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NAUGATUCK — Eighty-two plastic evergreens brought a festive air to a normally mundane building last week. United Way of Naugatuck and Beacon Falls hosted its annual Festival of Trees at the Naugatuck Savings Bank Dec. 6-9. Local businesses, organizations, and individuals donated and decorated the trees, each with its own theme.

BEACON FALLS — The procession curled off Exit 24, toward North Main Street, and paused as ladder trucks from Seymour, Prospect, Bethany, Roxbury and Middlebury joined firefighters marching on foot, the Connecticut Firefighters Pipes and Drums and the 1929 Seagrave bearing the reason for the assembly. Kevin Swan, 68, a 49-year veteran of Beacon Hose Company No. 1, suffered a heart attack shortly after responding to a 5 a.m. call last Wednesday. Swan signed on the radio but never arrived at the Susan Street fire; he was found in his pickup truck, still in the driveway of his 95 Skokorat Road home, and was pronounced dead at Griffin Hospital, around 9 a.m.

NAUGATUCK — A Waterbury man is facing drug charges following an investigation into the sale of heroin in Naugatuck. Naugatuck police executed a search warrant...

NAUGATUCK — The kids have spoken, and they’re not happy. On Monday night, when the picketing, marching and chanting before a Board of Education meeting lasted longer than the meeting itself, students criticized financial mismanagement that last year left the school system $1 million in the red and this year has given it the unsavory distinction of being the only district in Connecticut without an operating budget. The board’s most recent deficit projection for the 2009-10 fiscal year is $1.07 million, down from the $1.3 million projected last month. When the board last met, two weeks ago, Superintendent of Schools Dr. John Tindall-Gibson said closing the gap could require laying off as many as 14 teachers, including the dozen hired over the summer.