Archive - 2013 - News Article
April 9th
BLACKSTONE â A proposal to install ground-mounted photovoltaic solar panels at the former landfill on Chestnut Street will go before voters next month.
The plan is to enter into a lease agreement with a solar energy developer who will finance, operate, and maintain the facility while providing reductions in energy costs to the town.
WOONSOCKET â The School Committee has received a school administration recommended budget of $65,958,808 for 2013-2014 but whether it can break a committee impasse over that figure wonât be known until Wednesday.
The panel voted 2-2 on the recommended budget at its last meeting but was missing its Chairwoman Vimala Phongsavanh when the vote was taken.
April 7th
jfitzgerald@woonsocketcall.com
CUMBERLAND â At 5:20 on March 31, just after finishing Easter Sunday dinner, 73-year-old Roland Bouvier and his wife of 49 years, 70-year-old Maria, walked quietly into the bedroom of their Cumberland condominium on Nate Whipple Highway.
While the couple's 40-year-old daughter and three grandchildren were in another room, Bouvier took a .32-caliber handgun, shot his wife twice in the torso and then turned the gun on himself.
It was Cumberlandâs first murder and second murder-suicide in four years.
I begin this story with full disclosure: I like riding on RIPTA buses, or at least I have fond memories of doing so.
Before I stepped on RIPTA bus No. 0124 Friday at a spot some of the locals disparagingly refer to as Hobo Junction â the corner of High and Main, below the P&W truss bridge â I hadnât been aboard one for about 40 years. When I was around 15 years old, the bus was how my friends and I used to go to downtown Providence for lunch at the now-defunct Lukeâs Chinese Restaurant, where we reveled in dumping the soy sauce into a bowl of sugar
when no one was looking.
dkirwan@pawtuckettimes.com
PAWTUCKET â Change can be scary...especially if it affects oneâs ability to get to work, school, or some other important destination.
The Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) has embarked on a plan to change many of its bus routes statewide, and officials say they are trying to do it without causing hardship to riders.
In an effort that began last summer, RIPTA has been doing a âComprehensive Operational Analysis,â a study of where riders live and work, how each bus route is performing, and where changes could be made to improve service.
April 5th
WOONSOCKET â In conjunction with the Woonsocket Education Department, the police yesterday warned parents and children about a man who has been exposing himself to youngsters on their way to Coleman Elementary School.
âWeâre doing everything we can to find him,â said Detective Jamie Paone, spokeswoman for the police. âHopefully someone can provide us with more information to help us identify this guy.â
Police believe same man exposed himself to children on their way to Coleman at least four times in the last year, she said. The most recent incident happened about 9 a.m. Thursday.
Just one day after state officials assembled to roll out a raft of proposed school safety legislation, a lockdown at the University of Rhode Island triggered by reports of a gunman on the South Kingstown campus brought new immediacy to what has become a national conversation about guns.
April 4th
SOUTH KINGSTOWN(AP) â The University of Rhode Island is ending a lockdown and says an investigation has revealed there was no gun or active shooter at any time on its South Kingstown campus.
The school ordered students and staff to stay indoors Thursday after reports of a gunman on campus.
A student in an 11 a.m. physiology class told The Associated Press that she was sitting in the back of a large lecture hall when someone sounding scared yelled "You're a nice guy! You're a nice guy!"
The student says people then started to run and scream, and the professor told all the students to run.
WOONSOCKET â Itâs like the forgotten stepchild of the Budget Commissionâs five-year plan.
Pension rollbacks, cuts in workersâ healthcare benefits and supplemental taxes have glommed all the attention as strategies for helping the city start to chip away at a projected deficit on track to reach $105 million by 2017.
But the calculus of fiscal solvency also calls for raising $1 million a year in new revenue by hiking residential trash fees, and a company called Waste Zero from Cambridge, Mass., showed commissioners how they can do it this week.
April 3rd
PROVIDENCE â Woonsocket Rep. Lisa Baldelli-Hunt says lawmakers who insist on reducing the annualized percentage rate for payday loans down from the current 260 percent to 36 percent immediately are âdetrimental to the causeâ of reforming an industry she sees as equivalent to âloan sharking.â
Baldelli-Hunt has once again filed legislation that would cut the interest rate down to 130 percent, or a two-week rate of $5 for every $100 borrowed.
