Also on today’s menu:
Candidates Line Up For Gunstock Area Commission
Hunter’s Shop ’n Save Destroyed By Fire
Congress Gives Itself A Pay Raise
A skiing accident at Gunstock Mountain Resort took the life of Sydnie Quimby, a 15-year-old student at Gilford High School who enjoyed skiing and horseback riding, and was a member of the Northeast Six-Shooters, a club that promotes mounted cowboy trick shooting.
Despite wearing a helmet, Quimby sustained a fatal head injury on January 16 when she skied off the Derringer trail and hit some rocks and trees. The Gunstock Ski Patrol took her to the base area where the Gilford Fire Department ambulance was waiting to transport her to Concord Hospital-Laconia, according to Gunstock President and General Manager Tom Day. From Laconia, she was transferred to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, where she eventually died.
An online fundraising campaign at gofund.me/53d9f374 to help her family had raised $49,932 from 589 donations as of 8 a.m. today. The original goal was $15,000.
Candidates Line Up For Gunstock Area Commission
The Belknap County Delegation will interview the six candidates vying for the two open seats on the Gunstock Area Commission at its meeting tonight. The seats have been vacant since the departure of former chair Peter Ness and former vice-chair David Strang. A third seat, that of Commissioner Denise Conroy who was a temporary appointed in August, will be open this fall.
Terry Stewart of Alton Bay, who worked for Lewis and Saunders and Scotia Technology in Laconia, is one of two candidates who espouse a lack of agenda or self-interest in the position. The other is Lauren Lyons, the former owner and manager of the Lyons’ Den restaurant in Glendale. Sean Lord, owner of Iron Works Market in Gilmanton, also was uninvolved in the recent controversies that engulfed Gunstock.
Rick Zach of Gilford is a former year-round Gunstock employee in the IT department who described Gunstock as a “victim of a very well-calculated hostile takeover by the Free Staters” during last year’s turmoil.
Heidi Preuss, a former Olympic ski racer and current Laconia resident, and Cindy Creteau-Miller, who ran as a Republican for a Meredith legislative seat last fall, are former applicants for seats on the Gunstock Area Commission who were bypassed by the delegation at the time.
Hunter’s Shop ’n Save Destroyed By Fire
Hunter’s Shop ’n Save, an independent, family-owned grocery store that has been a staple in downtown Wolfeboro for half a century, burned to the ground on January 16.
Wolfeboro Fire Chief Nathan Nichols said 10 departments, coming from as far as Rochester, worked together to extinguish the fire that broke out around 9 p.m. and proved to be a challenge because of steady winds. The crews drafted water from nearby Lake Winnipesaukee to fight the fire, but the building was declared a total loss.
A gofund.me/c2440c3d campaign was established to support those who worked at the popular store, with a goal of raising $5,000. As of this morning, the campaign had raised $23,784.
Congress Gives Itself A Pay Raise
Even as congressional Republicans weigh plans to cut Medicaid, school lunches, and food safety inspections as a condition of lifting the debt ceiling, Democrats on the House Administration Committee quietly tucked a provision into the internal rules that would increase House members’ reimbursement for lodging, food, and travel that could amount to a subsidy of about $34,000 per member this year, according to an estimate based on current government reimbursement rates.
The Treasury Department has warned that the country will hit its $31.4 trillion spending cap as early as January 19, but in bargaining for the votes necessary to make him House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy agreed that the GOP House would not move to lift the debt ceiling unless Congress slashes at least $130 billion in federal spending in the next fiscal year. That could affect Social Security and Medicare as well as programs for the poor.
For the past dozen years, House members have declined to take a cost-of-living increase in the annual spending bills, fearful of a political backlash.
If the debt ceiling is not raised, the country would be defaulting on the debts Congress has already incurred and it could wreak havoc on international markets and the United States’ own global standing, but that is the risk Republicans are threatening to take in order to get their way.
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