http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/feeds/topics/2009review Daily news from The Telegraph of Nashua en-us dkiesow@nashuatelegraph.com onlineeditor@nh.com http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/500832-196/towns-welcome-public-kindergarten.html No more will teachers wonder about what kind of progress their young students could have made with early instruction. First-grade teachers in Hudson, Milford and Lyndeborough now will have every pupil already prepared for the demands of elementary school with kindergarten instruction. The communities were, until this fall, three of the remaining nine towns in New Hampshire without the preschool option in public schools. Educators have long praised the value of kindergarten and how it develops social skills and establishes building blocks in reading, writing and math. But for towns such as Hudson, Milford and Lyndeborough, not having kindergarten available in public schools had deprived many young children of these early opportunities because their parents couldn’t afford private kindergarten, educators said. “This is what we’ve been working towards,” Scott Baker, principal of Library Street Elementary School, said in September as Hudson celebrated its first day of public kindergarten. “When we have kindergarten, they should be more prepared for school, and that extends all the way to high school.” Educators and parents in Hudson never thought they would see the day. At one point this year, both taxpayers and school officials opposed the start of kindergarten. At Town Meeting in March, voters rejected funding kindergarten by a 2-1 margin. Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:54:49 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/500834-196/marijuana-growth-use-hot-topic-in-09.html Marijuana was in the news in New Hampshire in 2009. Hollis farmer David Orde’s arrest for growing pot drew widespread interest, and the spotlight was later trained on the state Legislature after it tried to legalize marijuana for medical use. Orde, 54, was arrested in July 2008 on felony marijuana-growing charges after a Hollis police officer went to serve him with a complaint for failing to license his dog. After getting no answer at the main door, the officer went around to the side of the house at 2 Blood Road and spotted 16 marijuana plants growing in pots on a deck. His case ended up in Hillsborough County Superior Court, where Orde waived his right to a trial by jury and put the matter into the hands of Judge James Barry. Barry found Orde guilty and on Sept. 15 sentenced him to 12 months in jail, suspending all but 60 days. The judge also agreed the sentence wouldn’t be imposed while Orde appealed his conviction to the state Supreme Court. Orde admitted growing the plants and said he was “stupid” for doing so. Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:54:49 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/500835-196/new-nashua-superintendent-inherits-school-budget-disaster.html NASHUA – When it was discovered last summer that the Nashua School District overspent its $88.5 million budget for the 2008-09 school year by $3.3 million, the focus immediately turned to how such a massive deficit could have occurred without anyone seeing it coming. The school district’s former superintendent, Christopher Hottel, and chief operating officer, Jim Mealey, had left for new jobs in North Andover, Mass., when the deficit was discovered by school district personnel who were closing the books. In a prepared statement, Hottel said news of the deficit took him by surprise. He faulted an antiquated financial management system for failing to catch the deficit before it was too late. The deficit was covered by taking money out of the city’s school capital reserve fund, but the problem didn’t end there. Mark Conrad, the school district’s new superintendent hired to replace Hottel, said the same budgeting errors that led to last year’s deficit had been built into the 2009-10 budget, which meant that cuts would have to be made to have a balanced budget. That led to 60 positions being left vacant heading into the school year, which saved $2 million. Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:54:49 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/500843-196/mont-vernon-murder-unsettles-small-community.html MONT VERNON – The events of Sunday morning, Oct. 4, combined with the aftershock two days later when four local young men were arrested and charged with perpetrating the crime, created the biggest news story to come out of town in many decades. Today, the four men – Steven Spader and Christopher Gribble, of Brookline, and Quinn Glover and William Marks, of Amherst, along with Hollis resident Autumn Savoy, who was arrested Nov. 18 – remain jailed as suspects in the Trow Road home invasion and murder of Kimberly Cates, 42, and the assault on her 11-year-old daughter, Jaimie. Although many details have yet to be released about the crime, police say the four chose the home at random because it was isolated on a short dirt road. The father, David Cates, was away on business at the time. Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:54:49 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/500844-196/fairpoint-didnt-fare-well-in-2009.html For the region’s telephone system – a term that increasingly sounds out of date – 2009 was a year to forget. In 2008, North Carolina-based FairPoint Communications bought the landlines in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine from Verizon, including its phone system, its DSL Internet and the fiber-optic network in Nashua and parts of southern New Hampshire. The unprecedented $2.4 billion purchase of 1.4 million lines increased FairPoint’s size fivefold, raising both hope and worry about the region’s telecommunications future. Things went well until Jan. 31 of this year, when Verizon transferred roughly 600 computer systems to FairPoint’s roughly 60 systems, most of which handled things such as billing, scheduling of repairs and creating new accounts. The first problems began almost immediately when tens of thousands of people couldn’t use their e-mail, largely because the databases inherited from Verizon didn’t match each other. Complaints soon flooded in to regulators as phone bills were wrong, new accounts couldn’t be started, other telecommunications companies that use FairPoint as a backbone were shut out and people reported being on hold at call centers for as long as eight hours. By the summer, all three states were holding hearings lambasting FairPoint officials. Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:54:49 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/500845-196/domestic-violence-a-disturbing-trend.html Brutal incidents of alleged domestic violence made headlines all year long in 2009. Of the most notable incidents was the kidnapping and beating of former Nashua Police Chief Clifton “Doug” Largy, allegedly at the hands of his son, Eric Largy, 42. Eric Largy has been jailed since his April 22 arrest. He is facing two counts of first-degree assault and kidnapping after being charged with tying his father to a barber’s chair for nearly 12 hours and repeatedly hitting him on the head and face. Eric Largy said he and his father began fighting after his father poked him in the chest while berating him about a truck with a flat tire in the driveway, police reported. Clifton Largy told investigators he was struck on the back of the head with a heavy object after turning his back on his son, and then wrestled into the barber chair. Eric Largy’s lawyer has petitioned to prevent a county attorney, Joseph Fricano, from prosecuting the case, since he was a Nashua police officer during Clifton Largy’s tenure as chief. Clifton Largy spent 30 years on the city police department, the last five as chief before retiring in 2000. Eric Largy is facing 71⁄2 to 15 years in prison for each of the three felony charges. Hollis resident Gary Marchand, 53, was indicted on a charge of first-degree murder in December after allegedly beating and killing his wife, Phyllis Marchand, in September. Marchand faces life in prison without chance of parole if convicted of first-degree murder and up to life for second-degree murder. The indictments allege Marchand kicked, punched and beat his wife, using his hands, feet and blunt and sharp objects. The injuries he inflicted, and leaving her bound and gagged in the bathtub, all combined to kill her, the indictments allege. The Marchands had separated and had put the home up for sale before Phyllis Marchand was murdered, and domestic violence experts say the case fits a common pattern of escalation upon separation. Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:54:49 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/500846-196/itt-purchases-daniel-webster-college.html News of the proposed sale of Daniel Webster College to the for-profit ITT Educational Services came as a surprise to many when it was announced at the end of April. However, college officials working behind the scenes had known the sale of the Nashua college was a near certainty for quite some time. According to court documents filed in relation to the sale, the college needed to find a buyer or else it would have been forced to close, having amassed a debt of $23 million. Without a buyer, the college would have lost its accreditation and access to federal financial aid. After it was all said and done, the small private college known primarily for its aviation program was sold to ITT for $29.3 million. Not all went as initially planned. Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:54:49 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/500847-196/regions-economic-woes-shocking-crimes-were-top.html EDITOR’S NOTE: 2009 was a tough year for the Nashua region, as it was for the country and the world. We felt the effect of events far beyond our borders such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the struggles in Washington over health care and other policies, but the big impact came from events closer at hand. This and subsequent page show The Telegraph’s look at some of the top stories of the year, the biggest of which is one that was felt locally as well as globally: the weak economy. By the time 2009 rolled around, some of the shock had worn off from the stock market crash and economic panic that marked the fall of 2008. But the local economy remained in a slump this year, despite a few signs of improvement. Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:54:49 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/500848-196/state-becomes-more-energy-efficient.html One of the biggest worldwide stories of the decade, the push for alternative energy prodded by concern about climate change, got a boost here in 2009 as the Lempster Mountain Wind Farm went online. Although small by utility standards – its annual output is just a few percentage points more than that of the Seabrook nuclear plant – Lempster Wind showed that the state could accept real wind farms. It wasn’t the only alternative-energy story, however. Public Service of New Hampshire created the state’s largest solar farm, a 51-kilowatt facility at its Manchester headquarters that snuck past the previous title-holder at Stonyfield Farms by 1 kilowatt, and several “biomass” wood-burning power plants had fired up or were nearing operation, including one in Alexandria that had been shut in 1994 and was reopened this year. Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:54:49 EST http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/500849-196/city-officials-boot-baseball-franchise-out-of.html NASHUA – It began with so much promise, many fans actually on the outside looking in on a warm, late May night in 1998 because Holman Stadium couldn’t fit more than 4,325 fans because of the local fire code. It ended 11-plus years later, with the baseball franchise those fans had paid to see actually on the outside looking in, as well. That included owners, front-office staff and players. The American Defenders of New Hampshire, successors to that Nashua Pride franchise, weren’t even a one-year wonder; while they finished the 2009 season on the road, they were never able to conclude the Holman half of their schedule, locked out by city officials for failure to pay their rent. The lockout, similar to how the ill-fated, woefully run Nashua Hawks independent baseball franchise died in 1996, essentially ended the city’s 12-year run of uninterrupted independent minor league baseball. The Defenders’ ownership group, Boston Baseball All-Stars LLC, whose point man eventually was former Boston Red Sox general manager Dan Duquette, owes the city some $44,000, most of it back rent but a portion of it for police and fire department detail overtime costs. The group bought the team from former Pride owner John Stabile in September 2008 and appeared to be on solid financial footing, promising that revenue from its U.S. Military All-Stars program would filter down to the minor league team. It never happened. Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:54:49 EST