The roof at the Westbrook Community Center is proving to be a pesky problem for construction crews. Replacing the 35-year-old roof at the former Wescott Junior High was initially expected to be a $750,000 endeavor. But City Administrator Jerre Bryant said recently the project would cost more and run longer than hoped due to a leaky skylight that is proving more problematic than originally thought. There is no estimate of cost overruns yet.
Jeff Mao, the state’s learning technology policy director, said a warranty and a buffer pool cover the state-provided laptops. The buffer pool provides a limited number of replacements per district for certain types of damage. "It's not an endless well of computers," Mao said.
[Artist Aaron] Stephan's project required nine months of hard labor. He grew a tree in the atrium of the Westbrook Middle School. It's a gorgeous, leafless, canopied representation of a tree from an old-growth forest. Stephan used lumber reclaimed from the bowels of Moosehead Lake to make his tree, which measures about 25 feet high and 16 feet wide, branch to branch.
Is the fact that a roller with the name Morgan bowled in the candlepin national championships the year I was born mere coincidence?
Well, if you asked those who saw me bowl an average of 71 yesterday at the first night of the Paper City Junto (PCJ) candlepin bowling league, the answer would probably be a resounding, Yes!
Anyway, the league's still accepting two teams of 3 players to join our current crop of four, 3-player teams through February 10. See the PCJ Web site for more details and feel free to e-mail me at owner@papercityjunto.org.
All the snow in recent weeks should be a dream come true for local snowmobilers. Instead, they find themselves in a nightmarish battle with the state over the preservation of their trail running from Westbrook to Windham.
But does it even matter what party local officials are affiliated with? Now that the charter commission is reviewing all aspects of city government, said [Republican School Board Chairman Ed] Symbol, why not ask them to look closely at the issue? "I don’t think party matters anymore," Symbol said Tuesday. "The more I was on the City Council and the school board, the more I realized it didn’t matter and I got labeled a lot."
A new restaurant has opened in a spot that has been empty for two years. Doughboy’s Café on Bridge Street, across from the Dana Warp Mill, was opened Jan. 4 by Tina Dougherty and her husband Chris. They are Westbrook residents who moved their business from Portland’s Ocean Avenue, where it was known as the Back Cove Deli for a decade, she said.
[F]or Olympia Sports, a 185-store chain based in Westbrook, [small towns] are keys to success. Olympia, which was founded by Portland resident Edward Manganello 35 years ago, has expanded across New England and grown into a major player in the retail sports industry, thanks in part to a strategy of selling family sports equipment in towns lacking a large retail presence. "We went to smaller, remote markets that have little or no competition. There is quite a need there," Olympia President Dick Coffey said Tuesday in his Westbrook office.
The city of Westbrook has taken the first steps to deal with a potential lawsuit from a local man injured in an encounter with a police department parking enforcement and animal control officer in 2009. According to a notice of claim filed with the city, Daniel Casale, 49, of Mechanic Street, is seeking $1.4 million in damages from an Aug. 12, 2009, incident on West Pleasant Street.
The Westbrook restaurant has been closed this week with plastic over the windows obscuring the transformation going on inside. On Tuesday, a sign hung outside the restaurant proclaiming its new name is "Tranchemontagne's," named for its owners, brothers James and Andre Tranchemontagne. The sign describes it as "BBQ, Cajun and comfort mixed with a fun time," with food, a bar and delivery serving lunch and dinner Tuesdays through Sundays.
Haven's Candies factory store in Westbrook donated $5,085 to the Dream Factory of Maine. The store sold 600 tickets for people to make hand-rolled candy canes for the holidays. The Dream Factory also raffled off several items donated by local merchants during the event.
The students all have their own struggles to
overcome, but, [Principal Marc] Gousse said, ensuring they persevere and earn diplomas is the
common goal. Helping the kids through freshman year is the first step. "There’s
a subset of kids that have a series of challenges where they don’t have services
identified. Those are the kids that potentially can fall through the cracks,"
Gousse said. "Freshman year is probably the most critical year. It really
defines where a kid goes and doesn’t go."
- John C.L. Morgan
Full disclosure: I teach in the School for Success pilot program described by this article.
"This first year, the foundation is solid. I made the changes I think we needed to make. We have the structure in place. We have the expertise. I think next year is going to be quite a bit different," she said. "We should be able to really just focus on growth and that’s what I hope will happen."
At a press conference Monday, Mayor Colleen Hilton announced the creation of a director of public safety position, which will oversee police, fire and rescue operations and services. Fire Chief Michael Pardue will serve in that role on an interim basis beginning Feb. 4, the date [Police Chief Bill] Baker officially retires from full-time law enforcement.
[Bill] Baker, who became chief in 2007, said he regrets leaving the position but he looks forward to the challenges of a new venture dedicated to keeping police officers safe on the job. "Westbrook has been a fun place to work, so it's a tough situation to walk away from," Baker said Friday. "But police leadership is getting to be a younger man's job and it's getting tougher to keep such a frenetic pace." Baker's last day as chief will be Feb. 4. He will start his new job Feb. 7.
Though it's too soon for the crime statistics for 2010, Chief Baker initially saw a spike in the city's crime rate after he was first hired in August 2007--46.5% in 2008 compared to 36.3%% in 2007--but he presided over a dip in the 2009 figures (40.59%). Moreover, Chief Baker led the WPD to a steadying rise in the number of clearances, or cases resulting in charges. In 2007, the department's clearance rate was 33.2%, but it was 37.6% in 2008 and 46.4% in 2009.
These and other crime statistics can be found here.
Downtown Westbrook’s retail community could soon receive an artistic shot in the arm with the completion of the artisans’ condominiums on Main Street. Located across the street from China Villa and Guidi’s Diner, the condos at 917 Main St. could be complete and ready for tenants later this month or in early February, according to John Gallagher, the executive director of Westbrook Housing, the organization in charge of the project.
Thatcher’s Restaurant and Sports Pub could open in Westbrook later this month. Owner Cynthia Boulay has plans to open the restaurant at the former Mill Side Tavern location at 10-12 Cumberland St.
Lord knows we dwellers of the Paper City could (and do) spend hours and hours picking apart Westbrook and identifying problems that plague this city and brainstorming remedies for its improvement. However, in keeping with the author Jonah Lehrer's wise advice that we limit our New Year's Resolutions to one at a time, I'll suggest only one resolution for now: We need to reduce the energetic self-promotion of our city's warts.
The greatest problem with Westbrook's dreadful public image, from my perspective, is that our police department currently doubles as the city government's de facto PR arm. Hear a story about Westbrook on the evening news, or read a similar story in the paper? Chances are it's crime-related, and Chief Bill Baker is being interviewed. Got a Facebook update about the goings-on in Westbrook from the city's government? I can almost guarantee it was the WPD's latest list of arrests or the department's updates of sex offenders lurking in our neighborhoods.
Now, I completely understand the usefulness of the WPD's Facebook page as a tool for broadening public awareness. Moreover, I appreciate the law enforcement strategy behind announcements of drug busts and captured outlaws. The problem as I see it, though, is a question of balance and quantity.
The scale measuring public awareness on one side and negative public perception on the other has, in my view, tipped toward the latter. Instead of serving as reassurances for the city's citizens and warnings for its dirtbags, I'm concerned the WPD's steady stream of press releases and talking head interviews depresses civic morale and might scare off possible new residents, business or otherwise.
Some might argue that the challenges and controversies we face here in Westbrook would lead to an inevitable negative public perception of the Paper City. Such critics would have a point, though I'd be interested in their answers to the following question: Which city had a higher crime rate in 2009, Westbrook or South Portland? I suspect they--and most residents living in the Greater Westbrook media market--would quickly guess Westbrook, even though they'd be wrong.
Why do I think most people would guess Westbrook as the more crime-ridden of the two? It might have something to do with the fact that nobody knows what South Portland's police chief looks like, and that city's landscape wasn't, say, plastered all over a recent news story about rampant statewide drug addiction.
