Auburn
Patriotic display in Auburn
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Auburn firefighters Mike DiPietro, left,
and Steve Vanni installed flags along Hooksett and Chester roads
in Auburn on Saturday, Aug. 21. The flags, which are valued at
more than $2,000, were paid for by Nancy and Carl Mayland of
Auburn. (Ginger Kozlowski Photo)
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Auburn/Hooksett
Fluoride vote in question
By DEVON CORMIER
Staff Writer
dcormier@yourneighborhoodnews.com
Auburn may get to vote on fluoridation
of water it gets from the city after all.
With the Sept. 14 vote approaching, a lawsuit has been filed
saying it is unfair that the town is cut out of the vote on fluoridation.
Hooksett is already participating in the vote.
Attorney Jed Z. Callen is representing Auburn residents Thomas
Upham and David Lariviere; Derry residents Fred W. DeJong, and
Kim and Charles Statler; and Manchester state Rep. Barbara J.
Hagan.
The lawsuit has been filed in in both Rockingham and Hillsborough
counties. Auburn and Derry are in Rockingham county, while Manchester,
owner of the water system, is in Hillsborough County. It is expected
that the lawsuits will be consolidated to the Hillsborough County
court.
A question of fairness
Hagan said there are two parts to the lawsuit. "Voters of
Auburn and Derry are again being denied a vote on this issue,"
Hagan said. Hagan said this is unconstitutional and a denial
of due process.
Also, Hagan said the lawsuit will address the wording of the
ballot question. Hydrofluorosilic acid is the actual material
being added to the water, whereas the ballot question reads simply
"fluoride."
"The stuff they are adding to the water is making a health
claim," Hagan said. "But they are using the generic
word "fluoride," which is not the actual term. It is
hydrofluorosilic acid. That does not give people a clear idea
of what they are voting for."
Hagan hopes the suit will be put on a fast track to curb the
Sept. 14 referendum. Under law, the vote does not need to be
tallied until June 2005.
Callen said the court has already granted a hearing.
"The court has scheduled a hearing on my request for a preliminary
injunction for the first week of September," Callen said.
"The court could order Auburn and Derry to vote or that
the vote be delayed or any number of things."
Upham declined comment and Lariviere could not be contacted for
comment.
Debates held
Although Hagan hopes the vote will be put on hold, hearings and
forums continue. On Monday, Aug. 23, two forums took place, one
in Goffstown and one in Manchester.
While Hagan spoke with others in Manchester against fluoridated
water, Manchester's Public Health Director Fred Rusczek and others
were scheduled to speak in favor of fluoridating the water in
Goffstown.
Goffstown selectmen hosted the public hearing, scheduling Rusczek
along with Assistant Director of Manchester Waterworks Bob Beaurivage.
Beaurivage spoke about the technicalities of administering fluoride
to the water. He said Goffstown has 1,300 service connections
and that one part per million of the hydrofluorosilic acid is
being added to the water currently.
"I am in support of community water fluoridation,"
Rusczek said. "Fluoride had been found by the Center for
Disease Control and Prevention to be one of the top 10 public
health achievements of the century. Today, over two thirds of
the public water supply is fluoridated, over 170 million people
who live on the public water supply benefit."
After the two spoke, the selectmen permitted audience member
and researcher Michael Connett to speak against fluoridated water,
and then allowed questions.
"Fluoride chemicals are cheap," Connett said. "Why?
Because they are industrial waste products. There is an elegant
solution to this. If people want fluoride, go to the store and
buy fluoridated toothpaste."
About 20 audience members had gathered for the occasion, and
although the questions were few, most appeared to be against
fluoridated water.
Hagan said about 30 people came to listen to the forum in Manchester
on the same night. There were no pro-fluoridation speakers, since
most of them were in Goffstown at Saint Anselm College to speak.
Changing laws
Manchester voted to fluoridate their water in 1999. Manchester
followed the process of similar communities that voted to fluoridate
their water by leaving out other towns that receive city water.
Following other towns, only the city that owned the water system
voted.
In 2001, a lawsuit was filed in Superior Court asking that Manchester
be barred from fluoridating the water because customers in Hooksett,
Auburn, Bedford, Goffstown and Londonderry and Derry did not
get to vote.
The court ruled that the all affected communities should vote,
but because the law was unclear, it gave the city of Manchester
until June 2005 to remedy the situation with new legislation.
Manchester filed Senate Bill 449 in response, which would have
established that only the community that owns the public water
supply gets to vote. The Senate amended the bill, adding that
everyone in any outlying communities that receive water from
Manchester gets to vote.
The House further amended the bill to say that communities with
less than 100 direct connections to the water supply do not get
to vote. Auburn is one of those communities. The recently filed
lawsuit by Auburn and Derry residents is taking this decision
into question.
Candia
Child rape arrest
By JENNIFER CLAISE
Staff Writer
jclaise@yourneighborhoodnews.com
Police have arrested a former Candia man
and charged him with sexually assaulting a family member, who
is now 14 years old, over the past few years, said Candia Police
Chief Michael McGillen.
Donald Spinner, 33, was arrested by Candia Sgt. Scott Gallagher
and officer Rick Clement at 33 Varney Road, Wolfeboro, shortly
after midnight on Wednesday, Aug. 18.
Officers from the Wolfboro Police Department also assisted with
the arrest.
Spinner was living with his girlfriend in Wolfeboro at the time,
McGillen said. He had been living in Candia with his alleged
victim and her mother until about a month before the arrest.
Spinner was arraigned in Auburn District Court, where he was
charged with aggravated felonious sexual assault. Judge David
LeFrancois set his bail at $250,000 cash, and he is currently
being held at the Rockingham County Jail in Brentwood.
A probable cause hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 7 in
Auburn District Court.
The girl and her mother came forward to police to report the
alleged sexual abuse about a week before the arrest was made,
McGillen said.
She was then interviewed by a member of the Child Advocacy Center
in Derry, where police and Rockingham County attorneys were able
to listen in.
"They do it so the kids only have to be interviewed once,
instead of having to go through a series of interviews,"
McGillen said.
Currently, Rockingham County is the only one with that system
in place, but McGillen said that it may be spreading to other
counties in the state.
McGillen added that Candia has been fortunate in not having to
deal with many other incidents like this one.
"It's just one of those really nasty cases that we don't
see very often in Candia thank god," he said.
Hooksett
Giant pipes at Hooksett
Old Home Day
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Norm Beauchemin played a variety of pan
flutes at Hooksett Old Home Day on Saturday, Aug. 21. This was
his largest set, which is tough to play, but Beauchemin grabbed
the audience's attention with his sounds. Despite a very rainy
day, some hardy souls came out to visit, play games and enjoy
the entertainment.
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Candia
It's this teacher's first
day of school following brain tumor surgery
By JENNIFER CLAISE
Staff Writer
jclaise@yourneighborhoodnews.com
After a sudden illness
forced her to leave her job as a third-grade teacher at Moore
School almost 18 months ago, Nancy Cassavaugh said she is better
now, and ready to get back to her old life.
So, on Sept. 1, she'll be returning to the school where she taught
for 17 years a bit nervous, but eager and excited, just
like her students.
Cassavaugh said her whole world changed in March of 2003, when
some lingering health problems led her to consult a chiropractor
for what she suspected might be a problem with her neck.
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But her frequent headaches
and recurring periods where she was unable to walk sounded like
something more serious to her chiropractor; he feared she might
have multiple sclerosis, or even a brain tumor.
Unfortunately, Cassavaugh's doctor confirmed that fear: she was
diagnosed with a rare brain tumor that strikes only six or seven
people in the United States each year, she said.
Cassavaugh got the news in the middle of the day last March,
while she was teaching.
"The doctor called at school and said 'We need to see you
today.' And I asked if I could just go in tomorrow, but they
insisted 'no, you need to come in today.'"
Naturally, their sense of urgency told her that something was
seriously wrong.
"I started to shake all over, and I just couldn't stop,"
she said.
In the next few days, Cassavaugh
was rushed through a series of procedures to prepare her for
surgery, which could not be put off any longer. In fact, her
first consultation with a neurosurgeon at Brigham and Women's
Hospital in Boston was on a Friday, and her surgery was scheduled
for the following Monday, she said.
But in the last few days
before her surgery, Cassavaugh said, she was still focused on
taking care of her students whom she calls "my kids"
and doing what she could to prepare them for the rest of
the year without her.
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SHE'S BACK Third-grade teacher Nancy
Cassavaugh is back in her classroom getting things organized
before students return on Wednesday, Sept. 1. (Jennifer Claise
Photo)
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"Taking care of them was my first priority," she said.
"I needed to see where we were, and what they still needed
to finish this year, and I had no idea how long I might be gone,"
she said.
Cassavaugh said she didn't tell her students exactly what was
going on, since she wasn't sure herself. But, while she was away,
her sister, Kathy Hoffman, sent letters to her class letting
them know how she was doing, and encouraging them to keep working
hard.
"She would tell them to keep reading," Cassavaugh said
with a laugh.
Cassavaugh's surgery to remove the tumor, which was located in
a "tight spot" between the hemispheres of her brain
and near the cortex, lasted eight hours, according to her daughter,
Jen Goodwin. Cassavaugh said she doesn't remember anything about
the surgery, or about the five-weeks she spent in intensive care
afterwards.
"I just depended on my husband and my kids to get me through
that time," she said.
After she left the hospital, Cassavaugh spent about a month in
rehabilitation at Health South, where she had to relearn basic
skills that she had lost.
"I had to gain the strength to walk again, to feed myself,
to brush my teeth basic things like that," she said.
And when she left, she achieved a personal victory.
"I was able to walk out," she said. "That was
huge."
But some of her former students were a bit stunned by her physical
appearance the first time they saw her again, she said.
"I could see the fear in their eyes, and I couldn't blame
them," she said. "The last time they had seen me, I
had long hair, and now I had a buzz cut," she joked.
Cassavaugh said she can't express how much the support from her
family including husband David and children David and Jen
her friends, her students and her colleagues helped her
during the ordeal.
"My family was there for me every single day," she
said. "And I really needed them."
She added: "My students would send letters and cards to
support me, and I can't say how much that meant to me."
And while she said all of her colleagues were supportive during
her illness, two of them Mary Hogan and Sue Soucy
really stand out.
"Those two were unbelievable," she said. "Those
two kept on with me even when I was going through chemo and radiation.
They really kept my spirits up."
Today, Cassavaugh said that she is cancer-free and feeling well
overall. Mostly, she said, she's happy to not be a patient anymore.
"I'm feeling very good," she said. "I still have
some issues with balance and fatigue, but I am working on them.
But for the most part, I think I've done all my healing."
And most importantly, she said she feels ready for the upcoming
year.
"My teaching skills are still there," she said, "and
I'm ready to use them."
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