If you hike, chances are good that you've encountered a Gray Jay--a smart, impulsive, relatively tame bird that will approach looking for food crumbs from your snack or lunch. Gray Jays hide small caches of food throughout their territories in late summer and autumn so they’ll have a ready larder for winter. As such, they can survive cold winter conditions in which other birds can't exist. But now, studies show unseasonably warm weather is threatening Gray Jays' reproductive success.
The sale of the campground is the end of Ossipee's hopes to buy it, but not the end of the litigation surrounding it. Still to be resolved are Ossipee's lawsuit against property owner Sheehan to recoup its expenses based on her alleged breach of contract, and Sheehan's counter-suit for damages alleging breach of contract by the town as well as fraudulent and negligent misrepresentation. Also in the wings is a civil suit by two Ossipee residents who charged the town was unprepared for the turnout at the November 28 special town meeting.
Sheehan didn't waive her constitutional right to free speech when she signed an agreement to sell her land, the court ruled. Moreover, it would be impossible for the town to prove that 15 people — the margin of loss in the vote — changed their mind because of Sheehan's actions.
Two Ossipee residents, Joy Gagnon and Joshua Arnold, have filed a civil complaint alleging the right of residents to vote on the Camp Sokokis purchase was compromised by the town's failure to meet the open meeting provisions of the state's right to know law. Specifically they said people who waited outside because of a lack of seating could not hear or register as voters or get handouts to explain how the meeting would operate. The complaint asks the court to mandate a new vote to be held in a larger venue.
After an autumn flood, December was snowy, windy and bitterly cold, with power outages and frost heaves galore. It's the height of winter on the lake.
Ossipee officials claim Camp Sokokis owner Diane Sheehan's lobbying against the town's purchase of her Camp Sokokis property was a "blatant contract breach" of her agreement to sell to the town. Sheehan's attorney said she felt "bullied" into the deal by First Selectman Morgan, and was engaging in "political discourse, which is her right." A state judge will settle the dispute.
The Tale of Two Campgrounds, the boat thief who got away, and all the rest. Ossipee Lake 2017 in review.
David George Haskell wrote a superb article in the autumn issue of Northern Woodlands entitled "Song of the Balsam Fir," and while he evolved eventually into that subject, he also ruminated about the chickadees he encounters every year. It is good environmental reporting, so I thought I would reproduce his writing about chickadees instead of discussing how intelligent balsam firs are.
People of a certain age can remember when Mount Whittier was a thriving ski area with a cross-highway gondola. The neglected West Ossipee property has a new owner, and he's looking for ideas on what to do with it.
Ossipee officials will recount the votes from the November 28 special town meeting at which voters narrowly turned down the purchase of Camp Sokokis on Ossipee Lake. Meanwhile, a hearing on a state judge's temporary restraining order preventing the campground's owner from selling to another buyer has been continued to January 4. The town's complaint to the state is that the seller, Dianne Sheehan, violated the terms of the sales agreement by urging residents to vote against the purchase.
A Superior Court judge has issued a temporary restraining order against Camp Sokokis owner Dianne Sheehan to prevent her from selling the property to another buyer. The Ossipee Select Board accuses her of breach of contract and fraud, alleging she waged a war of words against the town in order to defeat the Nov. 28 special town meeting vote on the town's purchase of the property. The board wants Sheehan to repay the money the town has spent on pursuing the purchase and wants a new town meeting vote without Sheehan's interference.
The new members reflect the organization's goal of expanding its expertise and seeking ways for Freedom, Ossipee, and Effingham to work more closely on important lake issues.
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