Postal worker injured after dog attack

House kills government bullying bill

February 22nd 2012 at 12:56:27 PM

The N.H. House of Representatives voted 224-78 this morning to kill a bill aimed at the eradication of bullying in state government.

Rep. Susan Emerson, R-Rindge, District 7, the bill’s primary sponsor, said in an interview with the Ledger-Transcript this morning following the vote that she had suspected the bill wouldn’t pass this year. But its defeat, she added, won’t keep her from reintroducing a similar bill in 2013.

Emerson filed House Bill 1533 with the goal of establishing a policy against bullying among members of the General Court.

In March 2011, Emerson alleged Speaker of the House William O’Brien, R-Mount Vernon, had yelled at her and disregarded her right as a state representative to propose an amendment.

Story in Thursday's Ledger-Transcript.

Report on plane crash details last moments

February 22nd 2012 at 09:56:00 AM

PETERBOROUGH — Pilot Paul Schlieben notified the Lebanon Municipal Airport control tower that he “had to turn back” minutes before his Cessna T182T single-engine plane crashed about 700 feet from the airport runway on Feb. 9, according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board released today.

Schlieben, a retired Peterborough businessman who had founded a program to help teenage students obtain pilot licenses in exchange for doing community service work, died in the accident.

Schlieben was on his way back to the airport when observers on the ground saw his plane banking from left to right, the report states.

Body of KSC student found in Monadnock State Park

February 21st 2012 at 03:52:23 PM

JAFFREY –- State and local officials found the body of a 21-year-old Alexandria man at Monadnock State Park Tuesday after closing the park to search for him, Fish and Game said in a press release.

According to Keene State College sources, the man, Jacob Messersmith, was a senior majoring in theater arts.

Messersmith reportedly committed suicide with a firearm after hiking into the park on Monday afternoon, and his body was found Tuesday near the mountain summit.

Jaffrey Police Department, N.H. Fish and Game and the N.H. Division of Parks and Recreation led the daylong search for Messersmith, who was to reported to have been "armed and despondent."

Story in Thursday's Ledger-Transcript.

Neighbors put out by Rep. Hunt’s rental

February 21st 2012 at 01:43:26 PM

RINDGE — A state legislator’s home is at the center of a local debate, with neighbors questioning its use as a vacation rental spot. Neighbors have asked town officials to weigh in and enforce their interpretation of zoning ordinances that would ultimately impact the future use of the 500-acre property.

Rep. John Hunt, R-Rindge, District 7, and his wife, Lynda Hunt, own the property in question located on Sunridge Road, which is known by locals as “The Castle” and the “Holloway House.” While the couple has said that they are not violating any ordinances and that the matter is a “private dispute,” their neighbors expressed their concerns to the Select Board on Wednesday night.

Story in Tuesday's Ledger-Transcript.

Two men rescued after ATV fell through ice

February 20th 2012 at 12:10:09 PM

RINDGE - Two Fitzwilliam fisherman were rescued at approximately 7 a.m. Sunday morning after their ATV went through the ice on Contoocook Lake.

Edwin Ridley, 47, and Robert Plaszweski, 48, both of Fitzwilliam were taking part in the Annual Pelletier's Ice Fishing Derby in Rindge.

Both men were quickly pulled out of the lake by a fellow fisherman, said Plaszweski in an interview with the Ledger-Transcript on Monday. Despite some minor bumps and bruises, he added, they are doing well and thankful to the man who saved them.

Story in Tuesday's Ledger-Transcript.

Burglary suspect to wear monitoring device

February 17th 2012 at 12:16:45 PM

A local man charged in connection with several area burglaries has had his bail conditions changed to allow for house arrest with electronic monitoring, after a probable cause hearing on Thursday.

Jesse Dennis, 27, of Dublin, appeared at the 8th Circuit Court in Jaffrey on Thursday, along with Ashleigh Starr, 26, of Greenfield. Both waived their right to a probable cause hearing. The two had confessed to burglaries in Greenfield, Dublin and Jaffrey in order to feed an addiction to Percoset.

At their probable cause hearings, there were adjustments made to the bail conditions for Dennis and Starr. Most significantly, Dennis, who had been held at the Cheshire County Department of Corrections on a $25,000 cash bail, would be allowed to choose between cash bail or home confinement with an electronic monitoring bracelet.

If Dennis meets the requirements for enrolling in the electronic monitoring program, he would be able to leave his house for work, medical visits, visits to his attorney, and court appointments.

In a second change, Judge L. Philips Runyon allowed that Dennis and Starr would be able to have supervised visits, on the condition that the case not be discussed. Under their original bail conditions, the two were not allowed to have any contact.

Additional details in Tuesday's Monadnock Ledger-Transcript.

Lower state returns for MCH lead to wage cuts

February 16th 2012 at 04:31:45 PM

PETERBOROUGH -- In the face of a reduction of funds coming back to Monadnock Community Hospital from the state of New Hampshire, employees at the hospital will see their pay cut by 2 percent and members of the hospital’s nine-person executive team will be taking 3 percent cuts, with the changes taking effect April 1.

The cuts were announced Thursday, when employees met with managers at the hospital, according to Chief Executive Officer Peter Gosline.

“We feel like we’re doing the prudent thing,” Gosline said Friday. “We want to be responsible stewards of community assets. The state has been aggressive in creating a tax burden on hospitals. We learned that we’ll be paying an additional $1.2 million for 2012. That was a surprise and we had to adjust to that. … We’re doing this only reluctantly.”

The hospital, a nonprofit organization that's one of Peterborough's largest employers, has 725 full- and part-time workers.

The hospital will also be eliminating the employer contribution to its workers 403(b) retirement accounts, which in recent years has been slightly more than 3 percent of a worker’s wages, according to Gosline.

This year, Gosline said, the hospital is expecting to pay about $3.3 million through the state’s Medicaid Enhancement Tax program. The Medicaid Enhancement Tax money goes into the state’s general fund, but until this year it had been returned to local hospitals through a program called the Disproportionate Share Hospital fund, which goes by the acronym DISH.

“In the past, DISH and the enhancement tax netted out to zero,” Gosline said. “This year we’re getting just $2.1 million back, so it has a net impact of $1.2 million.”

Gosline said hospital officials hadn’t expected the difference to be so high.

See story in Tuesday's Ledger-Transcript.

Incumbent removed from ballot

February 14th 2012 at 10:00:05 AM

MASON — One of the longest-serving members of the School Board says his candidacy for the coming election was revoked on Thursday after a miscommunication regarding the filing deadline.

Donald Hodges, who has been a member of the board since the inception of the Mason School District in 2008, told the Ledger-Transcript on Monday that his filing received initial approval, and then was rejected without his having a chance to represent himself.

Woman convicted of aggravated DWI with child in vehicle

February 14th 2012 at 09:57:54 AM

MILFORD — A Jaffrey mother was convicted of aggravated driving while intoxicated at the Milford Circuit Court on Wednesday. Her 2-year-old child was in the vehicle at the time of her arrest.

Milford police had arrested and charged Misty Chase, 23, of Jaffrey in early-September for DWI when she was pulled over for allegedly speeding on Route 101, according to records at the Milford Circuit Court. She was also charged with speed and endangering the welfare of a child.

Story in Thursday's Ledger-Transcript.

Peterborough man killed in plane crash

February 9th 2012 at 05:06:53 PM

WEST LEBANON — The pilot of a Cessna 182 was killed in a single-plane crash at the Lebanon Municipal Airport yesterday afternoon shortly after taking off and radioing back to the tower he was experiencing trouble.

Officials at the scene wouldn’t identify the pilot, but the plane was registered to Paul Schlieben, a Peterborough, N.H., entrepreneur and pilot who flew charitable medical missions and founded a program that helped teenagers become pilots by exchanging community service hours for flight lessons.

Schlieben’s wife said he had flown to Lebanon from Keene earlier in the day, WMUR-TV reported.

Schlieben’s plane had just taken off from the Lebanon airport when the pilot “appeared to have some kind of trouble,” airport manager Rick Dyment said. The pilot asked to make an emergency landing, and when he tried to make a sharp turn, the plane crashed in a grassy field about 100 to 150 yards off the runway.

Details such as the time the plane took off and the elevation it had gained before crashing were unavailable yesterday. The National Transportation Safety Board will begin an investigation this morning. The Cessna 182 is a four-seater, single-engine airplane that has been on the market for 55 years and is frequently used by flight-instructor schools, according to the company’s website.

Emergency crews responded to a call from the Federal Aviation Administration at 1:45 p.m. and when they arrived found an intact plane engulfed in flames, Lebanon Fire Chief Chris Christopoulos said.

Standing in front of the airport terminal in full fire gear yesterday as passengers inside calmly waited for their flight, Christopoulos described the crash as one that nobody could have survived.

“When we arrived on scene, we saw a single plane on fire,” he said. “The plane was well involved.”

Firefighters extinguished the fire in less than five minutes and began searching for victims.

They found a single body inside the cockpit, according to Christopoulos. He said there were no passengers in the plane, and no chance of saving the pilot’s life.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner is scheduled to examine the body today.

The Lebanon airport terminal, sleepy on most weekday afternoons, remained unnervingly calm yesterday — a visitor could have easily come and gone and never known that anything had gone wrong.

Within a few minutes of the crash, the flames were extinguished, and only a small amount of smoke — about the same generated by a backyard bonfire — was visible. Some police cruisers left the runway within a half hour of arriving on scene, and a passenger waiting for a flight tapped away at her laptop, seemingly oblivious to the tragedy unfolding a quarter-mile away.

Even employees of the rental car booths inside the terminal said they heard nothing.

It was only the residual evidence, a brief glowing fire and a white plume, that alerted them that something out of the ordinary had happened.

Christopoulos said that Lebanon fire crews regularly do airport drills as part of their training, and responded to the scene as they were trained to do.

No one answered the phone at the Schlieben residence in Peterborough last night, nor at the computer software company Schlieben founded, Softlanding Systems.

Attempts to reach a brother in New York were also unsuccessful.

In an undated article in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, Schlieben said he began flying in 2001.

In addition to flying his privately owned single engine Cessna — what he called an “indulgent hobby” — he volunteered for Angel Flight Northeast, a volunteer pilot association that arranges free air transportation for charitable and medical needs.

Schlieben also founded Take-Off and Grow, a program through which he mentored high school students while helping them earn a pilot’s license and perform community service.

“I see tremendous growth in maturity in the students as they progress through the program,” he told the Ledger-Transcript. “They’re earning their way. ... They feel like they earned it, that’s good.”

According to IT Jungle, an online newsletter about the information technology industry, Schlieben started SoftLanding in 1989 and sold the privately held, 60-employee company that specialized in software for mainframe computers to Unicom Systems in 2006 for an undisclosed amount.

An employee stock-ownership plan Schleiben and his co-founder instituted a few years before the sale ensured that “every employee who had been at the company for more than two years got a piece of the action. … (it) was a remarkably generous thing for SoftLanding’s owners … to have done,” IT Jungle reported.

Before yesterday, the last fatal airplane crash in the Upper Valley took place in Lyme in 2005. Before that, two crashes in 1996 — one in Dorchester and one in Sunapee — each claimed lives.

And at the Lebanon airport itself, there hasn’t been a fatal crash since 1993, when two occurred in a single year.

This article appeared in the Feb. 10, 2012, edition of the Valley News. The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript featured Schlieben and his ConVal aviation program, Take-Off and Grow, in April, 2010. That feature can be found at: http://www.ledgertranscript.com/article/taking-flight

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