NRA says it’ll help
Gun owner group breaks post-Newtown silence, pledges ‘never again’ – P. 2
Wednesday, december 19, 2012
wednesday
Frugality in recent years said reason Meredith can now spend on infrastructure without spike in the tax rate
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Initial price tag for new county jail put at $42.5M By michAel Kitch THE LACONIA DAILY SUN
LACONIA — The committee planning the community corrections facility to replace the Belknap County Jail learned yesterday that Ricci Greene Associates of New York, the
consultants engaged to design the project, have indicated the building will cost approximately $42.5-million. The firm has yet to present its final report, but is expected to do so shortly. County Administrator Deb
Shackett told the committee that the construction costs are estimated at $37-million. Soft costs — fees for architectural, engineering and legal services, fixtures and fittings and moving expenses — along with the cost of demolishing the
existing jail, are projected to represent about 15-percent of construction costs, or $5.5-million. She said that Ricci Greene based its estimates on the cost of the county correctional facilities in Strafford, Cheshire and see JaIL page 8
By michAel Kitch THE LACONIA DAILY SUN
MEREDITH — After four successive austere budgets, marked by deferring spending on maintenance and replacement of equipment as well as closely controlling expenses, the Board of Selectmen has agreed to change course in 2013 by appropriating $1.5-million to fund equipment purchases and infrastructure improvements, while continuing to limit increases in the total amount to be raised by property taxes. By drawing on the undesignated fund balance, or “rainy day fund” to fund capital expenditures, the board expects to limit the increase in the amount to be raised by taxes to $120,634, or 1.5-percent. The change of course in 2013 is the result of the fiscal strategy pursued by the board since 2009. Taking 2008, when $7.7-million was raised in property taxes, as a benchmark, the selectmen have budgeted to forestall increases in the amount to be raised see MeRedITH page 8
Students in the Advanced Health class at Laconia High School have been studying “Ora’s Boy,” a memoir of growing up in the city in the 1940s and 1950s. Front row, left to right, are: Marilyn Evans, Gina Heath, Antonia James and Chris McCarthy. Back row: Meagan Bossey, Delaney Salway, Elizabeth Erickson, Kelly White and Caelan Norwood. (Laconia Daily Sun photo/Adam Drapcho)
Some ‘Ora’s Boy’ readers at the high school find they would rather have grown up in 1950’s Laconia By AdAm drApcho THE LACONIA DAILY SUN
LACONIA — When James Novak was growing up in Laconia in the 1950s, the city was a different place than the one navigated by today’s teenagers. Even so, “Ora’s Boy,” the memoir Novak published last year, contains useful lessons for young
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people currently coming to terms with the circumstances in their lives. That’s what students in teacher Patty Thibeault’s Advanced Health and Family Relationships class at the High School have found. Novak, known as Lucien “Sonny” Virgin in his youth, now lives in South Carolina, a retired U.S. Air Force captain who spent
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23 honorable years serving his country. That’s not how his story began, though, as Novak’s beginning was anything but auspicious. Abandoned by his father, rarely cared for by his mother and subjected to the scorn of a conservative French-Canadian Catholic community, Novak’s sucsee ORa’s BOy page 10
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