Whitman chiefs warn of staffing level, building safety issues

By Dave Palana
Express Contributor

WHITMAN — Fire chief Tim Grenno told Selectmen his department is facing a staffing crisis, and Police Chief Scott Benton addressed concerns about the safety of the police station following a second lightning strike, as both chiefs presented their first monthly reports on their departments to Selectmen Tuesday, July 22.

Grenno was unable to attend the meeting, but said in a prepared report that staffing will be his top priority in the coming budget year. He said his department has responded to 12,018 calls in 2014 and that the station can be empty two to three times in a day due to all staff responding to emergencies.

“The string we have been walking on finally broke,” Grenno said in his report, which was read by Lt. Al Cunningham. “We are constantly finding ourselves behind the ball and trying to play catch-up.”

In his report, Benton told Selectmen that the police station was recently stuck by lightning for the second time in two years, which has him concerned for the safety of his officers.

Benton said the recent strike damaged equipment and led to concerns about whether the building has been properly grounded.

“Now the issue is the safety of the people in the building,” Benton said.

Town Administrator Frank Lynam said the town has been in “constant contact” with the station’s architect over the issues. While Lynam said there has been lightning attention arresters placed on the antennae at the station, it is not clear where the lightning is striking.

“There isn’t necessarily any evidence on the tower,” Lynam said. “It’s not clear the lighting has hit the tower or the building.”

Lynam also said the damage seems to affect the dispatch area, which is the most “electronically intense” area of the station apart from the server room. He said the copper pipes in the radio room are up to code, but not the size and depth specified in the original plans for the station.

“I tend to blame the contractor that did the electrical work,” he said.

Lynam added that the damage is covered by insurance, but that this will be the second claim of more that $100,000 at the new station.

 

Local boat builder launches into new waters

By Tracy F. Seelye, Express editor
editor@whitmanhansonexpress.com

HANSON — Call it a yacht project with a “Twist” that piqued his interest.

For Halifax resident Bob Fuller, a three-year project to convert a 45-foot commercial lobsterboat into a European “lobsteryacht” not only inspired the craft’s new name — Twist, for the twist of fate that brought the vessel a new life — it brought with it a trip to Genoa, Italy last week to help launch the restored craft from Corsica, a French island off the Italian coast.

“It’s the middle of our summer and I’d like to stay here and enjoy our summer with my family — but we’re going for four days and it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he said.

Fuller and a diesel mechanic went to calibrate the boat’s computer-powered engines.

“It was actually a rebuilt of a 40-year-old boat from Rhode Island,” he said. “It was a working lobsterboat until three years ago.”

The former owner, Donald Wilcox, and his family had fished for about as long as they had the boat, formerly named the “Hazel W. III,” had been in the business.

“It was hard for them to sell their dad’s boat, but after 40 years, the two brothers who were still fishing it were getting older and didn’t have the time to properly keep up with the maintenance,” he said. Permit regulation changes also prompted the Wilcox family to sell.

Now the Twist is owned and registered in Baselia, Switzerland, by Swiss physician, Dr. Eric Megevand, to sail back and forth from Italy to Croatia where his wife’s family has a vacation home.

“We kept the hull,” Fuller said of the wooden lobsterboat. “Beyond that, everything else is new.”

The craft was gutted and fit with accommodations to sleep six people, modern electronics and a new engine and galley as well as a 40-gallon water desalination unit to provide drinking water on board.

Next week starts a new project as Fuller works to do the custom teak work on a fiberglass-hulled sailboat. But it’s all hunky dory for this third-generation master craftsman specializing in boat restoration, yacht-quality joinerwork and custom shipswheels.

He also builds dories, both real as with the 19-foot dory he is currently building for a repeat customer who fishes for striped bass, and child-size Plymouth Rock’r rocking cradle boats for kids.

Boats are a family tradition.

“I apprenticed with my father and grandfather in their shop [Industrial Patterns in Halifax],” Fuller said as his yellow Lab Jake poked around the Hanson workshop of South Shore Boatworks for scrap lumber on which to chew. “From the time I was four years old, I would draw out boats on wood and my father or grandfather would cut them out and we’d float them in a pond, or puddles — float them in the bathtub — just playing with boats. That’s really where it started.

From roughed out tub toys he’s worked his way to a respected reputation in boat restoration and renovation circles, the M/V Twist perhaps representing his magnum opus to this point.

“I choose [projects] based on my interest,” Fuller said. “If something seems as though it has some character I’ll take the project, sometimes it’s what the owner envisions and wants me to do.”

All things being equal, however, Fuller gravitates to lobster-style powerboats and small dories. About half the boats on which he works are wood construction.

He had started helping his father on boat project by age 12 and constructed his own first boat — 10-foot skiff — at 15.

“I apprenticed with my family, which worked for me,” he said. “My father had apprenticed in the shipyards of the Panama Canal Zone.”

In fact, his parents met in Panama where both had gone to seek work during the Depression. One of Fuller’s grandfathers ran the foundry in the Panamanian shipyards, while the other ran the apprentice program.

“I was born into this,” he said. “Where else could I have gotten the education that I did?”

His dad still follows the doings in the Panama Canal via webcam.

The family line in the boat-building business will likely end with him, Fuller notes, as his teen-aged daughter prefers working with animals. She is a student at Norfolk Aggie — a point on which he is philosophical. He realizes every generation goes their own way — but he is passing the skill to a new generation, just the same.

Fuller has a single employee, Michael Bryan who went to boat-building school in Eastport, Maine. He had interned with Fuller between years in the two-year program.

“I knew I had this big project that was going to be happening with this big boat [the Twist] and when he graduated he came back down and it’s been three years now working with me,” Fuller said.

The two work together in some weather-controlled conditions.

The uninsulated corrugated metal building at the Northeast Lumber Supply yard is heated in winter by a single diesel-fired heater, but the tradeoff is the benefit of ample space afforded by the building in which they work.

They moved the workshop up from West Wareham last August when that building was sold. His home workshop, where he crafts ships wheels and about five Plymouth Rock’rs a year is equally impressive.

“It’s almost like two separate businesses, yet interwoven,” he said of the wheels. “It’s a specialty and I’m the only one in the country doing it.”

He has taken his wheel projects on the road to craft festivals to demonstrate the art as well, focusing on the finish work as he discusses the skill and answers questions.

Fuller prefers metal hubs on his wheels for stability and works with a Woburn engraver to etch boat names and, in some cases, home ports.

The rings on the wheel are inlaid with holly, ebony and basswood.

“I feel very fortunate in what I do,” he said. “As much work as I do in the marine trades, I get more support out of the Massachusetts  Cultural Council.”

His wheels have been included in a book on Mass. folk artists produced by the Cultural Council.

By Stephanie (Crisp) Diaz
Special to the Express

MIAMI — “Miss Crisp, you gotta listen to this song,” a former student of mine named Dave told me recently. Most songs that my students share with me speak to their experiences in some way, and the opening lyrics of this one grabbed my attention.

“Am I wrong for thinking out the box from where I stay? Am I wrong for saying that I choose another way? I ain’t trying to do what everybody else is doing,” the duo Nico and Vinz croon. Although this wasn’t the typical hip-hop musical recommendation that I receive from my students, I knew immediately why the song had resonated with Dave. As a Teach for America corps member at a Title I high school in Miami, the students I worked with every day faced a constant struggle to, as the song suggests, think beyond the norms of their neighborhoods and aim for a higher education. The song struck a chord with both Dave and I because that push to think differently and work toward college was a constant refrain in our classroom for the two years that I worked with him and his classmates, most of whom would be the first in their families to attend college and some who would be the first to graduate from high school.

Two summers ago, the Express featured a story on my students selling their original poetry books to raise money for a trip to visit colleges in Boston. I dreamed up the trip as a way of exposing my students to both a college experience and the world beyond their city, something to which most of them had very limited exposure. I felt that by giving them the experience of actually living in a dorm, eating in the dining halls, and visiting a city that is simply full of college students, it would become real for them, allowing them to actually see this path as an option for them.

No sooner had I hatched this plan and gotten the school on board, however, than I realized what a huge undertaking it would be to actually finance the experience. As a Whitman-Hanson alum and a former Express intern, reaching out to my hometown paper to get the word out seemed like a great first step, but I wasn’t really sure what to expect. After all, the citizens of Hanson and Whitman had their own schools and students to support; asking for donations to help a school in Miami seemed a lot to ask.

After the article was published, however, I was truly overwhelmed by the response from the community and the way that my former teachers, librarians, neighbors, and friends contacted me to help the cause. Ultimately, community donations helped us meet our goal of raising over $6,000 towards bringing 22 teenagers to stay at the dorms at Boston University for five days last June. In a thank you to our donors, Dave wrote, “Because of you my mind is now officially set on going to college,” while Latosha explained that, “I learned that it was okay to branch out and try new things and new places.” James told me recently that he plans to move to Boston when he finishes school because he fell in love with the city. 

And yet the piece of the experience that almost all of the students said was their favorite part of the trip was the day we spent at my parents’ house in Hanson, meeting friends, family, and community members, including State Rep. Josh Cutler, who later in the week met us again for a tour of the State House. This community played an enormous role in influencing the futures of 22 young men and women, and this past year, another group from our Miami high school made the journey to Boston, extending the opportunity to a new group of students.

On May 30, almost exactly a year after our plane took off, I watched every single student who had accompanied us on the trip cross the stage and receive their diploma. Our group included students who had experienced being homeless, being shot, and facing the criminal justice system, as well as students who were essay contest winners, employees of the month, volunteers, athletic champions, members of National Honor Society, and the valedictorian. Considering all that they had overcome and all that they had accomplished, it was truly incredible for me to realize how many of the people who have been so influential in my success also played a role in helping my “kids” to realize their potential as well.

In September, some will begin their new lives in such big-name colleges as the University of Miami and University of Florida, others will attend smaller schools, and one will join the military. They will major in engineering, child psychology, nursing, physical therapy, marketing, film, and business, among others. They have, in the end, been able to “think outside the box” and avoid its limitations.

Like the graduates of Whitman-Hanson, my students are both nervous and excited for the next steps in their lives. I, too, am incredibly excited to see all that they will do and become, and will continue to be grateful to all of those from Hanson and Whitman who became an additional community ally in our fight for a positive future.

 

By Dave Palana
Express Contributor

Patrons of the Whitman Town Pool will notice some changes when they go to change their clothes courtesy of Eagle Scout candidate Matt O’Brien.

Tuesday night, O’Brien and his helpers put the finishing touches on a much-needed facelift to the pool house in Town Park O’Brien completed for his Eagle Scout project. The scout from Whitman’s Troop 59 power washed and painted the inside and outside of the pool house, added shelves to the locker rooms and helped organize the materials over the past week and a half.

O’Brien said he decided to pursue the project after his mother’s Girl Scout troop wasn’t able fit it in, but was under the gun to complete the project and submit the paperwork before he turned 18 this week while also having to work around the pool’s hours of operation. He and his helpers did the bulk of their work after the pool closed at 7 p.m. during the week but also made an early-morning trip on Saturday to get some work done.

“It was challenging, but I think it was worth it,” O’Brien said. “We didn’t really run into too many roadblocks we got it done faster than I expected.”

The outside of the pool house was speckled with patches of different colored paint to cover up various graffiti, but the bulk of the work O’Brien did was to the interior which Michelle Winnett of the Recreation Commission said had not been repainted in her 15 years with the commission.

“We could scrub all we want, but that battleship gray was just awful,” she said. “He worked really hard and we’re very grateful. It will definitely make the bathhouse cleaner and more cheerful.”

Winnett said the Recreation Commission has long wanted to overhaul the pool house, but had not been able to set aside the funds. So when O’Brien came to them with his Eagle Scout proposal, they were more than willing to accept the help.

“It’s definitely been a wish list item of ours for years, but we just didn’t have the staff or the money,” Winnett said. “It was desperately needed.”

To raise the money for his project, O’Brien collected bottles and cans while also securing crucial donations for home improvement store Lowe’s and paint supplier Valspar. Between the two companies, O’Brien said he received more than $700 in donated paint and supplies.

“Without them we would be in trouble,” he said. “I’m very grateful for everything they did for me.”

With the project completed, O’Brien is now preparing the paperwork the paperwork that goes to the board of the review for his Eagle Scout badge and will await his summons before receiving the rank. Pool users will be able to take advantage of his work for at least another month with the pool set to close the week of Aug. 17

 

By Tracy F. Seelye, Express editor editor@whitmanhansonexpress.com

HANSON — The Schools Priority Repair Committee got down to business Wednesday, July 9 — and one of its immediate tasks included scheduling a tour of the Maquan and Indian Head schools on Wednesday, July 16.

The committee was to convene that session at 6:30 p.m. at Maquan for the tours with W-H Facilities Director Ernest Sandland and Assistant Superintendent of District Operations Craig Finley.

In planning the tour, members were especially interested in the state of the slate roof on Indian Head School.

But the first order of business for the new panel was organization. They voted to name Selectman Bruce Young chairman; Michael Jones, who is employed as an HVAC project manager, as vice chairman and Brian Campbell, who works with a construction management firm, as secretary.

The panel then reviewed its mission statement and open meeting regulations and scheduled a 7 p.m. Wednesdays meeting time at least until Aug. 20 — when member Bob Hayes must attend the School Committee meetings he chairs on the third Wednesday of each month, and at times more frequently.

The mission statement calls for developing and presenting to the Board of Selectmen a “viable and realistic plan to identify immediate capital and related repairs” to keep the two schools safe, secure and comfortable for students, faculty, staff and the community.

One goal is to have at least an estimate for engineering costs ready for the October Town Meeting.

Young stressed the committee would work closely with the School Committee, its Facilities Subcommittee and Selectmen to accomplish that goal.

Hanson Town Administrator Ron San Angelo, attending as a supporter of the committee, provided members with information on the municipal design and construction procedures and a copy of the State Open Meeting Law.

Committee member Christopher Howard had questions on both the meeting law and the process of determining how the process of how the panel will make repair recommendations and estimated costs.

“When you do municipal procurement it’s a whole different animal than it is if you’re doing it in the private sector,” San Angelo said. “You have to follow state procurement laws. … A person who provides an estimate cannot bid on the job.”

Eventually and owner’s project manager (OPM) will have to be hired to make sure the specifications governing such estimates are drawn up correctly, San Angelo stressed.

Young provided the panel members with a copy of the Regional School Agreement and a timeline of the former Building Committee’s work over the last several years.

“The town actually leases the schools to the School District under the stipulation that the Regional School District has care and custody of those buildings for 50 years,” Young said of the lease last revised in 1998. Elementary school repairs over $5,000 must be approved by Town Meeting.

Member Maria McClellen asked if a “figure not to exceed” a certain amount could be presented to Town Meeting for, as an example, immediate repair of boilers at Maquan School.

San Angelo said he believes Town Meeting voters would prefer to see a “real solid number of what they would be voting a debt exclusion for” in a given article.

A resident attending the meeting asked at what point the state might be asked for funding.

The statement of interest required by the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) for accelerated repair projects are accepted at certain times of the year, Young and Hayes agreed.

“If there was a catastrophic event with the boiler, the school district would have to fund a repair, obviously, and keep the building open,” Hayes said. “They would come back to us, say spring Town Meeting, with the bill saying this is what the repair was.”

But longer-term repairs are a different process through MSBA.

“There are a lot of different triggers involved in that,” he said.