U.S. Forest Service-Stanislaus National Forest made this Facebook post Thursday:

Bald Mountain Helitak Base Break-In Most Recent in Series of Thefts

SONORA, California, February 2, 2023 – Law Enforcement with the Stanislaus National Forest is seeking the public’s assistance in identifying and apprehending those responsible for an unlawful entry and theft between noon, Saturday, January 28 and 7:30 a.m., Sunday, January 29, 2023 at the Stanislaus National Forest’s Bald Mountain Helitak base off of Highway 108.

The theft at the helitak base resulted in the loss of various firefighting, aviation, and forestry equipment. Initial estimates place the value of the stolen property between $40,000 and $50,000. This latest theft is in addition to break-ins at the Forest Supervisor’s Office in Sonora (catalytic convertors were removed from vehicles), the Mi-Wok District Office, and the Summit District Office over the last six months.

“Fighting fire is a difficult enough challenge without the loss of our equipment,” said Stanislaus National Forest Supervisor, Jason Kuiken. “Obviously we will replace the equipment, but this is not something we have a budget for, thus funds will have to come from different program areas meaning the degrading of other services provided by forest staff. The forest will also need to repair the vandalism to these federal facilities (broken windows, damaged fencing, general clean-up of ransacked buildings). This too will have an impact to other program areas and the services we offer.”

Anyone with information relating to the theft at Bald Mountain Helitak Base or any of the recent break-ins is encouraged to contact Stanislaus National Forest Law Enforcement at 530-906-2087.

Benjamin Cossel, Public Affairs Officer,
Stanislaus National Forest
209.288.6261
Benjamin.cossel@usda.gov

Hunter Oberst
The Keene Sentinel, N.H.
(TNS)

Feb. 1—SWANZEY — Voters will head to the town’s annual deliberative session Tuesday to weigh in on a host of matters that will be on the ballot in March. But this time, funding a new fire station won’t be one of them.

Attendees of Tuesday’s meeting, scheduled for 7 p.m. at Whitcomb Hall, can discuss and amend warrant articles before voting them up or down next month.

Here’s a look at what’s on the warrant:

Budget proposal: $7,425,000. That’s up $508,685, or about 7 percent, from the $6,916,315 budget voters approved last year. The default budget, which goes into effect if voters reject the operating budget proposal in March, is $6,864,706.

Michael Branley, town administrator, said factors driving the budget increase include higher electricity and heating costs and the addition of a land use and zoning coordinator position. Branley mentioned via email that the recreation director position will also now be full-time, and the town is proposing increasing funds for road repaving to account for higher asphalt costs.

Fire-station funding: In 2022, the town asked voters to consider raising funds for a new fire station to be built at 321 Old Homestead Highway. That marked the fifth time since 2015 that such an article had been on the warrant. In each of the past three years, the fire-station proposal received a simple majority but failed to meet the three-fifths supermajority required for approval.

One article that is on this year’s warrant calls for $300,000 to be raised for the Fire Stations Capital Reserve Fund, with half coming from taxes and the remaining $150,000 from undesignated fund balance. Branley explained that these dollars could be used to improve Swanzey’s existing fire stations or save toward a new one.

“With increasing borrowing and building costs and the Monadnock Regional School District proposing a major facility bond this year we did not feel it was a good year to propose a major fire station bond,” Branley wrote, referencing the school district’s proposed elementary-school renovation and consolidation project. “With that said, the need for a new fire station to get Station #2 out of the basement has not changed.”

Swanzey has three fire stations, and the new facility would replace the station that is currently under town hall and dates to the 1960s, town officials have said.

Other warrant articles: Residents will also weigh in on an article that would amend the town’s solar tax exemption, a policy that can benefit property owners who own land equipped with solar energy systems. This would be equal in amount to 100 percent of the assessed value of qualifying solar equipment with no dollar cap on the exemption. Swanzey’s existing policy, which voters adopted in 2019, has a maximum dollar amount of $35,000.

Town officials have also put forth a few articles that propose allocating money to capital reserve accounts and expendable trust funds, including one that calls for $590,000 to be raised through taxes for funds dedicated to road reconstruction and cemetery/highway improvements.

Hunter Oberst can be reached at 355-8546, or hoberst@keenesentinel.com.

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(c)2023 The Keene Sentinel (Keene, N.H.)

Visit The Keene Sentinel (Keene, N.H.) at www.sentinelsource.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Greg Garrison
al.com
(TNS)

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said tourists, visitors and local residents who got out and spent money after the COVID-19 shutdown helped the city have a massive economic rebound.

“I’m going to send a big shout out to our citizens as well as guests and visitors coming into our town,” Woodfin said.

For the fiscal year that started July 1, 2021, and ended June 30, 2022, Birmingham achieved an $81 million budget surplus, he said.

A dramatic increase in shopping, eating at restaurants and going to sports and entertainment events in the city led to a large increase in sale tax revenues, Woodfin said.

“Just from a sales tax standpoint we saw a significant increase in revenue,” Woodfin said. “We also saw the struggle in our ability to hire, which we believe this year will be better.”

The inability to hire to fill all funded positions was also a significant factor in the city’s surplus, he said. That included hiring for police officers, which left as many as hundreds of positions vacant throughout the fiscal year.

“We wanted to make sure the surplus went back to those who did not have probably an additional person to the right or to the left of them,” Woodfin said.

A five percent cost of living adjustment for city employees that passed and went into effect on Tuesday will help reward those employees who had to work in situations where their departments may have been working shorthanded, Woodfin said.

The city approved $60.4 million in spending priorities for the current fiscal year to put the surplus to use.

“We needed to make investments across the city,” Woodfin said. “We can support a new stadium, support a new amphitheater. We can support the upgrades and refurbs of Legacy Arena. But we can also invest in parks, recreation centers, libraries and pools. We can also spend $12 million toward street paving and continue to invest in our sidewalks and city stormwater and other infrastructure needs.”

The budget surplus spending plan includes $13.5 million for the cost of living increase for employees, the second such five percent pay increase in the past year.

About $2.45 million will go to the hiring of new employees for Birmingham Fire and Rescue service. Unlike open police jobs, the city has been able to find a sufficient number of applicants who want to be firefighters, Woodfin said.

The city will use $4.4 million of the surplus on park and recreation center improvements, including repairing swimming pools.

About $3.6 million has been set aside for capital improvements at library branches.

The city will spend $8 million on vehicle fleet upgrades including fire trucks, police vehicles, Department of Transportation vehicles. About $600,000 will be spent on sidewalk repair.

Legion Field, the historic football stadium that hosts the Magic City Classic, will get $4 million for improvements and Rickwood Field, the nation’s oldest former professional baseball stadium, will get $2 million.

The city will invest $15 million for the CrossPlex Family Fun Center, which includes a skating rink and bowling alley at the old Fair Park.

The headlining investment has been the city’s $5 million share to build a $50 million, 9,000-seat amphitheater at the site of the former Carraway hospital, as an entertainment anchor to the Star at Uptown development.

“We think this completes the footprint that we’re looking for in the Uptown district,” said Wardine Alexander, president of the Birmingham City Council.

“Having an amphitheater, football stadium and basketball arena in one footprint provides artists various options,” Woodfin said.

If the Birmingham amphitheater funding goes as planned, construction could start this year and concerts could begin by

Kents Store (VA) Volunteer Fire Company is going on two weeks of dealing with sewage leaking into the administrative side of the fire station.

A contractor hired by Fluvanna County (VA) was sent to the fire company to clean grease traps, cbs19news.com reported. 

After the contractor finished cleaning the grease traps, Fire Chief Andrew Pullen says he got a call that there was a minor water leak. Pullen immediately logged onto the firehouse security cameras and saw black water flooding the kitchen, the report said.

He says it has been eight days, and the black substance remains in the firehouse, keeping the volunteers from using it because the spill is sewage, according to the report.

Fluvanna County shared this statement:

“The County of Fluvanna takes the incident that occurred at the Kents Store Fire Station very seriously. The county has had the most urgent issues addressed and has also had the building assessed by an environmental consultant to make sure that the scope of work for remediation completely addresses the problem. In accordance with law and procurement procedures, the county is working to get quotes for the full and complete remediation of the issues caused by the incident with such work to begin as soon as practicable. The county is also looking into the causes of the incident and the contractor involved.”