March 28,1984
Maine Metal Finishing must clean its Gorham metal plating plant and clean and seal the waste lagoons there when it closes. It will be responsible for providing perpetual are for the sealed lagoons, no matter who owns the property. If it sells the site it must tell any buyer what the land was used for. Maine Metal is moving from its County Road, Gorham, location to a new plant being built in the Colonel Westbrook Executive Park. The stipulations are part of the settlement of a 1981 lawsuit brought against Maine Metal Finishing by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, reached in mid-February. Maine Metal was accused of illegally discharging pollutants such as cyanides, cadmium, chromium,
nickel, silver and zinc that seeped through the ground and into the Stroudwater River. The company was also fined $35,000, to be divided equally between the EPA and Maine Department of Environmental Protection, which joined the lawsuit.
Mayor Spiller’s Cost-Management Review Commission may recommend one dispatcher for both fire and police, Alderman Henry Saunders said Monday. If so, he’ll fight it and the proposal still would have to get past the City Council, Fire Chief James Rulman replied. Rulman said police had 15 auto accidents in a snowstorm March 13 while firemen were at a house fire on Jefferson Street, and that a combined dispatcher would have lost the fire chief’s call for a second or third alarm, in police traffic, if he had made one.
Westbrook police notes: A man called a Central Street woman at
9:45 a.m. and told her that her daughter had been attacked on the way to school. It was a lie. A 24-year-old man was chased on the New Gorham Road and arrested in Gorham as a habitual offender and for other traffic charges. The Fire Department will be burning down the house at 601 County Road. Mr. and Mrs. Donald E. Esty, parents of the City Council president, have sold the property and the new headquarters of Maine Lubrication Services is to be built there. A Cumberland woman was walking from Bradlees to her car, which was parked behind a big pile of snow, at 7:25 p.m. when a man grabbed her and threw her
up against a truck. She screamed, and he ran. The Rescue Unit took a man, 32, to the Maine Medical Center at 9:50 p.m. for what appeared to be an overdose.
March 30, 1994
Unrecorded auto registration fees are said to be the problem with
the Westbrook City Hall money. Official city sources still were not ready this week to explain the problem that came to public attention Wednesday, but the unconfirmed rumor is that someone has been taking the excise taxes (they vary with the value of the car) and registration fees (uniformly $22), issuing the proper receipts to vehicle owners, but tearing up the city’s records and pocketing the money. The fact that money is missing is said to have come to light when someone recognized that stickers – the tabs that go into the corner of the license plate – had disappeared without a record of an equivalent number of registrations. In short, the city had fewer stickers than it
should have had. Who did it, over how long a period of time, and how much money was taken? Stay tuned.
Gorham Town Planner Jay Grande is headed to Gloucester, Mass., for a job as city planner, he announced yesterday. His last day in Gorham will be April 29. “This job will be a new planning experience,” Grande told Town Manager David Cole. “It’s a good step for me professionally,” he said. “I’m leaving on a high note,” he said, “but it was a hard decision. I feel as though I have established a real kinship with the town and its citizens.”
Patty’s Place, 910 Main St., Westbrook, is offering Easter
Sunday dinner of baked ham, potato, vegetable, and dessert for $3.50.
Gorham High School was recognized by a panel of educators in
Redbook Magazine’s annual “America’s Best Schools Project.”
The high school was one of seven schools singled out nationwide for classroom innovation. The judges selected the schools for “successfully implementing such creative curriculum ideas as flexible scheduling, interdisciplinary courses and integration of the latest technology into the classroom,” according to the latest copy of Redbook.
Gorham state Rep. Anne M. Larrivee, Gray Road, has decided not to seek a fourth term as Gorham’s voice in the Legislature. “The biggest reason I’m not running is a financial one,” Larrivee
said. A state representative earns $10,500 for the first year of a two-year term, $7,125 the second. Larrivee has had jobs between sessions, most recently at York County Shelters and L.L. Bean, but she feels it is time for her to get a full-time position.
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