Dover Download

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.

In this episode of the Dover Download podcast, Deputy City Manager Christopher Parker chats with Natalie Bogart, Deputy Director of the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority (NNEPRA), which operates the Amtrak Downeaster.

Bogart describes the Downeaster's reach: 12 station communities across three states, five daily roundtrips, and over 550,000 riders last year, about 30,000 of whom traveled to or from Dover. She highlights the service's diverse ridership — commuters, day-trippers, college students, and seniors and kids who ride at 50% off — plus a discount program for medical travelers.

The conversation covers scheduling complexities (including why late-night Portland-area service, like return trips from Thompson's Point concerts, involves Amtrak, CSX, and NNEPRA), NNEPRA's ongoing 15-year service development plan, and priority infrastructure projects: relocating the Portland station onto the rail mainline and adding double-track sections to increase capacity and speed.

Parker and Bogart also discuss Dover's partnership with NNEPRA, including grant funding for station improvements, wayfinding signage developed years ago, and the volunteer ambassador program that welcomes arriving passengers. Bogart notes that fares are affordable — $16 to $26 between Dover and Boston, as low as $8 to Old Orchard Beach — and describes onboard amenities such as business-class seating and the Downeast Cafe. She closes by encouraging listeners to visit AmtrakDowneaster.com to learn more about the Downeaster's station communities and submit feedback on future service.

In This Week in Dover History, we look back at July 25, 1890, when the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that Dover's own Marilla Marks Ricker could be admitted to the state bar, the first woman in New Hampshire history to do so. A lifelong freethinker and suffragist, Ricker had already been the first woman to attempt to vote in Dover in 1870, and went on to practice law in Washington, D.C., where she was known as the "Prisoner's Friend." She ran for New Hampshire governor in 1910 and died in 1917, just before the 19th Amendment secured women's right to vote.

In this episode of the Dover Download podcast, Deputy City Manager Christopher Parker chats with Lauren Petraitis, Director of Development at the Dover Children's Home, continuing a series spotlighting local nonprofits.

Petraitis explains that although the 133-year-old organization was founded in 1893 as an orphanage, it's now known as a residential treatment program for youth serving any young person in New Hampshire, not just Dover. The main house serves up to 12 youth ages 10–21, while a separate independent living program houses up to 4 residents ages 18–21 as they prepare to live on their own. A former high school teacher, Petraitis found her way to the nonprofit through volunteering and now leads fundraising, grant-writing, and community partnerships.
She describes a staff of about 25 working around the clock, guided by a "trust-based relational intervention" model that emphasizes relationship-building and personalized care—down to decorating a new resident's room with their favorite colors before they arrive. Stays vary widely, from six-month juvenile justice placements to five-year stays for youth working toward independence. Looking ahead, the organization is considering expanding services, potentially adding a higher level of care, housing for young adults aging out of the system, or vocational training.

State funding covers the bulk of the budget, supplemented by fundraising events (including an annual golf tournament each September), an Amazon wishlist, a meal-donor program, and a robust volunteer and mentorship network. More information is available at doverchildrenshome.org.

In This Week in Dover History, we hear the story of Plato Waldron, a formerly enslaved Dover resident who worked as a courthouse janitor and church sexton before his body was found in the Cochecho River in July 1835, his death still shrouded in mystery.