Author: Ted Cohen

A string of crises facing Kennebunk schools reached a new nadir with embezzlement charges against a newly appointed drama teacher. Holly Fougere was arrested Thursday – just four days after being hired. The school board had appointed Fougere to succeed Dennis St. Pierre, former Kennebunk High School theater director. But just four days after she got the job cops grabbed Fougere – in Conway, New Hampshire – allegedly for stealing money from a Conway high school arts department. The drama following Fougere’s hiring is just the latest challenge plaguing schools in pricey Kennebunk, an oceanfront town that ranks in the…

A Yarmouth teenager who was mowed down and killed by a drunk driver more than 30 years ago is about to have her memory honored anew with an updated public walkway bearing her name. Work is expected to begin soon to expand the Beth Condon Memorial Pathway in Yarmouth, state transportation officials said. Before doing so, they are seeking comment from area residents as to whether the project would create to possible encroachments onto historic properties. 15-year-old Yarmouth High School sophomore Elizabeth Condon was killed by drunk driver Martha Burke in 1993 as she walked along U.S. Route 1 with…

Delinquent Maine property taxpayers just got a gift from the newly elected Democrat state treasurer. But guess who has to pick up the slack… Joe Perry of Bangor, who last month was a successful dark-horse candidate for the state money manager’s job, decided his first big act would be lowering the interest rate charged on late property taxes a full point, to 7.5 percent, from the previous 8.5 percent. That effectively means a tax increase for property owners who pay their taxes when they’re due. Municipalities rely largely on the property tax to finance taxpayer services. So when one taxpayer…

The co-founder of the National Trust for Local News, the “nonprofit” owner of Maine’s largest newspaper chain, who quit on Wednesday, had been under fire for taking huge salary increases amid budget cuts. As The Maine Wire reported a month ago, Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro has been under fire for grabbing massive pay hikes even as she was cutting the budget for the newspapers she just bought. Shapiro conveniently ignored the issue of her controversial salary hike in her rehearsed resignation statement. “We have built something extraordinary together, she said. “I am deeply grateful to our team.” The trust bought the Portland…

A columnist who’s among several ousted by Maine’s largest daily paper fears that the next shoe to drop may be the staff writers. “I share the worry of many that layoffs of staff writers could be next,” said Avery Yale Kamila, the first ousted freelance columnist to break her silence. Make no mistake, Kamila says – the part-time writers who recently got the boot by the National Trust for Local News did not quit – they were fired. “It was not my choice to end my column,” she said. “Rather, it was the paper’s decision, which I was told was…

If the crash Wednesday night of a plane into the Potomac River is reminiscent to Mainers, it’s for good reason. A Cape Elizabeth woman was one of five survivors of the last plane to slam into the Potomac in 1982. Priscilla Tirado was on Air Florida Flight 90 with her husband and her baby when it crashed into the icy river Jan. 13, 1982. When Tirado lost her grip on a life ring, she was rescued by Lenny Skutnik, an employee of the Congressional Budget Office, who jumped into the river from a nearby bridge and grabbed her as she…