(Editor’s note: Looking Back is a weekly column including news items reported 10 years ago in The Current, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in September 2011.)

Issue of March 7, 2002

The Scarborough Town Council wants people in town to recycle more. In fact, the council wants to almost double the recycling rate from the current 13 percent to 25 percent and will consider some sort of curbside recycling program in next year’s budget.

It is important that people recycle more because the more items that go into the recycling bin the less trash each household produces. This could lead to substantial savings in the amount the town pays to dispose of trash.

In a report, received by the council last month, the town’s Solid Waste and Recycling Committee recommended that Scarborough look at both curbside recycling and pay-per-bag programs as a way to increase recycling, reduce the amount of trash, save the town some money in the long run and do what’s right for the environment.

Perhaps the most visible of the booster-funded sports in Scarborough is the high school football team, which needs to raise $35,000 a year for coaches, game officials, equipment and transportation.

Each team member also must pay $275 for their freshman year and $75 for each additional year after that to play football. That could all change with a three-year plan to bring booster-funded sports into the school department’s regular operating budget.

In the school budget for next year, the Board of Education has added $38,650 to begin to pay for some of the things that the booster clubs have traditionally been covering. It’s not only for football, but for ice hockey, swimming and field hockey.

Under the plan brought forward by Athletic Director Frank Spencer, the school department would pay for coaches’stipends, equipment, uniforms, game administration, transportation and game officials.

It is the feeling every parent dreads: the pit in the bottom of Jack McKenzie’s stomach that he felt as he turned the corner to his block and saw a police car blocking the road and an officer waving him away. McKenzie, a single father with three daughters and a son, saw a fire truck parked in front of his house and firefighters coming out the front door.

“You won’t ever know the feeling. It’s a very frightening feeling,” said McKenzie.

Luckily, his children were safe, thanks to his 17-year-old daughter, Brandi, who put out the fire. But the feeling had been enough to make him want to join Cape Elizabeth’s crew of on-call firefighters. Brandi was inspired to put her firefighting experience to use a couple months later, after she witnessed the heroism of firefighters at the World Trade Center.

The fire at their house started when Brandi turned on the oven to cook a pizza. She didn’t realize someone had left empty pizza boxes inside. She went into another room and forgot about cooking a pizza, until the smoke alarm went off.

She ran out to the kitchen and saw smoke coming out of the oven. When she opened the door, flames shot out. “I flipped out. I didn’t know what to do.”

She ran to alert her 19-year-old sister, Tracy. But her sister, who was blaring music in her upstairs bedroom, couldn’t hear Brandi’s shouts. She ran back to the kitchen and grabbed a fire extinguisher from the stairwell next to the oven. The fire was out 20 or 30 seconds later.

Once she put out the fire, she called the fire department – something, her father later pointed out, she should have done first. He would join the call force about a month later, determined to be there for some other family.

The Cape Elizabeth School Board projects its budget increase will be twice the amount requested by the Town Council, and councilors and board members alike are blaming state funding cuts for the fiscal crunch.

Town Council Finance Committee Chairman Jack Roberts delivered a letter to Superintendent Tom Forcella March 1 stating the town budget would be capped at a 3 percent rise in expenditures, and expressing the hope that the School Board would exercise “similar restraint.”

The School Board, at its workshop March 2 and in prior meetings, has characterized its budget – up 5.7 percent – as “responsible” and “conservative,” and blames a lot of the budget pain on a loss of $589,598 in state funds.

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When Shirley Barnhart was asked how video gambling has affected the tiny West Virginia town where she has spent most of her 76 years, she sighed.

“It’s still a nice town, but it’s a lot different,” said Barnhart.

As the Scarborough Town Council considers whether it wants to allow video gambling machines at Scarborough Downs, many supporters of the track have pointed to the economic benefits video gambling has brought to other areas of the country. Legislatures in Delaware and West Virginia have allowed horse racing tracks to bring in video gambling to save the struggling industry.

Barnhart is the town clerk in Chester, a small town of about 2,700 people in the West Virginia panhandle that reaches up into a crevice between Ohio and Pennsylvania. The local track, Waterford Downs, was near bankruptcy 10 years ago, until video slot machines came along and pumped life back into it in increments of 5 cents to $5.