Despite the many new and often expensive homes going up all over Pine Point in Scarborough, especially along the beach, economic figures gathered from the 2000 Census indicate that Pine Point is an economically distressed area .

That means it could qualify for federal aid in the form of Community Development Block Grants or affordable housing dollars.

According to Caroline Allam, the community and economic planner for the Greater Portland Council of Governments, the distressed area includes Pine Point, what’s commonly known as Blue Point and East Grand Avenue as it goes into Old Orchard Beach. In that area, essentially bordered by the Scarborough River and Pine Point Road as it heads out to the beach, the median household income of $25,461 is well below the $44,707 median household income for the Portland Metropolitan Area.

Allam said for an area to qualify as economically distressed, the median household income has to be at or below 80 percent of the metropolitan area’s median household income.

Pine Point residents reached by the Current expressed surprise that Pine Point would be considered economically distressed.

Several pointed out that million dollar homes are going up all over that part of town.

However, the economic designation is not based on property values, but on income.

Robert Merrill of Seavey Landing Road said, “Everybody around me seems to be pretty well off. I’m looking at a $1 million home going up on the next street,” Merrill said.

Some Scarborough town councilors are beginning to question whether they should spend between $9 and $10 million now to prepare the Haigis Parkway for commercial development or wait until the economy looks a little brighter.

The question came up during a debate about whether to spend an additional $1 million to put all the utilities along the parkway underground.

Last year, when University of Southern Maine Professor Charles Colgan gave his annual forecast of the economy to state leaders, he predicted a positive turnaround leading to a quick end of the recession in 2002.

“I blew last year’s forecast, and now here I am giving another one,” said Colgan, drawing a laugh from state lawmakers and local officials gathered at USM’s Portland campus to see his presentation. “This time, my expectations are much more modest.”

The fact that Jarek Ethan Meade decided to become the first baby of the new year in the area provides just one more reason for his South Portland parents Theresa and Todd to believe “everything happens for a reason.”

Theresa, a clerk in Westbrook’s Finance Department, and Todd have been searching for a lot of reasons as they’ve gone through a first-time pregnancy that ended with an early and very complicated delivery in the early hours of 2003.

It appears Maine voters will decide in November whether to allow the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot nations to build a $600 million casino somewhere in the state – likely Sanford – and the campaigning from both sides of the debate is already heated.

Erin Lehane, the Portland-based spokesperson for the nations’ referendum petition drive, said Monday that her group has gathered more than 60,000 signatures calling for a statewide vote in November.

She said 25,000 of these signatures have been certified, and she plans to submit the petition to the Secretary of State’s office well in advance of the Jan. 23 deadline, after the remaining signatures are certified at the local level. Just over 52,000 signatures are required this year.

Cape Elizabeth Animal Control Officer Bob Leeman, a resident of Windham, will hang up his leash Jan. 10.

It will be his second retirement. The first was in 1988, after 27 years with the Portland Fire Department. Leeman was born in Portland and grew up in South Portland, the son of a town firefighter. He left high school to join the Marine Corps but was discharged shortly after entering boot camp, for medical reasons. “I fought it all the way,” Leeman said.

Cape officials and residents are again addressing the issue of traffic at the high school entrance, but this time are assembling a team of people to study the problem and recommend a solution.

In some ways, it’s the same old story. Each morning for years, from 7:25 to 7:40 a.m., and each afternoon, from 1:55 to 2:10 p.m., traffic backs up around the intersection leading to Cape Elizabeth High School.

“It’s an old problem,” said Beth Currier, vice president of the High School Parents Association. The group is drafting a letter to Police Chief Neil Williams asking for his department’s help with the problem.

Second-graders in Cape Elizabeth are getting photographed far more often now. Teacher Sarah Lewis got a grant from the Cape Elizabeth Education Foundation to buy a Nikon digital camera, and it’s getting a lot of use.

So far, the project is a “work in progress,” Lewis said, with various teachers trying out ways they can use the camera in their classes.

Lewis has used a camera before, documenting a project she did while on sabbatical last year taking graduate classes. She needs a refresher on how to put text together with photos for a words-and-pictures slide show, but so far has put together several slide shows displaying students in various stages of classroom activities.

Alison Coulter of Cape Elizabeth is one of 7,886 elementary and secondary school teachers nationwide who achieved National Board Certification in 2002, according to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in Arlington, Va.

Coulter teaches Spanish at CEHS and has been a teacher in Maine for 16 years. She holds a bachelor’s degree in French linguistics, a master’s degree in instructional leadership and a certificate of advanced study in literacy and English as a second language.

One of Cape’s newer businesses has recently occupied one of Cape’s newest and best-known buildings. Edward Jones Investments now has an office at 343 Ocean House Road, a building that was once the old Pond Cove Millworks near Cape High School and adjacent to the Pond Cove IGA. It has been renovated and now houses Cape Elizabeth’s Community Services offices and a couple of businesses. Bradley S. Smith heads the Cape Edward Jones office as its investment representative.

It was cold at Kettle Cove when Cape Elizabeth residents jumped into the water to raise money for Project Graduation in this file photo from Jan. 9, 2003.    
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