BRUNSWICK

Brunswick officials continued to grapple with school building needs in 2017.

Voters in June approved a $28 million bond to replace the 62-year-old Coffin Elementary School, which has structural and safety issues.

A new grades K-2 school will be constructed at the site of the now-defunct Jordan Acres School. It will be built to serve up to grade 5 and accommodate a growth of 200 students.

The council did not ask voters to approve a $5.7 million bond to repair the junior high school. The Brunswick School District has applied to the Maine Department of Education for major school construction funds for the junior high school.

The Town Council in 2017 also continued to debate whether to sell tax acquired land at Mere Point. In May, the divided council voted to allow the town manager to execute a purchase and sales agreement. The 5-4 vote came despite a suit pending in Cumberland County Superior Court.

The case centered on whether the town council acted according to municipal law when it voted to sell land at 946 Mere Point Road without considering a petition to allow voters to decide whether to make the four-acre parcel a park. A Cumberland County judge in August ruled that the council was not compelled to submit the proposed park to a referendum.

The land was sold to Daniel and Kathryn Frost of Irvine, California, for $550,000. The deal closed June 15. The asking price for the land was $335,000.

Other top stories

• The day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, millions marched in the streets as part of the Women’s March, the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. In Brunswick, hundreds rallied on the Mall, gathering in the snow to protest the new president and call attention to various injustices. People from around the Midcoast traveled to Brunswick, while others traveled to sister marches in Portland, Augusta and Washington, D.C.

• The council voted in March to ban single-use plastic bags, which went into effect Sept. 1.

• On April 7, 62-year-old Burton Hagar Jr. was charged with the death of his infant nearly 38 years ago. He subsequently pleaded not guilty to one count of intentional and knowing murder in Cumberland County Superior Court.

Hagar is accused of killing his 4-month-old son, Nathan Hagar, in May 1979. According to previous reports, the child was found unresponsive in the family’s 16 School St. apartment in Brunswick and later died at Parkview Hospital.

The child’s death was originally investigated as a result of SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome.

• The town faced a smelly problem in June when thousands of dead bait fish washed up on approximately 5 miles of shoreline in town. According to Brunswick Marine Resource Officer and Harbormaster Dan Devereaux, a fishing boat fishing for pogies by purse seining near Scragg Island in early June got a net caught on ledge.

The catch was released but the dead fish washed up on shore about two weeks later.

The Department of Marine Resources couldn’t afford to help with cleanup. The town hired Clean Harbors, a Massachusetts-based company, to do a land-based cleanup using a vacuum to clear the fish from the shoreline from Barnes Landing to Simpson Point.

• This summer, two Delaware companies purchased 407 homes and associated property on the former Brunswick Naval Air Station property in Brunswick and Topsham. Brunswick Landing Venture, LLC, and Patriot Brunswick Holdings, LLC, purchased the properties from Midcoast Affordable Housing, LLC on June 30.

• In October, Kestrel Aircraft Company, which employs about 45 people, was evicted from its engineering and production facility at Brunswick Landing.

Steve Levesque, director of the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, said it had been a months-long legal process to get the aerospace company, which joined Brunswick Landing at Hangar 6 in 2011, off the premises. As of Oct. 5 they were no longer a tenant, he said.

• Development continued at Brunswick Landing this year. On Oct. 24, the Brunswick Planning Board approved a sketch plan for a $2 million Cook’s Corner connector road. A road linking Gurnet Road and Admiral Fitch Drive at Cook’s Corner is intended to increase access to the growing Brunswick Landing site.

• Brunswick has been looking into complaints about excessive noise due to increased train activity through 2017. The council on Nov. 14 held a workshop with rail officials and agencies to identify measures to reduce disturbance to the public. No public comment was allowed during the workshop.

The council at its Dec. 4 meeting learned more about establishing a quiet zone along a stretch of railroad track through a report from engineering firm Gorrill Palmer, but is still waiting to find out how much it would cost.

Nathan Strout contributed to this report.

dmoore@timesrecord.com