‘Outrage’ about the same old in Augusta
The Daily Sun enters its third year today
The showdown on Stevens pits girls hoops teams against each other
See Bob Higgins on page 4
See Curtis Robinson’s column on page 5
See the story in Sports, page 7
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2011
VOL. 3 NO. 1
PORTLAND, ME
PORTLAND’S DAILY NEWSPAPER
699-5801
FREE
Worst storm ever? Not snow much Yawn! Less than 9 inches of snow fell in Portland BY DAVID CARKHUFF THE PORTLAND DAILY SUN
It’s been called the record-breaking Groundhog Storm, a massive snowpocalypse that buried the country and prompted the Federal Emergency Management Agency to take a hand in dealing with its impacts. So why is the common response in New England a shrug of the shoulders? “It was a huge storm coming across the country, and it was really, really big for a lot of people,” said James Brown, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Gray. For Mainers, though, it was a “run of the mill snowstorm,” he said. Consider that Portland got 8.7 inches of snow total for both Tuesday and Wednesday as of yesterday afternoon, when the white stuff was tapering off. The weather service didn’t even bother looking up snowfall records. “For us to get 10 inches of snow in one day, that’s not such a big deal,” Brown said. “It’s significant and it causes a lot of headaches, but it’s not unusual for up here.” see STORM page 6
Fred Robie clears a sidewalk along Congress Street Wednesday as the midweek storm eases. (DAVID CARKHUFF PHOTO)
Zoning concerns delay hostel plans BY MATT DODGE THE PORTLAND DAILY SUN
For Seren Huus, the process of opening Portland’s first hostel in recent memory has turned into a crash course in municipal bureaucracy. And it’s not over yet. On Jan. 11, the city’s planning board voted 6-1 to recommend to the City Council adoption of a zoning text amendment to the Portland Land Use Code. The change would establish “hostel use” in the R-6, B-2, B-3, B-5 and B-7 zones, bringing Huus one step closer to her dream of providing affordable accommodations for budget-conscious travelers. “I was looking at this like … I’ll go into it with positive attitude and be learning about the bureaucratic process, it’ll be really fascinating,” said
Huus this week. That planning-approved zoning text amendment was sent to the Housing Committee, which met on Tuesday to discuss some its finer points before forwarding it to the city council for a vote. At least that was the plan. Due at least in part to the onset of a major winter storm, Tuesday’s Housing Committee meeting failed to meet a quorum. All four agenda items were tabled until March 1, another delay in a long, drawn-out process for Huus — or maybe this is just how things work in city government. “The bureaucracy is overwhelming. I’m just waiting for zoning because my next move largely depends on where I can build,” she said. At issue is the text amendment’s
restriction on occupancy limits in residential neighborhoods. Any residence operating as a hostel in an R-6 zone would be limited to 10 transient guests, 20 if the owner received conditional permission. The R-6 zoning variance is on Huus’ radar; she’s long had her eye on her own, highly residential neighborhood of Munjoy Hill as a potential site for the hostel. see HOSTEL page 3 RIGHT: Seren Huus plans to open Portland’s first hostel, but first she has to wade through the bureaucracy that goes along with trying to get a text amendment defining a hostel as an acceptable use under city code. A well-traveled hostel patron herself, Huus had hoped to site her hostel in an R-6 residential zone, a proposition that looks to be increasingly unrealistic given the occupancy limits for such zones. (COURTESY PHOTO)