OXFORD – SAD 17 has done wonders to transform a steel manufacturing building into a temporary elementary school, Superintendent Mark Eastman told district directors.

Now it’s time to move on.

Eastman took the board on a tour of the Madison Avenue Elementary School, home to the former Oxford Hills Technical School. Colorful banners and art lined the walls, and in one room stood a fearsome paper mache depiction of the school’s mascot, a purple dragon.

The district had six weeks to get the space ready to accommodate overcrowding at Hebron Elementary School and the Mildred Fox Elementary School in Paris. It opened about three years ago with 220 students in grades 4, 5 and 6.

The state Department of Education recently approved the concept design for a new $12 million Paris elementary school, which will require 5 percent local funding from the eight district towns.

Hebron reclaimed its fourth- through sixth-graders when a new elementary school was completed last year. The need for a new Paris elementary school was rated the third-highest in the state in May 2002.

Professor gets $270,000 to study bacteria

LEWISTON – Paula Schlax wants to understand bacteria.

“There’s so much we don’t understand in our simplest organism,” Schlax said. “It’s kind of the quest for knowledge.”

The National Science Foundation has given Schlax, an assistant chemistry professor at Bates College, more than $270,000 to follow her passion.

Schlax, a 36-year-old mother of two, spent the past six years studying E. coli in a pair of small college labs. With help from student assistants, Schlax had one goal in recent years: to find out how bacteria respond to changes in their environment.

“Say, going from a hamburger to the inside of a stomach,” Schlax said.

She believes that environmental stress – such as changes in temperature and acidity of the human body – turns on a genetic switch that toughens bacteria and helps it survive. If scientists can discover how that switch is turned on, they might be able to turn it off. That would make the bacteria easy to kill.

“There are fundamental laws that allow these things to act. We don’t know what they are yet,” Schlax said.

Lewiston block grants down by $30,000

LEWISTON – Councilors continued slimming down their community group giving this year.

Councilors approved a $1.25 million community block grant budget. The city set aside $133,802 of that for community groups, including the Abused Women’s Advocacy Project, the Catholic Charities Maine and L/A Arts. The amount was down $30,000 compared to last year.

This year, 35 groups requested more than $364,000 from the city. They included several newly created groups that received no money from the city at all.

Councilors said they could not guarantee the city would continue to get new CDBG money year after year and have been trying to wean the community groups from relying on it as a funding source.

“We are not required to provide any money to community groups,” Councilor Renee Bernier said. “That is something this council decides.”

Only 29 groups received money from the council, and none received as much as they wanted.

Arena project jumps by $1 million

LEWISTON – The price tag for a new entrance to the Colisee went up another $1 million.

Councilors agreed to borrow $1.5 million pay for a three-story facade on the front of the hockey arena. The city had agreed to borrow $500,000 to help pay for a facade. That plan had been designed by former owner Roger Theriault.

City Administrator Jim Bennett said it didn’t include electrical work and was built on unstable ground.

“The original deal was done very quickly, in three weeks,” Bennett told councilors. “I apologize for not being able to make the deal and go over all of the engineering and design plans, but we didn’t.”

The city officially assumed ownership of the former Central Maine Civic Center in February, agreeing to take on $4.2 million in debt and management of the center. That includes day-to-day operations and repairs.

Bennett said getting involved was still the right decision.

“One of the criticisms of government is that we need to act like a business,” Bennett said. “We are. This makes sense, from a business standpoint.”

Motorbike ruling survives appeal

LISBON – The Board of Appeals voted 4-0 to uphold a ruling by the Code Enforcement Office that the Longchamps Motorbike Race Track does not violate a local land-use ordinance.

A neighbor, Ronald Poulin, citing excessive noise coming from the 120-acre track, contended that it was prohibited under a land-use ordinance enacted in 1974.

However, upon investigation, the Code Enforcement Office concluded that use of the track was grandfathered. It was in use prior to the 1974 ordinance and has been in continuous use since that time and “had not expanded or materially changed.”

About 30 people attended an appeals hearing, with seven speaking against the track and eight in support.

The board’s decision is not expected to end the controversy. Poulin said when he filed the administrative appeal on behalf of himself and neighboring residents that he was taking a “two-pronged approach,” beginning with the appeal.