The trustees decided at their January meeting to issue a request for qualifications to find consultants to develop the model, but as of yet, trustees don’t know what criteria would be used to evaluate programs’ performance or how funding could be reallocated.

Despite that uncertainty, some UMaine department heads are apprehensive of the idea and what it may mean for them.

‘It could just kill us’

“We’re down to the marrow,” said Jane Smith, chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Classics. “Depending on how this is formulated, it could just kill us. That’s my fear.”

And the heads of the philosophy, history and women’s studies departments, as well as the dean of the College of Engineering, echoed Smith’s fear.

They worry that their departments will be pitted against others on campus, and with different departments come different priorities that may not mesh well with stringent criteria. They say their programs offer students opportunities to learn things difficult to evaluate.

“A concern might be if they tried to pigeonhole each of the campuses in a particular niche and this becomes the STEM campus,” Smith said, referring to initiatives for promoting education in science, technology, engineering and math that have recently taken root across the country.

A main concern for Smith is that the intangible benefits from studying foreign languages are difficult to quantify. She worries that criteria for performance would deal heavily with retention and graduation rates and overlook gradual developments that students make during the course of their studies.

“It’s achievement rather than, ‘OK, got another one out the door,’” she said. “The study abroad experience … you can’t quantify that. Cognitive abilities are increased through the study of another language.

“We’re training human beings to interact with other human beings,” Smith continued. “We’re not producing ball bearings to ship off.”

Possible performance points

Richard Judd, chair of the Department of History, was concerned that his department’s lack of focus on applying for grant funding could be detrimental when compared to the heavy emphasis on securing grants in the hard sciences.

“We do not typically seek grants, so performance for us is publication of books and articles,” Judd said. “My initial reaction is that it would be really disadvantageous to the humanities.

“So many of our skills are in intangible things like critical thinking,” he continued. “How do you put a value on that? I’m not really sure that it works.”

The trustees have not specified whether performance would be measured in relation to other departments or solely against a department’s own past performance. Furthermore, if performance was measured relatively, it is not clear if it would be calculated against other departments at the same university or against departments system-wide.

“Our department is clearly geared to research. Our criteria is basically publication. I don’t think that would be true at Fort Kent or Farmington,” Judd said, referencing other system campuses.

Roger King, chair of the Department of Philosophy, took issue with the idea that retention and graduation rates could be tied to funding, among other things, since philosophy is not a major draw for potential students.

“Almost no one comes to the university declaring a philosophy major,” he said. “So there would be no cohort to measure if they say, ‘Oh, we’re going to look at first-years and see what happens.’”

Also, King said if a program didn’t appear to be performing well and received less funding, it’s possible that the program could be less attractive to students who may have been considering it.

“It penalizes the departments when students want to explore different majors,” he added. “If you’re measuring retention rate at the department level, that penalizes the department.”

King said the idea of establishing clear-cut goals for performance is not something the university has avoided. His department is scheduled for an external review next year, and faculty are currently preparing for that evaluation, including developing a succinct way to express department goals.

“We’re still in the process of really trying to get a clear handle on that ourselves, so if someone were to try to link funding to that, we might not be prepared,” King said.

Ann Schonberger, director of the Women in the Curriculum and Women’s Studies Program, also takes issue with evaluating a program by its ability to move students through to graduation.

Most women’s studies students have two majors, Schonberger said, which would skew a measurement of her department’s performance based on graduation rates.

With the addition of a second major, a student is less likely to graduate in four years; however, Schonberger said the addition of a women’s studies major is sometimes a supportive force that can encourage a student to finish a degree in his or her first major.

She described past students returning to tell her that the critical thinking skills they learned in their women’s studies classes or the support they received from the department made it possible to graduate when otherwise they may not have finished.

Schonberger also expressed concern that a department’s post-graduation employment rate could be used to measure its performance.

“Most of the other majors in colleges that aren’t in Liberal Arts and Sciences are focused on certain job areas,” she said, adding that job opportunities resulting from women’s studies are not always clear-cut. “That’s a very different thing from something like engineering, where you can just go right into a job.”

Schonberger described a group of four graduates who will return to UMaine in April for a lunchtime Women in the Curriculum panel. Mia Baker, a 2004 graduate, will be on that panel.

Schonberger said Baker worked at a Hannaford supermarket during college and applied for the competitive manager training program close to graduation. Baker was selected from a pool of about 400 applicants, Schonberger said.

“The reason Mia was chosen was because of her major in psychology and women’s studies, and the reason was, ‘Most of the people you will be managing will be women,’” Schonberger said, quoting someone who had been involved with Baker’s hiring.

“Who would have thought?”

Cheapening education?

Dana Humphrey, dean of the College of Engineering, worries that specifying criteria for evaluating performance will lead to education geared solely toward those criteria at the expense of other departmental goals.

“If it isn’t measured in the formula, then that’s going to force us to do less of it,” Humphrey said, adding that he fears the university’s commitment to research and public service could become stunted at the expense of its commitment to teaching.

“A poorly implemented funding model could reduce the quality of education,” he said.

Humphrey speculated on how a funding model based on the number of graduates could hurt his department, despite its status as a high-draw program for the university.

He hypothesized that a model could be developed that allocated a specific amount to a program for each graduate. If such a model were applied systemwide, he said, it could lead to the University of Maine at Fort Kent receiving the same amount of funding for seeing a student earn a bachelor’s degree in English as UMaine would receive for seeing a student earn a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, for example.

“That would be very bad because what it costs to take and produce those degrees is very, very different,” Humphrey said. “I certainly hope that any model they come up with would not be so simplistic.

Humphrey wants to see any performance-based funding model evaluate his department against others at comparable institutions nearby.

“It’s also important that you compare apples to apples when you‘re talking about cost,” he said. “There are no institutions in the system that are equivalent to the University of Maine, so you have to measure outside of the system.”

Moving forward

The trustees’ request for qualifications was issued on Jan. 24. Any consulting service interested in developing a model needs to send a letter of interest by Feb. 21.

The RFQ mentions the educational mission of teaching, research and public service that Humphrey discussed, identifying that mission as something the trustees hope to preserve as they move forward with a new funding model.

The consulting service will need to identify criteria for evaluating performance and how to measure those criteria and to conduct financial analyses, including “revenue allocation forecasting and modeling.” They will also need to develop a method for introducing the new formula and applying it to the system’s seven universities.

A final report is due to the trustees on July 9, meaning any answers about the design of the model will likely not be forthcoming by semester’s end.

And when he stood before the crowd that had gathered in room 107 in the Donald P. Corbett Business Building, he knew what he was about to say could land him in hot water with the U.S. State Department. So the School of Policy and International Affairs’ spring lecture series began with an act of defiance.

“I am actually standing here committing an act of civil disobedience, conscience or a crime,” Van Buren said.

He came to talk about his book, “We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People,” which, as a 23-year veteran of the Department of State, he had been banned from discussing in public. Van Buren’s book examines the shortcomings of the State Department and its reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

The first indication that his book would cause problems came after a post from Van Buren’s blog, which he was using to promote his book, was picked up by The Huffington Post. The blog post questioned the purpose of the United States Embassy in Baghdad, which is the largest embassy in the world with nearly 16,000 staff members, most of whom are contractors.

Van Buren was scolded by his boss but was otherwise unpunished.

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the U.S. embassy in Baghdad’s presence in Iraq stands to be decreased by at least half.

Almost immediately after the book was published, Van Buren lost his security clearance for exercising what the State Department deemed poor judgment.

Not long after the book was published, Van Buren posted a link to Wikileaks on his blog. Van Buren then lost access to State Department computers, buildings and his passport, and was told he could be tried under the Espionage Act.

According to Van Buren, the government is committed to secrecy and will use intimidation to protect those secrets.

“The easiest book to stop is the one that is never written,” he said. “The easiest voice to silence is the one that is never raised.”

The State Department has procedures that must be followed should an employee want to publish a manuscript. To ensure that an employee isn’t accidentally divulging state secrets, the manuscript must be made available for examination by higher-ranking employees for up to 30 days.

After electronically submitting his manuscript, Van Buren waited 30 days for approval or denial. He did not hear from the department and waited an additional 15 days in case there was a complication caused by federal holidays or weekends.

It was discovered that the department misplaced the manuscript, and since the time for review had expired, Van Buren submitted the book to his publisher.

Whistle-blowing, according to Van Buren, could spell the end of a career with the government.

“It shouldn’t be an act of courage, but it is,” he said.

He has been placed on paid administrative leave and was told that he would not be able to extend his job come September.

“For most of my career in the State Department I have been very happy. I’m not a disgruntled employee. I’m very gruntled,” Van Buren said, adding that he had not wanted to stop working for the Department of State.

“Are we going to end up on some government list if we buy your book?” Codi Booher, a fourth-year anthropology and women’s studies student, asked jokingly during a Q-and-A session after the lecture.

“I learned a lot,” she said later. “I’ll probably buy the book and read it.”

The chapter “Spooky Dinner” is one of the more humorous chapters in the book, according to Van Buren. It talks about a night he spent having dinner in one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces with some friends from the Central Intelligence Agency.

Van Buren references CIA operations in Somalia and U.S. cooperation with Hussein. This information was deemed classified by the government, but Van Buren said he learned about the CIA operation in Somalia from the film “Black Hawk Down.”

A photograph of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein led Van Buren to believe there was cooperation between the leaders.

Van Buren was a member of a Provincial Reconstruction Team, which was created with the goal of finding citizens individualized solutions to problems caused by military actions. The idea of this counterinsurgency program was that economic opportunities would prevent Iraqis from attacking U.S. soldiers.

One reconstruction program Van Buren described gave sheep to Iraqi widows. Each sheep cost $5,000, and it was expected that the widows would sell the lambs in order to earn a modest income. Van Buren asked questions about the justification of this program, namely how it benefited the government or the widows.

“Nobody on my team understood what we were doing,” Van Buren said.

Another program translated classic American novels into Arabic. Van Buren said he had 80,000 of the books in his possession and quickly found that giving the novels away was difficult. He said he ended up having to bribe a school principal to take all of the books.

He said later it was discovered that the principal tried to sell the books on the black market and when no one purchased them, they were abandoned behind a public building.

Many of the reconstruction programs Van Buren was associated with were similar. He described them as a type of positive publicity for the government.

“Our goals didn’t work. We just didn’t get it right. We failed,” Van Buren said. “We could never have done it and made it work, but we could have done better.”

With the help of the Government Accountability Program, Van Buren has been able to receive the legal help he now needs as a result of publishing his book. Others who have allegedly been  targeted for whistle-blowing have not fared as well, he said.

“I am one little piece of a very big battle,” Van Buren said.

Old Town has finalized plans and secured funding to move forth with a lengthy construction project that will overhaul the one-mile stretch of Stillwater Avenue extending from McDonald’s to the Old Town Elementary School.

The project is a joint venture between the Maine Department of Transportation (MDOT) and the Old Town Public Works Department, which will primarily oversee a complete reconstruction of the aging sewer lines buried beneath that stretch of Stillwater Avenue, according to Old Town City Manager William Mayo.

John Rouleau, director of the Old Town Public Works Department, said reconstruction efforts will take place in three phases, the first of which will begin in early May and last through the summer.

He said phase one will consist of overhauling the stretch of road beginning in front of McDonald’s and will be complete when construction crews add new sidewalks, build a more expansive shared left turning lane, reconstruct housing culverts for new sewer drainage and widen the entrance to the Lawndale Cemetery nearly three-quarters of a mile away.

In all, the project is estimated to cost around $1.1 million, and it is yet unknown when all three phases will be complete, as only the first phase has been funded by the state. Old Town will shoulder a lower portion of the costs and mainly pay for reconstructing the sewer drainage system beneath the road.

“It’s not really that big of a project, but it’s significant because you’re dealing with some very old pipes and the concrete that supports them under the road,” Rouleau said. “Not only that, but you’re overhauling the road at the same time, adding curbing and completely reworking all the drainage.”

On Jan. 19, the Old Town City Council approved the $825,000 necessary to make adjustments to its waste water treatment plant and bring the aging components there up to date.

“It’s a significant rebuild,” Rouleau said. “But we’re going to be greatly improving the quality, functionality and longevity of the drainage system, which has really been our primary concern.”

A third party will be contracted to undertake installation of new drainage. Rouleau said the public works department has largely aided MDOT and other agencies involved in the design of the new roadway and drainage by offering local knowledge and addressing “big concerns.”

“Those lines out there are old and the pump stations are old. This is long overdue,” Mayo said, referring to the drainage system.

Rouleau said the project “came to fruition” through a number of requests made by various agencies in Old Town, as well as others like the Bangor Area Comprehensive Transportation System, which manages the public transit system in the area.

Engineering on the project began nearly two years ago, according to Mayo, and a number of surveys have shown an abnormal amount of motor vehicle accidents on the stretch of Stillwater Avenue slated to be overhauled.

It’s unclear how the project will affect traffic over the summer, but Rouleau predicted the redesign will help prevent accidents and ease strains on traffic flow, especially near the intersection at McDonald’s.

Old Town officials have also made a request to MDOT to expand the project further and add a fourth phase that would extend repairs for a half-mile past the elementary school to Abbott Street.

The tour, given by professor emeritus Richard C. Hill, highlighted several technologies that were installed to facilitate more efficient heating.

The “energy house,” located at 491 College Ave, was a project built in response to rising energy costs. Hill, who first started with the university in 1946,  proposed the home be built in conjunction with the university to explore energy efficiency.

However, despite his role in building and designing the house, Hill says the experiment has failed.

“To build a building this way and tout it as an energy efficient building is simply absurd,” Hill said. “It was supposedly a demonstration building. It turned into a ‘don’t try this’ building.”

The house features passive solar collection, active solar collection, a “rock bed” system for energy regulation and an abundance of insulation. Wood stoves are also tested against more innovative heating methods throughout the house.

The project, according to Hill, has shown that many of the technologies, while sound ideas, aren’t cost effective enough to justify their use. In addition, the building itself was built in such a way that it failed to live up to the expectations of an energy efficient house.

“They hired an idiot for an architect,” Hill said. “I mean, will you look at this building? To think about energy efficiency, this is a juxtaposition of incongruities. I mean this is crazy.”

The only option for using the building is renting it to residents, as regulations would require drastic changes to furnishings and design. The large open nature has also made it inefficient, according to Hill, due to the high energy needed to heat a large building for only a small amount of people that could potentially live there.

The building is heated by multiple sources. Large solar collectors gather heat from the sun. Water from a 200-gallon tank is pumped through either the solar collectors or a gas-powered heater in order to generate radiant heat in the pipes below the floors of each room.

Additionally, a large bank of windows allows the sun’s light to easily pass into each room, where  underneath the floors a layer of fist-sized rocks, known as rock bed, are located. This rock bed stores heat, which is redistributed by a fan throughout the house.

The problem with the energy efficiency comes from the fan used to circulate the heat.

Hill’s house next door is a more rational take on energy efficiency. His hot water-heater is a device known as a “heat pump,” which works differently from a conventional water heaters. Most water heaters heat the water directly, whereas a heat-pump move heat from one area to another.

This is much more efficient, as Hill’s water heater has shown. The heater’s cost is almost a third of the cost to run a traditional hot water heater.

“It has more than paid for itself,” Hill said.

In addition to the heat pump, Hill has created a large brick wood-stove that burns both cleanly and efficiently. The stove, designed by Hill, allows for almost complete combustion of the wood and requires very little maintenance or effort to run.

“You only need to fire it once a day,” he said.

The stove also benefits from having “no thermal couple to the outdoors.” This means that the heat will stay in the building and will not vanish up the chimney, unlike a traditional fireplace.

“The idea that some gee-whiz technology is going to come along and save us is wrong,” Hill said.

For him, living in smaller houses and larger groups would improve energy efficiency more than any technology could.

According to Hill, data has shown that doubling the number of residents only increases energy costs by 40 percent, showing that more people in fewer homes means reduced costs overall.

“The secret to making a house energy efficient isn’t finding a new technology,” he said. “It’s figuring out how to cram as many people as you can into a small space, comfortably.”

Even with all the serious talk on energy efficiency, the 92-year-old still has a sense of humor.

“I hope you learned something,” Hill said at the conclusion of the tour as he began to kindle a fire in his stove. “Now, while everybody is here, let’s set the chimney on fire.”

Class president Nate Wildes said the class wants to contribute something of lasting value to the campus that would remain after graduation.

“The best way we thought we could do that was to give something to the university that would enhance campus life and be something that would be around for a very long time but also be sustainable,” he said.

Wildes said the class of 2012 didn’t want to give something like a stone with a plaque for a gift, but instead something that would benefit an area of campus needing improvement.

The class council has developed a garden containing both high- and low-bush blueberry plants as a physical representation of a new scholarship.

“What we have done is identified a student in our class, Zachary Campbell, a landscape design major, who has worked with us to design the plan,” Wildes said, adding that Campbell’s help has saved the class over $16,000 in design fees.

Wildes said the lack of blueberries on campus was troublesome to members of the class council due to the role the fruit plays in Maine’s economy. The low-bush plant is the official Maine blueberry plant; however, the high-bush is capable of being better arranged aesthetically

The $1,985 requested was reduced from the estimated $5,000 request the class brought to the Executive Budgetary Committee. Wildes said the money will be used to purchase crushed stone, sod and loam to build a pathway in the garden.

The total value of the project, according to Wildes, would be between $30,000 and $45,000 if the university were to purchase all the materials and hire a landscaping company. Wildes said the class of 2012 was going to do it for under $15,000.

“To date we have saved $4,500 in cost. We have been given lots of materials at cost or highly discounted rates,” he said. “The money we have requested from you is not because we haven’t done any fundraising.”

Wildes explained that a lot of the project is based off crowdsourcing. They have worked with material sourcing companies, green houses, hard landscape suppliers, class council connections and other members of the class to find the cheapest materials and costs.

Assistance from campus facilities will save approximately $6,000 in labor costs. Wildes said Facilities Management has already budgeted this project into their costs.

According to Wildes, the class gift will be completed by graduation weekend. The garden will be planted between the New Balance Student Recreation Center and the Bridge Tennis Courts.

“The minor weather issue is that the ground is apt to be too cold to put the bushes in and expect them to survive till the summer,” Wildes explained. “We’ll have everything done and keep the plants in a greenhouse, take them out and put them where they’re supposed to be for graduation so everyone can see.”

This was the first time Student Government had ever allocated money to a class council. Until last spring, when GSS chose to recognize class councils, they were affiliated with the Alumni Association.

GSS also allocated $1,440 to help fund the Animation Club’s trip to Anime Boston, an three-day Japanese animation convention that includes a masquerade, an anime music video contest, an artists’ alley and art show, and video programming rooms.

Curtis Porter, the club’s president, explained that he is trying to make this a yearly event.

“We’ve gone from 14 people [last year] all the way up to 32 people, which is more than what our club had,” he said.

GSS also passed a resolution to increase the cumulative GPA required to join GSS from 2.0 to 2.5. The new GPA standards will take effect in the fall of 2012.

Although some senators felt the increase may cause interested students to be unable to join, Student Body President Anthony Ortiz, Sen. Sam Helmke and Sen. Ryan Hall said the requirement would better the senate.

“Just because you don’t have the GPA to become a senator does in no way mean that your voice cannot be heard,” Ortiz said. “The job of senators is to represent every student on campus regardless of their GPA.”

Ortiz said the leaders of the campus should be held to a higher academic standard.

“When you come to school, objective one is to get an education for the future,” he said. “I think a 2.5 is a pretty good number to ensure that people underneath [a 2.5 cumulative GPA] focus on what they pay to go here for.”

Helmke said he wanted GSS to be exclusive.

“I want this body to be the cream of the crop. If you don’t have pride in yourself to try and aim high and get a good GPA, then you don’t belong here anyway,” he said.

The University of Maine Police Department received a report of the odor of marijuana coming from a third-floor room in Somerset Hall at 11:14 p.m. Feb. 7. An officer located the room and reported finding Thomas Powers, 20, inside. Police said Powers was suspected to be in violation of prior bail conditions and was brought back to UMPD for urinalysis, which showed that he tested positive for marijuana use. Powers was arrested for violation of bail conditions and transported to Penobscot County Jail in Bangor. He has since been released on bail.

Halted malt

UMPD received a report of noise and suspected underage drinking in a first-floor room in Kennebec Hall at 11:10 p.m. Feb. 4. Brian O’Leary, 19, was found in the room. O’Leary was summonsed for possession of alcohol by a minor and referred to Judicial Affairs. One 12-ounce container of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and two open cans of beer were confiscated.

XM escape

UMPD received a report of a burglary to a motor vehicle at 6:45 p.m. Feb. 3. An XM Satellite radio receiver worth an estimated $200 was stolen from a locked white 2005 Chevy truck left in the Hilltop parking lot. There was no damage to the vehicle.

Pass trespass

UMPD received a report of a burglary to a motor vehicle at 12:46 p.m. Feb. 2. A resident parking permit was stolen from a Chevy Aveo left in the Hilltop parking lot. The permit will cost $25 to replace.

Valueless velocipede

UMPD received a report of a theft at 2:17 p.m. Feb. 3. A silver bicycle left locked to the bicycle rack outside Knox Hall was taken between Dec. 1 and Feb. 3. The lock was not left behind. No value was reported.

Suds for seven

UMPD received a report of underage drinking in a first-floor room in Kennebec Hall at 12:30 a.m. Feb. 4. An officer reported finding seven individuals in the room, who were all cooperative and admitted to drinking. One 21-year-old male, four 19-year-old males and two 19-year-old females were referred to Judicial Affairs for either furnishing alcohol to minors or illegal possession of alcohol by a minor. A mostly empty bottle of ROKK vodka was confiscated.

Bacardi breakdown

UMPD received a report of an intoxicated, underage male in a third-floor hallway in Somerset Hall at 10:56 p.m. Feb. 2. An officer located the individual, who said he had consumed five shots of Bacardi rum. He was referred to Judicial Affairs.

Rumming a risk

A UMPD officer on patrol on the second floor of York Hall at 9:47 p.m. Feb. 3 came across a 20-year-old male holding a bottle of rum. He was referred to Judicial Affairs.

The move comes as no surprise to system administrators, who have been working with the Streamline and Prioritize Core Government Services Task Force since last summer as part of a larger effort by lawmakers to find greater efficiencies throughout state government.

In all, a $25 million gap was left on the books last year when the legislature approved its $6.1 billion biennial budget for 2012 and 2013. At the time, as Maine found itself slowly emerging from the recession and confronting its lingering effects, lawmakers sought to find greater savings in many aspects of the state budget.

This, according to House Minority Leader Emily Cain, D-Orono, required soliciting cost-saving proposals from various government agencies and service providers, which would then be passed on to the streamlining task force. The task force then recommended cuts based on those proposals.

“This was a budgeted gap, it’s not a shortfall at all,” Cain said. “These cuts are nothing new, and the system knew about them long before it decided to freeze tuition.”

In fact, the task force finalized its work last November, according to Ryan Low, the former chief financial officer at the University of Maine at Farmington, who served as the co-chair of the streamlining committee last summer.

After a public hearing on the cuts on Feb. 1, lawmakers were sure to make clear that the $25 million gap was not related to the $220 million shortfall in the Department of Health and Human Services budget, which has eluded legislators who have been working for months to fill it.

Such confusion raised the question of whether or not the $2.3 million in cuts would in any way affect the tuition freeze approved for 2012-13 by the board of trustees at its last meeting on Jan. 23. 

“When the trustees made their decision to freeze tuition they were well aware of the cuts,” said Low, who began his new role with the system as its executive director of government and external affairs on Jan. 1.

Low said the system worked closely with both the streamlining task force and Gov. Paul LePage’s administration to ensure the cuts would in no way affect students.

“We certainly didn’t advocate for reductions, and the original figure was closer to $5 million in cuts,” Low said. “But the system has worked to spread the cuts out and find a variety of ways to mitigate them.”

Low added that the system’s member campuses were also prepared for the cuts and have long since accounted for them within their 2013 budgets.

“We have been able to minimize the impact of these cuts,” he said. “And many of the things the board of trustees discussed at their last meeting, like finding more efficiencies and examining the size of the system’s administration, were based on the cuts and the work we did with the committee to find them.”

The task force also proposed reducing payments to hospitals to save $3.2 million, eliminating a program for at-risk youths to save $2.2 million, and reducing funding for the Child Development Services Program by $850,000.

“These proposals have met little resistance,” Cain said. “I expect they will be passed this week.”

When asked why higher education always seems to be on the chopping block when it comes time to fill holes in the state budget, Cain said it cannot be easily avoided.

“The University of Maine System receives a lot of money from the state,” she said. “Any time you’re trying to find funding efficiencies or seeking to make reductions it’s hard to keep it off the table.”

Cain estimated that the $2.3 million slated to be cut amounts to around 1 percent of the system’s appropriation from the state.

Meanwhile, officials from Old Town, which receives host benefits from the landfill, haven’t taken a position on the department’s decision.

The Orono Town Council submitted a statement to the MDEP last year against the proposed expansion of Juniper Ridge Landfill, the state-owned, Casella Waste Systems-operated landfill straddling the Old Town-Alton border.

Casella applied last year to expand the landfill by 21 million cubic yards, which would have nearly tripled its current capacity. On Jan. 31, MDEP issued a “partial approval” of Casella’s plan, allowing them to apply for a maximum expansion of 9.35 million cubic yards.

At a November 2011 meeting, the Orono Town Council opposed Casella’s proposed expansion of the landfill, discussing a draft letter saying the council was “very concerned that the proposed expansion highlights operational and management practices that fail to align, both technically and in spirit, with the State’s solid waste hierarchy.”

Maine’s solid waste hierarchy stipulates that landfilling is the method of last resort in dealing with waste. Reducing the amount of waste produced is the state’s priority, followed by reusing, recycling, composting and incinerating.

On Sunday, council chairman Geoffrey Gordon called the possibility of the expansion “an incremental step” toward a larger expansion in the future.

“Fifteen or 20 years from now, we’re going to be talking about the same thing,” Gordon said.

Last week, Don Meagher, Casella’s manager of planning and development, told The Maine Campus because the expansion won’t provide the company enough capacity to fulfill its contract with the state to operate the landfill into 2034, they will have to apply to expand again.

“So really what will have to happen is this expansion application will have to be followed by another,” Meagher said then.

Now, Casella may put in a technical application for the expansion. If they do, there will be time slated for submission of public comments, which Gordon said town officials will likely use to voice opposition. Last year’s letter came during a similar period of time.

Construction and demolition debris constitutes the majority of waste landfilled at Juniper Ridge, and a large proportion of that is routed through Casella subsidiary KTI Bio-fuels Inc. in Lewiston from other states, especially Massachusetts. According to KTI’s 2010 annual report, 85 percent of waste processed there originated in Massachusetts that year, while only 8 percent originated in Maine.

Reached Friday, Sophie Wilson, Orono’s town manager, declined to react to the MDEP’s decision, saying the council hasn’t met to discuss the expansion.

The council will meet next on Feb. 13. Since Orono’s letter opposing the expansion was drafted by the council as a whole, Wilson preferred to wait until the council could similarly draft a response.

“I’m sure people will have some reaction to the determination,” Wilson said.

Similarly, Jamie Dufour, Old Town City Council president, said his council has not met since the decision was announced on Jan. 31. In 2010, former Old Town City Manager Peggy Daigle said the city receives host benefits from the landfill, taking in approximately $1 million each year.

So far, they haven’t weighed in on the expansion. He said Old Town stayed quiet during the period of public comment last fall.

“I don’t think we took a stand one way or another,” he said, denouncing the idea that Old Town would be in favor of the full 21 million-cubic-yard expansion because the anticipation for host benefits would increase.

“Our approach is to make sure that the landfill is appropriately regulated, and it’s really more issues of the quality of operations,” Dufour said. “The fact is it’s there now, and the city hasn’t taken a position on the expansion other than … that it’s planned cautiously.”

Old Town has the Juniper Ridge Landfill Advisory Committee, which was established by the Maine State Legislature in 2004 to act as a mediator between the private entities that run the landfill and the public.

During a September 2011 meeting of the committee, with former State Planning Office Director Darryl Brown and Carlisle McLean, an adviser to Gov. Paul LePage, advisory committee members said they felt powerless and unsure of the effectiveness of their role in relation to Casella.

“As a committee, our hands are completely tied,” committee chairman Peter Dufour said then. “Our authority is unclear, and we need clarification from the state because we cannot make appeals, we cannot challenge permits and we cannot regulate the tons of trash that enter our town every month.”

“We don’t have the ability to influence the outcome of the expansion,” Jamie Dufour said Friday, though he promised the council would be vocal in expressing any concerns that arise as expansion plans move forward. “What we have done historically is to focus on particular issues in the applications like we originally did when it was approved to make sure there aren’t health and safety issues.”

Editor in Chief Michael Shepherd contributed to this report.

To assist people with no time to grab a bite, Black Bear Dining is introducing an online platform that will allow people to order their lunch for certain times on certain days in advance from the Marketplace.

“We’ve been looking into it for a while,” said Kathy Kittridge, director of Black Bear Dining. “Because people have such tight lunch breaks, and because it gets busy in the Marketplace, we wanted to have another option for people.”

Kittridge said the plan isn’t a new one and will use parts of successful programs that have been used elsewhere.

“In my interactions with other colleges and universities, some of them have had a lot of positive success for online ordering for different things,” she said. “For us, we thought it would be good at the Marketplace at lunch, from 11 [a.m.] to 1:30 [p.m.], the really busy time.”

Black Bear Dining is currently looking for a trial group of 50 people to participate in a test run of the system that will take place from Feb. 14 to 24, which will focus on figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Kittridge said this will provide information that will help determine if they should expand the menu selections.

“Because we have the Union Central Market, more commonly called Starbucks, we thought that would be a good pickup point,” Kittridge said. “It would be prepaid, with credit card, Black Bear Bucks or dining funds.”

For now, they plan on offering popular items such as burgers, pizza and wraps. Online menus will allow anyone using the service to choose any combination of ingredients.

“We’re going to start with a limited menu to see how we do,” Kittridge said. “We expect to expand it. We just wanted to keep it simple to see how it goes.”

An order will take at least 20 minutes to process, so someone hoping to eat at 1 p.m. would need to place his or her order by 12:40 p.m.

“If you’re looking at your day tomorrow and you think, ‘Oh, it’s jam-packed, how am I going to have time to do anything?’ you can order it in advance to pick up,” Kittridge said.

The system will work like any other Web store. After picking out which item you want, it gets added to a “shopping cart.” After all items have been selected, the entire order will go to a final window where a payment method will be selected.

“You can pick your time that you want to pick it up, and we’ll have our staff have it all ready when you get there,” Kittridge said.

In order to keep the process flowing smoothly, the number of orders will be managed.

“We’re hoping to limit the amount of orders that come in, so if it becomes excessive we can stop the incoming orders,” Kittridge said. “We don’t want the customers that come in to order have to wait behind the online orders.”

Although they considered it, they will not be doing any deliveries.

“I don’t think we could keep up. We wouldn’t have enough delivery people,” Kittridge said. “We’d have to have a lot of bicycles.”