Dear Insiders,
Thank you for the special Penacook issue. I suppose being The Concord Insider, there would be a certain amount of Concord bias, but I was disappointed at some of the obvious things you missed about the boundaries of the village.
I live on North Main Street in the South End of Boscawen. This confuses delivery people to no end, as they go to the middle of Boscawen and look for my house north of there. Sometimes I’ll note that I live in Penacook, but then some people see the Boscawen town line sign and think they’ve gone too far. It doesn’t help that North Main Street in the Concord side of Penacook is now Village Street.
I also have the Penacook (753) telephone exchange. The folks at penacook.org don’t have a map for that exchange, but I suspect it might be a very good one to include in any “where’s Penacook?” discussion. I think I sent them a note about it and my weather station in Penacook.
I’m not sure what the 753 exchange covers. It does go up to Riverside Veterinary Hospital, but not much farther. Appropriately, that’s located near the end of North Main Street.
Another significant omission in the article involves separating from Concord. While you note Concord’s Penacook tax district, you ignored Boscawen (which taxes Penacook property, but all as a single tax district). Our tax rate was $21.64 last year. Note that if Penacook did separate from both Concord and Boscawen, Penacook would get Boscawen’s town offices, library, police station and rescue station. Town hall, the fire station and the old library are all very much in Boscawen proper. Boscawen’s grade school is very close to the northern boundary and has a 753 exchange, so that might as well come, too.
Yet another description of Penacook might be available – people have commented that they see my dog Ella and me walking all over Penacook. My daughter’s driving instructor even pointed us out on one of her early road classes. Our range goes from not too much farther north south to Thirty Pines, east to Rolfe Farm, and west to Electric Avenue and the Contoocook River Park. Pretty much everything you describe except the Grange.
Ric Werme, Boscawen (or is it Penacook?)
Dear Insiders,
I see that your reporters came to Penacook but they missed a cornerstone of the community: THE PENACOOK COMMUNITY CENTER. Yes, for the past 56 years the Penacook Community Center has been providing valuable services to the community. We serve over 7,500 people a year, from 2 years old right up to 102! There wasn’t even a mention of PCC. . .
Is there a reason that it wasn’t mentioned?
Deb Cuddahy, Executive Director, Penacook Community Center
(For the record, we think the Penacook Community Center is great! So great, in fact, that we dedicated an entire issue to it last year. We wanted to give other Penacook landmarks some play time, but you can find the issue online at bit.ly/9acsGb.)