Limiting the number of temporary signs a business can put out on a yearly basis is not sitting well with some business owners the Current was able to talk with this week.

Last week Scarborough’s Ordinance Committee heard a proposal from the Planning Board that would make significant changes to the town’s temporary sign laws, including limiting the number of signs that can be put out in a year to two and requiring a $250 deposit per sign and a $20 fee. With this proposal, businesses would only be allowed to put out a temporary sign for a total of 60 days of the year, 30 days at a time.

Paul Lausier of Oak Hill Beverage and Redemption Center in Oak Hill Plaza asked, “How are small businesses in town supposed to grow, offer employment and pay their share of taxes when they can’t even advertise? Anyone in Oak Hill Plaza who isn’t right out on Route 1 has the same problem. How do we get the people to come in if they don’t know we’re here?” he asked.

Seniors are being warned to be careful about workers and others they allow into their homes. In three recent incidents, two Cape Elizabeth seniors had jewelry and other valuables stolen, and another had 50 tablets of painkillers stolen. In all three cases, in-home workers are suspected, according to Cape police.

The pills are believed to have been stolen by a person who advertised a housecleaning service by putting fliers on cars and in doors in various neighborhoods in Cape, according to Community Relations Officer Paul Gaspar. The victim hired the woman.

“She cleaned her house and cleaned out some of her medication as well,” Gaspar said.

As Secret Service agents combed every garden and dining room at the Black Point Inn this week in preparation for a visit from President George Bush on Saturday, the manager of the inn on Prouts Neck seemed unusually calm about the impending visit.

“It’s like any other function for us,” said Dick Schwalbenberg, the manager of the inn.

The Beach to Beacon race is Saturday and Cape Elizabeth families are preparing their guest rooms for international runners. Rather than putting up elite racers in hotels, the Beach to Beacon includes a hometown touch: a visit to a Cape home.

Ann Marie Miliard’s family will host their fourth runner this year.

“It’s a great experience,” she said. She has two older kids, who come home from college for the summer. “We just really enjoy hosting the athletes,” Miliard said.

If the late Minnie Sanville’s salt-and-pepper-shaker collection is any indication of how many friends she had, she was the most popular woman in town. Minnie collected more than 4,000 salt-and-pepper shakers before she died a couple of years ago.

Why would a salt-and-pepper shaker collection be any indication of how popular she was?

Well, for the answer to that question, just ask Minnie’s husband, Paul Sanville, who has become the de facto caretaker of the collection.

“It’s all friends. That’s what it is,” he said.

Minnie didn’t buy most of the salt-and-pepper shakers in the collection. Friends and family who often bought them in antique stores or on vacation gave them to her. “So you can see she had a lot of friends,” Paul said.

As the political season heats up heading into November’s general election, Scarborough Town Clerk Yolande Justice is requesting that the town consider additions to its political sign ordinance, specifically banning campaign signs from state or town roads within the estuary of the Scarborough Marsh.

Justice would also like campaign signs to be specifically banned from town-owned properties, including school grounds, fire station grounds, town hall grounds, Hunnewell house and grounds, Lions Den and grounds, the Scarborough River Wildlife Sanctuary and all community parks.

Come race day, Beach to Beacon competitors and volunteers, as well as participants in the children’s race, will be wearing shirts designed by Cape students.

The T-shirt designs were developed in a contest open to all Cape Elizabeth students, many of whom participated through their art classes.

Ten-year-old Kylie Tanabe created the design for the children’s T-shirts as part of her fourth-grade class last year, with Pond Cove School teacher Ogden Williams.

“He got us going on drawing the lighthouse,” Tanabe said. She also takes art lessons from her grandmother, and prefers to do tole painting, copying and adapting photographs and paintings. She had painted a lighthouse as a gift for her parents, and drew a similar lighthouse, adding in a small house and other elements to resemble Portland Head Light.

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

Members of the Scarborough High School class of 1944 met for a reunion in July 2002. Pictured are, front row from left, Eleanor Wyman Higgins, Frances Bimson Knight, Betty Bimson Retus, Alison Downs Eisenberger, Marjorie Libby Sturgeon, Priscilla Scammon Simon, Theresa Burnham Skillings, Ruth Chase Leighton, Ruth Libby Jones, and Dick Wood. Back row, Clifford Norman Olesen, Walter Jordan, Robert Lucy, Henry Burnell, Wesley Beckwith, Arthur Pooler, Brenton Dodge, Arthur Jones, and Gordon Mallory.