney when told the doors were closed. “It’s a public building.”
Forcella told the Current “it’s like a parent conference,” and was therefore confidential. He promised another session with non-varsity players and parents “within the next couple days.”
For the most part, according to Reid, the 40-minute meeting was mostly calm. After Forcella explained the process that led to Ray’s dismissal, he fielded questions from the parents, many of which he wouldn’t answer because it concerned a “personnel issue.” According to Reid, Forcella indicated that there were a lot of “issues” with Ray even before the season, issues “that you all know about.”
When Forcella was interrupted by parents who “didn’t have any idea what he was talking about,” Reid said, Forcella declined to elaborate. Instead, Forcella told the group “this is a personnel issue, this is a school issue, it will be handled internally.”
Controversy stirred
Forcella told the Current after the meeting that he had expressly told interested School Board members not to attend, so that the meeting could take place behind closed doors.
He said the decision to fire Ray was based on a formal evaluation by high school Principal Jeff Shedd, who had developed pre-season goals and objectives with Ray. “(Shedd) did not recommend him for rehire,” Forcella said. That was just a recommendation, however. “The final say is with me,” Forcella said.
Shedd said he had recommended Ray not be rehired. “I didn’t feel able to recommend him at that time,” Shedd said. He would not say why. Shedd said the arrangement under which he evaluates Ray is “unusual,” and said he has not evaluated any other coaches.
Shedd said the arrangement is in place because Athletic Administrator Keith Weatherbie, who evaluates all other coaches, has a possible conflict of interest because Ray’s wife, Susan, works in Weatherbie’s office.
Ray said he received his postseason evaluation just before the McDonald’s all-star games in Bangor last month, which he attends as president of the Maine Association of Basketball Coaches, a post he’s held since 1999.
Ray said he took the evaluation with him to read and consider, “but didn’t sign (it) because I couldn’t agree with it.”
Controversy swirled publicly around Ray this season after he identified to two newspapers (including this one) a player suspended from the team for violating school policy. Colin Malone, 18, a starter and one of the team’s key players, was suspended for the season after attending a party at Sugarloaf on New Year’s Eve.
Forcella said a one-hour closed-door meeting between the School Board and Malone’s parents Jan. 16 “had no bearing at all” on the decision to fire Ray.
Malone himself spoke to the Current in support of Ray. “He knows more about basketball than anyone I’ve ever met,” Malone said. “He’s always treated me with a lot of respect.”
Students and parents who were excluded from the meeting Wednesday expressed frustration at being left out, with one asking why parents of JV players, “who were looking forward” to playing under Ray, were kept out. Ray himself was not in the meeting, either.
“I am definitely not happy now,” said Allie Knight, a senior. “Dr. Forcella shouldn’t even have a vote on this issue because he has two kids on this team.”
“(Ray) would have been the girls (basketball) head varsity coach if it weren’t for Dr. Forcella,” said Margie Reid, a senior on that team, which was coached by Ray for two weeks before the season began.
Forcella said Ray can appeal the decision to the School Board.
Ray a true Caper
Cut Ray and he’ll probably bleed maroon instead of red. A 1980 Cape graduate, he was a star on the basketball team himself.
He is third on the school’s all-time scorers list, with 966 points, and is the career leader in assists, with 420. He achieved similar success at USM before graduating in 1984.
He’s 18th on the all-time scorers list, and the career leader in assists with 624. In 1999, Ray was inducted into USM’s sports hall of fame.
Ray was an assistant coach for John Casey before taking over the girls program at Cape for two years. In 1994, Casey resigned after eight seasons, and Ray transferred to the boys program, where he’s been ever since.
“It was always my goal to become a varsity coach,” said Ray, in a Portland Press Herald article about his hiring. “I was anxious to get my own program.”
It’s been a tough year for basketball coaches in Maine. First, the boys varsity coach at Traip Academy, Matt Mitchell, was fired early this season when 10 of 13 players on his 5-2 team quit over their unhappiness with his methods.
Next, Bonny Eagle’s boys basketball head coach, T.J. Hesler, was suspended in mid-season while school administrators investigated complaints from parents and players. After sitting out two games, Hesler was reinstated, but resigned after the season.
Ray’s situation was a hot topic on a web site devoted to Maine basketball. More than 60 messages on the topic have been posted at www.MBR.org since Monday night, generating over 6000 “views” by people reading them. Little of the information was more than speculation or second-hand, however, and all of it delivered from behind anonymous user names.
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
Transit service faces cuts
Published in the Current and the American Journal
A state cut in transportation funds for Medicaid patients could force several of the state’s social service transportation companies to close and would result in “dramatic cuts” to Cumberland County’s Regional Transportation Program.
A $600,000 cut in state funds proposed by Gov. John Baldacci would result in a further $1.2 million loss in matching federal funds, according to Jon McNulty, RTP’s executive director.
That loss would be spread across the state’s social service transportation agencies, but would be “a devastating blow” to all involved, he said.
“In some areas, they would simply go out of business,” McNulty said. That would leave people without a way to get to dialysis treatments, child care or work.
If the cuts – up to 60 percent of RTP’s funding – go through, RTP would need to lay off some of its 48 drivers. The agency now runs 260,000 trips per year, logging 3 million passenger-miles for 4,500 clients, McNulty said.
Though RTP wouldn’t close its doors, there would be reductions.
“We would have to make some dramatic cuts,” McNulty said.
In particular, the agency wouldn’t be able to afford volunteers, who pay for their own vehicles but are reimbursed 30 cents per mile. “Volunteers are very inexpensive by comparison” to maintenance of the agency’s own vehicles, McNulty said.
“We’ll survive,” he said. Primarily that is because of other programs RTP has in partnership with the city of Portland, and an arrangement in which the state Department of Transportation provides RTP’s vehicles.
McNulty questioned the wisdom of cutting spending that brings in additional federal funding to the state, and said there are “administrative ways” state officials could restore some of the loss, despite the approval of the state budget last week.
A state cut in transportation funds for Medicaid patients could force several of the state’s social service transportation companies to close and would result in “dramatic cuts” to Cumberland County’s Regional Transportation Program.
A $600,000 cut in state funds proposed by Gov. John Baldacci would result in a further $1.2 million loss in matching federal funds, according to Jon McNulty, RTP’s executive director.
That loss would be spread across the state’s social service transportation agencies, but would be “a devastating blow” to all involved, he said.
“In some areas, they would simply go out of business,” McNulty said. That would leave people without a way to get to dialysis treatments, child care or work.
If the cuts – up to 60 percent of RTP’s funding – go through, RTP would need to lay off some of its 48 drivers. The agency now runs 260,000 trips per year, logging 3 million passenger-miles for 4,500 clients, McNulty said.
Though RTP wouldn’t close its doors, there would be reductions.
“We would have to make some dramatic cuts,” McNulty said.
In particular, the agency wouldn’t be able to afford volunteers, who pay for their own vehicles but are reimbursed 30 cents per mile. “Volunteers are very inexpensive by comparison” to maintenance of the agency’s own vehicles, McNulty said.
“We’ll survive,” he said. Primarily that is because of other programs RTP has in partnership with the city of Portland, and an arrangement in which the state Department of Transportation provides RTP’s vehicles.
McNulty questioned the wisdom of cutting spending that brings in additional federal funding to the state, and said there are “administrative ways” state officials could restore some of the loss, despite the approval of the state budget last week.
Unum fires CEO after stock slide
Published in the Current and the American Journal
Facing as many as 13 class-action securities fraud lawsuits, profit restatements, downgrades from investment rating firms and a crisis of employee morale, UnumProvident fired long-time chairman and CEO Harold Chandler and replaced him March 27 with interim president and CEO Thomas Watjen, Chandler’s right-hand man.
Layoffs and organizational restructuring are not on the table, said the company’s spokeswoman in Portland, Linnea Olsen. “We need everyone that’s here,” she said. UnumProvident, which sells disability insurance, is headquartered in Chattanooga, Tenn.
The board’s firing of Chandler “is not something that was caused by any one event,” Olsen said. Instead, it was “the cumulative effect of many things.”
Among those were a $29.1 million restated reduction in earnings for 2000, 2001 and 2002, the result of a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into the company’s investment disclosures.
And in the past three weeks, several investment-rating firms, including Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s, have downgraded UnumProvident stock, citing concerns the company is over-invested in high-risk companies.
The company recently sold $500 million worth of these below-investment-grade bonds specifically to placate rating agencies, Olsen said.
But the company still believes in its business plan and will continue to implement it quickly, Watjen told analysts in a Monday conference call briefing.
A crisis of confidence and leadership led to Chandler’s ouster, Olsen said. He will get $8.5 million in severance pay, roughly four times his annual pay in 2000, and $8.5 million in pension benefits.
Chandler joined Provident as its CEO in 1993, and presided over the merger with the Portland-based Unum in 1999, after which he remained CEO of the combined company. One analyst said in the conference call that she was glad that Watjen would stay on “to provide continuity,” while another expressed surprise that one architect of the company’s plan would be fired and the other would take his place.
Watjen said he would keep the plan moving, but would have a different leadership style from Chandler, who he said was less decisive, less inclusive and less communicative than Watjen will be. He said his new style would become evident very shortly, and pointed to the increased disclosures in the company’s annual report, filed with the SEC Monday, as an example of more communications. He said company employees were notified of the management change over the weekend and would be involved in further company-wide discussions in the coming days, to allow them to understand what happened.
In the coming months, UnumProvident will be “out in the marketplace” seeking to raise as much as $1.5 billion, according to a November 2002 filing with the SEC. Olsen said the company would be looking for between $500 million and $1 billion, while Watjen told analysts Monday that the figure would be between $750 million and $1 billion.
The money is not earmarked for spending but instead will be used as capital on hand to offset concerns held by investment analysts, Olsen said.
“We will continue to have investment losses,” she said. Rating agencies are therefore looking for additional capital on hand to cushion those losses, she said.
Some of the capital will come from internal processes, such as regrouping some old individual disability policies into group policies, and there may be further sales of below-investment-grade bonds, she said.
Also, inter-company loans from the insurance subsidiaries to the holding company will be repaid, giving the subsidiaries more ready cash, Olsen said.
She expects there will be a combination of stock sales and convertible bonds. “We will not be issuing straight debt,” Olsen said. Initial indications from investment banks lead her to believe the company will raise the money it needs, she said.
The company also faces 13 class-action lawsuits alleging the company committed securities fraud by failing to truthfully disclose financial performance information to shareholders and prospective shareholders.
Olsen discounted the lawsuits, saying, “it’s an annoyance.” She said many of them were filed by law firms that specialize in stock-price collapses. The last group of suits was filed after the price dropped 62 percent, bottoming out below $6 per share.
“None of those classes have been certified,” Olsen said. Without a judge’s certification that a broad class of people was harmed, the suits cannot proceed.
The company also was fined $1 million by Georgia’s insurance commissioner for violations of that state’s insurance code during the merger of Unum and Provident in 1999.
“It was a slap on the wrist,” Olsen said.
The company’s search for a new, permanent CEO will begin shortly, and interim CEO Watjen will be considered for the position, Olsen said. “We have a real sense of urgency about this,” she said.
Facing as many as 13 class-action securities fraud lawsuits, profit restatements, downgrades from investment rating firms and a crisis of employee morale, UnumProvident fired long-time chairman and CEO Harold Chandler and replaced him March 27 with interim president and CEO Thomas Watjen, Chandler’s right-hand man.
Layoffs and organizational restructuring are not on the table, said the company’s spokeswoman in Portland, Linnea Olsen. “We need everyone that’s here,” she said. UnumProvident, which sells disability insurance, is headquartered in Chattanooga, Tenn.
The board’s firing of Chandler “is not something that was caused by any one event,” Olsen said. Instead, it was “the cumulative effect of many things.”
Among those were a $29.1 million restated reduction in earnings for 2000, 2001 and 2002, the result of a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into the company’s investment disclosures.
And in the past three weeks, several investment-rating firms, including Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s, have downgraded UnumProvident stock, citing concerns the company is over-invested in high-risk companies.
The company recently sold $500 million worth of these below-investment-grade bonds specifically to placate rating agencies, Olsen said.
But the company still believes in its business plan and will continue to implement it quickly, Watjen told analysts in a Monday conference call briefing.
A crisis of confidence and leadership led to Chandler’s ouster, Olsen said. He will get $8.5 million in severance pay, roughly four times his annual pay in 2000, and $8.5 million in pension benefits.
Chandler joined Provident as its CEO in 1993, and presided over the merger with the Portland-based Unum in 1999, after which he remained CEO of the combined company. One analyst said in the conference call that she was glad that Watjen would stay on “to provide continuity,” while another expressed surprise that one architect of the company’s plan would be fired and the other would take his place.
Watjen said he would keep the plan moving, but would have a different leadership style from Chandler, who he said was less decisive, less inclusive and less communicative than Watjen will be. He said his new style would become evident very shortly, and pointed to the increased disclosures in the company’s annual report, filed with the SEC Monday, as an example of more communications. He said company employees were notified of the management change over the weekend and would be involved in further company-wide discussions in the coming days, to allow them to understand what happened.
In the coming months, UnumProvident will be “out in the marketplace” seeking to raise as much as $1.5 billion, according to a November 2002 filing with the SEC. Olsen said the company would be looking for between $500 million and $1 billion, while Watjen told analysts Monday that the figure would be between $750 million and $1 billion.
The money is not earmarked for spending but instead will be used as capital on hand to offset concerns held by investment analysts, Olsen said.
“We will continue to have investment losses,” she said. Rating agencies are therefore looking for additional capital on hand to cushion those losses, she said.
Some of the capital will come from internal processes, such as regrouping some old individual disability policies into group policies, and there may be further sales of below-investment-grade bonds, she said.
Also, inter-company loans from the insurance subsidiaries to the holding company will be repaid, giving the subsidiaries more ready cash, Olsen said.
She expects there will be a combination of stock sales and convertible bonds. “We will not be issuing straight debt,” Olsen said. Initial indications from investment banks lead her to believe the company will raise the money it needs, she said.
The company also faces 13 class-action lawsuits alleging the company committed securities fraud by failing to truthfully disclose financial performance information to shareholders and prospective shareholders.
Olsen discounted the lawsuits, saying, “it’s an annoyance.” She said many of them were filed by law firms that specialize in stock-price collapses. The last group of suits was filed after the price dropped 62 percent, bottoming out below $6 per share.
“None of those classes have been certified,” Olsen said. Without a judge’s certification that a broad class of people was harmed, the suits cannot proceed.
The company also was fined $1 million by Georgia’s insurance commissioner for violations of that state’s insurance code during the merger of Unum and Provident in 1999.
“It was a slap on the wrist,” Olsen said.
The company’s search for a new, permanent CEO will begin shortly, and interim CEO Watjen will be considered for the position, Olsen said. “We have a real sense of urgency about this,” she said.
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
Chancellor Gardens changes hands
Published in the Current and the American Journal
With its principal owner in bankruptcy, the company that owned Chancellor Gardens on Scott Dyer Road has sold the Cape Elizabeth assisted living home, as well as a sister facility in Saco, to Commonwealth Communities of Massachusetts. The home has been renamed Village Crossings of Cape Elizabeth.
Abraham Gosman, who lives in Florida, was the majority owner of the company that owned Chancellor Gardens and Chancellor Place.
He was also a founder of Carematrix, the company that managed the Chancellor properties. Carematrix will not continue its management functions, according to Beth Derrico, a spokeswoman for the company.
Gosman, who made millions in real estate and healthcare, filed for bankruptcy in 2001, according to William King of Development Specialists Inc., the Miami-based firm that was appointed by the court as trustee for Gosman’s assets.
His filing was cited as an example of a problem some legislators see with the federal bankruptcy system – the unlimited homestead exemption. Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wisc., told the U.S. Senate in March 2001 that Gosman, while owing as much as $233 million, was keeping a 64,000-square-foot mansion in West Palm Beach, Fla.
In his Maine business dealings, Gosman had guaranteed a mortgage taken out by the Chancellor company, with the two homes as collateral. “The value (of the properties) was significantly less than the mortgage,” King said.
Rather than foreclosing on the homes, the lender agreed to cooperate in the sale of the properties and take the proceeds as partial payment of the debt, King said.
The change of ownership took effect March 1, bringing Chancellor Gardens and Chancellor Place in Saco into a company that already operates 12 nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities, six assisted living homes and four specialized hospitals in Massachusetts.
“This is our first step into Maine,” said David Calendrella, vice president of operations for Commonwealth Communities.
Last year Commonwealth bought two Massachusetts nursing homes from the same owners.
“They proved to be quality facilities,” Calendrella said. That experience led to this recent deal.
“We’re very bullish on the Maine marketplace,” he said.
The company does not have significant plans to change things at Chancellor Gardens. “At the moment, the plan is to introduce ourselves as the new owners,” Calendrella said. No staff changes are in the works, he said. Everyone has signed on with the new owners.
Calendrella plans to pay close attention to hiring practices and employee supervision, in the wake of an employee’s February arrest on charges of stealing medication from several patients. He said the company would be open about any problems that might arise.
It is the second turnover of a senior living facility on Scott Dyer Road in three months. In January Haven Healthcare of Cromwell, Conn., took over the management of the Viking Nursing Home and Crescent House, with plans to take ownership in the next several months.
With its principal owner in bankruptcy, the company that owned Chancellor Gardens on Scott Dyer Road has sold the Cape Elizabeth assisted living home, as well as a sister facility in Saco, to Commonwealth Communities of Massachusetts. The home has been renamed Village Crossings of Cape Elizabeth.
Abraham Gosman, who lives in Florida, was the majority owner of the company that owned Chancellor Gardens and Chancellor Place.
He was also a founder of Carematrix, the company that managed the Chancellor properties. Carematrix will not continue its management functions, according to Beth Derrico, a spokeswoman for the company.
Gosman, who made millions in real estate and healthcare, filed for bankruptcy in 2001, according to William King of Development Specialists Inc., the Miami-based firm that was appointed by the court as trustee for Gosman’s assets.
His filing was cited as an example of a problem some legislators see with the federal bankruptcy system – the unlimited homestead exemption. Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wisc., told the U.S. Senate in March 2001 that Gosman, while owing as much as $233 million, was keeping a 64,000-square-foot mansion in West Palm Beach, Fla.
In his Maine business dealings, Gosman had guaranteed a mortgage taken out by the Chancellor company, with the two homes as collateral. “The value (of the properties) was significantly less than the mortgage,” King said.
Rather than foreclosing on the homes, the lender agreed to cooperate in the sale of the properties and take the proceeds as partial payment of the debt, King said.
The change of ownership took effect March 1, bringing Chancellor Gardens and Chancellor Place in Saco into a company that already operates 12 nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities, six assisted living homes and four specialized hospitals in Massachusetts.
“This is our first step into Maine,” said David Calendrella, vice president of operations for Commonwealth Communities.
Last year Commonwealth bought two Massachusetts nursing homes from the same owners.
“They proved to be quality facilities,” Calendrella said. That experience led to this recent deal.
“We’re very bullish on the Maine marketplace,” he said.
The company does not have significant plans to change things at Chancellor Gardens. “At the moment, the plan is to introduce ourselves as the new owners,” Calendrella said. No staff changes are in the works, he said. Everyone has signed on with the new owners.
Calendrella plans to pay close attention to hiring practices and employee supervision, in the wake of an employee’s February arrest on charges of stealing medication from several patients. He said the company would be open about any problems that might arise.
It is the second turnover of a senior living facility on Scott Dyer Road in three months. In January Haven Healthcare of Cromwell, Conn., took over the management of the Viking Nursing Home and Crescent House, with plans to take ownership in the next several months.
Thursday, March 20, 2003
Bliss wants to lower voting age to 17
Published in the Current
Rep. Larry Bliss, D-Cape Elizabeth and South Portland, is the lead co-sponsor of a bill that would lower Maine’s voting age to 17. He and bill sponsor Rep. Glenn Cummings, D-Portland, have been touring the area talking to high school students about it.
The reaction has been mixed, Bliss said. The 18-year-olds in the classes aren’t impressed by the idea, while the 17-year-olds really like it. Bliss said he and
Cummings, both former high school history and government teachers, want to make government more accessible to young people.
“If you’re 17 years old when you’re learning about how the government works, you ought to be able to have a say in it,” Bliss said. Further, many 17-year-olds in Maine are paying income tax and have no voice in how that money is spent.
Rep. Larry Bliss, D-Cape Elizabeth and South Portland, is the lead co-sponsor of a bill that would lower Maine’s voting age to 17. He and bill sponsor Rep. Glenn Cummings, D-Portland, have been touring the area talking to high school students about it.
The reaction has been mixed, Bliss said. The 18-year-olds in the classes aren’t impressed by the idea, while the 17-year-olds really like it. Bliss said he and
Cummings, both former high school history and government teachers, want to make government more accessible to young people.
“If you’re 17 years old when you’re learning about how the government works, you ought to be able to have a say in it,” Bliss said. Further, many 17-year-olds in Maine are paying income tax and have no voice in how that money is spent.
Lady ghost roams Crescent Beach
Published in the Current
Cape Elizabeth’s resident ghost, the “Lady in White” of Crescent Beach, made a cameo appearance in a lecture at the Cape Elizabeth Historic Preservation Society’s meeting earlier this month.
Bill Thomson of Kennebunk, a retired history professor from Salem Teachers College in Massachusetts, spoke on ghosts and coastal hauntings in New England. He first addressed what a ghost is, explaining that “98 percent of all ghost stories can be explained” by something rational, rather than supernatural.
He told of a Maine landlord who had a hard time keeping tenants in an apartment; all of them complained of an eerie singing sound coming from one particular wall. The tenants blamed a ghost. Eventually the landlord got tired of the problem and took a shotgun to the wall, Thomson said. He discovered an old saw hanging inside the wall, and rubbing against a partly exposed nail in such a way to make a singing or screeching noise.
It is the other 2 percent of ghost stories that interest Thomson, particularly
vivid smells, unexplained noises and voices, moving furniture, appliances going on and off for no reason and apparitions.
He has a theory about visions people have of ghosts: Living people emit energy in “waves,” which intensify at times of great stress. Many ghosts are of people who have died violently, and therefore would have put out a lot of these energy waves just before they died.
Thomson theorizes that those waves remain in the room or building where the person died, “bouncing around.” When other people come into that room and, by virtue of their own psychological situations, become attuned to the frequency of those waves, they see the vision.
He admits it sounds outlandish, but said he didn’t believe in ghosts for a long time, until he began studying them and experiencing ghostly phenomena.
When he was filming a special on hauntings for a TV network, Thomson was in the Kennebunkport Inn, which supposedly is haunted by “Cyrus the Ghost.” When filming a segment, a red ball appeared on a television monitor and bounced all over the screen.
“I never believed in the stuff before I saw it,” Thomson said.
Cape residents have seen their share, too.
Crescent Beach is home to such a haunting. Lydia Clark, a 24-year-old daughter of a Portland businessman, had been sent to Boston to buy a wedding dress. She was returning with her new dress on the schooner Charles on July 12, 1807, when it was caught by
a storm just south of Portland Head, and wrecked on Little Island Ledge.
Clark drowned and washed up on Crescent Beach. Beside her in the morning was her trunk, containing the new wedding gown. Since then, people have seen a figure in white, with an anxious expression on her face, pacing the beach.
There may be houses in town that are haunted, too. Beckett’s Castle on Singles Road may be haunted by Sylvester Beckett, who built the home and died in 1882. While many hotels and bed-and-breakfasts advertise their ghosts to attract spirit-loving guests, most homeowners keep mum about their ghosts, fearful that potential buyers might lose interest or scuttle the deal.
And though there are 11 haunted lighthouses in Maine, none of those are very close by. “Portland Head Light is not haunted,” Thomson said, later confirming that the others are without ghosts, too.
Cape Elizabeth’s resident ghost, the “Lady in White” of Crescent Beach, made a cameo appearance in a lecture at the Cape Elizabeth Historic Preservation Society’s meeting earlier this month.
Bill Thomson of Kennebunk, a retired history professor from Salem Teachers College in Massachusetts, spoke on ghosts and coastal hauntings in New England. He first addressed what a ghost is, explaining that “98 percent of all ghost stories can be explained” by something rational, rather than supernatural.
He told of a Maine landlord who had a hard time keeping tenants in an apartment; all of them complained of an eerie singing sound coming from one particular wall. The tenants blamed a ghost. Eventually the landlord got tired of the problem and took a shotgun to the wall, Thomson said. He discovered an old saw hanging inside the wall, and rubbing against a partly exposed nail in such a way to make a singing or screeching noise.
It is the other 2 percent of ghost stories that interest Thomson, particularly
vivid smells, unexplained noises and voices, moving furniture, appliances going on and off for no reason and apparitions.
He has a theory about visions people have of ghosts: Living people emit energy in “waves,” which intensify at times of great stress. Many ghosts are of people who have died violently, and therefore would have put out a lot of these energy waves just before they died.
Thomson theorizes that those waves remain in the room or building where the person died, “bouncing around.” When other people come into that room and, by virtue of their own psychological situations, become attuned to the frequency of those waves, they see the vision.
He admits it sounds outlandish, but said he didn’t believe in ghosts for a long time, until he began studying them and experiencing ghostly phenomena.
When he was filming a special on hauntings for a TV network, Thomson was in the Kennebunkport Inn, which supposedly is haunted by “Cyrus the Ghost.” When filming a segment, a red ball appeared on a television monitor and bounced all over the screen.
“I never believed in the stuff before I saw it,” Thomson said.
Cape residents have seen their share, too.
Crescent Beach is home to such a haunting. Lydia Clark, a 24-year-old daughter of a Portland businessman, had been sent to Boston to buy a wedding dress. She was returning with her new dress on the schooner Charles on July 12, 1807, when it was caught by
a storm just south of Portland Head, and wrecked on Little Island Ledge.
Clark drowned and washed up on Crescent Beach. Beside her in the morning was her trunk, containing the new wedding gown. Since then, people have seen a figure in white, with an anxious expression on her face, pacing the beach.
There may be houses in town that are haunted, too. Beckett’s Castle on Singles Road may be haunted by Sylvester Beckett, who built the home and died in 1882. While many hotels and bed-and-breakfasts advertise their ghosts to attract spirit-loving guests, most homeowners keep mum about their ghosts, fearful that potential buyers might lose interest or scuttle the deal.
And though there are 11 haunted lighthouses in Maine, none of those are very close by. “Portland Head Light is not haunted,” Thomson said, later confirming that the others are without ghosts, too.
Cape kids sending troops cookies
Published in the Current
They didn’t do it for the fame, and they don’t support war, but two Cape kids are sending Girl Scout cookies to U.S. troops in the Middle East.
After watching the evening television news last week, 11-year-old
twins Jonathan and Lexi Bass were moved to do something to support the troops they had seen interviewed in the Kuwaiti desert.
The soldiers didn’t have much to do, and were feeling both proud and worried about the prospect of serving their country in wartime. Lexi, a Girl Scout, had loads of boxes of Girl Scout cookies in the back hallway ready for delivery, and the pair decided to buy some more for the troops.
Jonathan and Lexi wrote a letter to the people who live in their neighborhood off Mitchell Road, explaining what they had seen on the news and what they wanted to do. They asked for donations, saying the soldiers “were very serious and very nervous” about war, and were in the desert without their families.
It was Tuesday night. By Saturday, neighbors had donated enough money to buy over 100 boxes of Girl Scout cookies. Some neighbors sent notes with their donations, including one from a woman who said she didn’t support the war, but her husband had served in Vietnam, and she wanted to be sure to support the troops.
Jonathan and Lexi spent Sunday packing the cookies up and getting set to send them off, with notes saying “Thinking of you from Cape Elizabeth, Maine.”
Because of increased security, sending unmarked boxes to “any soldier” in the Persian Gulf region is complicated, so the kids are making arrangements to send them through the USO.
They didn’t do it for the fame, and they don’t support war, but two Cape kids are sending Girl Scout cookies to U.S. troops in the Middle East.
After watching the evening television news last week, 11-year-old
twins Jonathan and Lexi Bass were moved to do something to support the troops they had seen interviewed in the Kuwaiti desert.
The soldiers didn’t have much to do, and were feeling both proud and worried about the prospect of serving their country in wartime. Lexi, a Girl Scout, had loads of boxes of Girl Scout cookies in the back hallway ready for delivery, and the pair decided to buy some more for the troops.
Jonathan and Lexi wrote a letter to the people who live in their neighborhood off Mitchell Road, explaining what they had seen on the news and what they wanted to do. They asked for donations, saying the soldiers “were very serious and very nervous” about war, and were in the desert without their families.
It was Tuesday night. By Saturday, neighbors had donated enough money to buy over 100 boxes of Girl Scout cookies. Some neighbors sent notes with their donations, including one from a woman who said she didn’t support the war, but her husband had served in Vietnam, and she wanted to be sure to support the troops.
Jonathan and Lexi spent Sunday packing the cookies up and getting set to send them off, with notes saying “Thinking of you from Cape Elizabeth, Maine.”
Because of increased security, sending unmarked boxes to “any soldier” in the Persian Gulf region is complicated, so the kids are making arrangements to send them through the USO.
Cape musicians must choose between prom and performance
Published in the Current
Seven Cape Elizabeth High School students, four of them seniors, may have to give up their high school prom in mid-May in order to participate in the All-State Music Festival at the USM campus in Gorham.
No students will be able to commute to the three-day festival, which runs from May 15 through May 17, according to Joan Hamann, president of the Maine Music Educators Association, which hosts the event.
“We have about 450 students that we are responsible for,” she said.
Students will stay in USM dorm rooms and attend lots of rehearsals and special programs. “The activities will go quite late,” until 9:30 or 10 p.m., Hamann said. Students also will have to observe a curfew.
CEHS principal Jeff Shedd had asked the organization to consider allowing Cape students to stay until the end of evening rehearsals on Friday, May 16, and then leave to attend the prom.
“They would arrive late for the prom, but at least they’d have an opportunity” to attend part of it, Shedd said. It would likely finish too late for students to drive back to Gorham, so Shedd proposed allowing them to stay at their homes and arrive back at the festival early Saturday morning.
He questioned an interpretation of the rules of the festival. Organizers said students had to stay overnight, while Shedd read them differently.
Hamann said students who knew they were going to the prom would not be focused on their music. “It’s hard to believe that that student isn’t going to be watching their watch” all afternoon, she said.
She also wants to be sure students get proper rest. “It’s so strenuous,” she said, “we’ve had students that have passed out” from exertion.
And she wants to be fair about the event. “It’s expecting (students) to make choices,” she said. “It’s trying to provide a good experience with the kids.”
She also said the national association of music educators has issued guidelines for statewide music festivals, which include a recommendation that all participants stay overnight. “Nationally there have been events” that led to the policy suggestion, she said.
No other districts have asked for exemptions, Hamann said. “We’re certainly trying to work with the school system,” she said. She noted that attendance is not mandatory. Students were selected by audition to participate, and there are more students who would want to take any open slots.
CEHS Music Director Tom Lizotte said the decision was “disappointing,” but he was glad that the association had given Shedd’s request “very, very serious consideration.”
Part of the problem is that a scarcity of prom locations means the date for next year’s prom was chosen three months ago, Shedd said. Next year’s music festival won’t be scheduled until this year’s festival actually takes place.
“I hope there will not be a conflict,” he said.
Seven Cape Elizabeth High School students, four of them seniors, may have to give up their high school prom in mid-May in order to participate in the All-State Music Festival at the USM campus in Gorham.
No students will be able to commute to the three-day festival, which runs from May 15 through May 17, according to Joan Hamann, president of the Maine Music Educators Association, which hosts the event.
“We have about 450 students that we are responsible for,” she said.
Students will stay in USM dorm rooms and attend lots of rehearsals and special programs. “The activities will go quite late,” until 9:30 or 10 p.m., Hamann said. Students also will have to observe a curfew.
CEHS principal Jeff Shedd had asked the organization to consider allowing Cape students to stay until the end of evening rehearsals on Friday, May 16, and then leave to attend the prom.
“They would arrive late for the prom, but at least they’d have an opportunity” to attend part of it, Shedd said. It would likely finish too late for students to drive back to Gorham, so Shedd proposed allowing them to stay at their homes and arrive back at the festival early Saturday morning.
He questioned an interpretation of the rules of the festival. Organizers said students had to stay overnight, while Shedd read them differently.
Hamann said students who knew they were going to the prom would not be focused on their music. “It’s hard to believe that that student isn’t going to be watching their watch” all afternoon, she said.
She also wants to be sure students get proper rest. “It’s so strenuous,” she said, “we’ve had students that have passed out” from exertion.
And she wants to be fair about the event. “It’s expecting (students) to make choices,” she said. “It’s trying to provide a good experience with the kids.”
She also said the national association of music educators has issued guidelines for statewide music festivals, which include a recommendation that all participants stay overnight. “Nationally there have been events” that led to the policy suggestion, she said.
No other districts have asked for exemptions, Hamann said. “We’re certainly trying to work with the school system,” she said. She noted that attendance is not mandatory. Students were selected by audition to participate, and there are more students who would want to take any open slots.
CEHS Music Director Tom Lizotte said the decision was “disappointing,” but he was glad that the association had given Shedd’s request “very, very serious consideration.”
Part of the problem is that a scarcity of prom locations means the date for next year’s prom was chosen three months ago, Shedd said. Next year’s music festival won’t be scheduled until this year’s festival actually takes place.
“I hope there will not be a conflict,” he said.
Concannon moves on
Published in the Current
Kevin Concannon of Scarborough, formerly Maine’s commissioner of human services, has taken a job at the helm of the Iowa Department of Human Services.
That agency, like the one planned for Maine, combines health and human services and mental health. It also adds juvenile corrections.
“That is similar to the agency that I was in charge of in Oregon” from 1987 to 1995, Concannon said. Last month he had told the Current that he was looking to the private, non-profit sector. He says now that he had a change of heart on the way back from a job interview in Oregon.
“What do I really like the most?” he asked himself. “What I really like is what I’ve been doing on the public side,” he said.
Iowa is different from Maine in many ways, he said. Iowa has 3 million people spread across twice the geographic area as Maine.
“They have 99 counties,” Concannon said.
There are some similarities, however, in terms of the work he has done here. “They want to have an effect on things like prescription drugs, alternatives to nursing homes and Medicaid waivers. And I said, ‘I’m your man,’” Concannon said.
Of further interest, both the governor and lieutenant governor of Iowa are beneficiaries of the state’s human services department. Gov. Tom Vilsack was adopted, and Lt. Gov. Sally Pederson has an autistic child, Concannon said. He expects their experience to translate to strong support for his work.
Concannon expects to be confirmed by the state Senate in mid-April. He will sell his home in Scarborough and move to the Des Moines area, he said. His children, now adults, are still in Maine however, so Concannon and his wife will return to visit, he said.
Kevin Concannon of Scarborough, formerly Maine’s commissioner of human services, has taken a job at the helm of the Iowa Department of Human Services.
That agency, like the one planned for Maine, combines health and human services and mental health. It also adds juvenile corrections.
“That is similar to the agency that I was in charge of in Oregon” from 1987 to 1995, Concannon said. Last month he had told the Current that he was looking to the private, non-profit sector. He says now that he had a change of heart on the way back from a job interview in Oregon.
“What do I really like the most?” he asked himself. “What I really like is what I’ve been doing on the public side,” he said.
Iowa is different from Maine in many ways, he said. Iowa has 3 million people spread across twice the geographic area as Maine.
“They have 99 counties,” Concannon said.
There are some similarities, however, in terms of the work he has done here. “They want to have an effect on things like prescription drugs, alternatives to nursing homes and Medicaid waivers. And I said, ‘I’m your man,’” Concannon said.
Of further interest, both the governor and lieutenant governor of Iowa are beneficiaries of the state’s human services department. Gov. Tom Vilsack was adopted, and Lt. Gov. Sally Pederson has an autistic child, Concannon said. He expects their experience to translate to strong support for his work.
Concannon expects to be confirmed by the state Senate in mid-April. He will sell his home in Scarborough and move to the Des Moines area, he said. His children, now adults, are still in Maine however, so Concannon and his wife will return to visit, he said.
Ft. Williams fee killed
Published in the Current
As expected, the Cape Elizabeth Town Council ended discussion on admission to Fort Williams Park without imposing any fees. Five councilors said they would not support the fees proposed, and most said they would not support any fee for park entry.
Councilor Mary Ann Lynch, who had proposed a $5 annual charge for cars and $40 for tour buses, said she was glad to have raised the issue for discussion, but accepted that it was not to be. The fee was projected to raise $200,000 annually.
Councilor Anne Swift-Kayatta spoke in support of the fees, but for outsiders, not Cape residents. She said just under half of the e-mails she had received were for the fees.
In the historical documents laying out the park, its use was to be “within the financial capabilities of the town,” Swift-Kayatta said.
She wanted the money to go to the upkeep of the park itself, rather than the town’s general operating fund, as Lynch had proposed.
Because of tight budgets, Swift- Kayatta said people who use the park should pay. “Right now, Cape citizens do not freely enjoy Fort Williams,” because they pay for it through property taxes. “Only the tourists do,” she said.
Councilor Penny Carson said she noticed a contradiction between the proposal and people’s positions. While the idea was put forward to decrease pressure on the property tax and allow fixed-income people to stay in town,
most of the people who spoke against the fee were from the group the idea hoped to protect.
Residents spoke for and against the idea, suggesting some realistic solutions and others more amusing. Many wore stickers saying “NO” to show their opposition to the fees.
Eleanor Baker spoke on behalf of the Fort Williams Charitable Foundation, saying the organization’s mission was to raise charitable donations “to help keep the park free and open for all.” She said the council should give the foundation a chance before imposing fees.
“The foundation hasn’t been given enough time to do its job,” she said.
Other residents also expressed their concern that charging a fee would result in decreased volunteerism at the park.
One volunteer, Ruth Pitzele, said, “the people who volunteer might change their minds” if the park was no longer free.
Another resident suggested keeping costs down by increasing volunteerism. Eric Copperman said he moved to Cape from New York, where there was “class conflict” between people who could afford things and people who could not.
“Please do not do this to our town,” he said. Instead, people could help the town budget themselves: “Go to the park, pick up the trash, do it for free,” he said.
Some also spoke about the tradition of keeping the park free for everyone to use.
Al Barthelman, chair of the Fort Williams Advisory Commission, said the fort’s operating expenses were less than half a percent of town spending.
Jack Sears said Portland Head Light would be the only Maine lighthouse
with an admission fee, and suggested opening the south road for free access to the lighthouse alone. He then drew laughs with his idea of selling sponsorships for the park; he distributed to councilors digital mock-ups of the lighthouse with a Nike “swoosh” logo on it as an example of a way to help the park make money.
Stephen Simonds said he was a member of the last original Fort Williams study committee before the park was actually purchased by the town. “The word we heard was ‘leave this Fort Williams open without a fee,’” he said.
Brian Guthrie suggested asking for donations and seeing how much that raised. He also proposed charging a fine for people who get locked in the park by staying after closing time, saying they cost the town money to unlock the gate and let them out.
Representatives of the tourism industry also spoke to the council. Both Steve Lyons of the state Department of Tourism and Don Haggett, who helps bring bus tours to Maine, said tour companies would want lead time, to be able to incorporate the admission fees into ticket prices.
Jeanne Gross, director of the Portland Head Light Museum, said the museum’s entry fee of $2 turns away half of the people who get to the door. She predicted the volunteers would quit if there were fees, and that the town would have to hire replacements for them.
School funding also came into the discussion. Kevin Stack said he saw a councilor on television say that the town is “wealthy and can afford to pay for a park.” He differed, saying “if we were a wealthy town, there would have been no problem” to pay for the school construction project discussed the previous evening.
Elaine Moloney, finance chair of the School Board, who spoke as a private citizen, said “the schools are struggling in maintaining programs.”
She challenged the town’s statement that its contribution to the county budget is “beyond their control,” while the schools were held to account for reductions in state funding totaling nearly $1 million over the past two years.
“We must look at both the school and the town budgets as one,” she said.
When faced with cutting programs or charging fees, she saw the latter as “the lesser of two evils."
As expected, the Cape Elizabeth Town Council ended discussion on admission to Fort Williams Park without imposing any fees. Five councilors said they would not support the fees proposed, and most said they would not support any fee for park entry.
Councilor Mary Ann Lynch, who had proposed a $5 annual charge for cars and $40 for tour buses, said she was glad to have raised the issue for discussion, but accepted that it was not to be. The fee was projected to raise $200,000 annually.
Councilor Anne Swift-Kayatta spoke in support of the fees, but for outsiders, not Cape residents. She said just under half of the e-mails she had received were for the fees.
In the historical documents laying out the park, its use was to be “within the financial capabilities of the town,” Swift-Kayatta said.
She wanted the money to go to the upkeep of the park itself, rather than the town’s general operating fund, as Lynch had proposed.
Because of tight budgets, Swift- Kayatta said people who use the park should pay. “Right now, Cape citizens do not freely enjoy Fort Williams,” because they pay for it through property taxes. “Only the tourists do,” she said.
Councilor Penny Carson said she noticed a contradiction between the proposal and people’s positions. While the idea was put forward to decrease pressure on the property tax and allow fixed-income people to stay in town,
most of the people who spoke against the fee were from the group the idea hoped to protect.
Residents spoke for and against the idea, suggesting some realistic solutions and others more amusing. Many wore stickers saying “NO” to show their opposition to the fees.
Eleanor Baker spoke on behalf of the Fort Williams Charitable Foundation, saying the organization’s mission was to raise charitable donations “to help keep the park free and open for all.” She said the council should give the foundation a chance before imposing fees.
“The foundation hasn’t been given enough time to do its job,” she said.
Other residents also expressed their concern that charging a fee would result in decreased volunteerism at the park.
One volunteer, Ruth Pitzele, said, “the people who volunteer might change their minds” if the park was no longer free.
Another resident suggested keeping costs down by increasing volunteerism. Eric Copperman said he moved to Cape from New York, where there was “class conflict” between people who could afford things and people who could not.
“Please do not do this to our town,” he said. Instead, people could help the town budget themselves: “Go to the park, pick up the trash, do it for free,” he said.
Some also spoke about the tradition of keeping the park free for everyone to use.
Al Barthelman, chair of the Fort Williams Advisory Commission, said the fort’s operating expenses were less than half a percent of town spending.
Jack Sears said Portland Head Light would be the only Maine lighthouse
with an admission fee, and suggested opening the south road for free access to the lighthouse alone. He then drew laughs with his idea of selling sponsorships for the park; he distributed to councilors digital mock-ups of the lighthouse with a Nike “swoosh” logo on it as an example of a way to help the park make money.
Stephen Simonds said he was a member of the last original Fort Williams study committee before the park was actually purchased by the town. “The word we heard was ‘leave this Fort Williams open without a fee,’” he said.
Brian Guthrie suggested asking for donations and seeing how much that raised. He also proposed charging a fine for people who get locked in the park by staying after closing time, saying they cost the town money to unlock the gate and let them out.
Representatives of the tourism industry also spoke to the council. Both Steve Lyons of the state Department of Tourism and Don Haggett, who helps bring bus tours to Maine, said tour companies would want lead time, to be able to incorporate the admission fees into ticket prices.
Jeanne Gross, director of the Portland Head Light Museum, said the museum’s entry fee of $2 turns away half of the people who get to the door. She predicted the volunteers would quit if there were fees, and that the town would have to hire replacements for them.
School funding also came into the discussion. Kevin Stack said he saw a councilor on television say that the town is “wealthy and can afford to pay for a park.” He differed, saying “if we were a wealthy town, there would have been no problem” to pay for the school construction project discussed the previous evening.
Elaine Moloney, finance chair of the School Board, who spoke as a private citizen, said “the schools are struggling in maintaining programs.”
She challenged the town’s statement that its contribution to the county budget is “beyond their control,” while the schools were held to account for reductions in state funding totaling nearly $1 million over the past two years.
“We must look at both the school and the town budgets as one,” she said.
When faced with cutting programs or charging fees, she saw the latter as “the lesser of two evils."
Maine blood heads to Navy
Published in the Current
The U.S. Navy has asked the Maine Blood Center in Scarborough to send donated blood to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., to respond to additional need for blood by the armed forces.
MBC normally collects blood donations from around the state and provides blood and platelets to Maine Medical Center and other local hospitals. One place that has hosted blood drives over the past eight years is the Supervisor of Shipbuilding facility, a U.S. Navy site near Bath Iron Works, according to Kathy Carmichael at MBC.
In exchange for permission to collect blood at a Navy site, MBC had to agree to send blood to the Navy upon request, Carmichael said.
“The time has come,” she said. Mainers have benefited from blood donations by Navy personnel, and now it is time to repay the debt, she said.
Carmichael declined to be specific about how much blood MBC is sending to the Navy. “It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to put a bit of a strain on us,” she said. She also did not know how long the Navy would need MBC to continue to send blood.
Carmichael did not know why the Navy needs the blood, but speculated that some prospective donors in the military may have been inoculated against smallpox, making them ineligible to give blood.
Kevin Sforza, a spokesman for the National Naval Medical Center, said MBC sends two units of platelets to the hospital each Friday.
Platelets are in high demand because they expire in five days and cannot be frozen like whole blood can.
Many of the hospital’s usual donors have been rendered ineligible, either by being vaccinated against smallpox or other diseases in preparation for war, or by being exposed to West Nile Virus, Sforza said. “Having sufficient blood supplies ready to use is crucial to military effectiveness,” he said.
The U.S. Navy has asked the Maine Blood Center in Scarborough to send donated blood to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., to respond to additional need for blood by the armed forces.
MBC normally collects blood donations from around the state and provides blood and platelets to Maine Medical Center and other local hospitals. One place that has hosted blood drives over the past eight years is the Supervisor of Shipbuilding facility, a U.S. Navy site near Bath Iron Works, according to Kathy Carmichael at MBC.
In exchange for permission to collect blood at a Navy site, MBC had to agree to send blood to the Navy upon request, Carmichael said.
“The time has come,” she said. Mainers have benefited from blood donations by Navy personnel, and now it is time to repay the debt, she said.
Carmichael declined to be specific about how much blood MBC is sending to the Navy. “It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to put a bit of a strain on us,” she said. She also did not know how long the Navy would need MBC to continue to send blood.
Carmichael did not know why the Navy needs the blood, but speculated that some prospective donors in the military may have been inoculated against smallpox, making them ineligible to give blood.
Kevin Sforza, a spokesman for the National Naval Medical Center, said MBC sends two units of platelets to the hospital each Friday.
Platelets are in high demand because they expire in five days and cannot be frozen like whole blood can.
Many of the hospital’s usual donors have been rendered ineligible, either by being vaccinated against smallpox or other diseases in preparation for war, or by being exposed to West Nile Virus, Sforza said. “Having sufficient blood supplies ready to use is crucial to military effectiveness,” he said.
Heavy, dense, slow to move: Copenhagen like natural uranium
Published in the Portland Phoenix
Copenhagen
Written by Michael Frayn. Directed by Michael Rafkin. With Alison Edwards, Lee Godart, and Glen Pannell. At Portland Stage Company through March 23. Call (207) 774-0465.
Uranium in its natural form includes two subtypes: U-238, a heavy metal that absorbs energy without flinching, and U-235, the fuel for nuclear reactors and the first nuclear bombs. Volatile U-235 must be extracted from the surrounding material and gathered together in a tiny space to form a crucible of powerful material that explodes in a fury of energy and light.
So it is with a play. Dense words, dark on the page, must have their meaning and potential extracted and then presented on the crucible of a stage to enlighten and excite the audience. Copenhagen is a hard play to do this with, and resisted being distilled by Portland Stage Company.
Playwright Michael Frayn delved deep into theoretical physics to understand a historical event: German physicist Werner Heisenberg traveled to Nazi-occupied Copenhagen in 1941, where he spoke with his former teacher, Niels Bohr, the discoverer of atomic structure and grandfather of nuclear science. The subject of their conversation remains unknown. What Frayn surfaced with is a play that demonstrates in art two important concepts in physics, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and Bohr’s idea of complementarity (or duality).
Both are attempts to infer reality from what can be observed about the way particles move in the world, much as Frayn has tried to figure out what happened that night in Copenhagen by learning what Bohr and Heisenberg said and wrote about their meeting.
Frayn’s play is an example of the challenge of the uncertainty principle: It looks closely at one event, the meeting in Copenhagen, and tries not to lose focus of the rest of the context, including the Nazi occupation of much of Europe and the nascent arms race pitting the US and the UK, which had offered asylum to German Jewish physicists, against Germany itself. Further, it has a powerful physical duality: both a historical lecture and a play in one.
The historical value of it is a bit dubious, at least according to Heisenberg’s son Jochen, now a theoretical physicist at UNH, who told the PSC audience after a recent show that he thinks much of it is accurate, but his father was more rational and less emotional than Frayn allowed him to be. For that, we should thank Frayn: If any of these characters were less emotional, they would be dead, as indeed they all are today.
Combining science and art is a commendable undertaking, and one which this newspaper rewarded by sponsoring the play at PSC. However, the brutally spartan set and lighting force unwavering attention on complex speeches delivered by two of history’s most towering scientists. They discuss the moral role of a scientist who is pushing the limits of human capability, and whether people who know how to create terrible weapons should do so, or should delay politicians eager for new power.
Director Rafkin has chosen a play with strong contemporary tie-ins, weapons of mass destruction, scientific ethics, and the role of science in war. But he has not distilled the volatile, powerful emotion from the dense and deadening dialogue. The actors are perhaps put through their physical paces on a three-dimensional set unlike any other, but their passions are fettered and hidden. Brief bursts of energy are not reflected or amplified by the others, but are instead absorbed, stopping the chain reaction before it even starts.
Copenhagen
Written by Michael Frayn. Directed by Michael Rafkin. With Alison Edwards, Lee Godart, and Glen Pannell. At Portland Stage Company through March 23. Call (207) 774-0465.
BACKSTAGE
• Copenhagen is PSC technical director Ted Gallant’s 100th show. Since he started in 1987, he has climbed the exterior of a forklift to load a set into the building (Triple Espresso), designed two beds that fly for A Christmas Carol, built the lobster boat at the Children’s Museum of Maine, and ripped out a third of the stage to make room for a three-foot-deep swimming pool for Church of the Sole Survivor.
He called the set work for Copenhagen easy, saying the set for True West was much more challenging. It had to be constructed both in intricate detail and in super-sturdy form. Not every telephone gets ripped out of the wall daily, nor kitchen drawers thrown on the floor every evening. He has to work with actors, directors, and lighting crews to get things that look good and work properly but also fit in the space allotted and suit the rest of the performance.
" I never thought I was going to do a 100th show, " Gallant said, and laughed at the idea of 100 or 50 more, saying he would see what happens. Don’t be too surprised, though. After 15 years, " it has become what I do. "
• With no warning or explanation, Cauldron and Labrys’ run of Carolyn Gage’s Thanatron has ended prematurely at the Portland Performing Arts Center studio theater.
• For an evening of free theater, check out Eggs over Eric, written and directed by Tim Rubel, in a workshop production at PPAC’s 25A Forest Avenue studio theater at 8 p.m. March 27, 28, and 29.
• PSC’s 14th Little Festival of the Unexpected is coming April 23 through 26, showcasing new women’s voices in theater and preparing Women and the Sea for its debut at PSC next season.
• Registrations have closed for the Maine Association of Community Theaters’ one-act festival. Keep your eyes open for many of Maine’s local stars at Great Falls Performing Arts Center in Auburn, May 2 and 3.
Thursday, March 13, 2003
School Board cans Hamlin idea
Published in the Current
The numbers seem to show that Town Council Chairman Jack Roberts’ proposal for Cape Elizabeth to take over or share South Portland’s Hamlin School would cost more than either building an addition to Pond Cove School or renting portable classrooms at the school.
South Portland also has told Cape there would be no chance for a long-term lease agreement. Instead, the longest lease Cape could look for in negotiations would be a single year, Superintendent Tom Forcella told his School Board at a finance committee meeting Tuesday night.
Roberts had suggested using the Hamlin School to house Cape Elizabeth’s kindergarten, now housed at the high school.
Cape Business Manager Pauline Aportria spoke with her counterpart in South Portland and learned that a lease of the building would cost roughly $86,000 for the first year, which would include heat, electricity, water and sewer fees and snow removal. Telephone lines and staffing the building with a custodian and a receptionist/secretary would cost an additional $74,200.
That would bring the Hamlin proposal in at $160,200 for the first year. Aportria expected that costs would rise 3 percent per year. The worksheet Aportria distributed did not include projections for a nurse, special education travel costs or any other incidental expenses.
“If anything, the number at the Hamlin School could be higher,” Forcella told the board. Finance Chairman Elaine Moloney said it was unclear what, if any, money would be available from the state as an incentive to carry out the Hamlin plan and offset its costs.
By contrast, the cost of renting and operating portable classrooms at Pond Cove for the kindergartners would start at $97,300 for the first year, and would drop to nearly $48,000 in the second year. After a third year of leasing (at $49,000), the district could buy the portables in five annual payments of roughly $74,000 each. Board member Kevin Sweeney warned bringing portables into compliance with future building codes could be expensive.
Building a new addition at Pond Cove would cost $139,000 in debt service and operating costs in the first year, would rise to $165,500 in the second year, and would decline each year for the 20-year life of the loan.
The board also agreed that the size and location of the Hamlin School were unsatisfactory. “Our kids would be in another town, which is not an ideal thing,” Forcella said.
“We’ve been trying to get those kids out of the high school, and now we’re going to ship them out of town?” Sweeney asked rhetorically.
Moloney said she was opposed to the Hamlin idea both because it costs more and because it “defeats the purpose” of the School Board’s efforts to get the students together in buildings housing grades K-4, 5-8 and 9-12.
Roberts, in an interview Wednesday, questioned whether the $86,000 figure for school rent was realistic. He said South Portland has rented other buildings to non-profits for lower rates per square foot. He also did not know whether control of the building would revert to the South Portland City Council if it were not being used as a school.
If the numbers do end up showing the Hamlin idea to be more expensive, Roberts said he would not be discouraged. “I’m not married to that proposal,” he said.
The numbers seem to show that Town Council Chairman Jack Roberts’ proposal for Cape Elizabeth to take over or share South Portland’s Hamlin School would cost more than either building an addition to Pond Cove School or renting portable classrooms at the school.
South Portland also has told Cape there would be no chance for a long-term lease agreement. Instead, the longest lease Cape could look for in negotiations would be a single year, Superintendent Tom Forcella told his School Board at a finance committee meeting Tuesday night.
Roberts had suggested using the Hamlin School to house Cape Elizabeth’s kindergarten, now housed at the high school.
Cape Business Manager Pauline Aportria spoke with her counterpart in South Portland and learned that a lease of the building would cost roughly $86,000 for the first year, which would include heat, electricity, water and sewer fees and snow removal. Telephone lines and staffing the building with a custodian and a receptionist/secretary would cost an additional $74,200.
That would bring the Hamlin proposal in at $160,200 for the first year. Aportria expected that costs would rise 3 percent per year. The worksheet Aportria distributed did not include projections for a nurse, special education travel costs or any other incidental expenses.
“If anything, the number at the Hamlin School could be higher,” Forcella told the board. Finance Chairman Elaine Moloney said it was unclear what, if any, money would be available from the state as an incentive to carry out the Hamlin plan and offset its costs.
By contrast, the cost of renting and operating portable classrooms at Pond Cove for the kindergartners would start at $97,300 for the first year, and would drop to nearly $48,000 in the second year. After a third year of leasing (at $49,000), the district could buy the portables in five annual payments of roughly $74,000 each. Board member Kevin Sweeney warned bringing portables into compliance with future building codes could be expensive.
Building a new addition at Pond Cove would cost $139,000 in debt service and operating costs in the first year, would rise to $165,500 in the second year, and would decline each year for the 20-year life of the loan.
The board also agreed that the size and location of the Hamlin School were unsatisfactory. “Our kids would be in another town, which is not an ideal thing,” Forcella said.
“We’ve been trying to get those kids out of the high school, and now we’re going to ship them out of town?” Sweeney asked rhetorically.
Moloney said she was opposed to the Hamlin idea both because it costs more and because it “defeats the purpose” of the School Board’s efforts to get the students together in buildings housing grades K-4, 5-8 and 9-12.
Roberts, in an interview Wednesday, questioned whether the $86,000 figure for school rent was realistic. He said South Portland has rented other buildings to non-profits for lower rates per square foot. He also did not know whether control of the building would revert to the South Portland City Council if it were not being used as a school.
If the numbers do end up showing the Hamlin idea to be more expensive, Roberts said he would not be discouraged. “I’m not married to that proposal,” he said.
CEHS traffic plan to be tested
Published in the Current
A new traffic flow plan for getting cars into the high school area in the mornings will begin trials just after April vacation. Starting that Monday morning, April 28, traffic coming south on Route 77 will be able to turn right onto Jordan Way, the road between the police and fire stations.
According to a proposal drawn up by parents, police and town and school officials, cars will be allowed to drive down the road and through the gate by the fire station, which is usually locked.
Then they will have to go around the loop where buses drop off at Pond Cove School and down to the high school.
“They need to go around the circle, not just go in and take a left,” said Debbie Croft, president of the High School Parents Association.
There will be a stop sign added at the intersection of the Pond Cove access road and the road leading behind the high school toward the pool, Croft said.
There also will be a couple of speed bumps put on that road to the pool.
Cars will only be allowed to exit the high school at the normal exit, onto Route 77, and drivers coming north toward the high school will still have to turn left into the existing entry, Croft said.
The new route will be used in the mornings only. Croft said the traffic is less of an issue in the afternoon because it is more spread out across time; not everyone is trying to get out of the high school at the same time.
The trial will run until the end of the year, Croft said. At that point they will reassess the situation and see about further changes.
Croft said the HSPA still wants to learn more about putting a traffic light at the Route 77 entry to the high school. That is the group’s long-term goal, she said.
The light would initially be used only at peak traffic times of the school day, but could also be used to manage traffic entering and leaving the high school during special events at night or on weekends, Croft said.
A new traffic flow plan for getting cars into the high school area in the mornings will begin trials just after April vacation. Starting that Monday morning, April 28, traffic coming south on Route 77 will be able to turn right onto Jordan Way, the road between the police and fire stations.
According to a proposal drawn up by parents, police and town and school officials, cars will be allowed to drive down the road and through the gate by the fire station, which is usually locked.
Then they will have to go around the loop where buses drop off at Pond Cove School and down to the high school.
“They need to go around the circle, not just go in and take a left,” said Debbie Croft, president of the High School Parents Association.
There will be a stop sign added at the intersection of the Pond Cove access road and the road leading behind the high school toward the pool, Croft said.
There also will be a couple of speed bumps put on that road to the pool.
Cars will only be allowed to exit the high school at the normal exit, onto Route 77, and drivers coming north toward the high school will still have to turn left into the existing entry, Croft said.
The new route will be used in the mornings only. Croft said the traffic is less of an issue in the afternoon because it is more spread out across time; not everyone is trying to get out of the high school at the same time.
The trial will run until the end of the year, Croft said. At that point they will reassess the situation and see about further changes.
Croft said the HSPA still wants to learn more about putting a traffic light at the Route 77 entry to the high school. That is the group’s long-term goal, she said.
The light would initially be used only at peak traffic times of the school day, but could also be used to manage traffic entering and leaving the high school during special events at night or on weekends, Croft said.
Cape man leads Civil Air Patrol to new skies
Published in the Current
Maine’s members of the Civil Air Patrol have a new mission and have formed a rapid-response team to be ready in case they are needed to respond to a public safety threat.
“We’re very involved in homeland security,” said Maj. Chris Hayden of Cape Elizabeth, commander of the Cumberland County Combined Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol.
In an emergency, the Civil Air Patrol could be called on to provide aerial reconnaissance of a disaster site, either visually or with equipment that can measure airborne contaminants. The planes and pilots could also search for people or vehicles, or transfer supplies or personnel to and from emergency sites and staging areas.
Cape Elizabeth has long been home to CAP leaders. Cape resident and newspaper magnate Guy Gannett was a leader in encouraging Fiorello LaGuardia to establish a national group of aviators to help with home defense. On Dec. 1, 1941, a week before Pearl Harbor, the CAP was founded, with Gannett as a member of the board of directors.
Since then, the CAP has been charged with aircraft education, emergency services and cadet training about aircraft handling and maintenance. It is adding the security work to that list and has a new name to reflect its new importance: U.S. Air Force Auxiliary.
“We are basically at the table with the Air Force” in homeland security planning, Hayden said.
The Cumberland County squadron is the first branch of the CAP in Maine to form a quick-response team. “We’ve written the book for the rest of the wing in Maine,” Hayden said.
There are always two pilots on call, who must keep their flight suits and clothing and toiletries for two days close by. The pilots and ground crew members must be able to get into their planes, parked at the Portland Jetport, within an hour after receiving an emergency page.
Members of the group are unpaid, though their aircraft purchases, maintenance and fuel are covered by the Air Force.
They are using cellular phones’ text messaging capability to activate the crews. When a message is received, the phone chirps or vibrates, alerting its owner to a new message. “I actually put mine under my pillow” at night, Hayden said.
The unit has been conducting drills and stepping up their training, to make sure they are prepared if something does happen.
CAP members are planning training exercises with other homeland-security agencies, including the Air Force, the Coast Guard and the National Guard, as well as local law enforcement agencies and the Red Cross.
“We haven’t all been training together,” Hayden said.
Hayden is also trying to spread the word to employers that CAP members have important public-safety duties that may require them to leave work at a moment’s notice. While training, meetings and most CAP activities are done at regularly scheduled times, CAP members may need to drop everything if a major incident occurs, Hayden said.
“If they do get called, let them go without prejudice” is the message he wants employers to get. “They are doing a service for the country.”
In addition, Hayden is building ties to towns and cities in Southern Maine, to let local governments know how the CAP can help them. CAP pilots and crews can search coastlines and borders and monitor disaster sites from above. And they can help towns with aerial photos, road surveys or other assistance where looking at the ground from above could be useful, Hayden said.
Maine’s members of the Civil Air Patrol have a new mission and have formed a rapid-response team to be ready in case they are needed to respond to a public safety threat.
“We’re very involved in homeland security,” said Maj. Chris Hayden of Cape Elizabeth, commander of the Cumberland County Combined Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol.
In an emergency, the Civil Air Patrol could be called on to provide aerial reconnaissance of a disaster site, either visually or with equipment that can measure airborne contaminants. The planes and pilots could also search for people or vehicles, or transfer supplies or personnel to and from emergency sites and staging areas.
Cape Elizabeth has long been home to CAP leaders. Cape resident and newspaper magnate Guy Gannett was a leader in encouraging Fiorello LaGuardia to establish a national group of aviators to help with home defense. On Dec. 1, 1941, a week before Pearl Harbor, the CAP was founded, with Gannett as a member of the board of directors.
Since then, the CAP has been charged with aircraft education, emergency services and cadet training about aircraft handling and maintenance. It is adding the security work to that list and has a new name to reflect its new importance: U.S. Air Force Auxiliary.
“We are basically at the table with the Air Force” in homeland security planning, Hayden said.
The Cumberland County squadron is the first branch of the CAP in Maine to form a quick-response team. “We’ve written the book for the rest of the wing in Maine,” Hayden said.
There are always two pilots on call, who must keep their flight suits and clothing and toiletries for two days close by. The pilots and ground crew members must be able to get into their planes, parked at the Portland Jetport, within an hour after receiving an emergency page.
Members of the group are unpaid, though their aircraft purchases, maintenance and fuel are covered by the Air Force.
They are using cellular phones’ text messaging capability to activate the crews. When a message is received, the phone chirps or vibrates, alerting its owner to a new message. “I actually put mine under my pillow” at night, Hayden said.
The unit has been conducting drills and stepping up their training, to make sure they are prepared if something does happen.
CAP members are planning training exercises with other homeland-security agencies, including the Air Force, the Coast Guard and the National Guard, as well as local law enforcement agencies and the Red Cross.
“We haven’t all been training together,” Hayden said.
Hayden is also trying to spread the word to employers that CAP members have important public-safety duties that may require them to leave work at a moment’s notice. While training, meetings and most CAP activities are done at regularly scheduled times, CAP members may need to drop everything if a major incident occurs, Hayden said.
“If they do get called, let them go without prejudice” is the message he wants employers to get. “They are doing a service for the country.”
In addition, Hayden is building ties to towns and cities in Southern Maine, to let local governments know how the CAP can help them. CAP pilots and crews can search coastlines and borders and monitor disaster sites from above. And they can help towns with aerial photos, road surveys or other assistance where looking at the ground from above could be useful, Hayden said.
Biotech struggles to start at PATHS
Published in the Current
Fifty years after James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA, a program offering cutting-edge biotechnology education to local high
school students is having trouble generating interest.
In August, teacher Don Berthiaume started the program, housed at the Portland Arts & Technology High School, in a room with bare walls. Since
then, he has furnished it and stocked it with his own library of texts and reference books. He also has gathered donations of equipment and supplies worth more than $16,000 from local biotech firms, but so far has attracted only one student.
Local schools may send one or two students each next year, which would be a big boost to the course.
“We have a functional lab,” Berthiaume said. It includes a bio-safety cabinet for working with materials in an uncontaminated space, DNA replication and extraction devices and machines that can create “fingerprints” from DNA that can then be used to do DNA matching.
This is not the first time Berthiaume has started such a program from scratch. Seven years ago, he was a high school biology teacher in Biddeford and began a biotech class at the vocational-technical school next door.
He had no trouble finding students then because they already knew him. He would recommend that the best students in his classes take the biotech course the following year.
For students who took the semester-long class and wanted to do more, he arranged internships with local biotech companies.
One of those students got a job with Maine Biotech Services right out of high school, and the company is paying for her to go to college at USM, Berthiaume said.
It was a great opportunity and with the high school right next door, students jumped at the chance. “I actually had a problem with enrollment – too many students,” he said.
Now, in the program’s first year at PATHS, he has but one. He has been working hard to attract students to the program, giving presentations to local school guidance counselors and science teachers.
Part of the challenge is overcoming a large number of barriers all at once. First, PATHS has never been seen as a place for top-notch academic students to find opportunities.
Second, timing is a problem. Not only are PATHS sessions two and a half hours long, but students have to be bused back and forth to the school. Students in college-prep classes can’t often miss that many classes, Berthiaume said.
He is now targeting high school seniors because they will have taken the prerequisite courses and have some flexibility to choose electives, including biotech.
Enrollment doesn’t worry at least one member of the PATHS advisory board, Kevin Sweeney, also a member of the Cape Elizabeth School Board.
“We are going to continue to support this for a while regardless of student enrollment,” Sweeney said. He recognizes the challenge of overcoming PATHS’ image as a school for special education students.
“This program puts PATHS in an entirely different place than it was,” Sweeney said.
It does, however, still target students who want to have direct experiences and have an alternative learning style, Sweeney said. Also, it takes advantage of the broad base of schools PATHS serves. No single school could fund a biotech program or attract enough students to make it work, Sweeney said.
Ellen Ross, science department head at Scarborough High School, said one student is expecting to go next year, and another may also go. Ross said biotech is an important field for future scientists to learn about.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity,” said Michael Efron, science department head at CEHS. A student or two from Cape may be looking at it for next year, he said.
A student from South Portland High School is also looking at the program, according to Linda Sturm in the SPHS guidance office.
Fifty years after James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA, a program offering cutting-edge biotechnology education to local high
school students is having trouble generating interest.
In August, teacher Don Berthiaume started the program, housed at the Portland Arts & Technology High School, in a room with bare walls. Since
then, he has furnished it and stocked it with his own library of texts and reference books. He also has gathered donations of equipment and supplies worth more than $16,000 from local biotech firms, but so far has attracted only one student.
Local schools may send one or two students each next year, which would be a big boost to the course.
“We have a functional lab,” Berthiaume said. It includes a bio-safety cabinet for working with materials in an uncontaminated space, DNA replication and extraction devices and machines that can create “fingerprints” from DNA that can then be used to do DNA matching.
This is not the first time Berthiaume has started such a program from scratch. Seven years ago, he was a high school biology teacher in Biddeford and began a biotech class at the vocational-technical school next door.
He had no trouble finding students then because they already knew him. He would recommend that the best students in his classes take the biotech course the following year.
For students who took the semester-long class and wanted to do more, he arranged internships with local biotech companies.
One of those students got a job with Maine Biotech Services right out of high school, and the company is paying for her to go to college at USM, Berthiaume said.
It was a great opportunity and with the high school right next door, students jumped at the chance. “I actually had a problem with enrollment – too many students,” he said.
Now, in the program’s first year at PATHS, he has but one. He has been working hard to attract students to the program, giving presentations to local school guidance counselors and science teachers.
Part of the challenge is overcoming a large number of barriers all at once. First, PATHS has never been seen as a place for top-notch academic students to find opportunities.
Second, timing is a problem. Not only are PATHS sessions two and a half hours long, but students have to be bused back and forth to the school. Students in college-prep classes can’t often miss that many classes, Berthiaume said.
He is now targeting high school seniors because they will have taken the prerequisite courses and have some flexibility to choose electives, including biotech.
Enrollment doesn’t worry at least one member of the PATHS advisory board, Kevin Sweeney, also a member of the Cape Elizabeth School Board.
“We are going to continue to support this for a while regardless of student enrollment,” Sweeney said. He recognizes the challenge of overcoming PATHS’ image as a school for special education students.
“This program puts PATHS in an entirely different place than it was,” Sweeney said.
It does, however, still target students who want to have direct experiences and have an alternative learning style, Sweeney said. Also, it takes advantage of the broad base of schools PATHS serves. No single school could fund a biotech program or attract enough students to make it work, Sweeney said.
Ellen Ross, science department head at Scarborough High School, said one student is expecting to go next year, and another may also go. Ross said biotech is an important field for future scientists to learn about.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity,” said Michael Efron, science department head at CEHS. A student or two from Cape may be looking at it for next year, he said.
A student from South Portland High School is also looking at the program, according to Linda Sturm in the SPHS guidance office.
Chancellor Gardens changes hands
Published in the Current
With its principal owner in bankruptcy, the company that owned Chancellor Gardens on Scott Dyer Road has sold the Cape Elizabeth assisted living home, as well as a sister facility in Saco, to Commonwealth Communities of Massachusetts. The home has been renamed Village Crossings of Cape Elizabeth.
It is the second turnover of a senior living facility on Scott Dyer Road in three months. In January, Haven Healthcare of Cromwell, Conn., took over the management of the Viking Nursing Home and Crescent House, with plans to take ownership in the next several months.
Abraham Gosman, who lives in Florida, was the majority owner of the company that owned Chancellor Gardens and Chancellor Place. He was also a founder of Carematrix, the company that managed the Chancellor properties. Carematrix will not continue its management functions, according to Beth Derrico, a spokeswoman for the company.
Gosman, who made millions in real estate and healthcare, filed for bankruptcy in 2001, according to William King of Development Specialists
Inc., the Miami-based firm that was appointed by the court as trustee for Gosman’s assets.
His filing was cited as an example of a problem some legislators see with the federal bankruptcy system – the unlimited homestead exemption.
Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wisc., told the U.S. Senate in March 2001 that Gosman, while owing as much as $233 million, was keeping a 64,000-square-foot mansion in West Palm Beach, Fla.
In his Maine business dealings, Gosman had guaranteed a mortgage taken out by the Chancellor company, with the two homes as collateral.
“The value (of the properties) was significantly less than the mortgage,” King said.
Rather than foreclosing on the homes, the lender agreed to cooperate in the sale of the properties and take the proceeds as partial payment of the debt, King said.
The change of ownership took effect March 1, bringing Chancellor Gardens and Chancellor Place in Saco into a company that already operates 12 nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities, six assisted living homes and four specialized hospitals in Massachusetts.
“This is our first step into Maine,” said David Calendrella, vice president of operations for Commonwealth Communities.
Last year Commonwealth bought two Massachusetts nursing homes from the same owners. “They proved to be quality facilities,” Calendrella said. That experience led to this recent deal.
“We’re very bullish on the Maine marketplace,” he said.
The company does not have significant plans to change things at Chancellor Gardens. “At the moment, the plan is to introduce ourselves as the new owners,” Calendrella said. No staff changes are in the works, he said. Everyone has signed on with the new owners.
Calendrella plans to pay close attention to hiring practices and employee supervision, in the wake of an employee’s February arrest on charges of stealing medication from several patients. He said the company would be open about any problems that might arise.
With its principal owner in bankruptcy, the company that owned Chancellor Gardens on Scott Dyer Road has sold the Cape Elizabeth assisted living home, as well as a sister facility in Saco, to Commonwealth Communities of Massachusetts. The home has been renamed Village Crossings of Cape Elizabeth.
It is the second turnover of a senior living facility on Scott Dyer Road in three months. In January, Haven Healthcare of Cromwell, Conn., took over the management of the Viking Nursing Home and Crescent House, with plans to take ownership in the next several months.
Abraham Gosman, who lives in Florida, was the majority owner of the company that owned Chancellor Gardens and Chancellor Place. He was also a founder of Carematrix, the company that managed the Chancellor properties. Carematrix will not continue its management functions, according to Beth Derrico, a spokeswoman for the company.
Gosman, who made millions in real estate and healthcare, filed for bankruptcy in 2001, according to William King of Development Specialists
Inc., the Miami-based firm that was appointed by the court as trustee for Gosman’s assets.
His filing was cited as an example of a problem some legislators see with the federal bankruptcy system – the unlimited homestead exemption.
Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wisc., told the U.S. Senate in March 2001 that Gosman, while owing as much as $233 million, was keeping a 64,000-square-foot mansion in West Palm Beach, Fla.
In his Maine business dealings, Gosman had guaranteed a mortgage taken out by the Chancellor company, with the two homes as collateral.
“The value (of the properties) was significantly less than the mortgage,” King said.
Rather than foreclosing on the homes, the lender agreed to cooperate in the sale of the properties and take the proceeds as partial payment of the debt, King said.
The change of ownership took effect March 1, bringing Chancellor Gardens and Chancellor Place in Saco into a company that already operates 12 nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities, six assisted living homes and four specialized hospitals in Massachusetts.
“This is our first step into Maine,” said David Calendrella, vice president of operations for Commonwealth Communities.
Last year Commonwealth bought two Massachusetts nursing homes from the same owners. “They proved to be quality facilities,” Calendrella said. That experience led to this recent deal.
“We’re very bullish on the Maine marketplace,” he said.
The company does not have significant plans to change things at Chancellor Gardens. “At the moment, the plan is to introduce ourselves as the new owners,” Calendrella said. No staff changes are in the works, he said. Everyone has signed on with the new owners.
Calendrella plans to pay close attention to hiring practices and employee supervision, in the wake of an employee’s February arrest on charges of stealing medication from several patients. He said the company would be open about any problems that might arise.
Alcohol on stage: What price the bottle?
Published in the Portland Phoenix
An ad campaign now being broadcast on Maine television stations warns parents that they are misleading themselves about teen drinking. The Maine Office of Substance Abuse conducted a study of Maine parents, and compared the results with the annual Maine Youth Drug and Alcohol Use Survey administered in schools all over the state.
Over 80 percent of Maine parents, the study shows, believe their kids have " not had more than a few sips of alcohol in their life. " But 65 percent of teens say they’ve had " more than a few sips of alcohol. "
And nearly every Maine parent — 98 percent of them, in a survey with a four-percent margin of error — believe their child hasn’t had alcohol in the past month. But over a third of teens — 38 percent — have, in fact, consumed alcohol in the last 30 days.
Alcohol is a part of adult life, and a part of young-adult life, teen life. At a recent community meeting in Cape Elizabeth, a parent asked teens why they drink. The response — aside from the predictable silence — was a question: " Why do adults drink? " That answer was even more predictable: silence from the adults.
As life on stage reflects life off-stage, so does alcohol appear in both worlds. It may have started, as Andrew Sokoloff suggests, in the distant past. " The list of alcoholic playwrights is a long, sad, and honorable one, " extending as far back as Shakespeare, he says. Sokoloff is the artistic director at Mad Horse Theater and says " the use of alcohol on stage depends mightily upon the time the play was written and the time it’s produced. "
Alcohol, in short, is part of an accurate portrayal of life. " Good playwrights . . . put alcohol in their plays for many of the same reasons people in real life drink: to kill pain, to tell the truth, to have fun, to feel more alive, to feel closer to someone, " Sokoloff says.
Anita Stewart, artistic director at Portland Stage Company, agrees. " The theater is often a mirror of our culture, and in our society alcohol has played and continues to play a tremendous role. "
Recent examples of alcohol on Maine stages include True West at Portland Stage, in which both main characters got drunk, one to drown his pain when confronting society and the other to distance himself from the realization that his sheltered experience was not the raw stuff of life a movie producer wanted.
Straitlaced Austin behaved like the stereotypical drunk most commonly found in college freshman dormitories: Barely able to stand and slurring words badly, a man at the end of the night sits on the floor surrounded by empty beer cans, singing to himself. It is a means by which playwright Sam Shepard shows the audience the depth to which Austin has sunk, without actually having a character come out and say, " Gosh, Austin, you look awful. " The alcohol is a vehicle for communicating a message.
Over at the St. Lawrence, the Cast put on Pvt. Wars, in which the three characters drink frequently in an Army hospital. It is a sign of their growing camaraderie that, as the play progresses, first one man drinks alone, then another joins him, and finally the third man takes up a glass as well. The message? He has joined the group, become part of at least the hospital society again, and may be moving more toward " normal, " despite his deep physical injuries and evident psychological distress.
And, most recently, there was the bottle of alcohol used by a newly empowered woman, rejecting the traditional social anesthetic and choosing instead to use it as a weapon to overpower a death-crazed doctor in Carolyn Gage’s Thanatron, performed by Cauldron & Labrys.
Stewart’s choice for most memorable alcohol-related scene is in Betrayal and Emma, by Harold Pinter, in which " a smart, together woman " tells her lover she is pregnant, while drinking vodka. " In the ‘70s that was normal; now it is unimaginable. I wonder if drunken scenes will ever have that same bone-chilling effect on me, " Stewart says.
Alcohol has yet to carry the same moral weight as smoking, Stewart says. " We get tons of complaints if someone lights up, even briefly, on stage, but no one seems to be that bothered by drinking, " she says.
Teen issues are beginning to get some attention in local theater, especially with David J. Mauriello’s To Bear Witness at the Players’ Ring, in which a teen holds a gun while contemplating his friend’s suicide. I have yet to see a drunk teen character on a local stage; the numbers say it’s time.
BACKSTAGE
• Watch this space for the first glimpse of the 2003/2004 season at the Players’ Ring in Portsmouth. Scuttlebutt is that they have had proposals from a bunch of new playwrights, as well as a version of The Hobbit and several rarely seen classic plays. When the group makes their decision, " Backstage " will get the word out so you can mark your calendars.
• Room to move: The Theater At Monmouth (theateratmonmouth.org) has a few design and production slots open for the summer, and improv and sketch comedy group TRATCO is looking for one or two women to join the cast (no_stache@yahoo.com).
• Carol Noonan headlines a benefit concert for the Public Theatre in Lewiston March 29. Showtime’s at 8 p.m., tickets are $15. It’s a great way to support this excellent theater, which is now showing a play, Gun-Shy, exploring what happens if your divorce isn’t working.
• Props to Bonny Eagle and Biddeford high schools, who move on to the states after winning the Southern Maine Regional Drama Festival last weekend in South Portland.
Thursday, March 6, 2003
A parent’s green thumb: Bearing witness to the challenges of growing
Published in the Portland Phoenix
It’s really just a baseball hat. A blue Boston Red Sox hat, always perched on Justin Rasch’s head, especially when he’s not acting. But this hat, belonging to a sturdy eighth-grader from Rochester, New Hampshire, now has a place in the script of a locally written play: To Bear Witness, by David J. Mauriello.
To Bear Witness
Written by David J. Mauriello. Directed by Chuck Galle. With Justin Rasch, Al Vautour, Denise McDonough, Paul J. Bell and Kate Kirkwood. At the Players Ring, Portsmouth, through March 9. Call (603) 436-8123.
It’s really just a baseball hat. A blue Boston Red Sox hat, always perched on Justin Rasch’s head, especially when he’s not acting. But this hat, belonging to a sturdy eighth-grader from Rochester, New Hampshire, now has a place in the script of a locally written play: To Bear Witness, by David J. Mauriello.
The hat could have started there; it’s quite common for teens to wear hats these days. But it’s just riding coattails to the top. Rasch is taking acting classes at Arts Rochester. When Mauriello and Chuck Galle were looking for someone to play a 14-year-old, that’s where they looked.
" Half the kids in the class tried out for it, " Rasch said. " The kid knocked me out, " Galle said. Even with such high praise coming from his director, his hat stayed the same size. " Sometimes I think I’m more excited about it than he is, " said his mother.
Her son really wants to star on Saturday Night Live, but you can see him before he makes it there, by spending an evening at the Players Ring in Portsmouth. Both Rasch and his drama teacher at home, Kate Kirkwood, play key supporting roles in Mauriello’s sixth play at the Ring.
It started as a screenplay in the late 1980s, after Mauriello read an article about teen suicide and decided to explore the issue in script form. Now a play, the show has 16 scenes, a throwback to its film roots. The suicide scene is gone, and the audience never meets Danny, the boy who has killed himself months before the play begins.
The hat has appeared, now an important device in the show, used to signal father/son communication and camaraderie. Words have been changed, whole lines revamped. Mauriello admits he has a melodramatic tendency with dialogue, and while it remains throughout, it has been tempered by the cast, who made many suggestions. " I’m rewriting as I’m watching rehearsals, " Mauriello said before the play’s run began.
The actors tried out a lot of different angles in practice, to see how they worked or if they failed. " We don’t talk about having an affair. We’re all over each other on stage, " said Kirkwood (playing Diane Putnam) of her interaction with Frank DeMarco (played by Al Vautour).
The play is about nurturing roots and connections, between friends, neighbors, family. It contrasts 1980s ideals of success — money, power, domination — with those beginning to take hold in the 21st century — love, trust, respect. The characters are all very human, with honest differences separating them and deeply personal needs pulling them together.
Frank’s bizarre physical intimacy with nearly every character in the play springs from his need to connect with people. As a landscaper, he knows how to nurture plants, healing them and bringing them to their full, blossoming potential. With human beings, however, he is stuck.
As a father, husband, boss, and aspiring politician, he both resents and is mystified by others’ successes. His weakness is his son, from whom he desperately wants love, but who sees through the bullshit to Frank’s cheating heart.
The play walks the line between preaching and showing, and raises powerful questions about parenting. As Helen (played by Denise McDonough) notes, parents have a monopoly on their children, but only as long as there is truth and honesty between them. When those are lost, so are the kids.
A strong, old tree and a brand-new sapling are the metaphors for what Frank wants in his life and what he has. At a crossroads, he must choose to let the sapling die or revise his priorities to keep the tree alive. " He’s thrown everything in, " Kirkwood said of Mauriello’s writing, which includes a brief scene of heady philosophy as well as more botany than most stage productions.
Parents who are trying to keep strong connections as their kids grow up should see this show, which will cause them to step back and re-examine the priorities and assumptions behind however they choose to raise their offspring.
The cast, and their characters, are laid out as plants, needing love, honesty, and attention to flourish: The weed is expelled from the flower bed and the myriad not-quite-misfit plants that had been on the edge of the garden are brought together in a quiet, simple, and pleasing conclusion.
" I hope, " said Mauriello, " the audience is going to feel all of my characters have grown."
To Bear Witness
Written by David J. Mauriello. Directed by Chuck Galle. With Justin Rasch, Al Vautour, Denise McDonough, Paul J. Bell and Kate Kirkwood. At the Players Ring, Portsmouth, through March 9. Call (603) 436-8123.
BACKSTAGE
• Word is the soldiers over at the St. Lawrence, busy putting on Pvt. Wars, are getting lonely. It’s a fabulous show, and they’re there through March 9. Support the troops!
• Portsmouth screenwriter Nancy Grossman is a playwright on the verge of seeing the fruits of her first stage play, Therapist on the Verge. She’ll get her chance when it is read aloud at the Rice Public Library in Kittery, at 7 p.m., March 11.
• The Theater Project’s Al Miller corralled a group of fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-graders into performing a bilingual acting/singing show, Rose in Red, using traditional French folksongs. It created a lot of interest and plans to do a full bilingual show are in the works.
• Maybe Miller was warming up for the upcoming revision of his musical Matching Shadows with Homer, put on last year and set to reopen March 14, with some new writing, music, and a few new faces on stage as well.
• Camden playwright Robert Manns has several plays being produced in the next couple of months in the Belfast area. Get out the binocs: Wildlife and the environment are characters in some of his work.
Wednesday, March 5, 2003
Viking to see $1 million in renovations
Published in the Current and the American Journal
The Viking and Crescent House in Cape Elizabeth will see up to $1 million in renovations in the coming months and will be upgraded to become what its new owner calls “the facility of choice” in the area.
Ray Termini, president, CEO and owner of Haven Healthcare of Cromwell, Conn., met with Viking staff last month to announce the change of management. Haven has a consulting arrangement with the Viking pending state approval of a certificate of need for the change of ownership.
When the approval is complete, three to six months after the application is submitted, Haven will take over management from Duane Rancourt Sr., the current co-owner and administrator of the nursing home.
The certificate of need application has not yet been filed.
As of this month, Termini told the Current, Haven is operating 26 nursing homes throughout New England, with 3,200 patients and a similar number of employees.
Of those, four homes in Connecticut and one in Vermont have had more than one situation where residents were either subjected to “actual harm” or “immediate jeopardy,” since Haven took over management, according to federal documents and information from the Connecticut Department of Public Health.
Each affected one patient or a small number of them, and each has been rectified. Termini told the Current all of his facilities are in compliance.
Two of the problems found by Connecticut inspectors in May 2002 at Haven Health Center of New Haven are representative of the problems.
One patient was given only one-fourth the prescribed amount of a medication. Another resident was not properly restrained or attended while in a shower chair, resulting in the resident “almost falling out” of the chair, and suffering two scrapes on the head.
The nursing home was fined $600 by state authorities. Upon inspection in August 2002, the nursing home was found to have corrected the problems.
The Viking had much more serious problems prior to Haven’s arrival on the scene. In August 2002, Viking resident Shirley Sayre, 77, wandered out of the nursing home and drowned in a culvert across the street. As the family mourned, Viking was hit with an “immediate jeopardy” citation and over $30,000 in fines.
Money tight
Those fines came at a tough point for the nursing home, which faced running out of money by November.
State reimbursements for Medicare were late, and the company faced the tough choice of paying creditors or meeting payroll.
In a time when nursing homes are feeling financial pressure, Termini said Haven succeeds by making their nursing homes more attractive to residents and families than competing facilities.
Most nursing homes, he said, have 10 percent of their patients on private payment, 10 to 12 percent on federally funded Medicare payment and the rest on state-funded Medicaid payments.
Many are also not near full capacity, resulting in overhead costs with no revenue to make up for them.
Medicaid does not pay the full amount for services, forcing Medicaid-dependent homes into financial ruin, Termini said. Medicare pays $315 per day, while Medicaid pays $130 per day, no matter the services a patient requires.
Haven solves the problem by attracting higher-paying customers, and by making sure its homes are full.
“The only way to survive is to decrease dependency on Medicaid,” Termini said. Haven homes have 96 percent occupancy and over 30 percent non-Medicaid patients, he said.
Just that additional margin is enough to make the difference between a successful nursing home and one that is in trouble, he said.
Termini said attracting higher-paying residents takes work and said he will begin renovating the buildings as soon as he takes ownership.
New look, new faces
Resident rooms will get all new surfaces, including paint, flooring and window dressings, as well as electric beds, according to Patrick Keaveny, regional vice president for Haven Healthcare, who will be overseeing the renovation.
Gathering areas also will be renovated, with a new fine-dining area planned for what is now a “sunroom” space, and a bistro area in the assisted-living facility, Keaveny said.
A lounge area, corridor and office space will be converted into a large physical therapy, occupational and speech therapy room.
To staff that room, Haven will be hiring a new physical therapist and assistant, an occupational therapist and assistant, as well as a part-time speech therapist.
To get new blood into the rest of the staff, Keaveny plans to send recruiting mailings out to all the nurses in the area.
The changeover will not involve layoffs, however. “Everybody that has a job (at the Viking and Crescent House) is going to be an employee of Haven Healthcare,” Keaveny said.
All of this is dependent on state approval. While the certificate of need process is usually used for constructing a new healthcare facility, it is also used for transferring ownership, according to Cathy Cobb in the Maine Department of Human Services.
The process determines whether a company is “fit, willing and able to run a nursing home,” she said, and also makes sure costs to the state-funded Medicaid program will not increase.
The process involves an application, an initial hearing and then a public hearing and then a review of the application and any additional information, Cobb said.
Regulators look at the organization applying for the certificate, its financial plans and
the quality of care it provided elsewhere.
The Viking and Crescent House in Cape Elizabeth will see up to $1 million in renovations in the coming months and will be upgraded to become what its new owner calls “the facility of choice” in the area.
Ray Termini, president, CEO and owner of Haven Healthcare of Cromwell, Conn., met with Viking staff last month to announce the change of management. Haven has a consulting arrangement with the Viking pending state approval of a certificate of need for the change of ownership.
When the approval is complete, three to six months after the application is submitted, Haven will take over management from Duane Rancourt Sr., the current co-owner and administrator of the nursing home.
The certificate of need application has not yet been filed.
As of this month, Termini told the Current, Haven is operating 26 nursing homes throughout New England, with 3,200 patients and a similar number of employees.
Of those, four homes in Connecticut and one in Vermont have had more than one situation where residents were either subjected to “actual harm” or “immediate jeopardy,” since Haven took over management, according to federal documents and information from the Connecticut Department of Public Health.
Each affected one patient or a small number of them, and each has been rectified. Termini told the Current all of his facilities are in compliance.
Two of the problems found by Connecticut inspectors in May 2002 at Haven Health Center of New Haven are representative of the problems.
One patient was given only one-fourth the prescribed amount of a medication. Another resident was not properly restrained or attended while in a shower chair, resulting in the resident “almost falling out” of the chair, and suffering two scrapes on the head.
The nursing home was fined $600 by state authorities. Upon inspection in August 2002, the nursing home was found to have corrected the problems.
The Viking had much more serious problems prior to Haven’s arrival on the scene. In August 2002, Viking resident Shirley Sayre, 77, wandered out of the nursing home and drowned in a culvert across the street. As the family mourned, Viking was hit with an “immediate jeopardy” citation and over $30,000 in fines.
Money tight
Those fines came at a tough point for the nursing home, which faced running out of money by November.
State reimbursements for Medicare were late, and the company faced the tough choice of paying creditors or meeting payroll.
In a time when nursing homes are feeling financial pressure, Termini said Haven succeeds by making their nursing homes more attractive to residents and families than competing facilities.
Most nursing homes, he said, have 10 percent of their patients on private payment, 10 to 12 percent on federally funded Medicare payment and the rest on state-funded Medicaid payments.
Many are also not near full capacity, resulting in overhead costs with no revenue to make up for them.
Medicaid does not pay the full amount for services, forcing Medicaid-dependent homes into financial ruin, Termini said. Medicare pays $315 per day, while Medicaid pays $130 per day, no matter the services a patient requires.
Haven solves the problem by attracting higher-paying customers, and by making sure its homes are full.
“The only way to survive is to decrease dependency on Medicaid,” Termini said. Haven homes have 96 percent occupancy and over 30 percent non-Medicaid patients, he said.
Just that additional margin is enough to make the difference between a successful nursing home and one that is in trouble, he said.
Termini said attracting higher-paying residents takes work and said he will begin renovating the buildings as soon as he takes ownership.
New look, new faces
Resident rooms will get all new surfaces, including paint, flooring and window dressings, as well as electric beds, according to Patrick Keaveny, regional vice president for Haven Healthcare, who will be overseeing the renovation.
Gathering areas also will be renovated, with a new fine-dining area planned for what is now a “sunroom” space, and a bistro area in the assisted-living facility, Keaveny said.
A lounge area, corridor and office space will be converted into a large physical therapy, occupational and speech therapy room.
To staff that room, Haven will be hiring a new physical therapist and assistant, an occupational therapist and assistant, as well as a part-time speech therapist.
To get new blood into the rest of the staff, Keaveny plans to send recruiting mailings out to all the nurses in the area.
The changeover will not involve layoffs, however. “Everybody that has a job (at the Viking and Crescent House) is going to be an employee of Haven Healthcare,” Keaveny said.
All of this is dependent on state approval. While the certificate of need process is usually used for constructing a new healthcare facility, it is also used for transferring ownership, according to Cathy Cobb in the Maine Department of Human Services.
The process determines whether a company is “fit, willing and able to run a nursing home,” she said, and also makes sure costs to the state-funded Medicaid program will not increase.
The process involves an application, an initial hearing and then a public hearing and then a review of the application and any additional information, Cobb said.
Regulators look at the organization applying for the certificate, its financial plans and
the quality of care it provided elsewhere.
Thursday, February 27, 2003
Moving the ad message
Published in the Current
As the Goodwill Industries trucks roll across the state of Maine, their new designs are thanks to a Cape Elizabeth man, who has found a way to make
money from the sides of trucks.
Don Mackenzie has founded Mobile Marketing Solutions, which sells space on what are, after all, basically moving billboards.
Mackenzie used to sell technology to trucking companies and was familiar with trucking fleets in other areas of the country that sold ads on the sides of their trucks.
Eight months ago, when Mackenzie and his family moved to Maine from Atlanta, he decided to put his idea in motion.
His first challenge was to find a trucking fleet that would work with him. He found it “very hard to find a fleet” that was interested. Most companies wanted just their own logos on the sides of their trucks, if there were any markings at all.
One day, when Mackenzie was driving somewhere, he saw a white truck with nothing really on its sides and followed it to a Goodwill store. When he called to ask if the company would be interested, he found that someone there had always wanted to do just exactly what he was proposing.
In exchange for an ongoing ad campaign for Goodwill on the side of one truck, Mackenzie’s fledgling company had its fleet.
Best of all, the Goodwill trucks run regular routes in populated areas, picking up donations at drop-off centers and also delivering goods to the company’s retail stores. Most trucking companies run their routes far from where people are, because traffic slows them down. And many of them run at night, again to avoid congestion.
Not Goodwill trucks, which are on the road for six to 10 hours per day.
“They’re always where the people are,” Mackenzie said.
He had the trucks fitted with what are called “changeable fleet graphic systems,” essentially easy-to-change billboards. Aluminum rails hold a heavy vinyl sheet tight against the side of the truck.
The vinyl itself is printed by a firm in Seattle that can put any graphic or text on the fabric. It takes a couple of hours to put on a sign, which Mackenzie often has done at Wagon Masters in Scarborough.
His goal is to get the company to $60,000 in revenue by June and triple that by next year. He wants to expand the business beyond Maine, into the New England region and then into the mid-Atlantic states.
As the Goodwill Industries trucks roll across the state of Maine, their new designs are thanks to a Cape Elizabeth man, who has found a way to make
money from the sides of trucks.
Don Mackenzie has founded Mobile Marketing Solutions, which sells space on what are, after all, basically moving billboards.
Mackenzie used to sell technology to trucking companies and was familiar with trucking fleets in other areas of the country that sold ads on the sides of their trucks.
Eight months ago, when Mackenzie and his family moved to Maine from Atlanta, he decided to put his idea in motion.
His first challenge was to find a trucking fleet that would work with him. He found it “very hard to find a fleet” that was interested. Most companies wanted just their own logos on the sides of their trucks, if there were any markings at all.
One day, when Mackenzie was driving somewhere, he saw a white truck with nothing really on its sides and followed it to a Goodwill store. When he called to ask if the company would be interested, he found that someone there had always wanted to do just exactly what he was proposing.
In exchange for an ongoing ad campaign for Goodwill on the side of one truck, Mackenzie’s fledgling company had its fleet.
Best of all, the Goodwill trucks run regular routes in populated areas, picking up donations at drop-off centers and also delivering goods to the company’s retail stores. Most trucking companies run their routes far from where people are, because traffic slows them down. And many of them run at night, again to avoid congestion.
Not Goodwill trucks, which are on the road for six to 10 hours per day.
“They’re always where the people are,” Mackenzie said.
He had the trucks fitted with what are called “changeable fleet graphic systems,” essentially easy-to-change billboards. Aluminum rails hold a heavy vinyl sheet tight against the side of the truck.
The vinyl itself is printed by a firm in Seattle that can put any graphic or text on the fabric. It takes a couple of hours to put on a sign, which Mackenzie often has done at Wagon Masters in Scarborough.
His goal is to get the company to $60,000 in revenue by June and triple that by next year. He wants to expand the business beyond Maine, into the New England region and then into the mid-Atlantic states.
Scarborough hunting ranch escapes ban
Published in the Current
A so-called “hunting ranch” in Scarborough has been spared from a proposed law that would have banned the hunting of game animals inside enclosures like the 200-acre Bayley Hill Hunt Park here.
The bill, proposed by Rep. Tom Bull, D-Freeport, and Rep. Matt Dunlap, D-Old Town, failed in a legislative committee Monday.
“Fortunately, (Monday) it was completely squashed,” said Nick Richardson, manager of the Bayley Hill Deer and Elk Farm and the adjoining hunt park. “It was really a storm in a teacup.”
Hunting ranches are typically several hundred acres of forest and wild land, Richardson said. They are stocked with deer and elk raised on farms like Bayley Hill’s farm. The animals are then released into wildland-type areas with fences around them.
Hunters pay the owners of the ranches hundreds and even thousands of dollars to hunt on the ranch’s land and are sent home with trophy heads as well as meat processed from the carcass of any animals shot.
Critics of the ranches say the practice is inhumane, effectively hunting an animal that has been penned up. Ranch supporters, including Richardson, say the animals are allowed to run free in natural environments, where they are hard to find and shoot, and added that hunters are hunting for meat as well as trophies.
“They’re not just coming to shoot an animal for its horns,” Richardson said.
Further, economic and regulatory pressures on supplier farms mean it is already difficult to make ends meet. Without being able to sell trophy animals to hunting ranches, the business would fail, Richardson said.
Hunting ranches bring tourist dollars into the state, helping the economy, Richardson said.
A so-called “hunting ranch” in Scarborough has been spared from a proposed law that would have banned the hunting of game animals inside enclosures like the 200-acre Bayley Hill Hunt Park here.
The bill, proposed by Rep. Tom Bull, D-Freeport, and Rep. Matt Dunlap, D-Old Town, failed in a legislative committee Monday.
“Fortunately, (Monday) it was completely squashed,” said Nick Richardson, manager of the Bayley Hill Deer and Elk Farm and the adjoining hunt park. “It was really a storm in a teacup.”
Hunting ranches are typically several hundred acres of forest and wild land, Richardson said. They are stocked with deer and elk raised on farms like Bayley Hill’s farm. The animals are then released into wildland-type areas with fences around them.
Hunters pay the owners of the ranches hundreds and even thousands of dollars to hunt on the ranch’s land and are sent home with trophy heads as well as meat processed from the carcass of any animals shot.
Critics of the ranches say the practice is inhumane, effectively hunting an animal that has been penned up. Ranch supporters, including Richardson, say the animals are allowed to run free in natural environments, where they are hard to find and shoot, and added that hunters are hunting for meat as well as trophies.
“They’re not just coming to shoot an animal for its horns,” Richardson said.
Further, economic and regulatory pressures on supplier farms mean it is already difficult to make ends meet. Without being able to sell trophy animals to hunting ranches, the business would fail, Richardson said.
Hunting ranches bring tourist dollars into the state, helping the economy, Richardson said.
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