• School, community rise up to help Narragansett's Nate Rasch realize college dreams

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Narragansett Regional baseball player Nate Rasch listens to a coach between innings of a game against Gardner High on May. 5. Rasch will attend Duke University on a Washington Duke Scholarship worth $72,000 a year for four years. T&G Staff/Rick Cinclair
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• By Rich Garven
  Telegram & Gazette Staff

  
  Posted May. 21, 2016 at 8:03 PM
  Updated May 22, 2016 at 9:46 AM
  
  

  BALDWINVILLE — Nate Rasch walked into the guidance department at Narragansett Regional High School early last month and sat down at a computer to check his email.

  The thoughtful, helpful, gifted and well-liked senior had been accepted to a number of prestigious universities, including Cornell, Duke, Virginia and the UMass Honors College at both the Amherst and Lowell campuses.

  Now Mr. Rasch was waiting on financial aid awards. This 2016 T&G Student Achiever understood his situation, and getting into those schools didn’t mean going to them.

  While Mr. Rasch lacks monetary means, he is a driven individual with an enormous wealth of support from family, friends and a community. That priceless combination had nurtured and nudged him to get this far.

  Mr. Rasch looked into the screen and saw his past and his future, the reality of the present and a long-held dream in limbo. It was all just a keystroke or two away.

  •••

  Mr. Rasch, 18 and the youngest in a family of three, is legally blind in his right eye as a result of amblyopia — more commonly known as lazy eye. He is red-green color blind in his left eye.

  Contacts allow him to maintain a typical and active teenage lifestyle.

  Mr. Rasch has his driver’s license, with no restrictions; works part-time as a gas station attendant or, as he likes to joke, “field transport technician” at Huhtula Oil & Propane in Templeton; and is a three-sport captain for the Warriors.

  Mr. Rasch started playing T-ball when he was 4, but he was already well schooled in the act of catching and hitting a ball thanks to his older brothers, Josh, 24, and Kyle, 23.

  “They took me under their wings,” he said.

  The 6-foot-2, 185-pound Mr. Rasch joined the soccer, basketball and baseball teams at Narragansett in seventh grade. He was the starting goalie for the varsity soccer team for four years and a Wachusett League D all-star as a senior, spent two years on the varsity basketball team as a multi-positional player and is in his second season as the starting catcher for the varsity baseball team.

  He enjoys and is always up for the challenge that comes on a field, court or diamond.

  “I’m sort of a competition junkie,” said Mr. Rasch, who comes across as anything but with his quiet voice and laidback demeanor. “Anything that is competitive and makes me work; anything that I have room to improve on, it stimulates me.”

  Some concessions are made for his impaired eyesight. For instance, fellow senior Eric Thomas would position himself on the edge of the 18-yard box as a marker whenever Mr. Rasch went to punt a soccer ball.

  But other than that, you’d never know. That’s the same way Mr. Rasch looks at it.

Appointments & Approval of Hiring (On-Call Fire Department)

Templeton Board of Selectmen
Pauly Cosentino Sr Town Hall, 
160 Patriots Road,
East Templeton Monday,
May 23, 2016,
6:30 p.m.

Agenda  6:30 P.M.    

Call to Order Pledge    

Town Administrator Report   

Minutes~ 5.9.16  6:40 P.M.    

Pole Hearing~Plant Road     

Appointments & Approval of Hiring (On-Call Fire Department)    

So what's wrong with this picture? The voters at previous town meetings voted to create and fund full time equivalent firefighters to provide 'round the clock coverage for both EMS and fire services. The Fire/EMS department now provides ALS service the funds from which are used to support full time coverage. 

The only way to keep the fire/EMS department at ALS level is that a paramedic fire chief needs to be in place. 

From Jeff Bennett's blog - 
Massachusetts General Law, chapter 48



Section 58. In every town which accepted chapter two hundred and ninety-one of the General Acts of nineteen hundred and sixteen or chapter one hundred and forty of the General Acts of nineteen hundred and seventeen, or in which the provisions of chapter thirty-one were, on April third, nineteen hundred and seventeen, applicable to the chief of the fire department thereof, such chief shall hold his office continuously during good behavior unless incapacitated by physical or mental disability to perform the duties of his position; provided, that in every such city the official having the power of appointment, with the consent of the confirming board, if any, and in every such town, the selectmen, may, for just cause and for reasons specifically assigned by said official or selectmen, remove such chief, first giving him a copy of such reasons and allowing him a reasonable time to answer them in writing. A copy of the reasons, notice and answer, and of the order of removal, shall be filed with the town clerk.

posted by Jeff Bennett 


Time for a FOIA request to the town clerk!

BTW - 

http://www.templeton1.org/sites/templetonma/files/file/file/2016pressreleaseheartsafe.pdf

• Suspect in fatal shooting of Auburn policeman is dead

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  Auburn Officer Ronald Tarentino Jr., who was shot and killed.
  

  

  
  »  RELATED CONTENT
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• By Brian Lee
  Telegram & Gazette Staff

  By Mark Sullivan
  Telegram & Gazette Staff

  
  Posted May. 22, 2016 at 6:51 AM
  Updated at 8:33 PM
  
  

  AUBURN - The suspect in the fatal shooting of an Auburn police officer is dead, District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. confirmed in a news conference Sunday evening.

  "An exchange of gunfire erupted shortly after 6 p.m.," the DA said, resulting in fatal injuries to Jorge Zambrano, 35, of Worcester and injuries to a veteran state trooper who had entered the duplex looking for the suspect in Sunday's early morning slaying of Officer Ronald Tarentino Jr.

  Officer Tarentino, who leaves a wife and three children, was shot and killed around 12:30 a.m. Sunday after stopping a vehicle on Rochdale Street. The assailant fled, and a manhunt for the shooter began.

  Authorities did not immediately identify the trooper wounded in the exchange at 31-33 Watch St., Oxford, where the investigation led police and where the vehicle involved in the overnight slaying was located.

  Col. Richard D. McKeon of the Massachusetts State Police, said the trooper was struck in the shoulder and is expected to survive.

  Sunday afternoon, state and local police cleared residents from the neighborhood on Watch Street near the Leicester-Oxford town line. Police were seen wearing bulletproof vests, and what sounded like gunshots could be heard.

  In Leicester, hundreds of people, many holding American flags, lined Main Street Sunday evening as Officer Tarentino's body was brought to Morin Funeral Home. As the silver hearse rolled by in a procession that included Auburn police cruisers and dozens of officers on motorcycles, residents, many with tears in their eyes, held their hands over their hearts.

  As sirens wailed and blue lights flashed, the hearse pulled underneath a large American flag hoisted in the air on a firetruck ladder. Moments later, members of the department received hugs from Medford police, who helped with the escort, as well as state police.

  “We will leave no stone unturned in our investigation to determine who was responsible for Officer Tarentino’s murder,” Auburn Police Chief Andrew J. Sluckis Jr. had said at a noon press briefing.

  Chief Sluckis said an intensive investigation was launched by Auburn police, Massachusetts State Police, Worcester Police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the office of the district attorney.