Oct. 26, 1983
Gorham School Committee member David Morrill called for $500 more a year base pay for teachers this year and next than is called for in a contract ratified Thursday, and decried that the school committee did not act as “advocates for the teachers” in the contract negotiations. Morrill was the lone vote against the contract. His opposition to the contract sparked a post-meeting argument with Jean Ryan, committee chairwoman, who said, “I haven’t been going to meetings on this contract for over a year to go in there and blow it for your pet projects.” Morrill responded, “You represent the management standpoint.” Ryan replied, “We just think entirely differently. I’m one of the old mothers of the town. You don’t represent me, and I do represent someone . . . What’s got to stop is your charges against me and the rest of the committee.” Morrill then said that the teachers had not been fighting over money, but over three things that got held up by committee’s refusal to sign a contract earlier in the year. “Now they’re shot for this year although the money is still there” to fund them, he said. He did not say what three things he meant.
Former Westbrook Mayor Elmer Currier has undergone surgery for the removal of the left leg above the knee. The surgery was made necessary by development of blood clots in the leg that couldn’t be corrected by other treatment, his daughter,
Alderman Beverly Morin, reported. Currie lives with Mrs. Morin at 112 Mechanic St., Westbrook. He will be in the Maine Medical Center for a couple of more weeks. Now 87
years old, he was Westbrook’s mayor in 1956-57 and 1958-9.
Westbrook police notes: Evonne Anderson, 74, was taken to Mercy Hospital after a two-car crash at Main and Mason streets. Someone was throwing eggs at cars from the Brown Street overpass. A 20-year-old Sebago man was arrested at 1:15 a.m. on a motorcycle after a police chase, and was charged as a habitual offender. He was taken to the Cumberland County Jail, and his motorcycle was taken to Gammon’s Garage, Gorham.
Patrolman Merrill spotted a suspicious 19-year-old man behind Shop ‘N Save at 4:15 a.m. and arrested him for theft.
Gorham’s field hockey team, defending Class B state champions,
pulled through early tourney play last week, eliminating Rumford 1-0 and Lake Region 3-0.
Oct. 27, 1993
“People who want to make a campaign issue of bickering and arguing ought to recognize that if it hadn’t happened for that, their taxes would have gone up,” Westbrook’s Ward 3 Alderman Don Richards said Monday. Richards, the City Council’s Finance Committee chairman, is an independent candidate for a third two-year term. “School spending would still be out of control,” he said. “People in The Hamlet would still have no Rent Justification Board. The city would still be buying insurance by the year instead of saving money by buying it quarterly. An there’s more,” Richards said. “I defend the arguing. If it weren’t for that it would be just business as usual in the Westbrook City Council.”
The Westbrook High School football team has qualified for the
Western Maine Class A playoffs for the first time in more than10 years, Athletic Director Peter Curran said. That’s the good news.
Unfortunately, the 3-5 Blazes will be going into the playoffs at 1:30 Saturday against the No. 1 ranked and undefeated Biddeford Tigers on their home field. Westbrook defeated Marshwood, Deering and Sanford to qualify for the playoffs. Curran said Biddeford’s size, depth and momentum from an 8-0 season will be difficult to overcome.
Four years of $1.5 million school budget increases were used by
other school spending, not the construction cost of expanding
Westbrook High School, Don Richards, the Westbrook City Council’s Finance Committee chairman, said Monday. He charged that Superintendent Edward Connolly misled the Finance Committee by blaming school budget increases on the high school expansion, which is being paid with local tax dollars without state subsidy. Richards said that in the years 1988 through 1991, when the school budget was going up 9.6 percent a year, payments on bonded debt were $500,000 a year lower than they have been since then. The debt payment now is about $800.000, he said.
Rob Smith, Republican candidate for Westbrook mayor, announced
that he enlisted an 11-member bi-partisan advisory committee that will work with him as mayor, meeting probably monthly. The members are Dick Bouthillette, Lyle Cramer, Dick Goan, Elmer
Currier, Vaun Born, Beverly Morin, Phil Spiller, Joe Pizzo, Jim Born,
Norman Conley and Marion Douglas. Currier and Spiller are former mayors and Cramer, Morin and Conley are former aldermen. Smith said Bouthilette and maybe Douglas are
independents; Goan and Pizzo are Democrats; and the others are Republicans.
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