April 1982

Mayor William O’Gara’s new budget was launched into the choppy waters of the Westbrook City Council. It totals $8,130,230 for city purposes (no schools), up 20 percent, and would cost taxpayers $14.21 per $1,000 in property, up 16 percent. Alderman hope to pass on it by July 1. The school committee has been working since January with a school budget that also is up, but just how much isn’t clear yet.

Westbrook Police Chief Leroy Darling announced his retirement to the city council. He has served in the Westbrook Police Department for 23 years, nine as chief. Darling read to the council a letter to Mayor William B. O’Gara: “Following some very hard thinking and deliberation between my wife and myself I have decided that effective April 23 (my anniversary date) I shall retire,” Darling said. “This decision was regrettable. However, I have many good memories and close associations from by work.”

Westbrook is assessing two-thirds of the cost of a new Woodmont area sewer to homeowners. The date for a public hearing on the fairness of these assessments was set for June7.

From the police log: A drunk wouldn’t leave the cinema. Police went for him, and found he was wanted on two Portland warrants. They took him to the Cumberland County Jail. The Westbrook Rescue Unit took Raymond Bennett, 19, and Charles Daly, 20, to the Osteopathic Hospital from a Stroudwater Street house after getting a call at 10:30 p.m. that someone was beating up someone there with a baseball bat.

Roland Lemiex, 61, of 43 Ennis St., Westbrook, sawed off the first and second fingers of his left hand of a circular saw in his basement about 7 p.m. March 31 while building lawn furniture

If that was horribly bad luck, his luck in the next few minutes was better. His wife happened to be home, and was able to make quick contact with Dr. James Calderbank. She rushed her husband to the Westbrook Community Hospital, which is only 300 yards from their home, and Calderbank met them there. Policed were dispatched to find the missing fingers but Flaherty did not reattach the fingers, at the patient’s request.

A proposal to rezone the Gorham Fairgrounds property on the northerly side of Narragansett Street from suburban residential to roadside commercial drew a negative public reaction and roused many tempers at a Gorham Planning Board public hearing. Hannaford Bros. Co. is requesting the zone change. The company has an option to buy this 75-acre parcel of land and has tentative plans to develop the site into a supermarket, discount department store, smaller stores and possibly some office buildings and residential housing.

April 1982

Rejecting Westbrook electrician Wayne Worrey’s suggestion that the work be done by school maintenance people or electrical students, the school department is about to award a $40,517 contract for new light bulbs and ballasts in Westbrook Junior High School to M. L. Systems Inc., Burlington, Mass. The contract could be extended to other schools.

An unidentified buyer has signed a contract to buy the 26-acre site on the County Road, Westbrook, where the Maine National Bank had to give up on a multi-million dollar headquarters building. Greg Boulos, who is handling the sale as agent of Recoll Management Co., said closing the purchase may take some time. He declined to say who is buying, for what purpose, or whether the sale would promise new jobs. He declined to discuss price, including the asking price.

Trash problems may cost the Colonial Bowling Center its Westbrook city licenses. Ward 1 Alderman Lionel Dumond has written to the owners promising to fight renewal of the licenses for bowling and food service that expire April 30. Colonial Lanes has a long Westbrook history. They were owned for years and expanded by Gerald P. Fluett, whose half-million-dollar bequest benefits Westbrook’s Walker Library. “Litter and debris have been a problem since you have been operating,” Dumond wrote David Little and Russell Glidden, partners in the business. “The city has given you plenty of chances,” he wrote.

The members of two separate bargaining units have agreed to two-year contracts with the Gorham School Department, marking the conclusion of negotiations that began 11 months ago.

Tom Curran, president of the Westbrook Education Association teachers’ union, is among 21 persons who are accepting bonuses to leave their jobs. Curran is taking early retirement from his position as guidance counselor in the junior high school.

The Idexx Co., new resident of Westbrook’s Five-Star Industrial Park, wouldn’t have come to Westbrook if the city had not promised to plant more trees on Eisenhower Drive, according to city council President Kenneth Lefebvre. He said Idexx is likely to become Westbook’s fifth biggest taxpayer and employs about 200. His tree remarks came in a council debate over a $6,302 program of tree planting this year. “The biggest thing they want is more trees,” Lefebvrie said of Idexx. “If we had said ‘We’re not going to do it’ they’d have said ‘We’re not coming.'”