Ahlquist out
Scarborough Town Council chairman, Ronald Ahlquist, who turned in his papers to run for re-election with just 45 seconds to spare before the deadline, has asked that his name be taken off the November ballot.
“The reality is, it’s personal stuff,” he said, following the Sept. 18 Council meeting. “I’m pretty proud of my record and it’s time to do other things. I’ve done this for over 10 years and I’ve enjoyed it, but it’s somebody else’s turn, I think.” This year’s Town Council race will now feature four candidates running for two seats. They include incumbent Judy Roy, former councilor Carol Rancourt, real estate agent Jean-Marie Caterina and retired attorney Bill Donovan. All are registered Democrats and it remains to be seen which will appear at an Oct. 3 event at Scarborough Middle School billed by the Scarborough Democratic Town Committee as “a conversation with the Democratic candidates for municipal office.” Town Council and school board races have historically been non-partisan affairs in Scarborough, as they are in most Maine municipalities.
Bank home base
A tenant has been named for the 40,000-square-foot office building to be built by Risbara Family Development on Foley Farm Road, just off Route 1 between the Hannaford supermarket and the Little Dolphin Marketplace, home to The Egg & I restaurant. According to Nancy St. Clair of Cumberland-based St. Clair Associates, which will present the project for final site plan review at the Oct. 7 Planning Board meeting, the new building will become home base to Town and Country Federal Credit Union and will house its operations center, as well as its executive and administrative offices. The first 20,000-square-foot section of the building will house between 40 and 60 credit union employees, said St. Clair.
Fire open house
To kick off Fire Prevention Week, the Pleasant Hill Hose Company will conduct an open house of the fire station at 207 Pleasant Hill Road from 8-11 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 6. Coffee and donuts will be provided, and firefighters and EMTs will be on hand to give tours, conduct blood pressure checks and offer fire safety education. According to Fire Chief Mike Thurlow, company members also will schedule in-home fire safety inspections and installation of free smoke and carbon monoxide detectors for area residents who would like them.
Fire stats
Scarborough Fire Chief Mike Thurlow recently submitted his annual report on emergency call statistics for the fiscal year that ended June 30. The department answered 3,726 calls for the year, an average of 10.2 per day, counting both fire and rescue calls. “Calls for service were down 3.8 percent this year, but that is largely attributable to storms we dealt with in FY12, including Hurricane Irene,” said Thurlow. While activity at the Scarborough Fire Department was down slightly from the 3,874 calls in 2012, it is up 30 percent from the 2,868 calls answered in 2003 and up 114 percent from the 1,738 calls received in 1993. The vast majority of last year’s calls – 2,116, or 57 percent – were for medical issues. The department also responded to 136 car accidents, 72 instances of downed power lines, 22 brush fires, 18 car fires and 13 structure fires.
New homes
At its Oct. 7 meeting, the Scarborough Planning Board will review plans for a 23-lot residential subdivision on Sawyer Road, across from the Oak Dale condominiums. The project, to be built by Star Homes Inc. of Cape Elizabeth, sits on 13.5 acres crossing an unnamed stream and includes seven acres of wetlands that will be kept in a natural state. According to project manager William Thompson of Gorham-based BH2M Engineers, the Oct. 7 presentation is “a pre-application meeting, to present this concept and to receive comments from the Planning Board.”
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