A Dover-Foxcroft resident whose body was discovered on his front porch by a neighbor on New Year’s Day, after apparently being there for days, died of a heart attack, according to the state medical examiner.

With the HAD 4 board of directors voting 15-3 last month to start a merger with Northern Light Health, Mayo Regional Hospital officials are looking to hold four public information nights across the region to share details of the process and hear from residents and answer their questions. One session is tentatively scheduled for 5:30-7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 2 in the Morton Avenue Municipal Building Gymnasium.

The Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Office plans to keep its patrol division housed in Guilford at the former primary school building -- the law enforcement space more recently was the home of the SAD 4 administrative office suite -- for another three years after the county commissioners approved extending the space lease through the end of 2022 during a March 5 meeting. A formal document should be signed during an upcoming session.

A revised energy infrastructure upgrade project, which per an agreement between SAD 41 officials and the town will not result in any new debt for Atkinson now and after the town deorganizes at the end of June, will be voted on at the polls on Thursday, March 14.

After several budget committee meetings over the previous few months, RSU 68 officials are looking at a 1.5 percent increase in the spending plan for the 2019-20 academic year.

After discussion that day about issues facing young adults and what can be done, Mills encouraged those present to go back to their schools and form a Positive Action Team. “Our group thought if kids had more positive things to do then maybe they would not turn to drugs,” Keane said. The teams have caught on.

Following four weeks of budget advisory committee meetings, a public hearing on the proposed 2019-20 Dover-Foxcroft municipal budget is scheduled for the evening of Wednesday, March 27 -- potentially at 6:30 p.m. but a formal start time will be announced. The March 27 date was set by the selectmen during a Feb. 25 meeting, and the board will hold its annual joint session with the budget advisory committee on Wednesday, March 20.

Each month outstanding pupils in grades 5-8 at Piscataquis Community Elementary School are honored as Students of the Month. The 15 February honorees were presented with certificates in front of their peers during morning meeting in the cafeteria on Tuesday, Feb. 26.

Plans for Atkinson to join the Unorganized Territory (UT) on July 1 -- the community voted 187-19 (nearly 91 percent) at the November referendum to deorganize -- are still on track.

If you are a fly fisherman whose passion is casting a line over landlocked salmon across moving water, Grand Lake Stream (GLS) is the next thing to paradise. And, since 1875, the state fish hatchery on the stream has been part of the GLS scene, and the source of salmon that populate the stream and the adjoining West Grand Lake.