After looking into a pair of bids that were more than $28,000 apart, the Piscataquis County Commissioners awarded pre-paving ditching and culvert work for a 1.8-mile stretch of the Elliottsville Road to Bennett Construction of Guilford for the lower price of $10,350.

Husband and wife business owners who have given back in numerous ways since coming to the area a half dozen years ago have been honored by the Valley Grange with the 2017 Community Citizens of the Year honor. Will and Melissa Wedge, owners of Will’s Shop ‘n Save in Dover-Foxcroft, received the recognition on the evening of May 19 at the Grange Hall.

Amazon's EchoDot looks like a hockey puck. But this small, voice activated device, "connects to Alexa, a cloud-based voice service that is always getting smarter. Just ask and Alexa will provide information, play music, read the news, set alarms, control smart home devices and more," according to Amazon.

Those of us who winter over in the South get spoiled in a lot of ways. For one thing, we tend to take the sun for granted. Day after day that big bright orb comes up in the eastern sky in the morning and then drops below the western horizon late in the day.

For the equivalent of four full days from May 11-15 the more than 58,300 Americans who lost their lives during the Vietnam War were honored as Shirley B. Carter VFW Post 4298 hosted the Moving Wall at Bud Ellms Field.

While the two districts are in the midst of the application process for an integrated, consolidated grade 9-16 educational facility, SAD 4 and AOS 94 -- which includes the Dexter-based SAD 46 and the towns of Athens and Harmony -- are also looking into ways to save money and share resources in the more immediate future. During a May 9 meeting of the SAD 4 school board, the directors voted to send a written request to AOS 94 to enter into a one-year cost sharing agreement with the neighboring school unit.

With the most recent monthly meeting starting at 4 p.m. on May 10, the selectmen opted to remain with a regular session schedule of the second Wednesday of the month at 4 p.m. at the town hall -- with additional meetings taking place as needed.

The four classes of kindergarteners at the SeDoMoCha Elementary School had some special visitors on the afternoon of Friday, May 12 as many of the students had their mothers, and/or some other family members, stop by for the annual Mother’s Day Tea in the school cafeteria.

Public hearings for both a proposed corridor moratorium ordinance extension and the June 13 referendum will be part of the next selectmen’s meeting on Monday, May 22 at 6:30 p.m. at the Morton Avenue Municipal Building.

Legislation to allow hunters to wear red if their religion prohibits them from wearing orange earned support in the Maine House on Thursday, May 11. The bipartisan vote was 120-27.

Despite a cool start to the spring season, planning is well underway for summertime as the Dexter Town Council gave its approval to closures on public ways for three events across July and August during a May 11 meeting.

This is one of my memories of living during the Vietnam War. When my older brother, Craig, told me Gary had been killed in Vietnam -- I thought of the skates, the shadows, and the ice.

Jim Schmidt has been working with coyotes for more than 50 years. As a wildlife specialist for the USDA, he has been involved in coyote damage control throughout the country. He has hunted them, trapped them, snared them, chased them with hounds and chased them on horseback. He has also lived remotely with them for almost a year collecting biological samples for scientific research. He knows this critter intimately.

A public hearing on a $473,000 loan from the state’s school revolving renovation fund for sprinkler and elevator system upgrades at the Penquis Valley School has been scheduled for Tuesday, May 23 at 5:30 p.m. at the Marion C. Cook School in LaGrange.

The RSU 68 school board gave its approval to a proposed $10,817,189 budget for the 2017-18 academic year, during a May 2 meeting at the SeDoMoCha School.

Maine Department of Education (DOE) Commissioner Robert Hasson has approved a one-year extension for all certificates with an expiration date of July 1, 2017. All teachers, educational specialists and administrators with certificates expiring on July 1, 2017 will be issued a one-year certificate that will be mailed to their home address on file with the Maine DOE.

A need for more law enforcement officers across the region was a key finding of a recent countywide task force. While the issue has been identified, there are no easy answers to addressing the shortage, according to county officials who discussed the task force report during a May 2 meeting.

In last week’s column, Darn Good Yarn founder/CEO Nicole Snow spoke about her reasons for moving her Sebec, Maine-based million dollar a year business to Schenectady, N.Y. In part, the move was due to her husband’s business.