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

Issue of Sept. 19, 2002

A proposed change to Scarborough’s firearm laws that would have required hunters to obtain the express written permission of a landowner before going out to hunt was defeated at the Ordinance Committee level Tuesday.

The committee, headed by Councilor Mark Maroon and including Councilors Sylvia Most and Suzanne Foley-Ferguson, called the proposal a backdoor attempt to effectively ban hunting in town and refused to send it on to the full council for consideration.

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A bear was spotted on Ash Swamp Road in Scarborough last week and a bobcat is apparently prowling around Cape.

In the wee hours of the morning of Sept. 11, a sharp-eyed Ash Swamp Road resident spotted the bear. She had noticed that something had been taking food from her backyard bird feeders.

The resident told Animal Control Officer Chris Creps that an animal had been raiding the feeders for about two weeks before she caught a glimpse of it in a motion-detector spotlight in the middle of the night. The bear wandered back into the woods after the light came on, Creps said.

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Maine Medical Center told employees Wednesday it would be eliminating administrative positions in the next month, but adding more hands-on care, with the likely net effect being that 15 to 18 people will lose their jobs. The hospital said the reorganization was being done to save money and to refocus on patient care.

Vincent Conti, the president and CEO of Maine Medical Center, said the hospital’s Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements had failed to keep up with the rising cost of new medications and an increasing patient volume.

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The Cape Elizabeth Planning Board is forcing the doctor who bought the old community center to install a sidewalk out front, despite the fact it would lead to nowhere and was never considered when the town owned the building.

About 30 residents came to a public hearing Tuesday night to support Dr. Craig Johnson, who bought the old community center from the town in March for $272,200. He a rgued that it was unfair for the town to require him to build a sidewalk because the town hadn’t built one when it owned the property, and he couldn’t afford to build it himself. Residents also argued that it was silly to build a sidewalk that wasn’t connected to any other sidewalks.

“If I had gone to the Town Council and proposed to build such a sidewalk” when the town owned the property, said Johnson, “I think I know what they would have said. They would have said ‘why?’ I would have been laughed out of the meeting.”

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Bob Tourangeau slumped into a recliner with a week of mail spread around his feet on his living room floor. He had returned home the previous night from New York City, where he spent a week counseling New Yorkers traumatized by Sept. 11.

“Look at me. I’m almost on the verge of tears just talking about it. It was emotionally exhausting,” Tourangeau, a Scarborough resident, said of the experience.

Despite his fatigue, he said he came away from the experience amazed at the resilience of the people he met. “It will take me months to digest the width and breadth of that whole experience,” he said.

A self-employed counselor who works with trauma victims at businesses in Southern Maine, Tourangeau was one of about 100 counselors recruited by Crisis Care Network from all over the country. The network recruited them to counsel employees of Fortune 500 companies in New York City last week.

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Piper Shores plans to complete construction on all of its buildings by the end of next month.

The large and once-controversial senior housing complex plans to finish 40 cottages in the woods behind the apartment building at the end of October. Piper Shores still plans to add two assisted-living apartments and eight beds to its nursing home.

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As part of the Cape Elizabeth schools renovation plans, the School Board is soliciting comment on whether the town will have all-day kindergarten sometime in the next 10 years.

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In an effort to phase out the use of temporary business signs in town, the Scarborough Town Council’s Ordinance Committee approved proposed new rules Tuesday that would require anyone seeking a temporary sign to pay a $500 deposit and remove the sign at the end of 30 days, for a maximum of 120 days per year.

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The Cape Elizabeth Planning Board decided to grandfather the Purpoodock Club into the town’s zoning districts at a meeting Tuesday night, rather than opening half the town to new golf club developments.

The Planning Board voted five to two, with David Griffin and Peter Cotter opposed. Griffin said the Purpoodock Club had been a good neighbor in town, and he wanted to give them the opportunity to expand.

But several board members said they d i d n ’t feel they had enough information to vote on a zoning amendment that would have allowed the development of golf courses in two residential zoning districts, which account for 57 percent of the town.

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Just one year ago, Robert Lehman, a symphony conductor and violinist, made his home in Scarborough, after being offered a teaching position at the University of Southern Maine.

Lehman is the director of string studies at USM, which includes conducting the Southern Maine Symphony Orchestra and the Portland Youth Symphony Orchestra.

Originally from Mexico City, Lehman moved to Maine from Boston where he earned a doctorate degree in musical arts from Boston University’s School for the Arts and conducted the Greater Boston Youth Symphonies and the North Shore Philharmonic. Also prior to his appointment at USM, Lehman served as the music director for the Mozart Society Orchestra at Harvard University.

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This week marks the anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution.

On Sept. 17, 1787, 38 of 41 delegates present at the closing of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia signed the document creating the government of the United States of America as we know it today.

Rufus King of Scarborough was one of the delegates from Massachusetts, which then included the land that became Maine.

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The Cape Elizabeth Education Foundation is starting to make an impact in the town’s schools with the first round of grants, awarded late last week.

The foundation had anticipated giving $15,000 in grants, and ended up granting a total of $14,600, according to spokeswoman Susan Spagnola.

Of 19 applications, 11 grants were awarded. Next will be the beginning of a community-based fund-raising effort built on the success of these grants.