September 1982
A meeting of the Westbrook School Committee wasn’t the most comfortable for Superintendent Carl Knowlton and two top aides. They were criticized for combining some first- and second-grade classes without consulting the full school committee, and for running deficits in some major accounts, then covering them with transfers, without school committee approval. The meeting also saw Knowlton in a last-moment reversal on his position on accepting the Spurwink School for emotionally disturbed students as a tenant in Forest Street School. He supported this in a written report prepared for the meeting, but killed it in a surprise move in the meeting.
Despite a state ruling that the S.D. Warren mill’s chip storage
building is exempt from taxation, Westbrook is going ahead
to tax it $82,000. The city expects the Scott Paper Co. to appeal. Maine’s Board of Environmental Protection ruled that the building keeps wood particles out of the environment and is exempt as an investment in environmental protection. Westbrook City Assessor Mark Caldwell sees it differently and has it on the city’s tax rolls at a value of $2,921,320. A tax bill on it for $41,000 (half a year) is due in Warren’s mail Saturday.
A Gorham police officer has been patrolling the village square area on foot for the past two or three weeks, David Chick, the assistant manager of 7-Eleven in Gorham told the American Journal last week. He said that before that, a lot of kids were hanging out in the square throwing bottles and litter and vandalizing property. “The past couple of weeks have been a lot better,” he added.
The Westbrook City Council’s finance Committee decided not to buy any of the Spring Street land offered them by Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Chuluda. In recent years Mayor William O’Gara and his staff have been urging the city to extend Larrabee Road to Eisenhower Drive across the Chuludas’ land. Complaining that this talk scares buyers and makes it impossible to sell the land, the Chuludas recently offered five acres to the city for $35,000. The city has the power to seize land for highway purposes upon payment of damages. O’Gara has warned the council that if the Chuludas, or anyone they sell to, should put up buildings or otherwise develop the land, the cost of taking it for a right of way will go up.
The Westbrook School Committee voted to spend $6,000 to be used for a roof at the high school locker room, as recommended by Superintendent Carl Knowlton. Also, $38,937 will be used with a budgeted $20,000 to buy two school buses. John Skvorak, Ellen Burrill and Fred Wescott were opposed.
Sept.1992
Seven area women from the Christian Outreach Association left July 28 for a 15-day trip to Nepal to take medical supplies and equipment valued at around $8,000 for four hospitals in the area. They were fortunate that the Gorham Village Travel Agency had changed their flight plans, booking them through Pakistan, or they would have been on the Thai Airlines plane that crashed on landing at Nepal. That crash, the day after the Gorham group arrived, killed everyone on board.
The proposed expansion of Gorham High School has won unanimous votes of support from both the school committee and the town council, School Superintendent Timothy McCormack said. “They recognize, as private citizens should, I think, that this is a wonderful opportunity for the citizens to get a quality educational facility that will hold this community in good stead for the next 30 years, and at a bargain price,” McCormack said.
Too many broken springs, shocks and flat tires. Too many pot holes, and too many damage claims. Westbrook is going to tear up a troublesome part of Cumberland Street and rebuild it. To do so, it will close Cumberland Street between Brown Street and Park Road during working hours for nearly three weeks.
Alfred E. Porell of Westbrook told aldermen last week that Westbrook should begin collecting an estimated $60,000 a year more in taxes on Mill Brook Estates, the senior citizen housing development on East Bridge Street. The council ignored his suggestion, however, voting to surrender all but a tiny fraction of the city’s eventual claim to ownership of the project, which was developed by the Westbrook Housing Authority.
With the last day for payment of Westbrook’s latest property
tax bills gone by, Finance Director Susan Rossignol said the payment pace was “pretty normal.” About $4 million came in.
Gorham High School’s current 30-year-old steam boiler won’t provide adequate heat for the additions planned for the school, and isn’t efficient, said Gorham Superintendent Tim McCormack, and “the state will only kick in to the cost of a separate new heating system for added space in a school if the current system isn’t adequate.” The proposed new boiler would cost $278,000 above what the state will subsidize.
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