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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.
The $1.93 million village budget, as presented, maintains the current staffing for the Bellows Falls Fire Department, which includes five full-time career positions, and approximately 18 paid, on-call career firefighters.
Should the voters at the business portion of the Annual Village Meeting on Monday, May 18, decide to go with a figure from a preliminary $1.6 million budget - which eliminates all but one of the full-time, and all the part-time career firefighters, as well as $321,775 worth of wages and benefits for four full-time career firefighters and all the paid part-time on-call career staff positions, retaining only the chief full time - village residents will see an approximate savings of $90 on $100,000 of the grand list assessed property values. [See related story this issue.]
Trustee Sandy Martin explained, “It's the most logical point of budget adjustment for the villagers, and for us to [look at to] cut, to continue to provide an adequate level of services.”
The suggested move toward an all-volunteer fire department was a “trend,” Martin told The Commons. He came to that conclusion after having looked at 14 towns of size and population comparable to Bellows Falls that maintain all-volunteer fire departments.
Village voters will consider a proposed $1.93 million budgett - and possibly the fate of the fire department - during the business portion of the Annual Village Meeting on Monday, May 18, at 7 p.m., at the Bellows Falls Opera House. Voters will decide by Australian ballot on Tuesday,
Southeastern Vermont Community Action (SEVCA) has come a long way in 50 years. The agency, which declares on its website that “the strength of our communities is measured by the quality of life of everyone within them,” has worked to reduce hardships for the most vulnerable Windham and Windsor...
The Meeting Waters YMCA faced a difficult choice last year: what to do about its building, a former Methodist meetinghouse whose roots in the community were planted in 1835. For years, the organization had been looking for a way to shed its longtime headquarters at 66 Atkinson St., which was no longer essential to its mission and was prohibitively expensive to heat and maintain. In the end, the YMCA donated the former Methodist church in January to a newly formed...
January saw temperatures dip below zero for the first time in what had been a moderate winter. When that happens, the people at most risk for freezing to death are the homeless. While most of the local homeless people - a “handful” of five to 10 - will seek shelter at the Greater Falls Warming Shelter in North Walpole, N.H., Lisa Pitcher, director of Our Place Drop-In Center in Bellows Falls, said there are those who refuse to go and...
The Bellows Falls Police Department has arrested five people for drug violations involving mephredrone - “bath salts” - since May, a full 21 percent of the number of heroin arrests during the same period. “That's a trend,” said Detective Lt. Shane Harris. But that trend is not reflected statewide. John Merrigan, a former Southern Vermont Drug Task Force lieutenant who commands the Vermont State Police Narcotics Unit, said this trend in Bellows Falls does not reflect bath salts drug abuse...
Carolyn Frisa serves as the vice-chair of the Board of Trustees of the Rockingham Free Public Library. She has served on the board three years, including the contentious months leading up to the firing of Library Director Célina Houlné in 2013. But a new twist has taken place in the life of the busy civic volunteer and entrepreneur. “I stopped using email,” Frisa said. Frisa said that in the wake of months of blanket public- document requests to the board,
Shortly before the Rockingham Free Public Library Trustees sat down for their October monthly meeting, they were presented with an 11-count complaint from a former library trustee. The letter from Deborah Wright alleges that the current board has continued violating state open-meeting and public-records laws and library board best practices. “This board and or some of its members are in serious need of state training on [open-meeting law],” Wright told The Commons last week via email. Senior Assistant Attorney General...
