Published in the Current
Local oil dealers say fear about a war with Iraq may drive oil prices up a bit in the short term, but there is plenty of oil to go around and prices will stabilize.
Jeff Quirk of Quirk Oil Company in Scarborough said prices may be going up slightly right now, but are generally stable.
Last year, people thought oil prices would climb after Sept. 11, but they did not. Quirk expects similar psychological factors this year to contribute to oil price uncertainty.
Kevin Frederick of Frederick Brothers Oil in Scarborough said, “nobody knows for certain what it’s going to do.”
He said military action in Iraq could cause prices to rise initially, but that would be because of public concern and not any real issue with the oil supply.
Those price hikes may be artificial to some degree, reflecting refineries’ desire to make a profit from public concern rather than decreased oil supply, dealers said.
Buyers may not have a wide range of prices to choose from.
“Most all of us buy from the same supplier or suppliers,” Quirk said.
Local dealers don’t hike their prices “unless they have to,” Frederick said. And when they do raise prices, they don’t always pass on the full increase to customers.
Small dealers, he said, will often handle a five-cent supplier-price increase by raising their own prices two or three cents and absorbing the rest as a reduction in profit.
Bill Fielding Jr. of Fielding’s Oil Company in Scarborough said his customers are also worried, and prices have climbed slowly for the past two months. He has had some calls from people who want to pre-buy oil to lock in a price, even if they might not normally do so.
Fielding cautioned that those people are taking a risk: If oil prices go down, they might have spent more money than they would need to.
Michael Constantine of Champion Fuel Company in Cape Elizabeth said his customers are worried about what war might mean for oil prices, but there is plenty of oil in reserve. Homeowners may have a lot of oil already in their
tanks, because of warm temperatures last year, while oil companies have thousands of gallons in their tanks already because they sold so little oil last winter.
“I don’t see that there’s going to be a problem for anybody,” Constantine said.
Thursday, October 17, 2002
Woman dies in motorcycle accident
Published in the Current; co-written with Kate Irish Collins
Elaine Mitchell, 41, of Scarborough was laid to rest Tuesday morning after being killed in a motorcycle accident on Pleasant Hill Road on Friday, Oct. 11.
She was a passenger on a motorcycle driven by her longtime companion, James Goode, 45, of Scarborough when the vehicle collided with a deer at
5:48 p.m. Both were treated at the scene and taken to Maine Medical Center, where Mitchell was later pronounced dead.
Goode was treated for what Scarborough police called “non-life-threatening injuries.”
Neither were wearing helmets, according to Sgt. Greg Bedor. He said about half of the people he sees on motorcycles are wearing helmets. The rest, he said, “take their chances.”
Mitchell leaves behind a daughter, Brianna, a junior at Scarborough High School, and a large family of brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews. She was remembered Tuesday for having a great love of life, including spending time with her daughter and traveling to the Caribbean.
Mitchell’s death was called “a sad and dreadful nightmare” by Father James Morrison, who officiated at the funeral held at St. Maximilian Kolbe Church in Scarborough. “Though we might want to, we cannot turn the clock back,” he added.
Father Morrison also had special words for Brianna, who was accompanied to the service by friends and teachers. He told her to think long and hard about the one thing of her mother’s she might want to keep - something that would stay with her always. “Try to hold on to that one thing that says who your mother was,” Father Morrison said.
He also urged Mitchell’s family not to think about the “what if.”
“You are all wondering why did this happen and could it have been prevented? Was there anything that could have been done at the scene afterward that would have saved Elaine’s life? And the answer is ‘no.’ Everyone did the best that they could,” Father Morrison said.
Father Morrison also told Mitchell’s family, friends, and coworkers that no one has the answers, but they could offer each other a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry on and words of gentle mercy and hope. “Soon the joy and the laughter will come back and the stories and memories you have of Elaine will have warmth and meaning again,” he said.
For the past five years, Mitchell, who was born in Van Buren, held the position of Human Resources Manager at Nordx Laboratories.
Those wishing to honor Mitchell’s memory are asked to make donations in her name to the Scarborough Rescue, c/o Anthony Attardo at 246 U.S. Route 1, Scarborough or to the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital at Maine Medical Center, 22 Bramhall Street, Portland.
Elaine Mitchell, 41, of Scarborough was laid to rest Tuesday morning after being killed in a motorcycle accident on Pleasant Hill Road on Friday, Oct. 11.
She was a passenger on a motorcycle driven by her longtime companion, James Goode, 45, of Scarborough when the vehicle collided with a deer at
5:48 p.m. Both were treated at the scene and taken to Maine Medical Center, where Mitchell was later pronounced dead.
Goode was treated for what Scarborough police called “non-life-threatening injuries.”
Neither were wearing helmets, according to Sgt. Greg Bedor. He said about half of the people he sees on motorcycles are wearing helmets. The rest, he said, “take their chances.”
Mitchell leaves behind a daughter, Brianna, a junior at Scarborough High School, and a large family of brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews. She was remembered Tuesday for having a great love of life, including spending time with her daughter and traveling to the Caribbean.
Mitchell’s death was called “a sad and dreadful nightmare” by Father James Morrison, who officiated at the funeral held at St. Maximilian Kolbe Church in Scarborough. “Though we might want to, we cannot turn the clock back,” he added.
Father Morrison also had special words for Brianna, who was accompanied to the service by friends and teachers. He told her to think long and hard about the one thing of her mother’s she might want to keep - something that would stay with her always. “Try to hold on to that one thing that says who your mother was,” Father Morrison said.
He also urged Mitchell’s family not to think about the “what if.”
“You are all wondering why did this happen and could it have been prevented? Was there anything that could have been done at the scene afterward that would have saved Elaine’s life? And the answer is ‘no.’ Everyone did the best that they could,” Father Morrison said.
Father Morrison also told Mitchell’s family, friends, and coworkers that no one has the answers, but they could offer each other a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry on and words of gentle mercy and hope. “Soon the joy and the laughter will come back and the stories and memories you have of Elaine will have warmth and meaning again,” he said.
For the past five years, Mitchell, who was born in Van Buren, held the position of Human Resources Manager at Nordx Laboratories.
Those wishing to honor Mitchell’s memory are asked to make donations in her name to the Scarborough Rescue, c/o Anthony Attardo at 246 U.S. Route 1, Scarborough or to the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital at Maine Medical Center, 22 Bramhall Street, Portland.
One of the “Band of Brothers”
Published in the Current
Walking into Lester Hashey’s home, it’s clear he is a veteran proud of his service. The former paratrooper has a small parachuting figure hanging
high in a living room window. A poster with the names of the 51 men of his outfit who were killed in action hangs in the corner, a litany of small-print names impossible to ignore.
And upstairs, his beloved pool table is covered in piles of photos from the war and unit reunions since. On the walls are mementos, including his Purple Heart, Good Conduct Medal, unit patches and his paratrooper’s wings.
But not until the time comes to leave the Scarborough home of this energetic 77-year-old does his role in history become clear. To the right of the front door hangs a 16-by-20-inch print of a drawing of a church in the Dutch town of Eindhoven, a town liberated by Hashey and his fellow soldiers in 1944.
Though the church was destroyed, a modern Dutch artist drew it in honor of the liberation.
Printed at the bottom of the display are five simple words: “Thank you for our freedom.”
Hashey has had a lot of recognition, especially in the last 10 years or so, as a former member of Easy Company, Second Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division.
He and 37 others are the only surviving members of a group that has become famous in the Emmy-winning HBO special “Band of Brothers,” inspired by the Stephen Ambrose book of the same name.
Hashey remembers the day the group liberated the town, having parachuted in the night before, as part of Operation Market Garden, to secure the town. The soldiers were, he said, “looking for German snipers” while being greeted by thousands of people in the streets, who lifted the Americans on their shoulders to celebrate their freedom.
That day, Hashey signed a school notebook belonging to a 16-year-old Dutch girl named Lise. “Everybody wanted your autograph,” he said.
Many years later, at the 2000 dedication of the D-Day Museum in New Orleans, he saw Lise again, and she was carrying her notebook.
“She came all the way from Holland to thank me for her freedom,” Hashey said.
A boy’s dream
When Hashey was 15, he went to see a double-feature at a Portland movie theater, and saw a short newsreel about an elite group of infantry, whose soldiers were trained paratroopers as well as excellent skiers.
Right then, he decided that was what he wanted to do. Two years later, in 1942, he dropped out of Portland High School to become a shipbuilder in the Liberty shipyards in South Portland. Soon after, he was drafted into the Army.
He volunteered for airborne duty and was part of the 93rd class of paratroopers. “It was tough,” he said, but rewarding, “to be a paratrooper at a time when nobody had ever been up in a plane.” Paratroopers never had it easy. If they went up in a plane, it was for a jump. “It wasn’t until 1950 – the Berlin airlift – that I ever landed in a plane,” Hashey said.
He joined Easy Company after half the unit’s members were killed during the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944. They jumped into Holland on Sept. 17 of that year, as part of Operation Market Garden, designed to open a route from Eindhoven north to Arnhem. Expecting to be on the ground for a week, they ended up there for nearly three months.
The original intent of the mission was to take a bridge and hold it until the tanks arrived. Resistance was tough, and on a planned rest away from the front, Hashey and his fellow soldiers found themselves in the middle of one of the key battles of the war.
“We weren’t sure what country we were in,” Hashey said. They had little ammunition, having left the front lines. But they soon found out both where they were and what kind of firepower they would need: The Germans broke through Allied lines on both sides of the town of Bastogne, Belgium, surrounding Hashey and his comrades.
The men formed a circle, with the artillery in the center, and fought off repeated German attacks for 10 days before they were able to reconnect with Allied forces.
Hashey remembers how close the battles were. Had the Germans attacked from more than one point simultaneously, he said, the artillery would have been too weak to repel the attacks, and “they would have had us all for prisoners of war.”
After the soldiers broke the siege, they went immediately on the offensive, fighting their way up the road to the town of Foy, where Hashey was wounded in action and evacuated for treatment.
He returned to Belgium in 1994 for the 50th anniversary of D-Day and went on a short drive to Foy. He saw the ridge he once climbed, but because they were all foot soldiers, “there’s no evidence that we were ever there,” he said.
The welcome he got, though, was evidence enough. In addition to the medal from the Queen of the Netherlands, there was an amazing parade. “Three hundred thousand people came to watch us walk through a town,” Hashey said, beaming.
The road to stardom
Such attention wasn’t what he expected. After the war, he became a swimming instructor and sports director, working at military bases all over Europe and in Asia. He even taught West Point cadets and Special Forces troops how to swim and fight in the water.
When he retired from the service in 1963, he got a job with the American Red Cross, teaching swimming around the country. He retired recently from his job as director of water safety and first aid in Portland, but still teaches CPR a couple of days a week, which he has done since CPR was developed in 1971.
For his dedication, he was made a commodore in the Commodore Longfellow Society, named after the founder of the American Red Cross swimming and lifeguarding program, in what he said was one of the proudest moments of his life. Next week he will present the first Lester A. Hashey Award for Teaching Excellence to a Portland-area Red Cross teacher.
Hashey never thought his experience on the ground in Europe in 1944 would end up as a big story. But World War II historian Stephen Ambrose changed that. Ambrose, who died at age 66 earlier this week, “was a great guy,” Hashey said.
Ambrose spent hours and hours interviewing each of the men in Hashey’s unit in a hotel room during the reunion, and wrote a book, “Band of Brothers.” Actor and director Tom Hanks took the book and made a docudrama miniseries for HBO about the men of Easy Company, including Hashey.
The story has attracted attention from all over the world. The unit just had a reunion, which was attended by over 300 people, more than triple the largest reunion attendance before. He and his buddies sat at a long table and in two and a half hours, Hashey estimates, signed over 1,000 copies of Ambrose’s book.
Hashey is clearly proud of his accomplishments and said that being a paratrooper is one of the things he is most proud of, along with being a commodore. He met a goal he had when he was young, and it gave him the confidence to “do anything” with his life, despite difficult beginnings.
“Back in the Depression days things were tough. When I quit school, nobody told me that was a stupid thing to do,” Hashey said.
Even that has now been remedied. A couple of weeks ago, Portland High School granted him a diploma, under a program that allows veterans who dropped out to be awarded diplomas now.
What he did instead of high school may make for better storytelling, though. Looking at a photo from the war, he remembers every detail. He and a buddy were spending the night in the top of a windmill near the Rhine River and could smell someone cooking beef nearby. He convinced his friend to come downstairs with him to get some food.
Just when they reached the bottom of the stairs, two shells hit the windmill. When they returned to their sleeping site, Hashey’s sleeping bag had large holes in it, and his pack was destroyed. “My toothpaste was blown up,” Hashey said.
That 1944 photo reminds him that every moment is lucky. “I almost got killed in this windmill,” he said. “If we had been one minute later. . . ”
Walking into Lester Hashey’s home, it’s clear he is a veteran proud of his service. The former paratrooper has a small parachuting figure hanging
high in a living room window. A poster with the names of the 51 men of his outfit who were killed in action hangs in the corner, a litany of small-print names impossible to ignore.
And upstairs, his beloved pool table is covered in piles of photos from the war and unit reunions since. On the walls are mementos, including his Purple Heart, Good Conduct Medal, unit patches and his paratrooper’s wings.
But not until the time comes to leave the Scarborough home of this energetic 77-year-old does his role in history become clear. To the right of the front door hangs a 16-by-20-inch print of a drawing of a church in the Dutch town of Eindhoven, a town liberated by Hashey and his fellow soldiers in 1944.
Though the church was destroyed, a modern Dutch artist drew it in honor of the liberation.
Printed at the bottom of the display are five simple words: “Thank you for our freedom.”
Hashey has had a lot of recognition, especially in the last 10 years or so, as a former member of Easy Company, Second Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division.
He and 37 others are the only surviving members of a group that has become famous in the Emmy-winning HBO special “Band of Brothers,” inspired by the Stephen Ambrose book of the same name.
Hashey remembers the day the group liberated the town, having parachuted in the night before, as part of Operation Market Garden, to secure the town. The soldiers were, he said, “looking for German snipers” while being greeted by thousands of people in the streets, who lifted the Americans on their shoulders to celebrate their freedom.
That day, Hashey signed a school notebook belonging to a 16-year-old Dutch girl named Lise. “Everybody wanted your autograph,” he said.
Many years later, at the 2000 dedication of the D-Day Museum in New Orleans, he saw Lise again, and she was carrying her notebook.
“She came all the way from Holland to thank me for her freedom,” Hashey said.
A boy’s dream
When Hashey was 15, he went to see a double-feature at a Portland movie theater, and saw a short newsreel about an elite group of infantry, whose soldiers were trained paratroopers as well as excellent skiers.
Right then, he decided that was what he wanted to do. Two years later, in 1942, he dropped out of Portland High School to become a shipbuilder in the Liberty shipyards in South Portland. Soon after, he was drafted into the Army.
He volunteered for airborne duty and was part of the 93rd class of paratroopers. “It was tough,” he said, but rewarding, “to be a paratrooper at a time when nobody had ever been up in a plane.” Paratroopers never had it easy. If they went up in a plane, it was for a jump. “It wasn’t until 1950 – the Berlin airlift – that I ever landed in a plane,” Hashey said.
He joined Easy Company after half the unit’s members were killed during the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944. They jumped into Holland on Sept. 17 of that year, as part of Operation Market Garden, designed to open a route from Eindhoven north to Arnhem. Expecting to be on the ground for a week, they ended up there for nearly three months.
The original intent of the mission was to take a bridge and hold it until the tanks arrived. Resistance was tough, and on a planned rest away from the front, Hashey and his fellow soldiers found themselves in the middle of one of the key battles of the war.
“We weren’t sure what country we were in,” Hashey said. They had little ammunition, having left the front lines. But they soon found out both where they were and what kind of firepower they would need: The Germans broke through Allied lines on both sides of the town of Bastogne, Belgium, surrounding Hashey and his comrades.
The men formed a circle, with the artillery in the center, and fought off repeated German attacks for 10 days before they were able to reconnect with Allied forces.
Hashey remembers how close the battles were. Had the Germans attacked from more than one point simultaneously, he said, the artillery would have been too weak to repel the attacks, and “they would have had us all for prisoners of war.”
After the soldiers broke the siege, they went immediately on the offensive, fighting their way up the road to the town of Foy, where Hashey was wounded in action and evacuated for treatment.
He returned to Belgium in 1994 for the 50th anniversary of D-Day and went on a short drive to Foy. He saw the ridge he once climbed, but because they were all foot soldiers, “there’s no evidence that we were ever there,” he said.
The welcome he got, though, was evidence enough. In addition to the medal from the Queen of the Netherlands, there was an amazing parade. “Three hundred thousand people came to watch us walk through a town,” Hashey said, beaming.
The road to stardom
Such attention wasn’t what he expected. After the war, he became a swimming instructor and sports director, working at military bases all over Europe and in Asia. He even taught West Point cadets and Special Forces troops how to swim and fight in the water.
When he retired from the service in 1963, he got a job with the American Red Cross, teaching swimming around the country. He retired recently from his job as director of water safety and first aid in Portland, but still teaches CPR a couple of days a week, which he has done since CPR was developed in 1971.
For his dedication, he was made a commodore in the Commodore Longfellow Society, named after the founder of the American Red Cross swimming and lifeguarding program, in what he said was one of the proudest moments of his life. Next week he will present the first Lester A. Hashey Award for Teaching Excellence to a Portland-area Red Cross teacher.
Hashey never thought his experience on the ground in Europe in 1944 would end up as a big story. But World War II historian Stephen Ambrose changed that. Ambrose, who died at age 66 earlier this week, “was a great guy,” Hashey said.
Ambrose spent hours and hours interviewing each of the men in Hashey’s unit in a hotel room during the reunion, and wrote a book, “Band of Brothers.” Actor and director Tom Hanks took the book and made a docudrama miniseries for HBO about the men of Easy Company, including Hashey.
The story has attracted attention from all over the world. The unit just had a reunion, which was attended by over 300 people, more than triple the largest reunion attendance before. He and his buddies sat at a long table and in two and a half hours, Hashey estimates, signed over 1,000 copies of Ambrose’s book.
Hashey is clearly proud of his accomplishments and said that being a paratrooper is one of the things he is most proud of, along with being a commodore. He met a goal he had when he was young, and it gave him the confidence to “do anything” with his life, despite difficult beginnings.
“Back in the Depression days things were tough. When I quit school, nobody told me that was a stupid thing to do,” Hashey said.
Even that has now been remedied. A couple of weeks ago, Portland High School granted him a diploma, under a program that allows veterans who dropped out to be awarded diplomas now.
What he did instead of high school may make for better storytelling, though. Looking at a photo from the war, he remembers every detail. He and a buddy were spending the night in the top of a windmill near the Rhine River and could smell someone cooking beef nearby. He convinced his friend to come downstairs with him to get some food.
Just when they reached the bottom of the stairs, two shells hit the windmill. When they returned to their sleeping site, Hashey’s sleeping bag had large holes in it, and his pack was destroyed. “My toothpaste was blown up,” Hashey said.
That 1944 photo reminds him that every moment is lucky. “I almost got killed in this windmill,” he said. “If we had been one minute later. . . ”
Wednesday, October 16, 2002
Parents worried about laptop insurance
Published in the Current and the American Journal
To a soundtrack of “If I Had A Million Dollars” by the Barenaked Ladies, Cape parents walked into the middle school cafetorium on three different occasions earlier this month to get their first real look at the seventh-grade laptop program.
While most of the parents were impressed, significant concerns remain, though not in the educational aspects of the computers. Rather, parents are worried about increased liability if their children take the laptops home and
damage them. The laptops are worth up to $1,300, with the monitor screen alone costing $1,000 to replace.
The meetings, required by the state before a school district can send laptops home with students, were well attended, according to middle school Principal Nancy Hutton. Cape was one of the first towns in the state to get the laptops to the students earlier this school year, and is one of the first to have parent meetings as well, Hutton said.
Yellow Light Breen, a spokesman for the Maine Department of Education, said a form of self-insurance is in place for the laptops. Apple Computer has supplied the state with a number of spare laptops that can be used to replace
damaged machines.
Breen said school districts should contact their own insurance carriers to discuss the cost of insuring the laptops locally.
He said other locations distributing laptops have used an insurance policy costing about $50 per machine. It is presently available to school districts in
Maine, Breen said, but is not mandatory. The policy, offered by a company called Safeware, The Insurance Agency, out of Columbus, Ohio, does not cover intentional damage and is presently available either individually or as a district-wide group policy.
The sales manager at Safeware, Brian Haase, said the group policy costs $49.50 per machine, while purchasing insurance individually could cost twice as much. “The best rates are under our group program,” which Haase said has a minimum group size of 10 participants.
Insurance is of particular concern to parents as the schools look at sending the laptops home with students as early as the end of this month.
“The School Board supports getting these home as quickly as possible,” said Technology Coordinator Gary Lanoie, but is concerned about the schools’ potential liability if some computers are broken or damaged.
Some of Cape’s machines have already been dropped and damaged during in-school use, Lanoie said, blaming some of the incidents on the cases used to carry and store the computers.
They have several fastening devices that must all be secured, and the computers could be even more protected, Lanoie said, by installing adhesive Velcro straps to the computer and the inside of the carrying case. At present, that is forbidden by the state’s policy of not allowing any stickers to be applied to the machines.
Use at home
Internet use during school is monitored by teachers and filtered through the school’s Internet connection. At home, however, those restrictions loosen. Hutton and Lanoie all made it clear that students are expected to use their laptops in public areas of their homes, and not lock themselves away from family members while typing.
Parents are entitled to know their children’s passwords and are allowed to supervise any activity their kids undertake on the laptops. Lanoie said students should not be allowed to install games on the laptops, saying that is what home computers are for. “These are for educational purposes,” he said.
To a soundtrack of “If I Had A Million Dollars” by the Barenaked Ladies, Cape parents walked into the middle school cafetorium on three different occasions earlier this month to get their first real look at the seventh-grade laptop program.
While most of the parents were impressed, significant concerns remain, though not in the educational aspects of the computers. Rather, parents are worried about increased liability if their children take the laptops home and
damage them. The laptops are worth up to $1,300, with the monitor screen alone costing $1,000 to replace.
The meetings, required by the state before a school district can send laptops home with students, were well attended, according to middle school Principal Nancy Hutton. Cape was one of the first towns in the state to get the laptops to the students earlier this school year, and is one of the first to have parent meetings as well, Hutton said.
Yellow Light Breen, a spokesman for the Maine Department of Education, said a form of self-insurance is in place for the laptops. Apple Computer has supplied the state with a number of spare laptops that can be used to replace
damaged machines.
Breen said school districts should contact their own insurance carriers to discuss the cost of insuring the laptops locally.
He said other locations distributing laptops have used an insurance policy costing about $50 per machine. It is presently available to school districts in
Maine, Breen said, but is not mandatory. The policy, offered by a company called Safeware, The Insurance Agency, out of Columbus, Ohio, does not cover intentional damage and is presently available either individually or as a district-wide group policy.
The sales manager at Safeware, Brian Haase, said the group policy costs $49.50 per machine, while purchasing insurance individually could cost twice as much. “The best rates are under our group program,” which Haase said has a minimum group size of 10 participants.
Insurance is of particular concern to parents as the schools look at sending the laptops home with students as early as the end of this month.
“The School Board supports getting these home as quickly as possible,” said Technology Coordinator Gary Lanoie, but is concerned about the schools’ potential liability if some computers are broken or damaged.
Some of Cape’s machines have already been dropped and damaged during in-school use, Lanoie said, blaming some of the incidents on the cases used to carry and store the computers.
They have several fastening devices that must all be secured, and the computers could be even more protected, Lanoie said, by installing adhesive Velcro straps to the computer and the inside of the carrying case. At present, that is forbidden by the state’s policy of not allowing any stickers to be applied to the machines.
Use at home
Internet use during school is monitored by teachers and filtered through the school’s Internet connection. At home, however, those restrictions loosen. Hutton and Lanoie all made it clear that students are expected to use their laptops in public areas of their homes, and not lock themselves away from family members while typing.
Parents are entitled to know their children’s passwords and are allowed to supervise any activity their kids undertake on the laptops. Lanoie said students should not be allowed to install games on the laptops, saying that is what home computers are for. “These are for educational purposes,” he said.
Thursday, October 10, 2002
Bliss vs. Ross: different routes to similar ends
Published in the Current
Cape Elizabeth and South Portland residents of House District 24 have a choice of two men who both support increased education funding and health care reform, but have differing ideas about how to reach their goals.
Incumbent Democrat Larry Bliss, 55, is facing Republican Wayne H. Ross, 66. Both are Clean Elections candidates.
Bliss, director of career services and professional life development at the University of Southern Maine, became a candidate two years ago, as a last minute fill-in after the primary, because, he said, “I thought it might be interesting.” After he won, he found out he was right.
“It was both more work and more fun than I ever thought it would be,” Bliss said. He is proud of what he has been able to accomplish and wants to continue his work.
Ross, who retired as president of Southern Maine Technical College a year ago, entered the race this year with no prior political experience, because he is concerned about issues at the state level.
Bliss thinks the state should pay for schools what it said it would pay, 55 percent of the cost of education. He said the state now pays 45 percent.
If the state paid in full, he said, the money should be used for property tax relief and should not be used to boost local budgets, either for schools or for towns.
Ross looks at it slightly differently, saying the state should spend one-third of its total budget on school funding, as it did in 1992. Now the state spends about 27 percent, he said. Making up the difference would provide $160 million for property tax relief.
Ross would also like to revamp the school funding formula to reduce its reliance on property valuations. “It’s got to be fair and equitable,” he said.
Last year, with property valuations up and school enrollment flat, “Cape Elizabeth and South Portland got hurt badly,” Ross said.
He also proposed capping valuations for retirees on fixed incomes.
Bliss, too, wants property tax reform. In a meeting with a number of South Portland neighborhood associations, he heard a lot about the pressures property tax hikes are placing on residents. “The stories that got told are heart-wrenching,” Bliss said.
Bliss also knows there are hard stories about health insurance in Maine. He supports a single-payer system that would reduce administrative costs, thereby lowering medical care prices.
He also likes Jonathan Carter’s plan to charge businesses 7 to 13 percent of their payroll for healthcare coverage, which is lower than the 35 to 40 percent most businesses now pay for private insurance. “The total cost will be much less,” Bliss said.
Ross opposes a single-payer system, saying the state would not be efficient and has already raised medical costs too high with state mandates and regulations. Ross said liability and malpractice insurance costs are also part of the problem of expensive medical care.
Ross said the state should pay the full price for services provided to Medicare patients. At present, he said, the state only pays half, leaving doctors and hospitals to shift the remaining cost onto private insurers and uninsured people.
Both men acknowledge their ideas will cost money, not save it, in a time when the state budget is facing a revenue shortfall of as much as $1 billion for the next budget cycle.
Bliss suggested broadening the state sales tax to include more items. “We have the narrowest sales tax in the country,” Bliss said.
He also suggested looking at ways to tax visitors to Maine, such as the lodging tax, increased last year from 7 percent to 8 percent. “We’re still the lowest lodging tax in New England,” he said. Upping the tax to 10 percent, he said, would bring Maine more into line with other states in the region, and would raise revenue significantly.
Ross would make up the additional expense by stopping new programs that were funded in the last legislature but not yet started.
“If we haven’t implemented it, why do we need to move forward?” Ross asked.
Both said the state will need to set priorities and plan spending along those lines, to make ends meet.
Cape Elizabeth and South Portland residents of House District 24 have a choice of two men who both support increased education funding and health care reform, but have differing ideas about how to reach their goals.
Incumbent Democrat Larry Bliss, 55, is facing Republican Wayne H. Ross, 66. Both are Clean Elections candidates.
Bliss, director of career services and professional life development at the University of Southern Maine, became a candidate two years ago, as a last minute fill-in after the primary, because, he said, “I thought it might be interesting.” After he won, he found out he was right.
“It was both more work and more fun than I ever thought it would be,” Bliss said. He is proud of what he has been able to accomplish and wants to continue his work.
Ross, who retired as president of Southern Maine Technical College a year ago, entered the race this year with no prior political experience, because he is concerned about issues at the state level.
Bliss thinks the state should pay for schools what it said it would pay, 55 percent of the cost of education. He said the state now pays 45 percent.
If the state paid in full, he said, the money should be used for property tax relief and should not be used to boost local budgets, either for schools or for towns.
Ross looks at it slightly differently, saying the state should spend one-third of its total budget on school funding, as it did in 1992. Now the state spends about 27 percent, he said. Making up the difference would provide $160 million for property tax relief.
Ross would also like to revamp the school funding formula to reduce its reliance on property valuations. “It’s got to be fair and equitable,” he said.
Last year, with property valuations up and school enrollment flat, “Cape Elizabeth and South Portland got hurt badly,” Ross said.
He also proposed capping valuations for retirees on fixed incomes.
Bliss, too, wants property tax reform. In a meeting with a number of South Portland neighborhood associations, he heard a lot about the pressures property tax hikes are placing on residents. “The stories that got told are heart-wrenching,” Bliss said.
Bliss also knows there are hard stories about health insurance in Maine. He supports a single-payer system that would reduce administrative costs, thereby lowering medical care prices.
He also likes Jonathan Carter’s plan to charge businesses 7 to 13 percent of their payroll for healthcare coverage, which is lower than the 35 to 40 percent most businesses now pay for private insurance. “The total cost will be much less,” Bliss said.
Ross opposes a single-payer system, saying the state would not be efficient and has already raised medical costs too high with state mandates and regulations. Ross said liability and malpractice insurance costs are also part of the problem of expensive medical care.
Ross said the state should pay the full price for services provided to Medicare patients. At present, he said, the state only pays half, leaving doctors and hospitals to shift the remaining cost onto private insurers and uninsured people.
Both men acknowledge their ideas will cost money, not save it, in a time when the state budget is facing a revenue shortfall of as much as $1 billion for the next budget cycle.
Bliss suggested broadening the state sales tax to include more items. “We have the narrowest sales tax in the country,” Bliss said.
He also suggested looking at ways to tax visitors to Maine, such as the lodging tax, increased last year from 7 percent to 8 percent. “We’re still the lowest lodging tax in New England,” he said. Upping the tax to 10 percent, he said, would bring Maine more into line with other states in the region, and would raise revenue significantly.
Ross would make up the additional expense by stopping new programs that were funded in the last legislature but not yet started.
“If we haven’t implemented it, why do we need to move forward?” Ross asked.
Both said the state will need to set priorities and plan spending along those lines, to make ends meet.
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