Rochester Main Street moves in new direction
ROCHESTER Rochester Main Street is retooling for 2021, refocusing its efforts on ways to support local businesses while uniting and emboldening the different groups working to move the Lilac City forward.
The changes are born out of the COVID-19 pandemic and out of public criticisms involving the nonprofit organization, according to Mike Guillette and Matt Wyatt. Guillette and Wyatt are the respective president and secretary of Main Street’s all-volunteer board.
“We’re trying to connect the dots as much as possible. We want to be working together on these efforts,” said Wyatt. “We’d like to take the next year to really show what Main Street can do when we work together, when we reach out to our businesses and when we take public input seriously.”
A tale of three cities. We talk with the mayors of Manchester, Rochester, and Keene about their communities during pandemic times. Some challenges have
ROCHESTER Mayor Caroline McCarley will resign once the budget process is over in June, stepping down partway through what she intended as her third and final term in the Lilac City’s top elected office.
McCarley, who retired from her professional career at the beginning of 2020, said her plan to retire from elected office this year was accelerated by both the COVID-19 pandemic and by the fact that the home she and her husband are building on Cape Cod will be finished this summer.
“We’re excited,” she said. “It’s going to be whole new big deal change in life, but it’s kind of time.”
SOMERSWORTH With heavy snowfall in the upcoming week’s forecast, and public uncertainty about the future of the Tri-Cities’ emergency warming center still accumulating, the cities’ mayors say they’re firm in their commitment the facility will continue to serve the region’s increasing houseless population.
Dover Mayor Bob Carrier, Rochester Mayor Caroline McCarley and Somersworth Mayor Dana Hilliard all insisted in separate interviews this past week during an eventful week for the center that the center isn’t going away and the primary criteria for its activation moving forward will be life-threatening cold.
“As to how we go forward, I think whatever we’re gonna to do, we’re gonna have a way to guarantee that our folks who are not sheltered have a place to get to in freezing cold weather,” said McCarley. “Period. End of story.”
Seacoast mayors, schools call for NH funds amid COVID crisis
New Hampshire mayors and school board chairs sent a joint letter to Gov. Chris Sununu and other state government leaders Thursday urging them to help municipalities across the state facing millions of dollars in uncontrollable cost increases.
The letter, which Rochester Mayor Caroline McCarley hinted was coming last week, states Granite State school districts fear they won’t be able to provide children with adequate public education due to things like state retirement system cost increases and various impacts and unintended consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“An accessible and properly funded public education is critical for the children of New Hampshire, and right now, our schools are communicating significant concerns,” reads the letter, which was signed by mayors and school board officials from Dover, Portsmouth, Rochester, Somersworth and seven other New Hampshire cities. “We hope that the Department of E