Tag: 220804

News & Notes 22/08/04

Cash for Nashua Fire

The Department of Homeland Security and FEMA’s Assistance to Firefighters Grant will award $569,036 to the City of Nashua to be used for operations and safety improvements for the Nashua Fire Department. U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a member of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, which funds the grant, applauded the award in a press release. “Granite State firefighters play a critical role serving on the front lines to protect their communities. It’s crucial they have access to the resources necessary to do their jobs safely and effectively, no matter the emergency,” she said. “I’m thrilled that this federal award is heading to Nashua, which will go toward necessary upgrades.” The AFG program allows funds granted to fire departments to be put toward training, equipment, personal protective equipment, wellness and fitness activities and modifications of the station.

Quality status

Waypoint, a Manchester-based private nonprofit human service agency and the oldest children’s charitable organization in New Hampshire, has been designated a “Family Resource Center of Quality” by the Wellness and Primary Prevention Council of the New Hampshire legislature. To qualify for the designation centers must engage in an extensive application process and ongoing self-assessment, seeking feedback from participants and community partners, and consent to a site visit for review by the Council. According to a press release, Waypoint, which offers more than two dozen programs throughout the state for people of all ages, earned the designation by “demonstrating exemplary practice building family strengths.” “Waypoint is thrilled to have achieved this status as an FRC-Q in Manchester,” Missy Oglebay, Family Resource Center coordinator and supervisor of Family Support, said in the release. “For those of us in the family service field in New Hampshire, this designation represents our commitment to the people we serve with programs that are proven to have a positive impact.”

Help for estuaries

The Environmental Protection Agency has announced that $132 million from the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will be invested in the National Estuaries Program, providing up to $4.5 million over the next five years to estuaries in New England considered to have national significance, including New Hampshire’s Piscataqua Region Estuaries. According to a press release, the funds will support work being done to protect and restore the estuaries. “This latest infusion of federal dollars serves as a continued reminder about how the bipartisan infrastructure law is delivering for New Hampshire communities,” U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, who was a lead negotiator on the legislation alongside U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan, said in the release. “It’s exciting to see how these dollars will make a tangible difference in our communities, and in this case, through restoring water quality and ecological integrity in the Piscataqua Region Estuaries.”

Granite Stater in Ukraine

Bedford resident Brian Nolen will go to Ukraine on Aug. 9 for his third humanitarian mission overseas to help people affected by the war in Ukraine. Nolen and fellow Bedford resident John Fitzgerald previously made two three-week trips to Poland and Ukraine, supported with funds raised through a GoFundMe drive, to work with nonprofits to deliver shipments of essential aid to refugees throughout Ukraine and to transport refugees in Ukraine across the border. “When Russia invaded Ukraine this past February, like so many of us, I felt compelled to do something to help the Ukrainian people,” Nolen said in an email. “I quickly decided that I had to head over there to help out, however I could.” To learn how you can support Nolen in his efforts to help the people of Ukraine during his upcoming trip, visit bedford4ukraine.com.

New to the board

Gov. Chris Sununu has appointed Evelyn Whelton of Madison to serve on the New Hampshire Housing Board of Directors, and Chris Norwood of Portsmouth to serve as chair of the board, according to a press release. Whelton is the senior vice president and retail lending sales manager for Bank of New Hampshire and the founder and a board member of the Mount Washington Valley Housing Coalition. Norwood is president of the NAI Norwood Group, where he focuses on commercial real estate sales. The nine-member board, created by the state legislature, promotes, finances and supports affordable housing in the state through a homeownership division, a multifamily housing division, an assisted housing division and a policy, planning and communications group that conducts research and presents reports on housing issues in the state.

The New Hampshire Farm, Forest and Garden Expo will move to a new location and a new date for its 40th annual event in 2023. Formerly held indoors at the DoubleTree by Hilton Manchester Downtown in February, the expo will now be held outdoors at the Deerfield Fairgrounds in the spring the weekend of May 5 and May 6. According to a press release, the outdoor space will allow the expo to grow and feature running farm machinery, more live animals and more. Visit nhfarmandforestexpo.org.

The Claremont Growers Collective and Claremont Cooks will present their first-ever Tomato Jam at Winter Street Farm in Claremont (344 Winter St.) on Saturday, Aug. 6, from 4 to 7 p.m. The community event will feature organic farm field tours, a salsa-making competition and fresh wood-fired pizzas. Visit claremontgrowers.org.

The Nashua Regional Planning Commission will hold a Household Hazardous Waste Collection at the Nashua City Park & Ride (25 Crown St.) on Saturday, Aug. 6, from 8 a.m. to noon. The collection, which is open to residents of Amherst, Brookline, Hollis, Hudson, Litchfield, Merrimack, Milford, Mont Vernon, Nashua, Pelham and Windham, will accept waste such as oil-based and lead paints, solvents, thinners, polyurethane, antifreeze, gasoline, pesticides, insecticides, household cleaners, mercury, fluorescent light bulbs and more. There is a fee of $15 per vehicle (cash or check only), with additional charges for waste exceeding 10 gallons or 20 pounds. Visit nashuarpc.org/hhw or call 417-6570.

Pay attention, get involved

Even though I am a transplant who has lived in this state for more than 20 years, there are occasions when I am especially aware of just what it means to live in a state the motto of which is “Live Free or Die.” Such a recognition came recently. Although the details of the attempt on the part of certain residents of Croydon, New Hampshire, to halve the annual school budget, as well as the successful later counter to restore it, are well known, the lesson for me, as well for all of us, is one worthy of serious self-reflection.

Like many of my fellow Granite Staters, I live in a small town. I am fortunate that mine is one that has an efficient and useful website as well as a robust email alert system. My neighbors and I receive regular announcements of all town meetings as well as their agendas. These I read dutifully, but too often my engagement stops there and I fear I’m not alone in that regard. It is a rare agenda item that would draw me to attend a meeting in person. It must be some kind of utilitarian criterion that I’m applying in such situations, the logic of which would go something like this: “If it’s a really important issue for me that will be discussed or voted on, then I’ll go; if it’s not I won’t.”

What is lost in that logic, however, is the other, equally important aspect of democracy, namely a shared sense of responsibility for our community and a corresponding obligation to participate. Something akin to the latter is what I often feel on town voting day, when, standing in line with neighbors, friends and strangers, I feel a sense of solidarity that together we are doing something important and are seeing one another in the act of doing it, voting on issues of common importance. It is a sense of a common will for a commonweal.

This year will be my 13th serving as executive director of Leadership New Hampshire, an organization founded as a recommendation of the gubernatorial Commission on NH in the 21st Century. Its mission statement is “Building a community of informed and engaged leaders.” Every year, from a large pool of applicants from across our state, LNH selects 32 people to participate in a one-day-a-month intensive program that seeks to familiarize them with the needs, challenges, people and resources of our state, so that, being better informed about our state and its communities, the graduates — and now, in its 30th year, there are more than 1,000 of them — will get even more engaged in their communities, region or state. But the “special chemistry” of LNH is the sense of solidarity the graduates develop over the 10-month together.

It does truly take a community, precisely because the members of one need to feel a sense of community. The people of Croydon found that out the hard way.

Stay in the loop!

Get FREE weekly briefs on local food, music,

arts, and more across southern New Hampshire!