"Greens Dump State Leaders" by Ed King in the West End News: May 24, 2006

Maine’s Green Independent Party began its annual party convention with a bang on May 19th by voting to replace the entire state party leadership with a complete new slate of officers. Three prominent Portland Greens were elected to take the party in a new direction, on the second day of the two-day convention. Neighborhood activist and former City Council candidate Carol Schiller, and party strategist Ben Chipman are now part of the 5-member state committee, which also includes former gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Carter. Portland Green Party Chair Kevin Donoghue was elected a national representative.

There are twelve announced Green candidates in the state this year – all of them in Cumberland County. Six Greens are elected officials in the City of Portland – four school board members, one member of the Portland Water Board, and West End state legislator John Eder.

Green Independent Party gubernatorial candidate Pat LaMarche addressed about 40 Greens at the convention on May 20th, delivering a critical ‘State of the State’ address in which she touched on such topics as health care, education, energy, and the economy.

"Eder Bill Becomes Law" by Ed King on thewestendnews.blogspot.com: May 17, 2006

A new law sponsored by West End Representative John Eder requiring landlords to present prospective tenants with a disclosure form revealing a rental unit’s energy efficiency has gone into effect. The law requires landlords to fill out the form, make it available to the rental housing consumer, and post it in a visible place in the apartment for rent. Upon signing the lease, the prospective tenant must sign that they read the form.

The forms are now available to landlords and property managers for download on the Public Utilities Commission website. The forms provide easy to understand information describing in simple terms whether or not a rental unit meets minimum energy efficiency standards, and also apprise the renter of an existing law that allows a prospective tenant to contact the utility to find out how much it cost to heat the unit in the previous twelve months.

Portland has some of the oldest housing stock in the country, and many of its rental buildings are uninsulated. Eder says that every winter he gets calls from tenants who are shocked by the cost of their heating bills. The original legislation would have required all rental units in the state be made to be energy-efficient. The disclosure form approach was the result of a compromise between those representing tenants, the environment and landlords.

Among the groups who worked for the bill’s passage was The League of Young Voters, who were invited by the Legislature’s Utilities and Energy Committee to be among the stakeholders who worked out the final language of the law.

"Bloggers Bring New Dimension to Local Political Scene" by Ed King in the West End News: May 10, 2006

Comments by Portland School Committee member Stephen Spring on his web log became the topic of a Portland City Council workshop on May 8th when City Councilor Jill Duson asked if the School Committee members who voted against the School Committee budget had issued a ‘minority report’. (Four Green Party members on the officially non-partisan School Committee had voted against the school budget in a 5-4 vote.)

School Committee Chair Ellen Alcorn told the City Council that there was no consensus among the dissenters as to their reasons for voting against the budget, and so a ‘minority report’ was not possible.

Spring and several Green Independent Party members who are running for local office recently started their own web logs to get their views into the open. Portland Green Independent Party Co-Chair Kevin Donoghue is using his blog (kevindonoghue.blogspot.com) to promote his campaign against District 1 City Councilor Will Gorham. Other Green Party candidates with web logs include David Marshall (District 2 City Council; www.davemarshallforcouncil.com) and Kevin Gardella (at-large School Committee; kevingardella.blogspot.com).

Duson said that she thought it was ‘odd’ for a public official to put his views on a blog instead of bringing it before the official body. Spring, however, has said that there is no forum for the minority on the School Committee to express its views, hence his comments independent of the board.

Spring has proposed several ideas on his blog (www.springcares.blogspot.com.) to cut the school budget and save energy as well.

"Born to Ride?" by Stephen Nunns in the Portland Forecaster: May 10, 2006

It's 8:20 in the morning all over the city, parades of elementary school children pedal their way along didicated bike routes, traversing intersections with the help of crossing guards, making their way to school in time for the morning bell.

This is the scenario that some biking advocates and parents hope to see in place of the next few years.

Currently, the School Department has no official policy about kids riding to school; instead it is left up to individual principals to decide policy on a school-by-school basis. As a result, some schools are examing the idea of letting the kids ride to school.

"I think there's been a confluence of events," School Committee member Stephen Spring said. "First of all, I think there's a growing awareness that there are other weays to get around having to put $30 into your tank every couple of days. And secondly, there are more transportation advocates in positions of power and people are starting to listen to them."

At Hall School, some parents and staff have embarked on a pilot program to encourage kids to ride to school. A new bike rack was installed on May 1. Accord to Rich Veillieux, whose two daughers attend teh school, the rack has been "overfull" since its installation.

"My daughters and I rode to school twice last week," said Veillieux, who is one of the parental advocates and was project director for Healthy Portland. "One day they found it was actually too crowded."

According to Veillieux, there was never a frim policy disallowing bikes, but riding them to school had not been encouraged. Last fall, he and a number of other parents starting speaking to the administration about allowing bikes as an experiment.

"We convinced them that it was the right thing to do." he said. "It relieves the congestion around the school at the start and end of the day and the kids get exercise and a certain amount of freedom."

Parents and otehr advocates are getting assistance from members of Portland Trails, Healthy Portland, and the Portland Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee, who have teamed up to create a Safe Routes to School team.

According to Jaime Parker of Portland Trails, the group is applying for grants to install bike racks, work with Maine Department of Transportation to improve or create safe routes to and froms schools and install road safety programs into schools' curricula.

"Communities should see that not driving kids to school is beneficial to everyone," Parker said. "It's a wholesome, healthy thing to do."

Parker believes parents and school administrators need to rethink their kids' transportation needs. He notes that he lives within a seven-minute waslk to the new East End Community School, the school his two children are slated to attend. Nevertheless, they will still be eligible to be bused to class every day.

"None of us grew up with that," he said. "It's not only a waste of money, but it's coddling. It limits kids' freedom and independence."

Still, advocates like Parker acknowledge that allowing schools to set their own policies makes more sense that trying to institute something throughout the city. The situation is certainly different at Peak Island Elementary - where most kids ride to school even in the dead of winter and cars travel more than 25 mph - than for the kids at Riverton, which is accessed by busy Forest Avenue.

Not everyone is excited about gaggles of third- and forth-graders pedaling their ways to school.

"I would hold my breath with worry," said Dawn Carrigan, principal of Longfellow School. "Can you imagine 2,000 kids riding to school in two one-hour blocks in the morning and afternoon?"

Longfellow does not currently have any policy against biking to school, though Carrigan said it is strongly discouraged, thanks in part to the traffic on Stevens Avenue and because there have been numerous examples of vandalism and theft to bikes left on school grounds.

"I'm a big cheerleader for Portland Trails," she said, "and I'd be interested in hearing their thoughts, but this really is an issue of safety."

Veillieux acknowledges that traffic is an issue for certain schools particularly because of cars that speed through school zones. But he bleives that enforement of traffic laws, and educating motorists should be the key.

"Inevitabley, someone will get hurt," he said. "There is a risk with biking as there is with any physical activity. But what we need to do is make the city safer for biking and not discourage it just because conditions aren't what they should be."

"METRO to Let Students Ride Free" by Ed King in the West End News: May 10, 2006

Beginning in September, all students in grades 6-12 in both Portland and Westbrook will be given free access to METRO for a four month period. During that time, data will be gathered on usage, and students will be able to provide feedback to policymakers.

West End School Board member Stephen Spring had been promoting a plan to offer passes to only high school students, which he was hoping to see implemented this past January. Spring was one of six elected officials of the joint finance committees of the City Council and the School Committee who met in the Fall of 2005 to create a list of consolidation recommendations to save money for the City.

The original plan was to give students free passes to use METRO on a voluntary basis to get to and from Portland High, Deering High or PATHS. During the rest of this academic year, youth were going to test the system, gather data, and advise METRO on how it could tweak its routes and schedules. On February 23rd, school and METRO staff came back to the school committee recommending that consolidation not be implemented for a number of reasons.

However, Spring insisted that joint committee's plan was misunderstood by METRO and school staff members, and continued to push the consolidation plan, which was adopted by the school committee last month.

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"Eder, Hinck Face Off in First Campaign Battle of the Season" by Ed King in the West End News: May 10, 2006

Although they agreed on almost every issue raised during a candidate forum sponsored by The League at Reiche School on May 9th, West End State Representative John Eder and challenger Jon Hinck exchanged angry charges and denials regarding what may be the most important issue – perhaps the only issue in the campaign – the viability of having a third party to promote progressive ideas in the State Legislature.

Eder, the only elected Green Party state legislator in the country, took great exception when Hinck accused him of not doing anything when Democrats nearly lost an important committee chair to a conservative Republican in the last session. Eder denied the charge, saying that he had nothing to do with the committee in question and said that the Democratic leadership considered him to be part of the working majority. He said that he voted his conscience and that he was a Green - not a Democrat who had become an independent.

After Eder said that there should be more political parties and that the two-party system has failed, Hinck described how radically different Portland politics are from the rest of the state, and how Republicans vote against every progressive measure. He then said that he didn’t think that third parties were the answer – that they tear down the better parts of the other two parties.

Aside from that major difference, the two candidates agreed on issues ranging from citizen referendums to toxic waste disposal to single-payer healthcare to immigrant voting rights. At the end of the 40-minute session, the two candidates hugged each other and started distributing their first wave of campaign literature.

"LaMarche Wins League's Dating Game" by Ed King in the West End News: May 10, 2006

Green Party gubernatorial candidate Patricia LaMarche beat out opponents Peter Mills, Davy Jones and Christopher Miller at the The League’s “ReEmergence” event on May 6th, making her its choice as The League’s 2006 political prom queen.. The League event included music, dancing and a Gubernatorial Candidates Forum staged as a political version of “The Dating Game”.

The questions posed by voters ranged from political to personal to serious to social:
- Are you pro-choice or pro-life?
- What are you listening to on your CD player right now?
- Do you believe there should be equal benefits and wages in the workplace?
- How do you believe we should take on the burning issues of construction debris and the environment?

The candidates were concealed behind a privacy screen - allowing for anonymity – and placing the focus on the depth and substance of the answers, as opposed to the personality and verve of the individual candidates. By a show of audience applause, the winning “date” was chosen.

The League made a point of stating that the results were not an official endorsement, despite the applause LaMarche received from the youthful crowd. LaMarche received a bouquet of red tulips and box of chocolates for her victory.

“Now that our mutual affection is a matter of public record, I look forward to my next date with them on November 7th,” she concluded.