Articles by JT Leonard
Brunswick officials propose $1.2 million in additional budget cuts for 2014
BRUNSWICK, Maine — With adoption of 2014 town and school budgets looming, Town Manager Gary Brown and School Superintendent Paul Perzanoski have prepared $1.2 million in new cuts for the council’s approval Thursday. Town councilors two weeks ago requested cuts to keep the property tax increase required to fund next ...
Brunswick lawmaker says ‘backroom politics’ is plaguing base redevelopment bill
BRUNSWICK, Maine — After failing to gain committee favor by a single vote, a prospective bill to give Brunswick and Topsham direct appointments to the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority board of directors now will have to win approval during a floor argument in the House of Representatives. The bill, LD ...
Bowdoin College student advances to “Jeopardy!” semi-finals
BRUNSWICK, Maine — Bowdoin College junior Cindy Cammarn progressed to the semi-final round of the “Jeopardy! College Championship” with a strong showing Thursday night. Competing against students from Stanford and Azusa Pacific universities, Cammarn, 21, never trailed after taking the lead midway through the first round. She finished with a ...
Brunswick couple hired to conserve Nixon’s Oval Office desk, other pieces of historic Washington furniture
BRUNSWICK, Maine — When the furniture used by U.S. senators during the past 150 years starts to get a little creaky, Jon and Linda Brandon will get the call. The Brandons own East Point Conservation Studio in Brunswick, located in Fort Andross. Recently they learned they had won a five-year ...
Brunswick photographer wins prestigious Guggenheim fellowship for river project
BRUNSWICK, Maine — Winners of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation’s Fellowship shouldn’t have to answer their own phones. Particularly, Guggenheim Fellowship winners who receive the prestigious honor for their photography work shouldn’t have to answer the phone while processing film in a darkroom. But Brunswick photographer Michael Kolster did ...
Bowdoin College student to go on game show ‘Jeopardy!’
BRUNSWICK, Maine — Gogettem, Polar Bear. Bowdoin College junior Cindy Cammarn left Saturday morning for several days of hullabaloo and ballyhoo in Hollywood, where she will compete against her postsecondary peers in the annual “Jeopardy! College Championship.” The winner gets $100,000 and a slot in the historic game show’s “Tournament ...
Scabies outbreak contained at Brunswick shelter
BRUNSWICK, Maine — Officials quickly contained a parasite outbreak at a Brunswick homeless shelter, according to municipal health inspectors and officials from the Maine Center for Disease Control. Thirteen people at Tedford Housing’s adult facility on Cumberland Street were diagnosed with scabies in mid-March. Jeff Emerson, Brunswick’s deputy fire chief ...
State lawmaker says Brunswick neighborhood ‘abused’ by Downeaster officials
BRUNSWICK, Maine — Sen. Stan Gerzofsky, D-Brunswick, has told the operator of Amtrak’s Downeaster that building a $12 million layover facility for passenger trains in town could harm Brunswick residents. In a March 25 letter, Gerzofsky said Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, the Portland-based agency that operates the Downeaster, ...
Robert Zildjian, world-famous cymbal pioneer, dies in Brunswick
BRUNSWICK, Maine — Robert Zildjian, whose surname is synonymous with cymbals played by the best drummers in Western popular music, died March 28 at age 89 in his Brunswick home. A descendant of 10 generations of metallurgical and cymbal-making lineage, Zildjian’s genealogical tree dates back 350 years to the Ottoman ...
Train facility on track: Amtrak Downeaster operator authorizes deal for $12.2 million layover structure in Brunswick
BRUNSWICK, Maine — The operator of Amtrak’s Downeaster passenger trains will develop an indoor train layover facility in Brunswick. The Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority board authorized the award of a design-build contract for the facility Monday to Consigli Construction Co. of Portland. According to a news release from ...
Youth homelessness on ‘shocking’ rise in Brunswick area
BRUNSWICK, Maine — Child homelessness is not supposed to happen here. Children in affluent, educated communities anchored by top-level private colleges aren’t supposed to go to school hungry, or be without a place to live when classes let out for the day. But it does happen here, and indications are ...
Sandy Polster, former Times Record editor and BDN columnist ‘fired by the best,’ dies
Editor’s note: Sandy Polster was a Bangor Daily News columnist in the mid 1990s. Sandor M. “Sandy” Polster, former managing editor of the Times Record, died Thursday, March 21, from the effects of an almost-three-year battle with gastric cancer. He was 71. Polster was an Ohio native whose subsequent life ...
Brunswick board approves larger gun lockers to allow ‘patrol rifles’ in schools
BRUNSWICK, Maine — Police will be able to stow AR-15 patrol rifles inside Brunswick’s public schools after a 7-1 school board vote Wednesday. Board members approved new, larger lockers for school resource officers to secure their larger weapons while on duty at the schools. Official costs were not available, but ...
Harpswell to decide budget, elect selectman
HARPSWELL, Maine — It’s a bind hardly exclusive to Harpswell. Voters at Saturday’s annual town meeting will face an array of spending choices based largely on how to provide equal or increased services with less revenue. The meeting is scheduled to commence at 10 a.m. at Harpswell Community School. Polls ...
Work progressing on new Bowdoin College arts building
BRUNSWICK, Maine — At the moment, Bowdoin College’s planned Longfellow Arts Building is little more than a storm of concrete forms, framing and sawdust. When the cement cures and the paint dries, however, administrators from the illustrious school envision a fourth and final point on the campus’ artistic compass. The ...
New York company plans bacteria-based power plant for former Brunswick Navy base
BRUNSWICK, Maine — A New York company plans to build a bacteria-based power generation facility at Brunswick Landing. Village Green Ventures hopes to file permit applications for the project by the end of the month and will hold a public meeting about it Wednesday evening. Planned for 2 acres of ...
Freeport man building ship out of recycled steel fails to meet town deadline
FREEPORT, Maine — Former trap manufacturer Harold Arndt’s embattled “Island Rover” is out of time and hanging in the balance. Arndt failed to meet a Jan. 26 town deadline to meet conditions that would have temporarily relieved the project from its zoning nonconformity and given him three more years to ...
Medical products manufacturer hiring at former Brunswick Navy base
BRUNSWICK, Maine — The bricks are being set, the mortar is drying and production line machinery is on the way. What remains now is finding people to run it. Molnlycke Health Care is advertising for production operators, quality assurance and maintenance technicians, facilities and manufacturing equipment engineers, warehouse and shipping ...
Controversy swirls around violent, gun-heavy video made by Brunswick youths
BRUNSWICK, Maine — The film opens with scenes of recognizable buildings in downtown Brunswick and a backdrop of sad music. An alarm sounds. A character, played by a teenage boy, wakes, jumps to his feet, grabs a handgun and runs to a window, peering from a crack in the blinds. ...
Freeport aims to improve parking for small businesses, shoppers alike
FREEPORT, Maine — In a town where shopping is king, being able to find a parking space is like holding the keys to the kingdom. But the current retail environment here isn’t as robust as it was more than 20 years ago, when Freeport’s parking ordinance last was overhauled. As ...
Former Bangor YMCA building sold to new dental technology school
University of Maine hockey job has been offered to former assistant Red Gendron
Millinocket company unearths logging history for niche market
By the time new federal judge from Maine was confirmed, he ‘had no practice left’
Why is DHHS always asking for more money?
Maine GOP disappoints on Medicaid
State House move
Lerner had good reason to take Fifth at IRS hearing
Lawrence, Connolly help UMaine advance to America East baseball title game
Bucksport’s Cassidy Adams strikes out 19 in single game
Jonesport-Beals basketball standout Garet Beal named Parade All-American
Maine Democrats stooped to the governor’s level with TV complaint
I’m sick of husband’s eye rolling and grunts, how do I get him to stop?
Have a drink, kiss a fish: Just another Saturday night, Newfoundland-style
I want my husband and I to be fun people again
Bangor High School students re-enact funeral of Civil War soldier