The Cumberland County YMCA Board of Directors gave the go-ahead last week for a committee in Scarborough to move forward on bringing a Y to town. Now the real work must begin.

“We’re rolling,” local Y committee member, Gary O’Donnell, said after the March 27 meeting.

O’Donnell said he had “significant donations and pledges” in hand, although he said it was too early to divulge the total amount. Since a town-wide meeting held last month, 32 people have signed on to help make a YMCAa reality in Scarborough, including Hannaford Bros. Co. District Manager Michelle Thorpe-Hayes.

Cape Elizabeth property owners with homes along the coast could see their property values triple, and other town residents could see their values nearly double, when the town-wide revaluation process is completed in late April.

Town Assessor Matt Sturgis is in the final phase of number crunching that will lead up to the revaluation report he will give to town councilors April 30. Notices of new assessments will go out the first week of May, and the tax rate based on the new property values will take effect in August, Sturgis said.

Those values will be higher across the board, he said. “The assessments on pretty much all properties are going up,” Sturgis said. The primary cause is the increase in land values since 1994.

Between them, Susan and Henry Berry of Cape Elizabeth raised seven children, but little could have prepared them for the worry they now feel about having a daughter serving in the war with Iraq and the possibility that a son also could be called up.

Daughter Abigail Scandlen is serving on the USS Valley Forge off the coast of Iraq in the Persian Gulf. Son Benjamin Scandlen, a member of the Marine Reserves, could be called up at any time.

Ben was married on Nov. 2 of last year, but less than a month before the wedding, Abigail was suddenly called up to serve. She was a member of the Navy’s Reserve Officer Training Corps during college at Holy Cross, and immediately upon graduation she was commissioned as an officer in the reserves.

The USS Valley Forge belongs to the battle group assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Constellation. Her ship is an anti-missile cruiser and Susan said Abigail likes to think of it as a defensive ship, not an offensive one.

“It’s really nerve-wracking,” Susan said about having a daughter serving in the war. “I haven’t been able to talk to her since she was deployed, but we can send e-mails and packages. It’s a real legacy in my family to serve in the Navy. Both my father and brother were captains,” she added.

Paul Ledman is, in one sense, a strange person to have completed a history of Cape Elizabeth and South Portland during the Civil War. Born and raised in New York City, he has a background in geology and law. When he moved to Maine a few years ago, he got certified to teach science and social studies.

He is now the advanced placement U.S. history teacher at Scarborough High School and is taking history classes at the University of New Hampshire. As part of those classes, he became interested in what is called “ quantitative history,” or history based in data and records compiled over time, like census data.

“ You could use it as a tool to learn things you may not see” in personal records like letters or even old newspaper reports.

Using computer databases, he compared the now-public 19th century census data for Cape Elizabeth with the roster of Cape residents who served in the Civil War.

He looked at how enlistments in the Union Army changed as the war progressed and also looked at the socioeconomic data indicating how different groups in town responded to the pressures of war.

The Scarborough Town Council has approved a committee of 13 municipal officials, business people and residents, who will work together to plan the town’ s 350th anniversary celebration. The town was incorporated in 1658 and will turn 350 in 2008.

The committee includes Councilors Shawn Babine, Mark Maroon and Sylvia Most and Board of Education member Annalee Rosenblatt.

Also on the list are John Parvin, manager of the Oak Hill Hannaford grocery store, unofficial town historian Rodney Laughton, Current Newspaper Editor Victoria Ogden, local attorney and writer, Dan Warren, and residents Linda Gordius, Mark Farley, Terry Babine, Terry Maroon and Alan Cardinal.

By the end of the day Friday, April 4, Maine should have a new state champion in the National Geographic Society’ s annual geographic bee, being held this year on the campus of the University of Maine at Orono.

Local students Stanis Moody-Roberts, an eighth-grader at Cape Elizabeth Middle School, William H. Murphy, a seventh-grader at Scarborough Middle School, and Sam Chatto, a sixth-grader at Mahoney Middle School in South Portland, will be among over 100 students competing here in Maine for a chance to attend the national competition in May in Washington, D.C.

The Cape Elizabeth fifth and sixth grade math teams competed in the Southern Maine Math Meet held at the Portland Expo on March 26. The fifth grade team placed first out of 25 teams while the sixth grade team placed second out of 19 teams. In addition, all six fifth graders and three of the six sixth graders placed in the top four in the individual categories. The teams are coached by fifth grade teacher Evan Solender.

Students in Sally Connolly’ s fifth-grade class at Cape Elizabeth Middle School are writing letters to Senior Airman Matt Janson, a 2000 graduate of CEHS now serving in Qatar with the Air Force.

“ I think it’ s nice that he went,” said one member of the class. “ I think he’ s being really brave,” another said. The letters they wrote included “ positive things,” one student said. Others wrote about baseball season, the snow melting and, above all, “ we’ re thinking of you.”

They send him letters regularly. Last week’ s shipment was on paper headed with the word “ spring,” which students colored in. They also sent him Valentines in February, to help keep his spirits up, and many of the kids are closely on top of what he is doing.

E-mail messages from Janson’ s parents, now living in Maryland, keep the class up-to-date. The kids know Janson is living in the desert in a tent and loads bombs on airplanes for work, though he wants to be a pilot.

The students are also on top of the war, for as young as they are. They know where Iraq is on a world map and know that Iraqis are surrendering in some places and fighting in others. They watch TV with their parents and have trouble with “ foreign names” and “ big words.” The kids think there is too much coverage of the war, and that it has become “ boring” to watch. It’ s not just a faraway war, either. “My babysitter’ s husband is a medic,” said one boy.

They also know there are kids their age in Iraq, who are scared and don’ t have food or clothes. “ Nobody wants war,” said one student, who went on to say that it’s important to support the troops.

The students want other classes in the school, and elsewhere, to adopt service members. “ I think more people should write letters,” said one student.