By Jen Claise
Staff Writer

January
• Candia’s volunteer firefighters agree it’s time for the town to run the department, ending its unique status as a department separate from the town. The decision by voters to accept this change will come at the March Town Meeting where, just last year, residents watched some of the members of the department duke it out over a proposal to transfer the department to town control. In 2005, voters will see a united department standing behind a warrant article requesting it become a town department.

TIGHT SPACES – Three Title I reading students study in Candia teacher Gail Heller’s 90-square-foot classroom, where there is very little room to move. (File Photo)

Among the benefits of bringing the department under town control are a chance for more training opportunities for firefighters, a cost savings associated with being under the town’s wing and the ability to bring on full-time firefighters in the future.

• With the town poised to enter a period of sustained growth, a newly formed open-space town committee plans to stem the development tide in favor of preserving rolling hills, wooded forests and tranquil water bodies. But they’ll need the town’s financial backing with a key vote at Town Meeting. Members of the committee are drafting a warrant article for Town Meeting that asks voters for a $5 million bond to be set aside into a conservation fund. The money could be used to get easements placed on land the town currently owns, to help residents place easements on their prime acres or even outright purchase conservation land.

• Selectmen approve the hiring of full-time officer Christopher Beaule and part-timer Gregory Spicher Jr. With six full-time and four part-time officers, Police Chief Michael McGillen says Candia’s police force is stronger than ever.

• For the first time in the town hall’s history, according to some town officials, the meeting room is filled to capacity as several residents come out to support resident and local business owner Karen Smith. Smith owns and operates Pet-Agree, a grooming, boarding, day care and training facility for dogs. Smith goes before the zoning board Jan. 22 to defend herself against a noise complaint that led to a question about the legality of her business. Ultimately, she agrees to set up additional noise barriers as members of the zoning board voted unanimously in favor of allowing Smith to continue to operate as she has for over two decades.

February
• Frustrated they’ve faced a number of criminal charges in the wake of a dispute with their Crowley Road neighbors, Debra and Andrew Izbicki come forward to clear their names. The couple say they and their family have suffered after being accused of killing two of their neighbors’horses. Debra Izbicki says much-publicized accusations and charges levied by her former neighbors, Wayne and Laura Theodore, should be clarified. In May and June 2002, two of the Theodore’s horses died and autopsy results showed the animals had ingested antifreeze. Wayne Theodore maintains he believes his neighbors are responsible for the deaths, but the Izbickis assert they had nothing to do with the deaths.

• A crowd of about 40 residents hears the latest on a plan to build a transfer station in town that would require a $4 million bond but should generate a sizable chunk of revenue for the town, according to officials. But some residents ask selectmen, “Would you want it in your backyard?” as they discover that proposed sites included those along Route 27, from its intersection with Route 43 down to the Lions Club. Equal numbers of residents indicate they would vote for, against or were unsure of their vote on the proposal.

• Resident Cathy Rohrs supports a $40,000 warrant article in response to what she says are discipline problems on school buses. If it passes, monitors would be hired to ride each of Candia’s five buses on the morning and afternoon runs. But school board officials do not support the petitioned article, saying reports of discipline problems on the buses have decreased dramatically this year.

March
• Residents kill a proposal to build a transfer and recycling station in town at the annual Town Meeting. Many say a lack of project details, especially around the location of the station, left them with no choice but to vote down the proposal.

• An open-space bond is also defeated by four votes. The measure needed a two-thirds majority to pass.

• Voters give selectmen raises effective immediately. The annual salary of the chairman is raised from $2,000 to $3,000, while the annual salaries of the other two selectmen are upped from $1,700 to $2,500.

• With ease, voters approve transferring the volunteer fire department to town control.

• Voters give their wholehearted support to a proposal to outfit the pond in back of the Smyth Public Library for ice skating. Along with the skating, planners said walking and crosscountry skiing trails, a lighted park, and a gazebo will be added to the area. The $72,850 project will be offset by a matching federal Land and Water Conservation Fund grant that will reimburse the town for half of the project cost.

• Despite an effort to trim $50,000 from the town’s budget, the proposed $1.7 million operating budget is passed.

• A snowstorm forces resident Denise Perry to deliver her fifth child, daughter Leah, in a minivan on Route 101 in Auburn heading toward the Elliot Hospital in Manchester. Both mother and child are fine.

April
• An expert specializing in bronze conservation determines the town’s Civil War monument across from the old library was mass-produced, coming from a more generic source rather than an artist’s studio. However, this should work to the town’s advantage, she said, since her company should be able to find another gun like the one broken on Candia’s statue and replicate the missing piece. The statue was vandalized in 2003.

May
• The Candia Crusaders Multiple Sclerosis Walk Team of 38 members participate in a 5-mile walk and raised more than $18,000 in the Manchester area. Many Candia Moore School students are counted among the fundraisers and walkers, several of whom are friends and classmates of Jackie Kuhn, 9, whose mother has MS.

July
• Auburn’s K-9 unit is instrumental in tracking down and cornering a suspect who fled from Candia police. The capture was sparked when Candia police officer Kevin Bowen attempted to make a routine traffic stop after a vehicle nearly clipped his cruiser. Douglas Green, 21, of Portsmouth, a passenger in the car, fled into nearby woods and successfully evaded police until the dog was brought in.

August
• The town contracts with a forester to conduct timber stand improvements in the North Road woodlands, a 15.5-acre site made up of forests and wetlands. Ed Fowler, chairman of the conservation commission, described the project as a “weeding and thinning operation,” where dead or unhealthy timber is removed to improve the health of the living trees in the area.

• School board members announce their intent to consider a staggered-start system at Moore School. The proposal calls for students in grades 6, 7 and 8 to start the day earlier and be dismissed earlier, while the students in the lower grades would come in later and stay later.

• After a sudden illness forced her to leave her job as a third-grade teacher at Moore School almost 18 months earlier, Nancy Cassavaugh returns to teaching. Cassavaugh says her whole world changed in March of 2003 when some lingering health problems led her to consult doctors, who found she had a brain tumor. After treatment, she is again in good health.

September
• Town officials announce that Clarence Blevens, charged with operating an illegal junkyard on Rockingham Road, may soon be getting a bill from the town that could top $75,000 for cleanup of the property, after a judge rules that he did not make an effort to clean the property in a timely manner himself. Blevens is given 60 days to clear the 3-acre property. When he fails to do so by his deadline in May, a Rockingham County Superior Court judge authorizes the town to clean it for him, at Blevens’expense.

• A spread in the new first-grade social studies “Harcourt Horizons” textbook series features the Moore School’s butterfly garden, along with some of the students who began work on it several years ago.

• Selectman Gary York, who took over as the town’s interim recycling center and incinerator operator, steps up recycling enforcement and sends out hundreds letters of violation to people found to have recyclable material mixed in their garbage. But fellow Selectman Clark Thyng, chairman of the board, thought York might have been a bit too overzealous in searching for prohibited items.

October
• The zoning board denies a variance to Cheryl Wozmak, who had been breeding and selling shih-tzu dogs in her home since the early 1970s. Wozmak is told she would need a variance to continue to sell the puppies, since commercial operations are not allowed in the residential zone where she lives. Wozmak said she had about 73 dogs, approximately 27 of which are used for breeding.

• Larry Joyce, 34, who was involved in a 12-hour standoff with Candia police 15 years ago, jumps to his death from the Hoover Dam. Joyce, of Laconia, is also accused of killing his girlfriend, Rebecca Roux, 27, who lived in Sanford, Maine, before he committed suicide. Joyce had also been found guilty of kidnapping and sexual assault after approaching a girl in a parked car at Shaw’s Supermarket in Hooksett earlier in 1989, forcing her to drive at gunpoint to his parents’ vacant home at 130 Main St., where he sexually assaulted her, according to Candia Police Chief Michael McGillen.

• Moore School officials say a proposed $5 million renovation that will add approximately 22,000 square feet of new space would alleviate the current space crunch at the school, making room for special education programs, science labs and sports. The preliminary plan, presented to the school board by Sumner Davis Architects this month, calls for the addition of a 13,000-square-foot gym, and the expansion and reorganization of several existing classrooms.

• Selectman and interim recycling center and incinerator operator Gary York says he saw a sharp increase in recycling compliance after sending out hundreds of warning letters. But the sudden aggressive enforcement causes a frenzy in the small town. Some residents were angered by the letters, arguing that more education should have been given first. Rumors spread about heated verbal spats at the recycling center, as does talk of the “dump Gestapo.” Police say the department even investigated a threat to burn York’s house down, which was allegedly overheard at the recycling center.

• About 65 residents who turn out for a special school district meeting overwhelmingly approve a warrant to set aside $100,000 for emergency roof repairs and water damage testing at Moore School. The money is part of an extra, unexpected $280,000 the district received from a state adequate education grant.

• While Candia residents wait for the state Department of Revenue to determine what their tax rate will be, at least one is angry enough about the revaluation results to distribute anonymous copies of Selectman Gary York’s new tax card to his neighbors, highlighting an apparent discrepancy. York says his new assessment is lower than many would have anticipated due to faulty work done on the home, which would cost over $175,000 to fix.

November
• After overwhelmingly rejecting the first offer, Manchester teachers approve a second union contract proposal which contains some improvements for the teachers at a packed meeting. The move is expected to end the work-to-rule job action in effect since October, during which teachers worked the hours required of them and no more.

• Seventh- and eighth-graders at Moore School perform “Bonds of Iron,” a coming-of-age play set in 19th-century Candia. The play, which tells the story of an escaped slave, was written by language arts teacher Eileen Suckley, who says she was inspired to write her first play after hearing stories about a local home that was rumored to have been part of the Underground Railroad.

• After a two-year development process, members of the planning board vote to approve the town’s master plan, which is intended to define a long-term vision for development in the town. The master plan suggests possible zoning changes that would allow for different housing types, such as multifamily housing, accessory dwellings and cluster developments. The plan encourages the development of a “mixed use” district at Exit 3, which planners have called the “gateway to Candia.” However, the plan does not show lot lines or specify exactly where changes would occur.

December
• In a murder that unnerves town residents, Critchett Road resident Daniel Champney, 42, confesses to police that he killed his girlfriend, 52-year-old Sandra Royce, a divorced mother of two sons, in the gravel pits behind his home, according to court documents. The motive for the killing is unclear.

• Candia officials say a conflict over a 43-acre parcel of land at the southwest end of Palmer Road could lead to litigation if a developer interested in building on the land wants to build over a small graveyard discovered on the site this summer. According to a property deed dating back to the early 1800s, the plot is the site of a burial ground of roughly 66 feet by 33 feet that could be the final resting place of one of Candia’s earliest families.

• A Department of Environmental Services official finds no significant violations at the town’s recycling center during an inspection, but says access to the facility could be the town’s main concern. The center is currently open for a total of 24 hours each week, with hours spread out over four days. The inspector says these hours are typical for a town of Candia’s size, but might not be enough to accommodate residents.

• Candia voters will consider at least two major proposals totaling almost $10 million in March. School officials are working hard to prove to residents why now is the time to go forward with a $5.6 million Moore School addition and renovation proposal, and voters will once again consider the construction of a transfer station – slated to cost about $4 million – which could bring in about $500 a day in revenue, according to town officials. The new facility would likely be built near the intersection of Old Candia and Brown roads abutting Route 101.