Spencer's crew returns home after busy 90-day patrol

The Coast Guard Cutter Spencer returned home to Boston Tuesday following a highly successful 90-day patrol fighting transnational organized crime networks in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, and training for multi-national search and rescue response in the Arctic.

The crew’s patrol efforts resulted in the interdiction of four drug-laden vessels, the seizure of more than 7,000 pounds of cocaine worth more than $110 million, and the apprehension of 12 suspected smugglers.

Last week, the crew offloaded approximately 10 tons of cocaine and 23 kilograms of heroin in Port Everglades, Florida, worth an estimated $300 million wholesale. The drugs were interdicted along Mexico and Central America by multiple U.S. Coast Guard cutters.

"While this offload represents approximately 10 tons of illicit drugs that will never hit out streets, it also represents a significant depletion to the cash flow to these criminal organizations," said Cdr. John Mctamney, Spencer's commanding officer.

Mctamney said the offload is not just the result of their crew's work, but the combined efforts of multiple Coast Guard cutters, aircraft, and support, as well as those of "our partners and allied men and women who continue to work day and night to stop these criminal organizations from profiting off transnational crime and smuggling."

During their patrol, the Spencer’s crew also participated in the 2017 Arctic Guardian Search and Rescue (SAR) Exercise in Reyjkavik, Iceland. The full-scale, underway exercise included participation by eight Arctic nations working to hone best practices for potential multi-national search and rescue response in the Arctic region.

The cutter Spencer is a 270-foot medium-endurance cutter homeported in Boston with a crew complement of 13 officers and 87 enlisted personnel.

Jacobs kids will compete in Turkey Trot Wednesday morning

Principal Christine Cappadona said that the Lillian M. Jacobs Elementary School will host its ninth annual Turkey Trot at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

Following a pep rally at the school  on Harborview Road, fourth- and fifth-grade students compete in the Turkey Trot. Teachers will keep track and record their students’ times as they complete the 1.2-mile race. An awards celebration for all participants and their families will be held in the gym following the race and all students will be awarded with a finisher’s medal and certificate of completion.

The overall winner and the top three girls and boys from each grade will earn additional awards, which were donated by the Hull PTO and Lori Tobin from SporTobin.

In the days leading up to the race, the school is hosting a food drive, where canned goods are collected in classrooms and donated to the local food pantry at Wellspring. Parents and residents who would like to donate to the food drive can drop off items at the school lobby up until Wednesday morning.

"The students have been training all fall for this in their physical education classes and on their own," Cappadona said. "We look forward to the pep rally and the race every year, and it's a great way to begin the Thanksgiving celebration."

Stranded turtles enjoy warm welcome in Quincy

A sure sign of winter in New England is the start of the sea turtle stranding season. On Wednesday, the first live, hypothermic sea turtles of the season washed up in Dennis on Cape Cod.

The two green sea turtles were collected by Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary and transported to the New England Aquarium’s sea turtle hospital in Quincy. There, the sea turtles – with body temperatures around 47 degrees – were slowly rewarmed over several days. Normal temperatures are around 70 degrees for sea turtles. 

They also are being treated for other medical conditions, such as pneumonia and severe dehydration, which are the product of slowly becoming hypothermic over the past two months as ocean temperatures gradually dropped.

These sea turtles are mostly juveniles of three different species that visit southern New England waters each summer to feed on crabs. Many of those that get on the north side of Cape Cod are unable to figure out how to navigate out of Cape Cod Bay in the autumn. As water temperatures drop, they slowly become hypothermic and very inactive. If they are lucky, they get washed ashore.

All of these species are either threatened or endangered due to the impacts of human activities. Rescuing, rehabilitating, and eventually releasing these critically important marine animals has been a joint conservation effort of the aquarium and Mass Audubon for more than 25 years.

The first live sea turtles arriving on Nov. 15 is a late start to this season. On average, the first stranded turtles arrive during the first week of November. However, this fall’s record-breaking warmth until early November kept local ocean temperatures above normal. The cold weather snap of the past week has resulted in a drop of sea temperatures into the low 50s, which is the critical threshold at which strandings begin. Wind volume and direction are also important. Northwest or northerly winds of 10 mph or more help create enough wave activity to wash the floating, inert turtles to shore.

Sea turtles will continue to strand Massachusetts beaches until mid- to late December, depending on the weather. Prior to 2011, an average year yielded about 90 live sea turtles being rescued and treated, but over the last several years, that average has moved to more than 300.

End of an era: Riddle’s will close this weekend

By Susan Ovans

The Hull Board of Selectmen transferred the license to sell alcoholic beverages to the prospective new owner of Riddle’s Supermarket Thursday evening. The vote allows current owners Michelle and Michael Sears to move forward with the sale of the town’s only full-service supermarket.

The couple told the board they will permanently close the store Saturday in preparation for the Nov. 16 sale to James McInnis, of EAM Market, Inc., dba The Village Market.

McInnis currently owns two Village Market stores, one in Roslindale, the other in Scituate.

He said Riddle’s will become the third Village Market after he stocks and reopens the store, which he anticipates will take place in early December.

Selectmen Chairman Kevin Richardson told McInnis that the town is “excited to have you here” and said he believes the new store would be successful, as Riddle’s “loyal following” had demonstrated a “definite demand” for a Hull supermarket.

Richardson also thanked the Searses for serving the town well through the years.

Selectwoman Jennifer Constable urged McInnis to rehire Riddle’s employee base, many of whom had given the store long years of service and tried to stay on during the year’s decline.

McInnis said he’d put a hiring sign in Riddle’s window and would be accepting employment applications once the sale was completed next week.

WIN holds forum on town issues Sunday

Women in Nantasket (WIN) holds a discussion centered around issues of fiscal responsibility, inclusive leadership, and civic engagement in Hull on Sunday from 2-5 p.m. upstairs at The Red Parrot.
You are invited to join this group of local citizens which is currently soliciting input about the future of our town. This is a nonpartisan event. All ideas and perspectives are welcome. The event is open to the public.
WIN members care deeply about our community and its resources, believing that we all win when we are able to examine facts and data to help drive our conversation. We win by working together. Please participate.

More than 31,500 still without power after Sunday's storm

By Colin A. Young
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

About 36,000 Massachusetts homes remained in the dark Wednesday morning, more than 48 hours after wind-driven rains swept through, knocking out power to swaths of the state.

By midday, the outage number was down only slightly to 31,503, mostly National Grid customers.

The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency reported 35,983 outages as of 8 a.m. Wednesday, mostly in the Merrimack Valley and Essex County. While the agency said most customers could expect to have their electricity restored by mid-day, they cautioned that some outages requiring specialty equipment may not be fixed until Thursday night. The midday numbers showed the lights are still not on for many customers.

Most of the outages are in Andover, where 4,291 homes or about 30 percent of the town remained without power as of 1 p.m. Wednesday afternoon.

On MEMA's tracking website, the agency said 3,565 customers were without power in Lowell, 3,064 in Methuen, 2,724 in Haverhill, and 2,365 in North Andover.

Andover, Boxford and Tyngsborough remain the most severely impacted, according to MEMA, with 25 percent or more of customers in those towns still without power as of mid-day Wednesday. South of Boston, Eversource reported 304 outages in Norfolk, 276 in Plymouth, and 119 in Wareham.

On Tuesday, Gov. Charlie Baker told reporters that the goal was to have full electric service restored by midnight Tuesday. Having power fully restored by midnight would be "terrific," Baker said Tuesday morning, and added that he's heard from people without power that it "is an incredible problem for them."

Baker and his wife left Wednesday for California, where they will vacation until returning to Massachusetts on Monday. Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito is acting governor while Baker is out of state.

According to MEMA, tree damage has been the primary cause of the power outages and 208 forestry crews are working with utility crews. MEMA said 398 utility crews are working on overhead lines, downed wires, substations, and damage assessment, and 94 additional contractor crews have been brought in to help.

Meeting on cleaning up former gas station site tonight

The town will hold a public hearing at St. Mary Parish, 208 Samoset Ave. – which if we are not mistaken is the gathering space at St. Ann's Church – on a grant application to clean up the former Waveland gas station site at the intersection of Nantasket Avenue and Bay Avenue East.

A draft of the grant application summarizes the former Superfund toxic waste  site, contamination issues, cleanup standards, laws, and the protocol the town hopes to implement to accomplish its goals and restore this property to use.

Your participation and insights will be welcome. The meeting begins at 7 p.m.

Hull native to appear in TV comedy Wednesday

Hull's Justin Selig can be seen in the top-rated ABC Comedy "Modern Family" on ABC on Wednesday night. The program airs at 9 p.m. 

Nevada nets $3.7 million in 1st month of marijuana tax collections

By Colin A. Young
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

The Silver State is seeing green, having hauled in $3.68 million in state tax revenue during the first month of legal marijuana sales.

The bulk of the revenue was generated by Nevada's 10 percent retail tax on sales of recreational marijuana, totaling $2.71 million in July, the Nevada Department of Taxation reported. Another $974,060 came from a 15 percent wholesale tax charged to all cannabis cultivators.
Wholesale tax revenue goes to Nevada schools and is expected to bring in $56.2 million over the next two years.

Revenue from the 10 percent retail tax will go to the state's rainy day fund and is expected to produce $63.5 million over the next two years. Marijuana became legal in Nevada on Jan. 1 and retail sales began July 1, making the state the fifth in the country to provide legal retail access to marijuana.

Massachusetts consumers will pay a state excise tax of 10.75 percent, the 6.25 percent sales tax, and a local option tax of up to 3 percent on retail sales.

Based on estimates compiled by the Department of Revenue – using a range in taxable sales between $771 million and $1.433 billion – a 20 percent effective tax rate on marijuana could produce between $72 million and $134 million annually, or between $6 million and $11 million a month in Massachusetts.

Although Nevada's population is less than half of that of Massachusetts, 203 of the 250 marijuana licenses issued in Nevada are in Clark County, which includes the major tourist destination Las Vegas, according to that state's Department of Taxation. So far, Nevada has licensed 53 retail stores, 92 cultivation facilities, 65 product manufacturing facilities, 31 distributors, and nine testing labs.

After largely avoiding marijuana policy proposals for years, the state Legislature this year rewrote the voter-approved law legalizing adult use of marijuana. The redrafted law boosted tax rates and state and local officials are now eyeing pot tax revenues as they compile future spending proposals.

Bay State voters approved marijuana legalization last November. Retail sales in Massachusetts are expected to begin in July 2018.