Dec. 7, 1983

Westbrook Mayor-elect Philip D. Spiller has asked city engineer Edward Reidman and Code Enforcement Officer Thomas Wakefield to look for other jobs, he confirmed Monday. He said he also has had a talk with Public Works Director Kenneth Eastman, but will not ask him to leave. In mid-November, after his easy victory in the Nov. 8 election, Spiller said there might be changes in some of the city’s department heads, and that he would give advance warning to anyone he intended not to reappoint. Monday, he said he now has taken what action he intends to take: “Those were the problem areas.” Engineering and Public Works are city departments which Spiller himself has headed in the past. Reidman has been the city engineer since September 1973. He was appointed by Mayor Donald Brydon and has kept the office throughout the 10-year administration of Mayor William O’Gara. Wakefield is the third person to serve as code enforcement officer under O’Gara, and has held the job since January 1981.

Officers of the Gorham Republican Town Committee agreed Monday night to withdraw the name of Lester Hall as their nominee for the Board of Registration of Voters. A new nominee will be sought “in due time.” The action followed a 17-6 vote of the general membership to advise the officers to find someone else. The Town Council has refused to appoint Hall but the Town Committee’s leaders had refused to withdraw his name.

With Democrats in control, Donald E. Esty Jr., Ward 2, will be

elected unanimously as president of the next Westbrook City Council, it’s reported. James Foley is his likely choice as chairman of the council’s key committee, the Finance Committee. Foley has been offered Republican support if he wanted the council president seat, but chose to support Esty instead.

The Planning Board has given its approval to a site plan for

Remstar International’s new plant on Eisenhower Drive, Westbrook. Its building will be 10,000 square feet, with a possible future addition of about 40,000 square feet. Remstar makes storage systems for offices and industry that are up to 21 feet high and provide computer-controlled automated delivery from storage with constant inventory reports. Its machines are manufactured in Germany but will be assembled for the U.S. market in Westbrook.

Dec. 8, 1993

Two mothers who have questions about Prides Corner School sleepovers have been in a months-long dispute with Superintendent Edward Connolly and the Westbrook School Committee that has surfaced only in recent weeks. They are Carol J. Morse, 54 Waltham St., and Donna Gordon, 70 Woodland Road. The committee largely stonewalled their questions in its meetings Oct. 27 and Nov. 10. Chairman Arnold Gaudet said repeatedly Oct. 27 that the committee had answered them and didn’t want to continue discussing the matter. The mothers said Connolly is telling the School Committee what to do about their complaints. “Our superintendent seems to be above reproach,” Mrs. Morse said in a statement she read to the School Committee Oct. 27. “Absolutely no code of ethics or standards of professional conduct of our superintendent exists in the Westbrook School Department.” The mothers said they were intimidated, and were told to talk to the school lawyer in what they interpret as a move to scare them away.

Westbrook police notes: On East Valentine Street at 7:45 a.m., a person came back and spat in a woman’s face. Mrs. Cote’s house at 98 Puritan Drive was egged in the night. A Mechanic Street man said his landlady assaulted him. Asked by the Sheriff’s Department to give someone a ride from the Windham line to Riverside Street, a patrolman issued a summons to the person for not using the sidewalk on Route 302. A 34-year-old man was arrested on North Street at 7 a.m. for assaulting a woman. He was taken to the county jail. In the arrest, Patrolman Steve Bailey’s wrist and elbows were hurt. A cat fell behind a loading dock at 72 Bridge St. and couldn’t

get out. Patrolman 10 got it out and took it to the Animal Refuge League. Kids jumped the fence at the Warren Pool and were throwing around shingles from the pump house roof. At 412 Brown St. at 11:30 p.m., someone in a red Chevy truck was laying rubber, and then fighting. Christopher O’Shea got a broken jaw in the fight. He was taken to jail for a probation violation.

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