Correction
In this article that appeared in the Dec. 14, 2007 edition of The Gazette, Elementary School Building Committee Chairman Jim Hager was incorrectly attributed as giving a presentation at the Dec. 10 Gorham planning board meeting on the on two possible locations of a proposed elementary school. Quotations which described details on the development, differences between its two possible locations, and the committee’s intention to make a choice by January should have been attributed to project architect Lyndon Keck. The Gazette regrets the error, which has been corrected in this version


By Cliff White
Staff Writer
North Gorham may keep its elementary school after all.
The town’s planning board heard details in a workshop on Monday about the two possible sites where a replacement for the overcrowded White Rock Elementary School might be located. One is the Chick property – location of the Narragansett School south of Gorham village As recently as mid-October it was the only site that met necessary requirements. The other location – a recent development – is off Route 237 in north Gorham. The town has been involved in discussions to purchase a 23- to 29-acre plot from Walter Stevens along Sebago Lake Road, north of the intersection between Route 237 and Huston Road.
The Gorham town council had authorized in its Oct. 16 meeting a preliminary site investigation of the Chick property, after both the council and school officials admitted to a lack of realistic alternative options closer to the current White Rock School.
“We have been searching for a possible site for over a year,” said Jim Hager, chairman of the Elementary School Building Committee. “We have had a number of options become non-starters. Now we have two viable options, one of which will be presented to voters in a referendum in June 2008.”
The effort to build another school in Gorham has been ongoing for 10 years, with the school committee making an official decision in favor of a new school in 2001. It is part of an effort by the town to ease overcrowding and reorganize the school system so students can spend six consecutive years in one school. Currently, the White Rock School and the Narragansett School offer kindergarten through second grade, and the Village Elementary School is for students in third through fifth. The new school would have an enrollment of 550 students and would eliminate the need for portable classrooms currently located at the White Rock and Narragansett Schools.
Project Architect Lyndon Keck said at least one athletic field will be built at the Stevens property if it is chosen, with space available for additional future fields. There will be parking for between 110 and 150 vehicles, with separate drop-off areas for buses and automobiles.
Keck said there are three potential drawbacks for the project. An out-of-use gravel extraction pit sits on the property, which is in the process of being filled in by Shaw Brothers Construction. The site is not currently attached to adequate electrical power, but hookups are less than a half-mile away. And Keck pointed out Stevens has said he would likely develop the remainder of his 69-acre parcel which isn’t sold to the town to build the new school.
“Some future development will undoubtedly happen,” Keck said.
Time is a factor in the decision-making process. If the town does not choose a site for the new elementary school and begins developing it by early 2008, it stands to lose up to $20 million in funding from the state, Keck warned.
“It is our intention to settle on either one of these sites by January,” Keck said.
Asphalt plant
Hearings continued on the Shaw Brothers Construction asphalt plant off Mosher Road during the Gorham Planning Board regular meeting.
A peer-reviewer told the board aniticipated sound levels the plant would generate raised no red flags, despite one projected noise estimate slightly exceeding state standards. The board questioned the possibility of the creation of a noise-monitoring program, to which Danny Shaw, owner of Shaw Brothers Construction, voiced his objection.
“You’re making something out of nothing,” Shaw told the board. “None of the other asphalt pits in town have a monitoring program, and it’s not required by any town ordinance. You shouldn’t single out this plant for a costly monitoring program.”
Planning board member Douglas Boyce said a monitoring program would be the only way to know if the asphalt plant’s noise levels were legally within town limitations.
“It is apparent these facilities do generate a significant amount of noise. It is our duty to insure noise does not become adverse to the neighborhood,” Boyce said. “If there is no monitoring system in place, how do we ensure that is the case?”
Shaw said the responsibility would lay with his company and with the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
“If there are any complaints about noise levels, they should be to the Maine DEP, because state noise requirements are stricter than town requirements. Then the DEP would come out, set up and do the tests themselves,” Shaw said.
Planning board member Thomas Fickett said local monitoring and state tests were two different things.
“It’s checking versus monitoring,” Fickett said. “One is preemptive and would allow us to know immediately if you were in violation, while the other would only happen in response to suspected violations.”
Peer reviewer R. Scott Bodwell, a consultant with Resource Systems Engineering, told the board there were two kinds of noise which would emanate from the asphalt plant: variable, such as trucks coming and going, and constant, such as the sound of the asphalt crusher. He said while variable sounds might rise to levels higher than regulated noise levels for  short bursts of time, state and local regulations measured hourly averages of noise, and that with relatively minor changes to the ashphalt plant’s site plan, such as the addition of noise-containing berms, asphalt plant sounds levels would not approach state or local limits.
The board also heard from peer review Steve Bushey of Deluca-Hoffman Inc., who said he had no major concerns about the asphalt plant’s current site plan in regard to storm water drainage.
Boyce said the board was taking time with the asphalt plant plan because they wanted to get it right.
“We are all wrestling with the idea that this project will outlive all of us, but it will only get approved once,” Boyce said.
In other business
Also at the meeting, the board postponed making a decision of whether some small businesses could be exempt from a town ordinance requiring them to pave their parking lots.
The board noted the cost of paving a parking lot can be expensive, and may not be necessary if the business was not retail-based and did not deal with a large volume of automobile traffic.
Business with eight employees or less, and less than 50 automobile trips into and out of the parking lot a week, would have exempted business-owners from paving their parking lots.
However, the board voted to postpone a vote on the issue.
“I don’t think this is ready for a vote just yet,” Boyce said.
Board chairman Susan Robie and board member Edward Zelmanow were not present at the meeting.