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

Issue of Jan. 17, 2002

Cape Elizabeth police are beginning to notice an increase in drug-related crime in town.

Several burglaries in the Scott Dyer Road area on one night in particular, Jan. 6, are believed to be related to each other and to a small group of users of heroin and other drugs in Cape Elizabeth.

“The drug (heroin) is becoming more prevalent,” said Cape Police Chief Neil Williams, adding that it is cheaper the cocaine and is easier to get than OxyContin.

On Jan. 6, “a crew of two to four people,” according to Detective Paul Fenton, entered unlocked cars and sheds on Scott Dyer and Brentwood roads, and stole “mostly small items.” Some of the property recovered from the thieves includes a set of golf clubs, a car stereo, a firearm and a bicycle.

“They grabbed what they could get their hands on,” Fenton said.

He said he has identified some suspects and has information that indicates they were planning to sell the items for drug money, or trade them directly for drugs.

“I’m pretty sure who they are,” Fenton said. He said he knows of about a half-dozen people in town who use drugs such as heroin, but said he assumes there are more that he doesn’t know about. He added that his count doesn’t include their friends.

Declaring it was a credit to the town that so many people had been involved in planning the details and financing of such an important project, the Cape Elizabeth Town Council voted unanimously Monday to go ahead with plans for a new community center which will cost taxpayers $1.5 million.

The community center will be located at the old Pond Cove Millwork building between the IGAand the entrance to the high school. The town purchased that property in November 2000 for $560,000.

The original timeline for the project included a start date of sometime in February. “Whether we can still meet that deadline is a little up in the air,” said Community Services Director Sue Weatherbie. “We would like to get going as soon as possible, the building is vacant now, but we still need to get through the permitting stage at the Planning Board level and will have to send out request for proposals for the general contractor,” Weatherbie said.

According to Town Manager Mike McGovern, there will be no tax impact from the community center project in the upcoming 2002-2003 fiscal year. In the 2003-2004 fiscal year, residents could be looking at an 11-cent tax increase.

Elizabeth McCann and Marty Craine think it’s wrong that despite being a significant percentage of Scarborough’s population, senior citizens in town have nowhere to gather and no voice in town affairs, and they want to do something about it.

According to U.S. Census figures, there are almost 3,000 senior citizens, or 17 percent of the population, in town and almost 1,500 households, or 22 percent, are occupied by someone who is 65 years of age or older.

“I know that senior citizens make up a lot of the population of this town,” McCann told the Current. “Right now we’re spending all our time and money on the kids and the schools, but we have an aging population.

The town should be projecting out 10 years for seniors as well as the kids. They can tell us down to the last child how many new students will be in the schools, but no one can tell us how many senior citizens there are in town.”

For their second year, Nancy Coffin and Cheryl Dedian of the Scarborough Middle School library, with the help of parent volunteers Felicity Kerr, Sheila Ouellette and Stephanie York, have facilitated a group of students who created intricate quilted wall hangings for a variety of local charities.

This year the charities that received the student-made quilts were The Boys and Girls Club of South Portland, the Center for Grieving Children, the Maine Veterans Home, the Maine Children’s Cancer Program and the Ronald McDonald House.

On Saturday, Jan. 19, the students of the Cape Elizabeth High School Jazz Program will return to Boston to compete in the 2002 Berklee High School Jazz Festival. Students hope to continue their two -year winning streak in their size division.

Most of the CEHS students who will compete at Berklee have studied jazz for years, and the music for them is more than just an afterschool activity. They are in Norm Richardson’s CEHS music theory class because they are passionate about jazz music.

This year will mark the final Berklee visit under the tutelage of Richardson. He plans to retire in June of 2002.

Mike Irace, a sophomore tenor sax player, says jazz is unique. “I think (jazz) is a lot of different things. It just can’t be copied. It’s not artificial. It feels real. In jazz, the musicians are actually good.”

Emily Dodd, a sophomore flutist, who has been playing jazz for three years, said “Jazz is fun. It’s fun to play in concerts. The audience gets into it, you can tell that the audience is into it, they’re tapping their feet. It’s fun music, it’s exciting.”

Adam Jackson, a junior alto sax player, says his experience with the jazz band has helped clarify a lifelong goal. “I pretty much know right now that I want to continue (music) after high school. It’s the only thing I’ve ever felt really passionate about. It’s just something that you can think about without knowing that it’s going to make your day bad, because it can’t. It’s just something you can think about to take your mind off everything. It doesn’t get any better than that.”