By Devon Cormier
Staff Writer

FOOTBALL FUNDING – Members of Goffstown High School football team, (front to back) Troy Laprise, junior, Kelvin Paris, junior, Andy Macon, senior, Matt MacDowell, junior, and senior Mike Graydon of Dunbarton, worried about the team’s future after the budget committee cut funding. The team did end up with the support of the town. (File Photo)

The town of Dunbarton spent 2004 bracing for a large development and embracing the rural character that means so much to the tight-knit community. A compromise showed residents that development won’t ruin the rural character of the town. Dunbarton also proved its loving community character by helping those in need.

January
• After three years of football at Goffstown High School, the Grizzlies varsity football team faces possible extinction after the town’s budget committee turned down the school board’s recommendation to partially fund the program, leaving many athletes frustrated at the thought of no longer having a varsity football team at the high school. Then, to the delight of many residents, the town’s budget committee votes to amend its original recommendation not to partially fund football at Goffstown High School. By a vote of 7-5, the com- mittee votes to recommend $20,000 to fund the program.

• Laraine Allen and Donna Dunn dig in the dirt of the old Molly Stark house to search for anything left by the people who lived in the house before. They find pottery dating to the 1800s. Allen received the home as a birthday present and has been restoring it room by room.

February
• In early February, local education officials warn residents that a lack of state aid for schools could nearly double the local school portion of the tax rate. Local taxes for schools were expected to jump to $16.25 per $1,000 of assessed value, up from $8.90 last year.

Tuition to Goffstown area schools is over half of the regular education budget in 2004. Per-student increases coupled with a loss in funds from state adequacy grants put the school board in a tough spot.

• After almost two years of trying to find alternate arrangements for the town’s high school students, Dunbarton enters into a contract agreement with Goffstown.

Members of the Dunbarton AREA committee talked with school districts from Hopkinton, Weare, Concord, Bedford and Bow, among other schools, to explore middle and high school options outside of Goffstown. None of the contacted districts were prepared to take additional students.

The school board budgets $7,661 for a per-student tuition at Mountain View Middle School, and a per-student tuition of $7,184 at the high school.

• Two articles amending the town’s zoning ordinances are planned to be in front of voters in March.

Article 2 would create a specific district for multifamily housing developments, and Article 3 would establish new lot requirements so property owners could subdivide a house lot. The articles reflect an effort to provide affordable housing in town. What happened? Skip ahead to March. • Voters prepare for March’s annual School District Meeting. Taxes and approval of the Authorized Regional Enrollment Area agreement were highlights at the annual meeting in 2004. At the meeting voters are asked to approve the following articles:

• The new Authorized Regional Enrollment Area agreement between Dunbarton, New Boston and Goffstown, which outlines tuition policies, quality of education and school official involvement in the Goffstown schools. – The school budget proposal of $3.89 million is up 6.21 percent over last year’s budget. The budget, if approved by voters, will increase the local school property tax to $16.25 per $1,000 of assessed value from $8.90 in 2003. A decrease in state aid and an increase in student tuition caused the increase, school officials said.
• A request to raise $150,000 for the school’s capital reserve fund to repair the elementary school’s heating and ventilation system; the project could start within the next year.
• The school board recommends that $20,000 be raised to purchase a replacement lift to resume the district’s compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

On March 9, voters are asked to approve a $620,000 town warrant to purchase land and buildings owned by resident Al Vaal at the corner of School Street next to the cemetery. The bond would add 47 cents per $1,000 assessed valuation to the property tax rate in 2004. In 2005, the bond would add 91 cents to the tax rate, and would average about that amount over the next five years of the bond.

March
• At Town Meeting:

• The Vaal land purchase fails. Without the land, the Dunbarton Center Building Committee has to go back to the drawing board and the one-building plan to expand the library. The Vaal purchase is rejected 212-71. A two-thirds vote was necessary to pass the $620,000 bond for the 6.6 acres of land.
• Voters pass the operating budget of $1.52 million, an increase of $192,287, or 8.4 percent, from last year.
• None of the warrant articles that would have come from property taxes passed at Town Meeting on March 9.
• Town Moderator Fred Mullen had to break a tie on Article 12 for the transfer station. Town Clerk Linda Peters said people asked for a recount after the tie. The $35,847 warrant failed.

• Susan Defritas finds a young boxer dog on Black Brook Road that had utility lock ties around its mouth that were embedded in its skin. The dog was also emaciated and had apparently been abandoned and left to die. Later, Dunbarton police report that a similar utility tie had been secured around the dog’s genitals, but had come loose and fallen off. The dog is taken to the Manchester Animal Shelter.

A few weeks later the dog abuse case was solved. Police Chief Jeff Nelson and Master Patrolman Christopher Connelly arrested Melissa Cere, 22, of Boyton Street in Manchester, on March 19. Cere’s co-workers, Kelli Vallier and Lisa Boczanowsk, said Cere had owned a male boxer by the name of Tyson, and that they had taken care of the dog at different times. Before the dog was found on Black Brook Road, they said that Cere had complained about the animal barking too much and urinating in the house.

April
• The vote to choose a school board member is so close in March that a recount is requested. While incumbent school board member Carl Metzger garners 281 votes on election day, he receives eight fewer votes than challenger Brian Little, who wins the three-year seat. • A line item that has been a regular fixture in the school budget for years is taken off the list. The $10 annual stipend for a truant officer had occupied a space in the books for longer than anyone can remember. From 1991 to 2000, Tim Locke was the only police officer in town, so he would have been the person to receive the $10 a year payment, an amount he said he never received. Voiding the expense doesn’t mean there isn’t a truant officer anymore, however. • Residents began a petition to request a rehearing on the maximum length of dead-end roads after the planning board decides that there needn’t be a length at all. Regulations for dead-end roads are only one item on a list of changes the board had been working on in 2003. On April 7, board members vote unanimously to change the maximum length from 600 feet to no length requirement at all. • A trash problem on the scenic Kimball Pond land begins to concern town officials in April. The town’s land has been used as an illegal dumping site for years. Now that the area around Kimball Pond is conservation land, the conservation commission and the selectmen discuss putting a gate up at the second entrance.

NO HORSING AROUND – When 18-year-old Jess Modzeleski, right, wasn’t taking care of her horses, she walked along the roads of Dunbarton to train. Jess and her twin sister Jen, left, were the youngest women registered in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in Boston in May. The walk is only open to people 18 and older. (File Photo)

May
• Police Chief Jeffrey Nelson applies for federal grant money that would help make improvements to the town common, including the installation of sidewalks and a redesign of the area’s main intersection.

Dunbarton is one of two New Hampshire towns being considered for a grant through the state’s Transportation Enhancement Program.

If Dunbarton was approved for the grant, the town would get $271,000 in federal money, and have to raise matching funds of $67,000. The total grant of $338,000 would pay for a sidewalk between the school and the town common and a sidewalk around the common. It would also pay for antique-style light fixtures around the common, and would turn the Y-shaped intersection at Robert Rogers Road and Route 13 into a T-shaped intersection.

• For the past 13 years, Dunbarton preschoolers have attended New Boston Central School to get prepared for kindergarten. While the arrangement is working for both towns, school board member Rene Ouellet wants to weigh the pros and cons of opening a preschool in Dunbarton. Ouellet starts looking into the district requirements, but said it would be a while before he could present an argument either way for a local preschool.

• Developer Donald Lane, who is a managing member of the Watch Hill Group in Bow, proposes a development that would not only be Dunbarton’s largest, but would be surrounded by the best scenery in town at the Countryside Golf Course. Residents don’t welcome the plan.

June
• An oil spill at a Grapevine Road development has Dun-barton firefighters and the state investigating possible contamination at the site.

• Three new ordinances are put in place.

Police Chief Jeffrey Nelson proposed the three ordinances, including one on noise, in 2001. After an April 29 public hearing, the ordinances are revised and by May 27 all are approved.

The new town ordinances include parks, recreation and conservation land, noise prevention and regulating emergency alarm devices or systems.

• Donald Lane’s proposal for a development on the golf course goes before the zoning board. Lane, a member of the Bow Planning Board, is disappointed at the lengthy zoning process his proposal has to undergo.

At the June 21 meeting, the proposal for a “Country Village” on the golf course did not succeed. Lane is sent back to finish some drawings and paperwork.

FACES – Patricia Dooly Murphy of Dunbarton has joined her love of sculpture and gardening to make unique flower pots. She also teaches sculpture to children and adults. (File Photo)

July
• The town’s appraiser for 20 years, Compton French, retires. The Board of Assessors goes to French’s house to present him with a clock for his service to Dunbarton. French had a heart attack in January that raised health concerns that forced him to retire in April. • Lifetime Dunbarton natives John and Eleanor Swindlehurst have their 50th wedding anniversary on June 19. They celebrate with a party at their home on July 18.

• The school board approves phase one of the renovations to Dunbarton Elementary School. Work is ready to proceed, but first, they need volunteers.

On July 10, the board asks people to help with the demolition work before construction can begin on the heat and ventilation systems. Work begins at 5 a.m. before the attic heats up, and continues to about 9 a.m.

• A new book about Dunbarton is released to residents. “Where Settlers’ Feet Have Trod, A Pictorial History of Dunbarton’s Old Homes and Structures,” is the work of Harlan A. Noyes, Dunbarton native and long-time member of the Historical Awareness Society.

The book took about a year-and-a-half to complete, but a lifetime of knowledge and research to compile. Athousand copies of the book were printed. The project was funded mostly by the town, but a portion of the funds came from the Historical Awareness Society.

• Resident Patricia Dooly Murphy spends a lot of time with “pot heads” in July, and thanks to her, other residents do, too. Dooly Murphy’s sculpting creations are clay heads designed to be used as planters. With an artist’s eye for beauty and a lot of time, sweat and blood, she uses her summer days to fill orders for her work. The heads can now be seen all over Dunbarton.

• After seven months before the zoning board, Don Lane, developer for the Watch Hill proposal, says he is fed up with the board’s inability to make a decision and he withdraws his application.

Days later, there is an outcry from the disappointed Meadow Lane neighborhood. Lane says he was able to work out a deal with land owner Chuck Urwin and his frustrated investors, and he rescinds his withdrawal.

• The planning board’s decision to redo site plan regulations comes in anticipation of more multifamily and commercial proposals. Town Planner Ken Swayze says the board has begun to get more proposals than in previous years.

• Residents spend a day or two demolishing parts of Dunbarton Elementary School