Also on today’s menu:
Plans for Bristol’s new public safety building are shaping up, with selectmen arranging the financing and looking into ways to keep the price from escalating amidst high inflation.
A 3 percent 20-year loan from Northway Bank will cost roughly $329,000 in interest on the $4.9 million project, which involves tearing down the old police station, cutting into the hillside behind it, installing drainage to avoid increasing stormwater flow to the highway, and utilizing an adjacent lot that the town purchased a few years ago for the new building and associated parking. The new public safety building would serve both the police and fire departments.
Selectmen also are looking into grant funding to outfit the building with solar panels and a heat pump, which would result in lower costs for heating and cooling. The building already is being designed to be energy-efficient, for significant savings over what the town currently pays for police and fire department utilities.
Governor And Council Tour Webster Place
Easterseals New Hampshire, which owns the former Sisters of Holy Cross buildings and 15 acres of the former Daniel Webster property in Franklin, received approval from the Governor and Executive Council to use $23 million available through the American Rescue Plan Act to create mixed housing, supportive services, and a retreat for veterans. On April 20, the Governor and Executive Council toured the campus to see for themselves what the property offers.
During the tour, Maureen Beauregard, president and chief executive officer of Easterseals, told the story of Daniel Webster paying for his education at Dartmouth College in sheep from the farm. The farm became the New Hampshire Orphans’ Home (also known as the Daniel Webster Home for Orphans), a precursor of the Spaulding Youth Center (now Spaulding Academy and Family Services) in Northfield, and later served as home to Sisters of Holy Cross. When investors were looking at developing the property, Alex Ray, owner of the Common Man Family of Restaurants, stepped up to create a substance abuse rehabilitation center, which he later turned over to Easterseals. The Franklin Historical Society also made its home on the property.
Easterseals shut down the rehab center and Meredith Elkins, Easterseals’ senior vice-president of marketing and communications, told us that specifics of the new plan for the property are still being worked out but should be complete in a few weeks, at which time they can talk about what the retreat will be offering to veterans and military personnel.
State-Run Marijuana Sales Nixed
The Senate Ways and Means Committee killed House Bill 1598 on April 20 after hearing complaints about the bill even from those who support legalizing marijuana. The bill would have the New Hampshire Liquor Commission sell adult-use cannabis on a liquor store model. Chairman Bob Giuda (R-Warren) was chair of the committee which voted unanimously to adopt the committee’s report to find the bill inexpedient to legislate.
Keenan Blum, president and chief executive officer of Prime Alternative Treatment Centers, said he supports legalizing cannabis, but that the current bill was not the way to do so. Senator Erin Hennessey (R-Littleton) said there were too many questions about how flexible the plan would be, and Senator Cindy Rosenwald (D-Nashua) said the bill was “not fixable today.”
Committee Vice-Chair Lou D’Allesandro (D-Manchester) agreed, saying, “The ability to actually implement this doesn’t exist.”
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