March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Council bypasses Legends noise item

BANGOR — The City Council’s Municipal Operations Committee was supposed to have taken action Tuesday on noise complaints related to Legends, a sports bar and restaurant located by the Penobscot River.

Each year the establishment holds street dances on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day.

Deputy Police Chief Don Winslow told councilors Tuesday that the city received some complaints from Brewer residents after the July 4 dance, but by working with the police, Frank Jordan, owner of the business, was able to make adjustments to the sound equipment so it could meet with proper decibel levels. As a result of the owner’s cooperation, said Deputy Chief Winslow, there were no complaints on Labor Day from Brewer and no need for the council to take any action.

Dr. Malvern Gilmartin of 243 Cedar Street appeared before the board with Ralph Mishou, superintendent of the sanitary department, to request an abatement on a 1992 sewer bill.

Gilmartin explained that he was out of the country during the summer of 1992 for three months. While he was gone a gardener in his employ accidently forgot to turn off a hose after doing some watering and the water continued to trickle for three months.

He said he did not disagree with the water bill he received, because he did use the city water, but the scientist in him could not allow him to pay the sewer bill because there was no way the water that flowed out of the hose could have ended up in the city’s sewer system. He did not believe that he should be made to pay for a service he did not use.

Mishou told the councilors that there had been a lot of correspondence back and forth on the issue. As a rule, he said, the department recommends very few abatements. The reason the issue had taken so long to resolve, he said, was that Gilmartin was scheduled to meet with the councilors last spring, but he had to leave the country again for another three months and was unable to attend the meeting.

Mishou said he was convinced that the water probably did not reach the city sewer, and he added that there were precedents in the past for such abatements. He referred to an unoccupied, but heated house that had a pipe freeze one winter and flood a cellar. The owners were given a partial abatement on some of the sewer costs.

Mishou’s major concern, he told the councilors, was that they maintain a consistent policy so that everyone is treated the same.

Committee members voted to grant an abatement of $295, minus whatever the minimum sewer cost would have been for the three-month period.

In other action the committee approved a request from bus director Joseph McNeil for a new engine, transmission, and two mini-bus shelters, one to be located at the Northwood Apartment Complex and the other at a location to be determined in the Hammond Street area.

The total cost for his request amounted to $17,300, but the city will only have to pay $3,460. By including the costs in the capital improvements budget, McNeil said the city would receive 80 percent matching funds from a federal grant program. If the expenses had been included in the operations budget, he said the city would have had to pay 50 percent of the cost.

Councilors also heard a proposal from Gloria Keenan of the Municipal Code Corp., which has headquarters in Florida. She said her firm could do an updated codification of all the city’s ordinances with indexes and cross references for about $18,000.


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