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Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
In a 5-to-4 vote on Tuesday night, the Rockingham Free Public Library Board of Trustees decided to uphold its Sept. 18 vote to terminate Library Director Célina Houlné.
The decision came following a lengthy two-day hearing where Houlné was given an opportunity to present her response to an evaluation and the corrective-action plan (CAP) that found her job performance deficient.
After nearly 2½ hours of deliberation, no trustees who had originally voted to terminate the library director were convinced to reverse their Sept. 18 decision.
Public comment followed the board vote, and at least eight people voiced their disappointment in the board.
The evening was a warm, fall night, with a full moon rising in the east. The water ran noisily beneath the concrete spandrels, as the leaves took on a golden glow from the setting sun. A large-winged predator swooped, hunting along the Connecticut River for its evening meal. Food...
Célina Houlné, former library director of the Rockingham Free Public Library, said she could not have been happier at getting the chance to respond to the allegations from the library's Board of Trustees - a hearing that would have been held behind closed doors if not for her insistence...
The Rockingham Selectboard has passed an ordinance prohibiting the establishment of marijuana dispensaries. Josh Hearne, in casting the lone dissenting vote, said it was his understanding that such dispensaries were highly controlled “and should be treated as any other business coming to town.” Under Vermont's 2004 medical marijuana law, patients or their caregivers can grow up to three cannabis plants and possess up to two ounces of marijuana. In 2011, the medical marijuana program was expanded to allow four dispensaries...
The Joint Board of Rockingham met last week in a special meeting to consider a seven-page proposal for merger. Selectboard chair Thom MacPhee said he was the one who pulled together the chairs of the three municipal boards - himself, BF's Roger Riccio, and Saxtons River's Louise Luring - as well as James McAuliffe and Paul Obuchowski, who have long considered the merger option for the community. Obuchowski assured the boards that the meetings which produced the proposal violated no...
Rockingham Free Public Library trustees, in a 5–3 vote on Sept. 18, fired Library Director Célina Houlné in an early- morning meeting attended by several dozen citizens and members of Friends of the Library. The attorney for the former director has promised to sue the board and, potentially, individual members. In the aftermath of the vote, a trustee resigned from the board, the second in three months to do so. According to Jan Mitchell-Love, board chair and member of the...
The Connecticut River Valley has been in use for at least 11,000 years, as witnessed by the rock petroglyphs on its Vermont shoreline in Bellows Falls. It was verdant and good hunting grounds for early indigenous peoples. Indian corn fields flourished on both sides of the river in the rich floodplains along its length. The river, whose name springs from Algonquian languages and means “long tidal river,” was the principal north-south travel route before the advent of roads and rails.
A coalition of economic-development agencies is beginning to step up efforts to spur the state of New Hampshire to repair the Vilas Bridge, closed since 2009. At the request of Francis “Dutch” Walsh, the development director for Bellows Falls and Rockingham, Mary Helen Hawthorne, the new executive director of the Bellows Falls Downtown Development Alliance, has composed a letter to Governor Peter Shumlin. The letter asks the governor to meet and discuss strategies to reopen the bridge. Walsh, who also...
