Senior center gathers steam

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (April 25, 2005): A Scarborough town councilor is teaming up with local seniors to back a $1 million referendum to build a senior center on the old drive-in property.

The bond would pay for a 5,000-square-foot building that would be constructed on the property named Memorial Park last week.

A draft of the proposed building is expected to be unveiled at a lunch meeting Thursday, May 26, at noon at the Hillcrest Community Center.

At an April 21 joint meeting of two town senior-citizen groups, Senior Series and Senior Voices, Town Council Chairman Jeff Messer offered the seniors a two-acre section of town-owned land, which was recently rejected by a group looking to build a YMCA.

He also said he would “try to gather the support politically on the council to make sure the question gets on the ballot” in November, which would require council action by early September. He estimated the bond would cost 2 or 3 cents on the tax rate.

“I think the time has come for seniors to have a place to call their own,” Messer told the group assembled at Scarborough Downs. He recalled the failure of the 2000 referendum on a community center, which would have included space for senior activities.

“We don’t have a senior center, and I think everybody here would be anxious to have one at some point,” Messer said.

While he said he would work within town government to get the question out to voters, “the seniors would have to be front and center from here to Election Day,” mobilizing voters to support the measure.

Messer asked the seniors to think of suggestions for what they want in a senior center, so the town can come up with a plan for a building where “seniors would have priority,” though if seniors were not using the space at a particular time the center “would have rooms available for other groups.”

He said the land became available when the Y turned down the two-acre parcel because it was too small for a building the size the Y is envisioning. Messer said the senior center would not have to have a gym or other large, expensive amenities, in part because of the Y.

“The YMCA has a lot of momentum” and may fill many of the roles of a community center, he said, but “the seniors really need to have something of their own.”

Sharing the load

The effort has brought together two groups, one private, organized and led by Elizabeth McCann – Senior Voices, which meets at Scarborough Downs – and the other town-sponsored and hosted by the Hillcrest Manufactured Housing Community, Senior Series.

“We’re happy that we’re going to be together a lot more,” McCann said at the first joint meeting of the groups.

One member of the audience proposed the two groups join permanently. Messer urged the groups to “act as one voice on this question,” whether or not they joined administratively.

Marty Craine, vice chairman of Senior Voices, backed the idea. “We better get out there and talk to people about this,” he said, suggesting groups use their membership lists and other contacts.

Ted Tibbals, who has attended meetings of both groups, spoke passionately in favor of the idea, and asked rhetorically who wasn’t in favor of it. When one woman, who had been worried about the proposal’s cost, raised her hand, it sent ripples of surprise through the room.

Tibbals suggested the senior center include meeting space; facilities for movies, slides and music; an office; a conference room for three or four people; a small exercise room with treadmill and exercise bike “with very limited equipment;” storage space and a kitchen because “certainly we’re going to want to have some meals.”

Other suggestions included an area for a monthly health clinic that could “start with a good scale” and perhaps include a visit from a nurse from time to time. Community Services would have offices in the building, according to Director Bruce Gullifer, but would also look for volunteers to help staff it.

Town Councilor Carol Rancourt, who works at the Southern Maine Agency on Aging, suggested that seniors take trips – perhaps organized by the town – to visit other nearby senior centers to evaluate their buildings and programs.

Tibbals said he liked the idea that seniors would have priority, because, even though the Downs and Hillcrest are generous to share their space, they’re not available whenever seniors want to use them.

“The important thing is we all work together,” he said, broadening his exhortation to the whole community.

“I’m not anti-education, but if I’m willing to approve these school projects, I’m willing to approve a senior center,”he said. “If the school department wants us to support their projects, they darn well better support ours.”

Political timing

Messer said the timing of this question in November is key to its success. Next year the schools are expecting to have a multi-million-dollar referendum on the ballot, to renovate and expand existing schools, or to construct new ones.

“November of 2005 is the most opportune time,” he said, also because it is an off-year election, in which seniors tend to vote far more often than younger people. In off-years, Messer estimated, at least half of the voters are senior citizens.

But, he said, with seniors making up about one-third of the town’s voters, younger people would do well to support seniors’ efforts, in hopes that the seniors would back the big school projects in the future.

Craine said seniors would continue to support education in town.

“We backed the schools, and we always will, and we’ll be backing another one,” he said, calling this year “the best shot that we’ll ever have” to get a senior center, which he said is “long overdue in this community.”

Town Manager Ron Owens said the town wants “to develop a project here that will be supported by the entire community,” and promised to “try to manage it to keep that cost down to the taxpayer.”

One senior asked if it would be better to convert the Bessey School into a center. Messer said that would cost $2.5 million to $3 million to refit, when a new building could be built for under $1 million and could later be expanded. Gullifer said the Memorial Park site could support an addition of 2,000 or 3,000 square feet to an original 5,000-square-foot building, and cautioned the seniors to “be careful not to outprice" themselves when coming up with ideas for the building.

Other questions included whether the building should be called a “senior center” on the ballot. One senior suggested calling it a “community center” instead.

“If it’s tagged a senior facility, we’re in the minority, it won’t fly,” said one senior.

Another asked if the school expansion project might leave available a building that could be, in part, a senior center, perhaps joined with a teen center and some town or school office space.

Land found for Higgins Beach cottages

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (April 21, 2005): A real estate agent has found land for up to two Higgins Beach cottages of five a local developer donated for Habitat for Humanity.

The agent, Rita Yarnold of Bay Realty, declined to say where the land is or provide any other details, because the deal is not yet secure.

A Higgins Beach developer, who wishes to remain anonymous, has offered Habitat for Humanity five cottages on Kelly Lane, if the housing group can find land for them. The developer declined to comment for this story.

Yarnold, who is also president of the Portland Board of Realtors, has represented him in the sales of five large homes built along Kelly Lane in the past two years, and is representing him in the sale of a house now under construction on the road. She said she proposed the idea of donating houses to the developer in late 2004.

Yarnold said she would also likely represent any future development along the lane. The land on which the cottages sit, listed as about an acre in town records, is valued by the town at $240,000, and the buildings are valued at $180,000.

Until recently, vacationers rented the cottages for $1,000 a week, Yarnold said. They have wide-board flooring and cathedral ceilings, and were originally cottages on the ground. The present owner’s mother owned them previously and raised them onto tall foundations to add space, Yarnold said.

The Portland Board of Realtors has partnered with the local Habitat for Humanity group, to help Habitat find land on which to either build houses or move donated houses, according to Steve Bolton, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Portland.

“They are out searching for land like crazy as we speak,” he said.

The group usually needs to find three lots a year, so five is a big number, he said. It’s especially challenging because of the booming housing market.

“A lot of the lots we used to get, the ones the builders didn’t want, are now profitable for the builders,” Bolton said.

‘Freedom Park’ to be proposed as name

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (April 21, 2005): The Scarborough Town Council was expected to hear a recommendation that the new town park on the old drive-in property be named "Freedom Park" at its meeting Wednesday night, after the Current’s deadline.

Jack Cowie III, chairman of the Community Services and Recreation Advisory Board, was to make the recommendation at the meeting. The recommendation was also to include the concept that other elements of the park, including the gazebo and a walking trail, be given specific names in honor of prominent citizens or local history.

And Cowie told the Current Tuesday he would suggest to councilors that the park be “an unscheduled open space” whose fields are available on a first-come, first-served basis to the general public, without a reservation.

That would allow people to have a place for outdoor recreation, without running into the problem of “youth sports or adult rental occupying 100 percent of the space 100 percent of the time,” Cowie said.

“Right now it’s all about prescribed, organized sports,” he said. The multi-purpose field, which will be ready to be played on this fall, is now slated to be used for various Community Services programs and to be available for travel teams and adult leagues to reserve on a regular basis, Cowie said.

But that means other community groups, and private citizens, are kept off the fields, which is a problem for some members of the board, he said.

The park name was the subject of some study, including solicitations to the public for suggestions. Some names that resulted were "Underhill Farm," suggested by the Historical Society, and "Owascoag," a Native American word meaning “place of much grass.”

Cowie said he ruled out "Owascoag" because he didn’t want to “stir the pot” of political correctness, which was last hot when the Scarborough High School team name was changed from Redskins to Red Storm.

And because the family that owned Underhill Farm, which was on the land where the park now sits, had not donated the land to the town, he decided not to choose that name, either.

The board voted, and the top vote-getter was "Veterans Park," followed by "Memorial Park," "Oak Hill Park," "Community Park" and then "Freedom Park" in fifth place, Cowie said.

But Freedom Park had “what I felt was the most compelling support statement,” that “in the aftermath of 9/11 we have a lot to be grateful for.”

While Veterans Park would commemorate the sacrifices of members of the military, after 9/11 people are more appreciative of “everybody who serves in public service,” notably police, firefighters and ambulance workers.

“Freedom Park would allow support and recognition of everybody, including veterans,” Cowie said.

He said the board also wanted to provide opportunities to give names to “sub-elements of the park, like the walking trail that goes around it, (and) the gazebo.” He said Underhill could be a name used for one of those items, and something else could be named in memory of Clifford “Kippy” Mitchell, a longtime town employee and volunteer who died recently.

300-year-old oak falls, twice

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (April 21, 2005): After weathering this winter's snow and wind storms, a 300-year-old oak tree just waking up for the spring fell across Holmes Road unexpectedly Tuesday morning, damaging a van and closing the road two separate times during the day.

The incident has prompted town officials to inspect and identify other old oaks that may need to be taken down.

At about 7:45 a.m., one large limb fell across the road, smashing the rear window of a passing van. “I just felt an impact,” said Scott Mincher, the van’s driver. “I looked in the mirror and my (rear) windshield was shattered.”

Mincher, who was unhurt, drove away and returned with a chainsaw to help clear the road. Onlookers and those who heard the story told him he should buy a lottery ticket.

While he was gone, a neighbor, Dan McMahan, had grabbed his own chainsaw and started work.

The drivers of other cars, who had to stop because the road was blocked, got out of their vehicles and helped, McMahan said. One person was driving a pickup truck. He swung around, attached a chain to his tow hitch and pulled one large section of the limb to the side of the road, where McMahan cut it up and with help was able to roll it into the ditch, clearing the roadway.

Hours later, a second, larger section came down, tearing off the side of the tree trunk and sending more branches flying across the road.

“It’s too bad it didn’t hit my truck,” said neighbor Arthur Gallant. His white Chevy pickup, on a rebuilt motor and transmission, was just a foot beyond the farthest branches.

“I wouldn’t have cried over that truck,” he said.

Gallant said he was surprised the tree picked a warm, windless day to fall apart, since it had already survived the heavy snows and high winds of this past winter. All the same, he knew it was an old tree, and “I’ve been eyeing it because I was afraid it would take the wires down.”

But when it fell, the limbs just rattled the wires and left them standing.

The tree was taken down later in the afternoon by Bartlett Tree Experts of Scarborough.

Tim Lindsay, a consulting arborist with the company, said the tree "failed" because of "a decay organism that was working very quickly within the tree."

He said fungi were rotting the tree from the inside out, which caused some limbs to appear normal from the outside, despite being discolored on the inside and far lighter than they should be, almost "like balsa wood."

The only way to discover the damage before a limb falls is to drill into the tree and inspect the wood that is removed.

The fungi "work very fast in degrading the wood in the fall of the year and the spring," Lindsay said.

That seasonal spurt, plus the tree's emergence from winter dormancy, led to the collapse. "The buds were swollen and they were ready to pop," Lindsay said. The weight of water now flowing up from the roots into the limbs of the tree overloaded the degraded wood, tearing the tree apart.

Lindsay said he and Public Works Director Mike Shaw will be on the lookout around town for other large oak trees that may be in similar straits and need to be tested.

Faye Holmes, who owns the house lot on which the tree sits, said she hoped other oaks on her property would be allowed to stand. The tree that fell Tuesday has “been in my father’s family for over 100 years,” she said, as part of what used to be Emerson Farm.

She was sad the broken tree had to come down. “The place won’t be the same without it.”

Parents, schools have role in keeping kids healthy

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (April 14, 2005): Today’s children are so unhealthy, they may not live as long as their grandparents have.

Dr. Steven Kirsch, a family-practice doctor in Scarborough, gave that message to a group of parents at a presentation on youth obesity and wellness sponsored by the Wentworth PTA last week.

Kirsch and Dr. Lisa Letourneau, another Scarborough doctor involved in the Maine Youth Overweight Collaborative and a founder of the Scarborough Wellness Initiative, told parents how the culture has changed to encourage obesity in children and adults, and gave some ideas on how to change personal habits to stay healthy.

“It’s not only for our youth but for us and older adults as well,” Kirsch said. He showed data of adult obesity by state, and a picture of a Time Magazine cover from 1995, with the headline “The Girth of a Nation,” saying Americans have been growing more and more overweight every year.

“It’s not easy modifying your diet,” he said, urging people to eat based on their level of activity. “Your energy in, if it exceeds your energy out, you’ll end up gaining weight,” he said.

On the “energy in” subject, he talked about what he called “portion distortion,” a phenomenon over the past 20 years in which foods have increased in size and calories. For example, a “regular” size bagel has doubled in size and calories in the past 20 years, and a “small” portion of French fries has nearly tripled in size and calories, Kirsch said.

He said many people know they should be having so many servings of different types of foods, but few know what a serving really is.

“The serving size of a piece of meat should be about the size of a deck of cards,” he said. A serving of vegetables or fruit is about the size of a baseball, and “if you want a serving of sweets,” that should be the size of a domino.

Kirsch noted that kids today have less “energy out,” playing video games or watching TV more than young people did in the past.

“As a kid, all we used to do is play baseball as a group in the neighborhood, and we were riding our bikes everywhere,” Kirsch said.

Letourneau said all is not lost, and encouraged the parents in the room to work to improve their health and their children’s.

“It’s everything. It’s not just one thing,” she said. “Until we make it easier to make good choices (rather) than bad choices … we’re going to be fighting an uphill battle” to get people to change their personal behavior about eating and exercise.

She asked parents to think about what they do that might unconsciously encourage their kids to eat unhealthy foods. For example, she said, many parents bring sweets for kids to eat after sports competitions.

“If we’re at a sporting event, why bring it?” she asked, noting that many athletic areas have advertising for sodas, candies or other foods, including on scoreboards.

She said the snack bar by the main high school fields often has unhealthy foods, and suggested it stock apples and other better snacks.

“I guarantee it. If that’s all the kids have to choose from, they will buy it,” she said.

Letourneau also lamented the economics of many school lunch programs, including Scarborough’s, which must be financially self-supporting. That effectively forces them to sell sodas and sugary foods to make a profit to support sales of healthier foods.

Letourneau said there are bright spots. She has heard of students complaining about long lines at the salad bar at Scarborough Middle School, forced them to wait or to choose other foods to get to class on time.

And several fifth-grade classrooms are tracking their exercise through a program called “Maine in Motion,” in which each student uses a pedometer to measure how many steps they walk each day.

“Kids who are more active in school actually learn more,” Letourneau said. Many young children play sports in town, but once they get to the middle school and have to try out for teams, very few continue athletics, she said.

Letourneau said the solutions to weight problems start at home. “When an issue is identified with a child, it’s not about the child; it’s about the family,” she said. “The whole family has to be involved in choosing a healthy lifestyle.”

Parents can encourage their kids to follow what Letourneau called a 5-2-1-0 program, in which kids eat five fruits or vegetables a day, watch no more than two hours of TV or video games, do one hour of physical activity and drink zero sodas. “Juices can be just as bad…Water water water is good,” she said.

To change the “culture of overeating,” she urged parents to take the lead. “We are absolutely role models for our kids.”