On Hill
scavengers. The relatively small opening discourages dumping of household waste, as well.
JS: Where are they so far?
By staff of the Friends of the Eastern Promenade If you’ve walked along the top of Cutter Street recently, you may have noticed a new addition to the Prom. A Big Belly solar compactor, complete with GPS technology and email indicators, is becoming one of the city’s savvy new waste management systems. Units can send emails or texts to drivers cutting down tremendously on the time they need to spend checking on overflow of trashcans. Check out the Q&A below with Portland City Waste Manager, Troy Moon, and Friends of the Eastern Promenade’s new Marketing and Development Coordinator, Joanna Smiley for the details on how this all works. JS: Why did the city decide to go with these new kinds of cans? TM: The Big Belly solar compactors have several advantages over traditional trash cans -- they hold more trash than regular trash cans because they compact the waste, they alert us electronically when they get full and they contain the waste so it cannot be strewn around by birds or other
TM: The new Big Belly at the top of Cutter Street is the fifth such unit in the City. There are two on Peaks Island and two in Deering Oaks.
MUNJOY HILL OBSERVER
to empty the units in Deering Oaks twice per week. I’m guessing that will be the case for the unit on Cutter Street, as well. If we had a full deployment of Big Belly units we would be able to send the truck to empty the ones that needed it instead of having
JS: Can you explain how the process works as far as the email notification you receive and also the solar aspect of the containers? TM: The Big Belly containers send status updates to a special website that our collection staff can look at in the morning. The units are located on a map using GPS technology, so we see a red, yellow or green indicator at each Big Belly location. If the unit is red, it needs immediate attention. If it is green, it is not very full. If it is yellow we need to make plans to empty it shortly. The units can also be set up to send a text message or e-mail when they are starting to get full.
JS: How much time will it save the city by having these? TM: As we get more Big Belly units we will see our collection efforts in Parks improve because we will only need to dispatch the garbage truck to units that need service. Right now we only need
Get Your Thrift On!
JS: What are your long-term goals with this initiative? TM: Our long-term goal is to replace all of the traditional trash cans with Big Belly units. We also want to introduce recycling containers into our parks and open spaces. We provide residents the opportunity to recycle at home, we should be providing the same opportunity when they are enjoying our parks.
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By Lisa Peñalver “Thrifting refers to the act of shopping at a thrift store, flea market, garage sale, or a shop of a charitable organization, usually with the intent of finding interesting items at a cheap price. A larger philosophy permeates the act of thrifting which celebrates the recycling of formerly-owned items, finding new use and new love for vintage material goods which had been thrown out, and the thrill of imagining what the former life of the item was like.” —From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In these times of economic scarcity, the concept of thrift has attained the status of grand virtue. No longer viewed as shabby, someone wearing a thrift-store find is applauded for having found such a fine deal.
to travel to all of the trash cans in the City to make sure they aren’t overflowing. That would leave the driver time to do other duties like picking up litter.
June 2012
Portland is a gold mine of thrift store values including several stores right on Munjoy Hill. If you Google “portland maine used clothing” you’ll get five pages of listings. Make that “furniture,” and you get four more pages. That’s a lot of territory to cover. But you don’t have to travel far from home to find your treasures. Talk to your friends and ask which thrift stores they prefer, and why. You’ll find it all depends on what you are looking for. We will include addresses and phone numbers for a number of the shops below, but this cannot possibly be a comprehensive list. Please alert us if we’ve missed a favorite of yours! Share the joy.
I have visited many of these shops myself, but to get a better feel for the topic, I picked the brain of my friend, Antonia Winter of Peaks Island, a selfdescribed thrift-store junkie. I asked, what are your favorite thrift stores in the area? And what is special about them? This is what I learned. Suggestion: before venturing into the land of the gentlyused, it’s good to have specific items/goals in mind—take a list! Because it’s too easy to get distracted in these places, and you’ll end up with a lot of things you don’t really need. Starting closest to home, we have two useful used furniture shops right on Congress Street by Otto Pizza: Tiny Tim’s Moving, and Cobwebs. Tiny Tim’s carries more contemporary pieces, and in Cobwebs, you will find more vintage and cottage pieces. Small shops with big savings. See page 8, Thrifting
With Development Coming, India Street Asks for Planning By Markos Miller In early May, Mayor Michael Brennan attended the general meeting of the India Street Neighborhood Association (INSA). The neighborhood has long been overlooked by the city, but recent development proposals are highlighting the need for a comprehensive vision for a neighborhood influx. While it was not clear that the mayor or city staff will be able to deliver this in the short term, the ongoing efforts of the neighborhood organization have drawn the city’s attention. The India Street neighborhood is currently facing three large scale development projects: a four to five story commercial development over the parking lot across from Miccucci’s at the site of the former Jordan’s plant, an eighty plus unit residential rental devel-
opment at the site of the old Village Cafe restaurant at Newbury and Hancock Streets, and Donald Sussman’s redevelopment of a block of dilapidated housing between Hampshire St. and Franklin St. below Federal Street. Together these projects will have a sudden and lasting impact on a neighborhood blessed by an attractive central corridor but lacking in clear identity or direction. Neighbors came together in 2010 to address the poor condition of the numerous undeveloped or unattended properties that plagued the neighborhood. Grand schemes of high end condos fantasized during the last development frenzy collapsed, leaving chain-linked fence and rubble. The neighborhood had long been viewed as on the edge of other, ‘more important’ parts
of the city, and as a result has been left out of any formal planning process.
hood in a way that is constructive, not reactive. Developer Kevin Bunker, who is working on the Sussman project, suggested that the association should create their own planning process if the city was not able to do so. The city has seen other grassroots planning processes provide needed direction in the past, such as the MHNO forum on Adam’s school in 2007 and the Franklin Reclamation Authority workshop that laid the groundwork for the Franklin Street redesign study.
Mayor Brennan, accompanied by city staff, heard neighbors call for a neighborhood planning process to create a guiding vision that would provide the context in which future changes to the neighborhood could be considered. While residents appear to be welcoming of development, there is considerable concern about scale of buildings and excessive building heights, as well as finding a balance between bringing more people into the It’s unlikely that the ISNA will From neighborhood and avoiding full www.veryfreesudoku.com be able to do so before some of scale gentrification.
Challenging Sudoku Puzzles - Book 7
Like any good neighborhood or-
Sudoku 3 ganization, the Puzzle group is looking
ahead and trying to capture their hopes and concerns about what might happen to their neighbor-
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these projects are realized. However, it’s clear that a comprehensive framework is needed; development will continue to come to this neighborhood. The India Street corridor is a strategic location for the city, a gateway top the Old Port for cruise ship passengers, a key link for Munjoy Hill residents, and a crucial thread in the effort to re-knit the east end of the peninsula together. Hopefully, the city is able to give this small, but valuable neighborhood the attention it deserves. The neighborhood, and the city as a whole, will benefit from doing so.
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