A Black Lives Matter protest more accessible to those in the disabled community is being organized for next Friday in Portsmouth.
For some, keeping active amidst an ongoing pandemic has posed many challenges, but for those operating various fitness centers in the Monadnock Region, a whole new set of obstacles are stretching them thin.
This past summer, local gyms and yoga studios were able to ease back into in-person activities, which helped these businesses gain momentum. But as the winter approached — and the second wave of the pandemic hit our area — gym and yoga studio attendance has fallen by the wayside.
In the nine-plus months since COVID-19’s torrent upending of everyday life, Michael Polizotti, a policy analyst at the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute (NHFPI), has concluded that, despite the economic recession induced by the coronavirus, the ability to draw comparisons between the current state of local economies and other eras of financial turmoil isn’t simply apples-to-apples.
The pandemic has impacted every level of tourism in New Hampshire, from leaf peeping to the 2021 ski season. Visitors are faced with state regulations both in New Hampshire and often in their home state as well.
It’s because of these challenges that Lori Harnois, New Hampshire Tourism Director, says, “The Division is not forecasting travel or spending for the 2020-21 winter season. Similar to summer and fall, due to COVID-19, there are many unknowns and variables with the potential to impact visitation and visitor spending, making it difficult to project those figures.”
While some sectors have seen business plummet due to the pandemic, the construction industry seems to be moving ahead as usual in New Hampshire. Both residential and commercial construction projects are still in demand.
“We’ve definitely still seen a steady set of pre-development activity and applications” for funding for commercial projects, notes Katherine Easterly Martey, executive director of the New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority (CDFA). “That’s been good.”
The beginning of the year is usually the busiest time for gyms, with New Year’s resolutions resulting in new gym devotees and people coming in from the cold to work out. The recent boom in-home workout options like Peloton and Mirror makes competition fiercer, so gym owners are working hard to make clients feel safe despite the ongoing pandemic.
Trends from the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute (NHFPI) suggest that New Hampshire’s food insecure households recovered from the Great Recession slower than the rest of the nation -- a trend that has worsened in the state as complications from the coronavirus crisis continue to arise.
NHFPI hosted a virtual event Wednesday (Feb. 3) featuring guest speakers from the New Hampshire Food Bank and New Hampshire Hunger Solutions in an effort to understand trends of food security in the midst of the pandemic. The presentation, titled Food Insecurity and Economic Conditions During the Great Recession and the COVID-19 Crisis, highlighted New Hampshire residents’ ongoing struggles with food insecurity and endeavors to combat the issue.
State Trooper Michael Arteaga was parked in an unmarked cruiser on the north side of the Hampton tolls on a clear spring evening in 2018, when he noticed two men driving north in a late model Cadillac sedan with Connecticut plates.
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The trooper eventually turned on his blue lights and had the Cadillac pull over, ostensibly for going 67 mph in a 50-mph zone and for making a lane change without timely use of signals. What followed was an interrogation and a search that turned up contraband.
When it comes to the question of armed and uniformed police officers as a permanent presence in the public school system, emotions run high on both sides of the argument. Debate over school resource officers, as they are known, has for years been a regular feature of New Hampshire town meetings and school board deliberations.
Local officials will soon have new guidance on the issue, thanks to the work of the governor’s commission on police accountability. Officially known as the New Hampshire Commission on Law Enforcement Accountability, Community and Transparency, the 14-member commission was appointed by Gov. Chris Sununu last spring amid national protests over systemic racism in policing.
[Pretextual stops are] when an officer pulls over a motorist for a minor traffic or equipment violation and proceeds to investigate more serious crimes, usually drug related. Many in law enforcement insist the stops are useful for investigating a variety of crimes, especially drug trafficking, while civil rights and racial justice advocates say the stops disproportionately target people of color.
The issue of pretextual stops was front and center in the deliberations of a commission appointed by Gov. Chris Sununu over the summer, tasked with improving law enforcement accountability and transparency after the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.
Members of New Hampshire’s Commission on Law Enforcement Accountability, Community and Transparency (LEACT) attended Fridell’s program last year to help brainstorm a new two-day seminar on implicit bias training in the Granite State that launched at the police academy on January 14.
The expanded program for police recruits is one of 48 recommendations the LEACT committee advanced after meeting during the summer months. The 16 hours of implicit bias training draws on the philosophies from the FIP program. It also models lesson plans from Ohio’s Peace Officer Basic Training for Community Diversity & Procedural Justice.
Despite all that has been learned and all the precautions taken, COVID-19 has continued to find its way into New Hampshire nursing homes with alarming regularity and deadly consequences.
The virus has killed 168 people just in current or recently closed outbreaks in congregate living facilities in the state, according to statistics compiled by the Health and Human Services Department. Hundreds more died in previous outbreaks.
A variety of factors may contribute to some nursing homes having a much worse experience than others, Health Commissioner Lori Shibinette said.
Many readers of this column are business owners, and many of them have a need from time to time to hire a lawyer to draft a contract for them. These contracts might include, for example, a contract between your company and its employees or independent contractors; an asset or stock purchase agreement, a nondisclosure agreement or an LLC operating agreement.
President Biden’s first 100 days in office began, of course, on January 20. It is certain that before the end of January, he will introduce in Congress one or more bills aimed at dealing not only with the devastating health impact of the Covid pandemic on American middle- and low-income workers but also on the pandemic’s devastating economic impact on them.
In the middle of March when coronavirus first hit the United States, many thought it was a rogue wave: stunning, but isolated and not long-lasting. Schools reacted quickly, thinking that remote education would be a short-term response.
But like everything else since the pandemic hit, there were no timetables in the early going. And decisions having to be rescinded due to spikes and clusters has many parents heads spinning. As the second half of the school year begins, parents and educators alike are overwhelmed by the ongoing uncertainty.
Julian Jefferson, a staff attorney in the New Hampshire Public Defender’s office, has represented victims of racism and experienced it firsthand.
“I am a black man,” he said in his testimony before the Commission on Law Enforcement Accountability, Community and Transparency. “I have lived in New Hampshire since 2008. I have been working in the criminal justice system since 2011. I can tell you that racism exists in this state and in our criminal justice system.”
The Commission on Law Enforcement Accountability, Community and Transparency has been quietly at work since June. Although its meetings over the summer were public, they received little attention amid the noise of a national election, a public health crisis and a struggling economy.
That’s about to change with the new year, as legislation to implement the commission’s findings begins to work its way through the State House and the reality of what is being proposed becomes more apparent to the many stakeholders.
Officials with The Salvation Army are anticipating totals nowhere near last year’s mark. At the Salvation Army office in Concord, Major Richard Sharkey said they have four or five kettles this year instead of the usual nine. Sharkey said typically they have seven locations, (two at some locations) and with nine kettles received about $100,000 last year. But this year Sharkey said he trimmed the anticipated revenue to about $75,000, though it could be less, because he expected some difficulty finding volunteers. While the Concord location hires seasonal staff, they also rely on volunteer groups and charitable organizations during the Red Kettle Campaign.
As Jeremiah and Kathryn Eisley fight to keep their red kettles out this year, COVID-19 is fighting back.
The Eisleys, who run the local Salvation Army in Rochester, NH, are determined to keep this year’s red kettle campaign — long an icon of holiday giving — alive during the pandemic.
They came prepared: the Salvation Army established guidelines to keep volunteers and donors safe, as well as options for contactless giving.
