A long-running dispute between Duxbury’s Emergency Management Agency (DEMA) Director Kevin Nord and Entergy, the owner and operator of Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth, has led to the layoffs of two part-time DEMA employees and the cancellation of all future training for nuclear disaster due to lack of funds.

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The Duxbury School Building Committee (DSBC) will tonight recommend to the School Committee that Dimeo Construction of Providence, RI be contracted as the construction manager-at-risk (CM-at-risk) to oversee constructing of the co-located middle and high schools. This comes on the heels of the city of Methuen severing ties with Dimeo Construction in December after the two sides could not come to agreement on a guaranteed maximum construction budget.

The Board of Selectmen voted unanimously to open the Town Meeting Warrant to add an additional article to change the position of Town Clerk from elected to appointed. Sponsored by the Board, the proposed article was not discussed at Monday night’s meeting, though it was announced the proposal would be a future agenda item. Town Clerk Nancy Oates was not present at the meeting.

In other business, Duxbury selectmen:

It’s the phone call no parent wants.

A 12-year-old girl, home alone, called her father to say a man had knocked on their front door while another man waited outside in a red sedan. When the girl didn’t answer, the man went to the garage door, opened it and attempted to enter the house.

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When Duxbury High School English teacher Karen Baynes assigned E.M. Forster’s “A Passage to India” to her AP English class, she had a brilliant idea to make the classic novel come alive for her seniors.

“It’s about cultural conflict and how India and England see the world very, very differently,” said Baynes who was born in England. “I believed it would be appropriate to contact a teacher in India and have some contact with her class.”

At 2,200 feet, the Powder Point Bridge is the longest wooden bridge in the United States. It is also in need of $2.4 million in repairs. To pay for those repairs, town officials have raised beach sticker fees.

The Powder Point Bridge Committee presented their findings on the bridge to the Duxbury Board of Selectmen Monday night. The town manager-appointed committee consists of chairman Jeff Lewis, Harbormaster Don Beers, DPW Director Peter Buttkus, ex-selectmen Margaret Kearney and Andre Martecchini, and DPW Highway Manager, Ed Vickers. The committee began meeting in September.

The police scanner crackled to life.

A 12-year-old girl home alone, a knock on the door, a stranger. When he received no response, he went to the garage door. Opened it.

Helen Philbrick died at 101 on Dec. 1. Her passing was marked by her friends, but her life, and her life in Duxbury, deserve exclamation points.

Helen Louise Porter married The Reverend John Philbrick in 1937. In 1939, he was named minister of St. John’s Episcopal Mission in Duxbury and of Trinity Church in Marshfield Hills. St. John’s served a largely summer population. In the winter, services were held upstairs in a small chapel, with only the heat of a pot-belly stove -- and no running water, summer or winter.

The Town of Duxbury last week cancelled all future training for nuclear disaster due to lack of funds following a long-running dispute between Duxbury’s Emergency Management Director Kevin Nord and Entergy, the owner and operator of Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth.

Nord, who is also Duxbury’s Fire Chief, said the town has been in negotiations with Entergy to fund its Radiological Emergency Response Funding (RERP) since May 2010. The town’s last round of funding has now run out. The consequences to the town and to Entergy could be serious.