LIVERMORE FALLS – Residents voted 801-615 to adopt an ordinance to regulate sexually oriented businesses.

And though ballots for a nonbinding straw vote to study moving from Androscoggin County to Franklin County hadn’t been counted, the “yes” pile was more than double the “no” pile, Deputy Election Clerk Faith Nichols said.

“The yes’ for sure won,” she said.

The Adult-Only Business Ordinance is 11 pages and requires a person wishing to operate a sexually oriented business to obtain an annual license.

It outlines the guidelines to operate such a business and prohibits sexually oriented businesses from being within 1,000 feet of a church, synagogue or other house of religious worship, school, day-care facility, public park or recreational facility, another sexually oriented business, or within 500 feet of any residence.

Secret camera? Yes, until flash

AUBURN -The secret locations of five Twin Cities red-light cameras won’t stay secret for long, Don Craig admits.

It’ll be obvious to drivers the first time the bright strobe light flashes behind them as they squeak through a red light.

“And then they’ll get something in the mail a week later, telling them they got caught,” Craig said.

But for now, transportation officials and consultants from Florida-based PEEK Traffic are keeping the locations under their hats.

“We’re testing the equipment to see how it works,” said Craig, director of the Androscoggin Transportation Resource Center. “We want to see if the technology itself makes those intersections safer. It kind of needs to be secret to work.”

The first of five cameras went up recently, but Craig said it’s not operational yet. It still needs to be connected to phone lines and the Internet.

Craig said he expects all five cameras will be up at Twin Cities intersections and connected later this month.

Library project moving indoors

LEWISTON – Construction crews at the Lewiston Public Library plan to begin moving indoors in the next few weeks.

Scaffolding around the building along Pine Street should start coming down this month, according to Library Director Rick Speer. Sidewalks around the building won’t reopen until March, however, as work on the $2.7 million renovation project continues.

“It’s coming along quickly now,” Speer said. “They’re working on the floors and reworking the windows.”

The library is expanding into the rest of the Pilsbury Block at the corner of Lisbon and Pine streets, according to plans. The renovation will give the library an expanded fiction section, a bright first-floor lobby, a second-floor historical records archive and a third-floor meeting and performance space with room for 150 people. The city hopes to store historical records from the Franklin Co. and Bates Mill in a new archive there.

Work on the street level storefront is next on the list, but Speer said that part of the project likely won’t be completed until March. That will keep sidewalks along Pine Street closed.

The entire project is scheduled to wrap up in May 2005.

Hospital exec off to big city

FARMINGTON – Though admittedly excited and nervous at the same time, Jill Berry Bowen is taking a big step in her career. She’ll be going from a hospital that has 70 beds to one that has 230 beds and is planning to build a new hospital.

The chief operating officer and vice president of Franklin Memorial Hospital is leaving her Farmington job to become the vice president of patient care services – nursing, pharmacy and the behavioral health program – at Mercy Hospital in Portland. Her last day at Franklin Memorial is Dec. 3.

The Avon woman who grew up in Phillips and Avon and graduated from Mount Abram High School says the move is “a huge step for me. It’s very significant.”

When she graduated from school she was going to be a physical education teacher. But that didn’t happen. Instead, she went into health care. “It sort of found me,” she said.

She has worked at Franklin Memorial Hospital for 11 years.

“It has been a wonderful experience for me,” Berry Bowen said. “I couldn’t have learned from a more wonderful hospital giant, Rick Batt.” But she has 20 years left to work, the registered nurse said, and she wants to further her education.

“I owe it to myself to explore a large hospital and I’m so fortunate to do it in Maine,” she said. “These opportunities don’t come about very often, especially in the state of Maine.”

Shooter pleads to mischief charge

AUBURN – A man who shot at a downtown apartment house in August has pleaded guilty to one count of criminal mischief.

Brett Griffin, 36, of Auburn was released after his appearance in Androscoggin County Superior Court.

He was sentenced to nine months and one day in prison, followed by one year of probation. Justice Ellen Gorman agreed to suspend all but 76 days of the sentence, which is the amount of time that Griffin has already been in custody.

Police say that on Aug. 5 Griffin fired a .22-caliber gun at an apartment door at 66 Shawmut St. No one was in the apartment at the time, and no one was injured.

According to court records, the shooting was related to a drug deal gone bad. Griffin claimed he was simply trying to get the attention of someone who had taken $2,800 from him for crack cocaine, then never delivered the drugs.

Zoning revision falls 2 votes short

AUBURN – A split vote doomed a plan to put more zoning decisions in staff hands.

The zoning change, which would have let small businesses expand uses that don’t match zoning codes, was able to get three yes votes, short of the five needed to pass.

Amendment backer Jim McPhee said he hopes councilors will consider similar changes in the future.

“There are at least three local businesses that we know of that would benefit from something like this,” McPhee said. “And those are just the ones we know of. There could be many others that we’ve never heard of. So, I think this will come up again.”

Current zoning codes require businesses that don’t conform to zoning codes go before the Planning Board if they hope to expand – adding a second floor, for example. That can cost as much as $1,800 in city fees and engineering expenses.

McPhee’s amendment would let those businesses ask city staff for approval for expansions of less than 25 percent of existing square footage. If staff doesn’t agree, the business could appeal to the Planning Board for a $150 filing fee.

Lack of surplus could be costly

AUBURN – County commissioners blame a lack of surplus revenues in the 2005 budget on a proposed 15.8 percent increase in the tax levy.

In each of the last several years, surplus funds have been available from previous years that have offset the amounts needed to be raised by taxation. That surplus is not currently available.

“The commission in whole has worked very hard to keep this budget down,” commission Chairman Elmer Berry said Wednesday during a presentation of the draft budget. “The past has finally caught up with us this year.”

In a letter to the Budget Committee, Berry and commissioners Constance Cote and Patience Johnson cited a reduction in revenues for 2005 of $537,385 due in part to a lack of surplus from 2003, as those funds were used to reduce the 2004 budget, and a 53rd week payroll of $73,000.

The proposed budget calls for a 4.78 percent in departmental expenditures with a 19.4 percent decrease in projected revenues and credits. The proposed amount to be raised by taxation is $7.5 million, almost a $1 million increase from the amount raised last year.

The largest proposed increase is $137,161 for the operation of the Androscoggin County Jail. Other proposed increases include $94,148 for the Sheriff’s Department, $51,427 for the Sheriff’s Department’s Civil Process program, and $203,218 for employee benefits. Some of the sheriff’s expenditures are offset by grants.