Dover Download

In this episode of the Dover Download podcast, Deputy City Manager Christopher Parker chats with Superintendent of Schools Dr. Christine Boston about the start of the 2026–2027 school year. Boston discusses the district's 30 new teachers, about 10% of its roughly 300-person teaching staff, noting a strong mix of recent graduates and experienced educators new to Dover. She describes the behind-the-scenes summer work by facilities and IT staff, including new printer/copier systems and wireless access point upgrades, and introduces four new administrators joining Dover's public schools. Boston previews Campus Parent, a new online portal replacing Meal Time that will let families manage lunch balances, payments, and automatic replenishment digitally. She reflects on last year's cell phone ban, calling it a success that boosted library use and student social interaction. The conversation turns to enrollment trends: kindergarten numbers are unusually low while high school enrollment stays stable, driven by school choice, career and technical education (CTE), and strong athletics and AP offerings. Parker and Boston discuss the demographic shifts behind this, including smaller families, people having children later, and new housing that isn't attracting families with school-age kids. Boston highlights the growth and prestige of Dover's CTE programs, including biotechnology and firefighting, which now set students up for strong careers after graduation. She closes by pointing to the district's strategic pillars and ongoing data review as the foundation for continued academic improvement heading into the new year.

In This Week in Dover History, we look back to 1999, when nearly 100 teachers and staff got their first tour of the new $15 million, 160,000-square-foot middle school under construction on Daily Drive, replacing the outdated 1934 Dover High School building. The state-of-the-art facility—featuring a 190-seat theater and a spacious gymnasium—opened to students on schedule in January 2000 and still serves Dover's middle schoolers today.

In this episode of the Dover Download podcast, Deputy City Manager Christopher Parker chats with Deputy City Attorney Jennifer Perez about New Hampshire's Right-to-Know Law, RSA 91-A, and how Dover handles public records requests. Perez explains that requests can arrive by phone, in person, or through an online form, and that the city's guiding principle is transparency rather than technicality. She walks through how her office interprets vague or overly broad requests — sometimes involving tens of thousands of pages — and reaches out to requesters for clarification when needed, while routine items like permits are often resolved with a quick link within five days. The two discuss how New Hampshire's right-to-know protections are enshrined in the state constitution as well as statute, recent legislative changes allowing the city to charge for email-heavy requests, and why Dover rarely invokes those fees. Perez also explains where listeners can find the Right-to-Know request form.

In This Week in Dover History, we hear about an Aug. 19, 1776 letter from Thomas Westbrook Waldron, a prominent Dover Patriot leader, urging New Hampshire's Committee of Safety to treat suspected Loyalists with justice rather than vengeance, a reminder, as the nation marks its 250th anniversary, that the Revolution's promise of liberty was tested by how it treated dissenters, including Dover's pacifist Quaker community.

In this episode of the Dover Download podcast, Deputy City Manager Christopher Parker chats with Susan Ford of My Friend's Place, continuing the podcast's series on local nonprofits.

Ford explains the Washington Street shelter opened in 1989 and houses single men, women and families under one roof, serving about 200 people a year. She was once a client herself, staying five months with her two children more than 30 years ago. Homelessness, she says, is not the problem but a symptom — substance misuse, mental illness, cognitive or developmental challenges and early trauma that leave people without the skills to sustain housing.

The shelter has grown from 17 to 28 beds by bunking rooms, and a $300,000 city appropriation funded a needed kitchen expansion. A small staff — Ford, a case manager, a program assistant and five to seven resident managers — keeps 90% of the budget aimed at residents. Two duplexes offer transitional housing for families waiting out affordable-housing lists that can run two years.

Ford walks through intake, which starts with a waitlist that turns over Monday mornings, and outlines volunteer work: counting bingo tear tickets at the Lilac Club Casino in Rochester, digitizing 30 years of records, gardening and front-office shifts. On donations, she notes furniture must be sturdy enough to move and good enough to preserve residents' dignity, gift cards are especially useful, and a coordinated network shares surplus food among area shelters and pantries.

In This Week in Dover History, we look back at August 1925, when more than 20,000 people flooded downtown for a parade, carnival and banquet celebrating Dover's new electric street lighting system, switched on at 8 p.m. on Aug. 14. The $20,000 project came in $146 under budget. The story continues into 2017, when the City Council approved converting all 1,700 city streetlights to LED, saving roughly $140,000 a year in electricity and cutting the city's carbon footprint by 482 tons.

In this episode of the Dover Download podcast, Deputy City Manager Christopher Parker chats with Director of Media Services Mike Gillis about what Dover's boards, committees and commissions took up in July.

The City Council met twice. They discuss additional scope of work approved at Maglaras Park, tied to the Cochecho waterfront project and paid for with previously identified funding, an approach meant to shorten construction along River Street, Payne Street and Henry Law Avenue. The Council also approved added outdoor pool expenses within the original bonded amount, awarded a bid extending pedestrian-level lighting south along Central Avenue, and directed Dover Business and Industrial Development Authority land sale proceeds to the Light Up Dover initiative and to a new Dover Arts Commission program placing rotating sculptures at ten downtown locations. Councilors also funded ADA improvements at Sullivan Field and Woodland Park, set 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. voting hours for the September primary and November general election, and held annual property appraisal hearings. Separately, after City Manager J. Michael Joyal Jr. announced his December retirement, the Council said it will first look internally for a successor.

At its single July meeting, the Planning Board continued talks on the cottages at Back River Road, approved a Church Street conditional use permit and a Dover Point subdivision, and posted annual zoning amendments, including proposed transfer of development rights changes that would tie density to neighborhood character.

The School Board approved a one-year teachers' contract to stagger bargaining cycles and reviewed the first year of the school device ban.

In this episode of the Dover Download podcast, Deputy City Manager Christopher Parker chats with Planning Director Donna Benton and Christine Trearchis of VHB about the transportation chapter of Dover's master plan, now underway about 10 years after the last update. Benton explains this is one of the plan's most technical and costly chapters. A seven-member steering committee representing bicyclists, pedestrians, drivers, and transit users is guiding the work, alongside public outreach through tabling events like Apple Harvest Day, a survey, and stakeholder interviews. Trearchis describes VHB's process of establishing an updated baseline of existing conditions — vehicle volumes, bike and pedestrian networks, crash data, and transit ridership — layered together to identify gaps, such as sidewalk connections near bus stops. VHB is partnered with Strafford Regional Planning Commission, drawing on a combined team of over a dozen people and a regional travel demand model to test future land-use scenarios. Both guests note the chapter builds on Dover's recently updated vision and land use chapters, and will include a parking utilization study of downtown and adjacent areas. The team expects a draft to go before the planning board for adoption in spring 2027, following public hearings. Benton and Trearchis emphasize that success will be measured over the next decade by how often the plan is actually used to guide policy and budget decisions, rather than left on a shelf.

In This Week in Dover History, we look back at the Aug. 3, 1933 fire that destroyed Dover's third City Hall and its grand opera house, a building that had stood since 1891. Firefighters from six communities battled the blaze, but by daybreak the four-story building and many city records were lost. A new City Hall broke ground the following year and remains in service today.