Each month the SeDoMoCha School recognizes “Students in the Spotlight,” celebrating pupils from kindergarten to grade 8 who teachers and staff have determined best demonstrate a specific positive attribute or characteristic chosen for the timeframe from the Habits of Mind (a set of life skills for educators and parents). Following a snow day last month, the February and March Students in the Spotlight were honored together during an all-school assembly in the gym on the morning of March 14.

Mayo Regional Hospital has announced four community forums to provide updates and answer questions regarding the potential merger with Northern Light Health, a statewide health care system. The forums will be held in four of the 13 towns that make up Hospital Administrative District (HAD) 4 and will provide an opportunity for citizens in the district to learn more about what a merger might mean for the hospital and local access to quality care.

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.

On Saturday, March 9 before the Foxcroft Youth Wrestling Tournament a special ceremony took place. Josh Pelletier, a 2006 graduate of Foxcroft Academy, had his singlet retired in front of a packed gymnasium. Pelletier is the second Pony wrestler to receive the honor -- four-time state champion Jerod Rideout was the first.

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.

Sen. Paul Davis, R-Sangerville introduced LD 555 “An Act To Reduce Colorectal Cancer Incidence and Mortality by Updating Screening Coverage” late last month to the Legislature’s Health Coverage, Insurance and Financial Services Committee. With this bill, Sen. Davis hopes to remove the reference to the minimum age at which insurance companies must cover colorectal cancer screenings.

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.

SeDoMoCha Middle School art teacher Bobbi Tardif selected the artwork of Karson Tibbetts, a seventh-grader at the school in Dover-Foxcroft, to hang at the Maine Education Association (MEA) headquarters in Augusta for a year. The MEA in collaboration with the Maine Art Education Association frame and display the artwork of 30 students selected from 30 different art educators in grades K-12 from all over the state for the show.

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.

An act of the Legislature is needed if Mayo Regional Hospital’s merger with a statewide health care system is to go forward in the way administrators at the Dover-Foxcroft hospital are proposing. But no legislator from Piscataquis County has publicly committed yet to sponsoring the legislation that would eliminate the charter the hospital has operated under since the 1970s.

On Feb. 27 the board that oversees Mayo Regional Hospital (Hospital Administrative District 4) voted 14-2 to tax the 13 communities it serves should it need to in order to balance its debt service. Two board members abstained and one member was absent.

The public board that oversees Mayo Regional Hospital has voted to begin a merger with Northern Light Health, the statewide health care organization that’s based in Brewer and includes Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. The board members, who are elected from 13 Piscataquis County communities served by the hospital and who oversee a quasi-municipal entity known as Hospital Administrative District No. 4, approved the merger agreement in a 15-3 vote during a meeting Wednesday night, Feb. 27.

Maine's highest court has denied another appeal of a Guilford man convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend and the toddler she was babysitting. Jeffrey Cookson sought a new trial for the 1999 killings in Dexter based on a provision of Maine's DNA statute.

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.

The public board that oversees Mayo Regional Hospital in Dover-Foxcroft will vote Wednesday on whether to go forward with a proposed merger with Northern Light Health, the statewide health care system that’s based in Brewer and includes Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor.

On Wednesday night, Feb. 27, following months of due diligence, planning, and gathering public input, the board that oversees Mayo Regional Hospital (Hospital Administrative District 4) plans to vote on a non-binding merger agreement with Northern Light Health, a statewide health care system.

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.