Central Maine News: July 24, 2015

These are some of the stories central Maine is talking about today.

Gov. Paul LePage has given state contingency funds to several nonprofit organizations. The Republican governor said he allocated roughly $230,000 in emergency funds left over from the previous fiscal year to 14 nonprofits and community programs. Among the groups that received the funds is the House in the Woods, an organization located in Lee that offers free outdoor retreat programs to veterans and their families. The group is getting $20,000. Other groups benefiting from the funds include the My Place Teen Center in Westbrook, the Highlands Senior Center in Dover-Foxcroft and the Challenger Learning Center in Bangor. The Legislature sets aside a certain amount of funds every fiscal year that the governor is free to hand out at his discretion. (AP)

Police in the town of Madison of looking for whoever smashed up several cars. Steve and Kelly Taylor say they found cars with their windows shattered on July 10. According to WGME, the cars were parked on some land down the street from where they live. One of the cars still had a cinder block inside. The owners are offering  $1,000 for any information that leads to an arrest. (WGME)

Waterville councilors have decided not to override Mayor Nick Isgro’s budget veto. They’ve approved a $37.4 million city budget. City officials had a dispute over a $58,000 subsidy from the State. According to WABI, Councilors wanted to put the money in surplus. The mayor wanted to use it to lower taxes and he got his way. The school board waited for a final decision on the municipal budget before approving its $21 million budget last night. (WABI)

Downtown Waterville is getting a bit of facelift. Colby College now owns the Levine’s building and the Hains building, two historic Main Street properties. There is still discussion on how the buildings will be used. Main Street Waterville executives on the planning committee say they’re actively discussing the impacts to the city. A project and partnership that has sparked lots of optimism about the future.(WABI)

Waterville plans to start collecting recyclables at the curb during the three times a year when there are more than four Mondays in a month. According to the KJ, Sullivan’s Disposal Service collects recycling the first and third full week of the month on residents’ regular trash collection day, but three times a year there are months when two weeks pass before recycling is collected again. Residents complained about the gaps in recycling collection. In the end it was resolved by the city, public works will do the pick up those weeks, unless there extreme weather conditions. (centralmaine.com)

Police say they'll work to figure out what brought a man to a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, yesterday evening. There he opened fire, killing two people and wounding seven others before killing himself. Police are not releasing the identity of the suspected shooter, only to say he was a 58-year-old white man. Police say before the gunman started shooting, he had been sitting in the packed movie theater, where the comedy "Trainwreck" was playing. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is praising two teachers as heroes for their actions in a Lafayette movie theater where a gunman opened fire. Jindal says one teacher jumped in front of the other, saving her life. The second teacher, although shot in the leg, then managed to pull a fire alarm. Three people were killed, including the gunman, who killed himself. And seven were wounded. (AP)

President Barack Obama says the issue that has left him "frustrated" is the debate over gun control. Obama tells the BBC that the U.S. does not have "common-sense gun safety laws, even in the face of repeated mass killings." Obama was interviewed yesterday afternoon, before the deadly shooting at a Louisiana movie theater. (AP)

Turkish warplanes have struck Islamic State group targets across the border in Syria. Turkey's government says three F-16 jets took off from an air base in southeast Turkey early today and used smart bombs to hit three IS targets across the Turkish border. The government says the decision to carry out the operation was taken at a security meeting on yesterday, held after IS militants fired from Syrian territory at a Turkish military outpost, killing a soldier. (AP)

A Philadelphia mural of Bill Cosby has been painted over. The city's Mural Arts Program says the fatherhood-themed mural in North Philadelphia was deteriorating and already scheduled for removal. But a spokeswoman says the date was moved up after a lawsuit deposition released this month.  (AP)