Archive - 2013 - News Article
May 30th
Governor Lincoln Chafee enters the Board of Canvassers in Warwick City Hall shortly after 10:00 a.m. Thursday to sign a short form switching his party affiliation officially from Independent to Democrat before a hoard of reporters and photographers who had gathered there before his arrival.
May 29th
WOONSOCKET – A new approach to hooking up commercial and retail tenants with downtown rental spaces will be spearheaded this weekend by NeighborWorks Blackstone River Valley.
“The Woonsocket Main Street Open House” is “first and foremost an effort to fill vacancies,” said Ainsley Cantoral, director of resource development for NeighborWorks, a private, non-profit agency in the city.
WOONSOCKET – The School Committee will consider recalling another group of laid-off teachers tonight at 5 in the Hamlet Middle School as it wraps up work on staffing for the coming school year.
The panel laid off 59 of its teachers in February to reserve leeway for making staffing changes that might be required in finalizing next year’s budget. The School Committee has already rehired 36 of the teachers during earlier committee action leaving 23 still on layoff.
The state Budget Commission running city affairs also approved the recommended earlier recalls.
WOONSOCKET – Amid a looming cash crunch, city officials are once again floating the idea of a state takeover of city schools as a way through the fiscal morass.
But Dave Abbott, the deputy commissioner of education, all but closed the door on a Central Falls-style takeover of the Woonsocket Education Department.
In an interview, Abbott gauged the chances of the Rhode Island Department of Education taking of the WED as “very slim.”
May 28th
WOONSOCKET – Stanislaw Okruta, 78, and his downstairs neighbor, Julien Stroz, 61, are friendly enough to watch TV together, but when an argument erupted over the remote control Sunday one of them ended up in the hospital.
Stroz was transported to Rhode Island Hospital with stab wounds to his head, arm and torso – the result of what he called “a little fight” with Okruta, according to police reports.
Because Stroz adamantly declined to file a complaint against him, Okruta was not charged with any crime, according to Detective Sgt. Matt Ryan.
WOONSOCKET – Could four-day school weeks be coming to Woonsocket?
It’s possible, if a bill that passed the Senate last week manages to find its way to becoming law.
Introduced by State Senator Roger Picard (D-Dist. 20, Woonsocket, Cumberland), the bill doesn’t mandate four-day school weeks. But with the state’s consent, school districts could adopt any sort of calendar they deem fit, so long as the school year provides no less than 1,080 hours of instructional time, the equivalent of the existing 180-day minimum.
WOONSOCKET – Seventeen years after his conviction in the road rage killing of another man with a powerful crossbow, Donald Graham is seeking a new trial with help from a friend in Alaska who has written a book about him.
Now 73, Graham is serving life without parole in the 1994 slaying of 42-year-old Michael Blodgett on the shoulder of I-95 in Attleboro, near the state line.
May 27th
LINCOLN – “BURN,” an independent documentary film capturing a year in the lives of Detroit firefighters, is coming to Rhode Island and the film’s director wants to see you at the screenings.
May 26th
WOONSOCKET – Imagine a creature that reaches reproductive maturity at six months old, gives birth to six or seven offspring at a time and loves having unprotected sex as often as possible.
No, it’s not some mythic species invented by Hollywood, but the common cat gone wild. By some estimates, one feral four-legger and her offspring can spawn a colony of 5,000 cats in just three years.
No wonder Pam Howard is such a busy lady.
CUMBERLAND – It’s been 68 years since Wilfrid E. Hebert, 91, returned home from World War II and he has spent much of that time coming to terms with his days as a B-17 crew member flying missions over Europe.
Hebert, an ex-POW and a resident of Flat Street, can tell you what helped him most through his troubled times and also about the things he still grapples with when holidays such as Memorial Day arrive.
