On Monday night, the City Council gave the Fraternal Order of the Eagles just over a month to fix noise problems at their Saco Street function hall.
The council voted to grant the Eagles a temporary permit that allows the club to hold events at the hall until Oct. 2, with the expectation that the Eagles would take steps to reduce the noise coming from the club.
While the council took the proper action, it was discouraging to learn the city had been receiving complaints from neighbors about noise coming to the club since May, and never told the Eagles about the complaints.
Club manager Mike Verostick said he only recently heard there was a problem after Westbrook Housing Authority Executive Director John Gallagher told him about complaints from residents of a housing authority project behind the club.
The city certainly dropped the ball here. If staff had been receiving complaints since the spring, that was the time to tell the Eagles there was a problem, not when it was time to discuss the renewal of the club’s permit.
The club has since inspected the building and has discovered an unused ventilation system that is likely allowing noise to escape the building, and has promised to hire a contractor to fix the system within the next month.
Thankfully, the council saw fit to grant the Eagles a temporary license to allow it to operate while the problem is being fixed. It wouldn’t have been fair to shut the Eagles down after the city had failed to tell the club it had been receiving complaints since May.
And shutting the club down certainly wouldn’t have been fair to anyone who had booked a function at the club in the coming weeks, leaving them to scramble to change their plans because of something they had no control over.
Hopefully, come October, the noise problems will be fixed and the Eagles Club and its Saco Street neighbors can live quietly together.
‘Four years was no good’
This week, Westbrook got the welcome news that workers at Sappi finally have a new contract, averting a potentially devastating strike.
On Tuesday, Sappi Fine Paper and the United Steelworkers Union Local 1069 agreed to a two-year contract, the first new contract for mill workers since the previous one expired four years ago.
While the details of the contract have not been released, Sappi and the union said they were happy with the final agreement.
While he was pleased with the result, Local 1069 President Brian Wade also expressed regret at the length of time it took to hammer out a new deal.
“It passed with a good majority, and now we’re ready to move on,” said Wade. “I don’t think (the protracted negotiations) worked out for anybody. Four years was no good.”
Wade’s right, when workers go without a contract for so long, it erodes their morale, which is also a detriment to the company.
The stalled labor negotiations have caused some tensions at the mill recently. In June, the union voted to authorize a strike after rejecting what Sappi called its final contract offer. In response, the mill hired extra security, which was seen as an intimidation tactic by some workers, a charge the company denied.
Now that there is a new contract in place, both the union and the mill now have the breathing room to try and work out a longer deal both sides can live with.
Two years is not a long time, especially when the last contract took twice that long to negotiate. Both sides should learn from the past and get back to the bargaining table sooner rather than later.
Because a delay in negotiations now will lead to more bad feelings and will certainly cost the workers and the mill much more down the road.
-Mike Higgins, assistant editor
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