South Portland News Briefs

WINTER FESTIVAL

It may not be a white Christmas this year, but South Portland residents are guaranteed a wintry blanket come the New Year. That’s because the Rotary Club of South Portland-Cape Elizabeth has purchases snow-making equipment to make certain the city’s first Winter Festival, scheduled for Feb. 3-4 in Mill Creek Park, goes off whatever the Heat Miser may do.

Event Chairman Daniel Mooers said Saco-Biddeford Savings Institution and Hannaford Supermarkets each came forward with $1,500 “blizzard” sponsorships to buy snowmaking equipment..

The all-ages festival will begin on Friday, Feb. 3, with a festival of lights at the corner of Ocean Street and Broadway and conclude the following evening with a family skating party. In between, there will be a snowman-making contest, a scavenger hunt, snowshoe relay races, human “sled-dog” races, ice skating exhibitions, a family skating party, a shoot-the-puck on a goalie competition, puck tosses for cash, snow sculpturing, horse-drawn wagon rides and pony rides, along with live and recorded music in the park gazebo, historical displays of Mill Creek and concession stands for hot drinks and food. A 24-foot-long “warming hut” will be delivered to the park in late January for use during the festival.

POOL PROBLEMS

South Portland City Manager Jim Gailey has made a $45,565 “emergency appropriation” from the city’s undesignated surplus account to effect addition repairs to the municipal pool at the Community Center.

The pool has been closed for the last month, pending repairs to an air-handling unit in a second-floor mechanical room at the center. Installed in 1997, the unit is designed to dehumidify, ventilate and heat the pool area, but “has been failing for the past six months,” according to Gailey.

The pool is expected to reopen by Jan. 5.

HIGH SCHOOL HEAT

On Dec. 19, Superintendent Suzanne Godin asked the City Council for the approval of a contract with Unitil to install a 6-inch natural gas line at the soon-to-be renovated South Portland High School by June 2013, and provide service for five years. Estimates for the installation of the line, from Evan Street and along Nelson Street, to where the gas meter will be, behind Beal Gym, are at $450,000. Unitil says its cost will be $646,834. However, because it expects to earn $392,367 in new revenue during the life of the contract (the high school currently uses oil heat), it has offered to do the work for $254,467.

However, Councilor Gerard Jalbert suggested that if Unitil would commit to a 10-year contract, its return on investment would, theoretically reduce the city’s cost to zero.

“I don’t think you can get this to zero,” Godin said. Five-year contracts have been the “typical” terms when converting other schools to natural gas, she added.

Councilor Alan Livingston agreed with Jalbert, but a motion to table the question failed. “With all due respect, I think the homework’s already been done on this,” said Councilor Tom Coward. “This is already coming in at half what the projected cost was.”