Higgins parking changed

Two spots at the beach will be eliminated, and the public lot expanded

SCARBOROUGH — With the summer season seemingly already at hand, based on recent weather at least, the Scarborough Town Council has taken several steps to address longstanding issues at Higgins Beach.

At its April 18 meeting, the council voted 5-1, with only Councilor Karen D’Andrea objecting, to post “No Stopping” signs on Bayview Avenue, to eliminate two parking spaces on the street, to build a sidewalk along its beach side, and to expand the public parking lot on Ocean Avenue.

In addition, a previously approved measure to bump the lot fee to $10 is being handled as part of the annual budget process, as is a $288,000 capital improvement project to build a bathhouse on the parking lot property.

The changes were culled from a list of 12 recommendations compiled separately and cross-commented on by members of the Higgins Beach Association and town traffic consultant Bill Bray.

Although three councilors – Judy Roy, Jessica Holbrook and James Benedict – said they had recently visited the beach and agree with safety concerns cited for the changes, D’Andrea said her visit yielded a different conclusion.

“I don’t see where there’s a problem,” she said. “I don’t see police reports of all kind of horrible accidents.”

D’Andrea also faulted the process behind the vote. Although Higgins Beach Association members met separately with each councilor during the winter to discuss ongoing issues, the solutions were brought forth for a vote with no public hearing.

“We had a process when we were dealing with all of this last year, but now, all of a sudden, it’s like, let’s shove this through without letting the other side have an opportunity to speak to this,” said D’Andrea. “It just stinks. I will not support it.”

“These changes do help residents of the Higgins Beach area,” said Roy, “but one must remember that they reside in this area. They deserve their property to be respected by the people who use it, and they deserve safety, as we all do.”

Of the 13 one-hour parking spots on Bayview – created last spring when the town simultaneously eliminated all side-street parking – the one closest to Morning Street was removed to improve sight lines for people entering the intersection. One of three handicapped spots across from Ashton Street also was removed to create more room for pedestrians using the crosswalk in that area. Previously, the walk went between two of the handicapped spots, making a nervous fit when all spaces were filled.

A sign on Bayview at the end of Pearl Street, near the beach drop-off area, will be added, to read, “No parking, stopping or idling.” The verbiage was amended at Roy’s suggestion from the original suggestion of, “No standing.”

“There was some concern by residents that people might get confused if they were pedestrians,” explained Roy.

Parking lot expansion (pegged at $40,000) and sidewalk construction ($24,750) will come from $102,391 in capital improvement funds left over from $300,000 bonded in 2010 to rebuilt the lot, which the town paid $1.27 million to buy from the Vasile family, using a Land for Maine’s Future grant.

The town received a Tier 1 permit from the Department of Environmental Protections last fall, giving it permission to backfill 4,925 square feet of freshwater wetland on property it owns next to its recently rebuilt lot. Once developed, that land could be used to park an additional 22 cards in the 60-space lot.

However, many at the April meeting noted that this only brings the lot back to the volume it held when the Vasiles owned it, and municipal spacing rules were not at play.

Once built out, the Ocean Avenue lot will surround on three sides the home of Richard and Kelly Valdmanis, which they bought in 2010.

“Our bias is obvious,” said Richard Valdmanis, last year, when the council was first mulling the addition. “But we feel the expansion would affect the community more broadly. There’s the basic question of whether the beach can sustain many more visitors. Adding parking capacity will worsen this problem.”

However, on the other side, former Councilor Sue Foley-Ferguson said the town continues to move in the wrong direction. From the podium at the April 18 meeting, Foley-Ferguson shoved forward with her foot a large box of data gathered on Higgins Beach during her six years on the council, ending in 2002.

“Since 2006, we’ve spent $3 million on Higgins Beach,” she said. “It’s a public beach and yet we are losing parking spots every year. The homeowners have a vested interest, but I have a vested interest, as well, because I’m a taxpayer.

“For the council to give credence and credit and weight to their studies in not doing a service to the rest of the community,” said Foley-Ferguson.

Last fall, the Higgins Beach Association, which says it represents more than 80 percent of the homeowners in its area, presented a 93-page compendium of observations collected during the summer, complete with photos of surfers on city streets in various stages of undress and a DVD of parking violations on Bayview Avenue.

Representatives of the association could be reached for comment by Current deadline Tuesday.

‘I love everything here’ — South Portland hosts citizenship ceremony for 54 new Americans

SOUTH PORTLAND — Moments after being sworn in as an American citizen Friday morning, and still flush with excitement, Cape Elizabeth resident Anna Maria Gonzales did not hesitate when asked where she is from.

“The United States!” she declared proudly, with a broad smile.

Gonzales was born in Guatemala and came to the United States 25 years ago, she says, “in search for a little peace from the violence there.” An international trade consultant, Gonzales said she decided to become a U.S. citizen after a quarter century because this is her home.

“I want to help shape this country into a better place to live by voting, and maybe even running for office,” she said.

Gonzales was one of 54 new citizens sworn in during a naturalization ceremony held April 13 in Southern Maine Community College’s HUB Athletic Center. It is an event that is becoming both more common, as immigrants that have come to Maine through the last two decades seek stability here, and more public, as officials make the process more open to the community at large.

According to Sally Blauvelt, field office director for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, prospective citizens must wait at least five years after obtaining permanent residency status through her office. Some at Friday’s ceremony, like Roland Morse of Alfred, who came to America from Germany as a child, have waited 51 years. Others, like Lidi Jiang of Skowhegan via China, beat the clock under rules that proscribe a three-year wait when permanent residency is obtained via marriage to an American citizen.

“Whether it’s three years or five, the reason is we want them to get enough time to integrate into our country, to understand what our history is, and our culture, and learn the language,” said Blauvelt, prior to administration of the Oath of Allegiance by Magistrate Judge John H. Rich III, of the U.S. District Court.

“Our agency provides quite a lot of information and education materials to help them get there,” said Blauvelt, explaining that adjudicators test each applicant for criteria including mastery of English and a knowledge of U.S. civics and history.

To qualify for citizenship, each applicant must correctly answer six of 10 questions chosen at random from a list of 100.

“Frankly, some of the questions are not that complicated,” said Blauvelt, listing stumpers like, “Who was the first president?” “Where does the president live?” and “Who is one of your senators?”

“But,” she said, “for someone just coming into the country, they do need to study for them, and that helps them integrate.”

However, in addition to the factual questions, there also are a few conceptual queries on the list that could potentially trip up even natural-born citizens. It’s up to the adjudicators, for example, to decide if an applicant has successfully explained why the United States has three branches of government and what each does.

Friday’s naturalization ceremony, said Blauvelt, is part of a new initiative by her office to publicize and promote the process “out in the community, where these people will work and live.”

“We have a very interesting and increasingly diverse community to be in,” said Blauvelt. “We have had a elevated number of these events in Maine of late simply because we’ve had a huge refugee influx.”

Groups of around 50 new citizens are now being sworn twice each month in Maine, said Blauvelt. In fact, data provided by Blauvelt Tuesday shows a near 20 percent increase through the Portland office, from 822 approved non-military naturalizations in 2010 to 985 in 2011. So far this year, there have been 265.

As Blauvelt indicated, their reasons for coming to America are as varied as the counties they come from, but all shared a certain pride in obtaining U.S. citizenship.

“I feel a lot of relief after so long,” said Morse, who said he needed the aid of U.S. Sen. Susan Collins’ office to obtain the necessary documentation, having been brought to the U.S. by stepparents when he was young. Morse lives in shelter and said he now looks forward to finding a job.

“I hope to get back on the working market now that I have my papers,” he said. “This should help. That and my stubbornness.”

Scarborough resident Irina Goltsova, who came from Russia, also is looking for a job.

“I was a nurse in Russia but my education did not count here, so I started from the beginning – new language, new life,” she said, noting that after starting at SMCC, she graduated from University of Southern Maine’s school of nursing in December.

Goltsova arrived in the United States five years ago, following her father, George Kurtz, an inventor with 276 ideas to his credit who obtained a green card 14 years ago in hope of finding better luck with the American patent process, and subsequently obtained citizenship.

“Now I am not the leader in our family,” said Kurtz, expressing pride in his daughter’s naturalization. “Now, there are two leaders.”

“I’m very happy, as well,” said Goltsova. “I’m feeling very proud. I love everything here. I have felt accepted from my first step here, even when I didn’t speak English and just smiled. Now, I am looking forward to putting my talents to use.”

For Muhivin Alas, a Somali now living in Lewiston, having to recertify skills he already has would be the least of his concerns. Having arrived as a refugee from the civil war that has raged in his homeland since 1991, he’s happy just to be alive.

“In 2006 I got an opportunity to leave a refugee camp I had been in from 1992 and come to the United States,” Alas said. “It is a pleasure for me to be here. I am feeling very good and confident to be a part of one of the biggest countries were there is no more war for me.”

“My husband is a chief engineer in the Merchant Marine,” said Jiang. “We were married in 2007 but I had to wait two years to come here for my country to give me a visa.”

Once here, Jiang applied for citizenship, she said, because her husband travels so much.

“On an American visa, you can go anywhere very easy,” she explained. “With a Chinese visa, it is very difficult.”

But becoming an American is about more than freedom of travel, says Jiang, it’s about freedom, period.

“I like the system of government very much here,” she said. “I feel free. It feels very nice. Everyone here is very, very nice to people like me. It makes me feel good to be American now.”

But if new citizens like Alas and Jiang are still acclimating to American, Portland resident Luc Nya has always know he’s at home in Maine, having arrived 20 years ago from Cameroon to study at USM.

“I have always loved America, what it stands for and its institutions,” said Nya. “After living here the first two years I got civically involved in the community and I felt like I belonged here. Now, to be a citizen, it’s a great relief. I feel great.”

Nya has been plugged in to the American system for a long time, both as a benefits supervisor for children to age 21 at the state Department of Health and Human Services and as a board member of the World Affairs Council of Maine, Maine Initiatives, Avesta Housing, Community Housing of Maine and the Opportunity Alliance, among others. But although he’s been at the forefront of his community in many ways, Nya has never been able to perform the most basic of American rights – he could not step into the ballot booth.

“That’s what’s key,” he said. “If I am celebrating anything about today, it is that I am now able to vote.

Seeds of discontent

 Tension, delay in talks over location are jeopardizing the South Portland Farmer’s Market.

SOUTH PORTLAND — A quest to help promote the South Portland Farmers Market has turned into a City Council debate on where the market should live, creating hurt feelings, accusations of back-room dealings, and the suggestion that the fledging farmstand may not live to see its second year.

The City Council is scheduled to workshop the issue April 23, when proposals are expected to include moving the market to Hinckley Drive, next to Mill Creek Park, or leaving it at its present location at Thomas Knight Park, albeit off the park cobblestones and on Waterman Drive.

The latter plan also includes a request for council permission to place a 4-by-8-foot sign on Broadway advertising the Thursday afternoon market.

The sign concept was first proffered at a Feb. 27 workshop by Councilor Rosemarie De Angelis, who championed creation of the market during her term as mayor. The sign met stiff opposition, particularly from first-year Councilor Jerry Jalbert, who said it could be seen as municipal favoritism for food booths over other brick-and-mortar grocery stores in the Knightville District.

The debate has worn on now for two months, largely out of the public eye, and market manager Caitlin Jordan said the very existence of the farmers market is in jeopardy. Even if consensus is reached April 23, the council will not be able to act until its next official meeting, set for May 7. Posting requirements to close either street means the market will miss its planned May 10 opening. Even that, said Jordan, is too late a date for some in her circle.

“I had 20 vendors, but I’ve lost three because of all the back-and-forth with the council,” she said last week. “On top of that, I’ve had five or six new applications withdrawn.”

Jordan claims that at least some of those defections have as much to do with uncivil emails sent to and from the market’s ad hoc advisory committee in the past several weeks as it does with scheduling and logistical issues.

De Angelis and Mayor Patti Smith have both confirmed the nature of those emails, with De Angelis saying she “feels horrible” at the “hurtful” way she’s been portrayed in some of them.

The Current filed on April 11 a request for those emails under Maine’s Freedom of Access Act. The emails were unavailable for review as of the Tuesday morning deadline for this week’s issue of the Current.

Smith, who has seen the emails, acknowledged that feelings have been hurt on all sides.

“That’s the unfortunate fallout of the situation,” she said on Friday. “I am always disappointed when the level or type of communication is not a productive one. It happens. People get emotionally attached, they lose focus and it’s hard for them, I think, to see other perspectives.”

Those perspectives date back to initial approval of the market one year ago. At that time, Jordan said, the market vendors voiced a strong preference for the Hinckley Drive site, based on a belief that Thomas Knight Park was too far off the beaten path. That was shot down, in part, because of parking issues near Mill Creek businesses, a belief that the Mill Pond ducks would create an issue, and the fact that setting up shop in Thomas Knight Park would require fewer updates to existing ordinances.

Jalbert said that, being new to the council, he was not aware when he asked Jordan at the annual Rotary Club dinner about Hinckley Drive as a possible alternative, which, he thought, would end the divide over the proposed Broadway sign. That conversation, said Jalbert, “took all of two minutes,” and he rejects the idea that he meant to conspire with Jordan against what the council then had on the table, or to perform an end-run on the market advisory committee, chaired by De Angelis.

For her part, De Angelis said her only concern is that Jalbert then began floating the idea to other councilors, when Jordan gave her enthusiastic assent to the move, in part because of poor foot traffic last season.

“Whether it’s one place or the other is neither here nor there,” De Angelis said. “It’s that none of this was ever brought to the advisory committee for consideration.”

Jalbert and Jordan both say there were unaware they needed an approval from the advisory group, which Jordan claims is “mostly hand-picked” by De Angelis and thus supports the Thomas Knight Park location. Meanwhile, Jalbert rejects De Angelis’ claim that he circumvented the public process to line-up support from his peers for the Hinckley Drive alternative. Although he admits to informally polling other councilors on the topic, Jalbert cites Maine’s Right-to-Know-Law, claiming he’s within his rights to talk with other members of the council, so long as three or more of them are not in on the same conversation at the same time.

“The notion that this was back-door politics and the level that this issue has raised to is disheartening,” said Jordan, adding that she only agreed to De Angelis’ sign request after being told there would be no action on her request to reconsider Hinckley Drive, made long before Jalbert intervened.

“I was told it absolutely would not happen no matter what,” she said.

Smith also denies claims that she pushed back consideration of Jalbert’s proposal in order to break momentum for a site change.

Jalbert said he expected an April 4 workshop, but that did not happen, only because, Smith said, the annual budget took precedence. She also said that, given the lesson of public reaction to recent parking changes planned for Ocean Street, the workshop had to be put off in order to give “all stakeholders” time to regroup.

“Moving the location put us back to square one,” Smith said. “Although it looks like a delay, we’ve had to scramble because the sign turned out to not be an easy slam dunk. I hope everyone understands that we have to do our due process.”

That said, Smith did seem to side with De Angelis’ claim that Jalbert worked the issue with too much vigor outside of public view.

“There may be something to that, which is just understanding due process of how we operate as a City Council,” she said. “What we try to strive for, the very point of us working as public civic leaders, is that our deliberations are public and transparent.”

Smith downplayed the seeming discontent on all sides of the farmers market issue, chalking most of the debate up to “growing pains.”

Although Jalbert, Jordan, De Angelis and Smith all intimate harsh words have been exchanged, even while none are willing to quote directly from the exchanges, Smith said that’s hardly what matters.

“I know that not everyone might have every piece of information that I might have, but the bottom line is that we are going to discuss potentially moving the location of the market on the 23^rd,” she said. “That’s where people want to be if they have in interest in the issue.”

More to the point, Smith added, “I know that absolutely everyone wants it to succeed.”

Scarborough board cuts school budget increase

SCARBOROUGH — More than one person at Wednesday’s public hearing for next year’s $37.8 million Scarborough school budget said it would drive people from town.

However, depending on who was speaking, the imminent exodus is either because the 11.28 percent spike it would cause in property taxes is more than people can bear, or because that increase is still not enough to maintain a quality education for students.

“My taxes have gone up roughly $400 to $500 every year for the past three years,” said Evergreen Farms Road resident Randy Lamattina. “It’s getting ridiculous. As a retired law enforcement officer, I can’t afford it anymore. It’s getting to be a choice of move out of Scarborough, which I don’t want to do, or shut my heat down and maybe get a little bit cold.”

According to Town Manager Tom Hall, the latest school number creates a total budget of $67.6 million, of which $50.3 million will come from property taxes. That means a property tax rate of $14.03 per $1,000 of property value, assuming a $15 million increase in total valuation this year. That, said Hall, would drive taxes up “about $300” on the median-priced $300,000 home.

Although Lamattina called that steep, one father of a first-grader, Ottawa Woods Road resident William Bly, took an alternate view.

“This budget, in my eyes, falls short of where it should be,” he said. “I can tell you that as the parent with a young family that if this school budget is not passed, at a bare minimum I will seek to reside in a different area where people will support the school system through taxes.”

Although no one else promised to flee Scarborough if not taxed more for public education, all but three of the 14 people in the 57-strong crowd who spoke at the hearing urged councilors to support the budget presented by first-year Superintendent George Entwistle III.

Entwistle’s first draft for the next fiscal year’s budget, turned in March 15, called for a 9.86 percent spending hike, to $39.2 million. However, the loss of $1.3 million from expired federal stimulus grants means a greater portion of the budget will have to come from local taxes. Initially, that tax jump was pegged at 16.12 percent.

By the time of a day-long budget workshop March 31, Entwistle’s proposal had dropped to $38.2 million (up anywhere from 7.2 to 7.7 percent, depending on the results of a debt refinancing deal), with a 12.9 percent hit to tax bills.

By Wednesday, school officials had cut $402,935 from spending, while proposing to fund $50,000 in “non-tax revenues.” That now lowers spending to a 6.05 percent increase, with an 11.28 percent hit to taxes. That does not include the municipal and county impacts, which are up 2 percent and 4.6 percent, respectively.

According to Entwistle, who has called his budget “mission critical,” even at the higher levels, the new cuts would come primarily from four sources. He intends now to buy one new school bus next year instead of two, and the growth in proposed spending for classroom supplies has been cut in half, from 5 percent to 2.5 percent. One elementary school teaching position would be cut, as well.

To Susan Hamill, those cuts are unconscionable. She urged councilors to restore Entwistle’s previous budget draft while looking elsewhere for ways to hold the line on taxes. 

"The education portion of the budget has been unfairly targeted for cuts over the past three years, while the municipal side has continued to grow," Hamill said. "Nobody moves to a town because they have great roads, a super fire station, new equipment or a brand new police station. They move to a town because the schools are great."
But retiree Brad Dupee said he simply can’t afford Entwistle’s spending plan, no matter how important to the town’s schools

"I'm not the only one in Scarborough on a fixed income," he said. "You need to take some consideration for people out there trying to survive and make a living.”

Entwistle said after the hearing that he decided to not refill the teaching job following expected retirements and resignations at year’s end because of projected enrollment numbers for next year. However, he was not yet able to confirm which grade and which school would see the cut.

He also has shifted about $150,000 for new computers from the operating budget back to capital bonding, as technology improvements were funded before his tenure.

According to Entwistle, the $50,000 in new revenue is only a promised number at this point, with no firm source in mind. However, possibilities include an increase to extracurricular fees and a new student-parking fee at the high school.

As they did at the first reading of the budget on April 4, councilors held their tongues on the budget.