The Lincoln County News

He has hiked mountains and valleys, visited national monuments, run 5Ks for charity, and been featured on the cover of a magazine. His name is Gizmo, and he is retired Wiscasset Police Department Lt. John Allen’s pet Shih Tzu.

Sarah Payne Stuart is a dyed-in-the-wool New Englander, and the Nobleboro resident will be the first person to say it. In fact, it is Stuart’s incisive, witty writing about what it means to be a New Englander that recently earned her a Guggenheim Fellowship.

High levels of participation and community investment helped make the Newcastle Local Planning Committee’s weekend of events and workshops a success, according to Newcastle Local Planning Committee Co-chair Ben Frey.

Removing a warrant article that allows the use of surplus to cover over-expenditures in department budgets was one of the best things the Wiscasset Board of Selectmen did in 2015, Chair Ben Rines said.

Waldoboro residents approved changes to the town’s dog ordinance during an open special town meeting at the town office Thursday, April 28.

Wiscasset high school students may be given the opportunity to play varsity football for Boothbay Region High School after the recent approval of a cooperative athletic agreement between the Wiscasset School Department and AOS 98.

The Wiscasset Board of Selectmen is looking into sending a bus full of community members to the U.S. Department of Energy’s public comment session on spent nuclear fuel Thursday, June 2 in Boston. If enough community members come forward with a request to attend the public comment session, the town may cover the cost of transportation.

After a months-long budget-setting process, the Wiscasset Board of Selectmen finalized the warrant for June’s annual town meeting by referendum and will present a municipal budget with a 12.94 percent increase to voters.

After several months of budget workshops, the Wiscasset School Committee unanimously approved a 2016-2017 school budget of $8.99 million at its Thursday, April 28 meeting. The budget is a 6.32 percent increase from the previous year’s budget of $8.42 million.

At approximately 10:30 a.m., Monday, May 2, it became apparent that the town of Whitefield’s computer system was breached by an unknown hacker demanding the town to pay an undetermined amount of money through the internet. Fortunately, all information was backed up as of Friday, April 29, and there was no need for the town to either pay the ransom or re-create nine months of transactions.

Former Wiscasset School Resource Officer Perry Hatch will return to the role at 7 a.m., Monday, May 2, according to interim Police Chief Jerry Hinton.

Meeting Thursday, April 28 to finalize the warrant for the annual town meeting, the Wiscasset Board of Selectmen reversed its previous decision to present two Wiscasset Ambulance Service budgets to voters.

Wiscasset has named its next police chief. Jeff Lange, interim chief of the Paris Police Department in Paris, Maine, will head the Wiscasset Police Department beginning May 23, Town Manager Marian Anderson said.

The culture of the fire service needs to change to reduce firefighters’ exposure to carcinogens and combat climbing cancer rates in firefighters, according to advocates.