MINOT — Authorities said a local man who held police at bay in a December armed standoff at his Verrill Road home burned down his house Friday, as well as the mobile home belonging to his estranged wife, before leading police on two high-speed chases. Michael Callahan, 44, was taken to St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center for a mental evaluation after he was arrested in Hebron, where he eventually surrendered, Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Capt. Ray Lafrance said. Callahan’s house was a total loss. The fire was reported just before 2 p.m. Lafrance said Callahan led a sheriff’s deputy on a high-speed chase in Minot into Mechanic Falls. At one point, Callahan pulled over, then tried to run down the deputy, who fired his weapon at Callahan before he took off again, eventually pulling over for good in Hebron, Lafrance said. (read more at Lewiston Sun Journal)
LEWISTON, Maine — As work continues to lock up and block vacant downtown tenements and the City Council looks to demolish 12 more buildings this year, city officials say the effort is making a difference. “I’m feeling very positive,” Jeff Baril, Lewiston’s liaison police and code enforcement officer, said. “We are looking at the 30 worst buildings, and once we knock those 30 down, it’s going to strengthen the housing market. We may get some more redevelopment and you are going to see us making a transition. We’re almost at the top of the hill, coming down the other side.” Baril and the city’s code enforcement staff have been working to identify vacant, abandoned and dangerous buildings for more than a year. They recommend that buildings that can’t be repaired be demolished. It’s a long process that involves legal schedules and City Council approval, but the city was able to demolish 13 old downtown tenements last year. Baril said the city plans to take down another 12 this year, but that’s not the preferred outcome. (read more at Bangor Daily News)
AUGUSTA — Residents told city councilors they can’t afford a property tax increase proposed as part of the $52.6 million city and school budget. Shirley Kinney, a lifelong Augusta resident, said her only income is a monthly Social Security check which she has to stretch just to pay her increasing bills, which include monthly property tax payments because, she said, monthly is the only way she can afford to pay them. “It takes all that to live, and there’s not enough,” she said of her monthly Social Security check. “Please don’t raise the taxes, because I can’t afford it.” Some councilors, in response, said they don’t think they will pass the budget with a 6.6 percent increase and hope to reduce the impact on taxpayers before they wrap up the budget over the next two weeks. “I don’t think we’re going to vote for 6.6 percent. Hopefully it’s going to be less than that,” said Councilor Patrick Paradis. Later in the meeting, Finance Director Ralph St. Pierre said updated property valuations and other updates to the budget mean the increase in taxes would be about 6 percent, not 6.6, if the budget is approved as proposed. That would result in the tax rate increasing from $17.55 to $18.62 per $1,000 of property valuation. Paradis warned that the property tax is the only way for the city to raise revenues and urged residents to, in turn, urge legislators to consider allowing municipalities to charge local sales taxes, lodging taxes, or legislation that would allow municipalities to seek payments in lieu of taxes from nonprofit organizations, which aren’t required to pay property taxes. (read more at Kennebec Journal)
AUGUSTA, Maine — Democratic legislative leaders said Thursday that Republican Gov. Paul LePage told them he would move his office from the State House in a protest over not being able to have a television display outside his office. But LePage said his staff would remain there “until partisan leaders of the Legislature choose to evict them.” Democrats said LePage was angered he was not being allowed to place a television screen outside his office displaying the number of days it has been since he submitted a budget to the Legislature and also the number of days since he offered a plan to pay off approximately $484 million in state Medicaid debt to hospitals. Democrats said that violates long-standing State House rules. The LePage administration called it “censorship.” “The repeated attempts by Democrats to stifle debate on bills and to prevent me from speaking in front of the Appropriations Committee is a disturbing pattern of censorship that should concern all Mainers,” LePage said in a prepared statement. “Now they are saying that the governor of Maine cannot have a TV in the waiting area. Maine Democrats are taking their cue from the Obama administration in Washington, D.C., which has violated the free-speech rights of American citizens and used the power of the government to silence those who disagree with them. If I have to remove myself from the toxic climate of censorship by Democrats in the State House to defend the taxpayers of Maine, then that’s what I will do.” His staff will stay put, the governor wrote. (read more at Bangor Daily News)
PARIS — What happens to a marshmallow when you send it to the outer limits of Earth’s atmosphere? How about a jelly-bean or Silly Putty? That was the question Oxford Hills Middle School seventh graders posed in April, when they were given the opportunity to send science experiments, contained within Ping-Pong balls, 100,000 feet above the Earth’s surface as part of the “PongSat” project, sponsored by private spaceflight firm JP Aerospace. Last Wednesday, students got their experiments back and opened them up to find out how they had been affected by the intense cold and heavy pressure found in the upper atmosphere. The company mostly uses weather balloons to launch “high racks,” custom-built cages, containing the experiments to the very edge of outer space. The 110 OHMS PongSats were among 2,400 experiments in the April launch, including the ten thousandth Ping-Pong ball to take the trip. The weather balloons, carry the high racks far into the Earth’s atmosphere before popping, allowing the experiments to careen back down to the planet in a free-fall. According to the JP Aerospace website, PongSat experiments have ranged from plant seeds to sophisticated, upper atmosphere labs with sensors and a data logger. (read more at Advertiser Democrat)
AUGUSTA — Teachers and administrators took issue on Tuesday with the weight given to student assessments in proposed regulations for teacher and principal evaluations. Most people testifying before a legislative panel said the minimum 25 percent that the Department of Education says student growth measures must count toward educator effectiveness ratings is too high. Several teachers and Maine Education Association representatives said student growth measures should count no more than 10 percent, while the Maine School Boards Association and Maine School Superintendents Association recommended a floor of 15 percent, with the ceiling to be determined locally. Much remains to be determined in both the state framework for educator evaluations and the systems that local districts must develop in compliance with the framework to implement in 2015-16. The rules do not specify which students’ growth and which subjects a teacher will be evaluated on, leading the MEA to express concerns that teachers could be held accountable for student assessments in areas where they have little influence. The department’s proposal says a working group would have to be set up to resolve those issues, and the department also must determine protocols for training evaluators. (read more at Kennebec Journal)
A rainy Monday was no deterrent for five crafters on Wiscasset’s waterfront May 20. The women were setting up shop for their second summer of selling crafts together, out of the baby blue Maine Craft Shack. The shack on the town-owned “creamery pier” opens for the season Friday, May 24, the start of Memorial Day weekend and the unofficial start to summer. They can’t wait. It’s an income for all of them, but, as they found last year, vending on the waterfront in Maine’s prettiest village has perks, like meeting people from around the world. The shack’s guest book was signed by visitors from Australia, South America, Canada, Europe, the Far East and from all over the U.S., fleece crafter Pam Shockley said. The cooperative started when Shockley, of Westport Island, told her crafting friends she planned to rent a spot on the Wiscasset waterfront. “And they said, ‘Not without us.’” Shockley, 59, makes toys for children, dogs and cats, along with other fleece items like wraps, blankets and scarves. (read more at Wiscasset Newspaper)
A 19-year-old man was arrested Friday on charges of indecent conduct and visual sexual aggression against a child. Simeon Welch was charged for allegedly masturbating in the front of a sport utility vehicle while a 4-year-old boy was in the back seat, according to an affidavit filed in Kennebec County Superior Court by Detective David Bucknam, of the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office. Bucknam was initially contacted by a State Fire Marshal’s Office investigator after an SUV driven by Welch caught fire in a gravel pit in West Gardiner on the evening of May 15. He was accompanied by a 4-year-old boy, and the fire investigator contacted Bucknam to investigate. According to Bucknam’s affidavit, the boy spoke to a forensic interviewer and described Welch “showing his private parts as well as touching it. When asked where this happened, (the boy) stated it happened in the ‘blazer.’” The affidavit indicated the Blazer was the vehicle that burned in the gravel pit. (read more at Morning Sentinel)
PORTLAND — Four years ago, Gloria L. Noyes found herself at the pinnacle of her teaching career. Noyes, who was teaching fifth grade at Westbrook’s Congin Elementary School, was chosen by her peers and the Maine Department of Education as the 2009 Maine Teacher of the Year. The list of nominees for teacher of the year typically spans the state in an effort to recognize an outstanding educator who has served as a powerful advocate for students and educators. “You beautiful children are the reason I get up in the morning,” Noyes was quoted by the Portland Press Herald as saying during a surprise school assembly where she received the award. But at Tuesday night’s Portland School Board meeting, Noyes will find herself on a list of a much different nature. Noyes, who left Westbrook in October to take a job as assistant principal of the Fred P. Hall elementary school in Portland, is on the list of teachers and school administrators who will be laid off at the end of the school year. (read more at Portland Press Herald)
BATH, Maine — Last week South Bristol School canceled its traditional blessing of the fleet after a Washington, D.C.-based organization declared the prayer unconstitutional. But on Friday, controversy was kept at bay as the school’s eighth-graders scrambled to finish building the wooden skiffs with an eye toward the June 14 launch into South Bristol Harbor. They’re a bit behind schedule, volunteer Kate Beaudette said, with only three Fridays left before the event, which has drawn much media attention. Thalia Eddyblouin, 13, her long braid swinging, braced the cedar planks of a 12-foot boat at the Maine Maritime Museum boat shop, while her classmate 14-year-old Jillian Page, sporting bright blue fingernails, drilled pilot holes to prepare the sides for wooden frames. “Make sure it’s in exactly the right place because once you do that, it’s irretrievable,” Beaudette, of South Bristol, told them. The class of five students has worked every Friday since September to build two flat-bottomed skiffs made of cedar and red and white oak. When the boats are finished, one will be sold by the museum and the other will be raffled off by the school to benefit its boat-building program and help finance an eighth-grade trip to Washington, D.C. (read more at Bangor Daily News)
MINOT — Authorities said a local man who held police at bay in a December armed standoff at his Verrill Road home burned down his house Friday, as well as the mobile home belonging to his estranged wife, before leading police on two high-speed chases. Michael Callahan, 44, was taken to St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center for a mental evaluation after he was arrested in Hebron, where he eventually surrendered, Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Capt. Ray Lafrance said. Callahan’s house was a total loss. The fire was reported just before 2 p.m. Lafrance said Callahan led a sheriff’s deputy on a high-speed chase in Minot into Mechanic Falls. At one point, Callahan pulled over, then tried to run down the deputy, who fired his weapon at Callahan before he took off again, eventually pulling over for good in Hebron, Lafrance said. (read more at Lewiston Sun Journal)
