Five months after the state attorney general fined his former employer $2.4 million for violating labor laws, Doug Laufer has yet to be paid the back wages he was promised. In February, Attorney General Andrea Campbell fined Concierge Services, a staffing company owned by a Plymouth man. A month later, the owner, Gregory Doyle, […]
Author Archives: Fred Thys - Independent Staff
Posted inGovernment
Citing personal reasons, Fornaciari steps down from Community Preservation Committee
Bill Fornaciari’s tenure as chair of the Community Preservation Committee was a short one – just two weeks. Fornaciari has stepped down from his position, and the board, citing unforeseen personal reasons. In an email to Town Clerk Kelly McElreath, Fornaciari said his resignation was effective June 27. The move also means he is no […]
Posted inEnvironment & Health
Holtec disputes anonymous claim that a worker was exposed to excess radiation at Pilgrim site
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says it has no evidence that workers at the shuttered Pilgrim nuclear power plant, which is in the long process of being decommissioned, were overexposed to radiation, despite a whistleblower’s claim made in a recent anonymous letter to state officials. In an email to the Independent, NRC spokesperson Neil Sheehan said […]
Posted inEducation
‘I want to be able to make an impact on somebody’s life’
For most members of this graduating class, Monday’s triumphant ceremony marked the end of an arduous journey, one that required them to overcome many obstacles along the way. On a still-sunny early evening in the packed garden of the Plymouth Public Library, 14 students received diplomas for having passed the General Educational Development test, or […]
Posted inCulture
Committee balks at acknowledging the Wampanoag tribe was here first
A proposal to acknowledge the Wampanoag people as the original inhabitants of Plymouth has met with skepticism from some members of the Plymouth Committee of Precinct Chairs. The committee voted 14 to 4 on June 20 to send town counsel Kate McKay a proposed statement acknowledging that the town encompasses what was once Wampanoag land. […]
Posted inCulture
With full fanfare, a topping off at the Spire Center
The wind was blowing from the north-northwest at The Spire Center downtown on Friday afternoon, and for the first time in a long while, people walking by could use the weathervane atop it to determine its direction. To the tune of Richard Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra” blaring from loudspeakers at street level, Ricky Lynn placed […]
Posted inGovernment
Community Preservation Committee wastes no time in moving on
Two days after the Select Board voted not to reappoint Bill Keohan and Allen Hemberger to the Community Preservation Committee, the newly formed lineup did not wait for the two men’s terms to end June 30 before electing architect Bill Fornaciari as its new chair. Former fire chief Edward Bradley was elected vice chair […]
Posted inGovernment
Keohan ousted from Community Preservation Committee
The Select Board on Tuesday voted to remove Bill Keohan from the Community Preservation Committee, which he has chaired since its inception in 2002. It also ousted committee member Allen Hemberger, a supporter of what Keohan has characterized as an effort to keep recommendations on spending Community Preservation funds independent of town politics. They were […]
Posted inEnvironment & Health
Discolored and smelly. That’s how some Ponds of Plymouth residents describe their water.
Celeste Harrington, a Ponds of Plymouth resident since 2003, remembers when the water was fine. “Until Aquarion,” she said. “You could drink it out of the faucet. It tasted good.” Now, however, her water is “sometimes brown,” Harrington said, and “it always smells like bleach.” Other residents of the massive South Plymouth subdivision say […]
Posted inGovernment
New committee will weigh where Plymouth’s wastewater should end up
The Select Board Tuesday selected six members for a committee that will advise it on a proposal to discharge treated wastewater at Camelot Park instead of in the harbor, where most of it goes now. Joshua Bows, Mark Champagne, Bill Doyle, Martin Enos, Rose Forbes, and Hampton Watkins were selected from a pool of 11 […]