WHITMAN – The Select Board and Finance Committee agree that it will likely take an override to resolve the town’s deficit situation. The question remains how big and whether it would be a one-year or a multi-year one?
Some important numbers, which would allow a projection, are not in yet, which is one reason another joint meeting is planned for Tuesday, Feb, 25, after the School District budget is released on Wednesday, Feb. 12.
“It might make sense to have more joint meetings than we’re accustomed to, said Select Board Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski during the Tuesday, Jan. 21 joint meeting. FinCom Chair Kathleen Ottina attended remotely be phone and Finance members Mike Flanagan, Jason Hunter, Vice Chair Mike Warner, Rick Anders and Al Cafferty also attended. Select Board member Laura Howe was absent.
W-H Superintendent of Schools Jeff Szymaniak also attended the meeting.
Select Boad member Shawn Kain opened the meeting with a brief review of the latest revenue and expenditure projections before the two boards got down to discussing the financial outlook for fiscal 2027.
“The preliminary budget numbers indicate that an override is necessary [his emphasis] to maintain level services,” Kain said, announcing that current revenue projections and expense outlook put the town at a deficit of about $1.7 million, inviting a discussion “on the size and scope” of an override this year.
That figure already factors the 2.5 percent increase for town department and adding a progression of 1 percent and so on, dividing the calculations to 1-percent increases, without interrupting that negotiation.
But what kind of override? That was his question regarding the size and duration of such a move.
Flanagan said Kain’s last budget review on Jan. 7 “opened my eyes a little bit,” and he found some sense in Select Board member Justin Evans’ proposal of a possible multi-year override, “to spread it out a little bit.”
Winter also favored a multi-year override.
“I would be concerned each of the following years … that we have to go back each year to hope that [voters] would go for another one,” he said. “We’re hearing it from the departments. We have some pretty major capital outlays that need to be made.”
All union locals for both the schools and town are due for contract negotiations this year, Evans and Szymaniak also noted.
Looking at a deficit that big, Ottina asked if a grant from the state secured by Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter that allows her to project the impact of different union contract raises on the budget
Carter confirmed that information.
While not wanting anyone to tip their hand in a contract negotiation, Ottina wondered what the pact of a 1-percent rise, “just or the sake of having a piece of information out there.”
“On a multi-year override, I don’t think we explained exactly how that works too well,” Evans said. “So, my thought was, if we have reasonable expense projections out, say, three years, is override to the level that you would need to be at in those three years, and not tax to the levy in the first two years.”
By intentionally leaving excess levy, which [the town] had not been doing for the past three years, so that we’re no hitting the taxpayers at the maximum level,” he said. “It would be one override vote, but it would step up, almost like it was a couple of overrides.”
It would increase by 2.5 percent plus new growth during the interim years, but it’s all projection right now.
“For me, I’m thinking that we should have the smallest possible override that we could ask the people to consider, knowing that we’re sacrificing, we’re demonstrating our sacrifice, and asking them to sacrifice in a way that’s a complement to our own, so we can just get by with level services, but that is a different message” he said.
While going back before the voters each year is a harder route, Kain said it would be the better route.
Andrews said he agreed, noting that a year-to year override is a better option because, it gives the town options.
Where the budget stands
“If we look at what we had in revenue last year, and what we have in revenue this year … we’re looking at a little over $800,000 in new revenue,” Kain said. “We’re pretty sparse, is the message that was sent out to the department heads.”
Among the bigger expenses officials are keeping an eye on is an 11.32 percent (or $323,260) increase in Plymouth County Retirement. “It’s a huge number for us,” Kain said. Medical and health insurance is estimated to increase by 7 percent.
“We’re not exactly sure where that’s going land, so that’s just a place-holder,” he said.
WHRSD, about a $20 million assessment line for Whitman, and $200,000 for every 1 percent it increases. Kain therefore put an estimated increase of 5 percent sits at close to $1 million.
“It is also important to note that we had discussed as a board earlier that a creative way to get them some revenue that’s not currently used in the operating budget, is the funding that we used to fund our OPEB liability,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that we’re not going to fund our OPEB liability, it’s just that it would go in the queue at Town Meeting and we’d ask for the Town Meeting’s support to pay for it with free cash.”
Resident John Galvin asked why free cash has not yet been certified by the state.
“We can’t talk about it unless we get it certified,” he said.
Carter said she had the town accountant’s office to check on the free cash certification status on Tuesday. The tax rate had been set in mid-December and took priority as well as a lot of year-end documents to be reconciled by the treasurer-collector’s office.
“I was told today that, where we have a new accountant in place full-time, the DOR is putting us at the top of the list and were working on it this afternoon,” Carter said, adding that it was hoped that task would be done that afternoon and could be available as soon as Wednesday, Jan. 22.
The budgeting situation means that the district is “missing critical components” in the district budget.
“They don’t have an educationally sound budget at W-H Regional School district, so they need more funding,” he said. “But they’re getting less money from the state because [of] this hold-harmless situation, so they’re in a bind.”
Instituted in 2021 to help with funding gaps as pandemic-related enrollment losses, hold-harmless provides funding stability for districts experiencing declining enrollments.  It can take several forms, such as limiting changes in state aid from year to year, providing supplemental funding for districts with declining enrollment, or using past enrollments in grant calculations, but some argue it may unintentionally disadvantage districts that were seeing steady enrollment or increases before the pandemic.
“We know they’re in a difficult situation with their current budget,” Kain said, noting that Szymaniak has reported to the School Committee on the specifics of the problem. “That’s definitely going to hurt when it comes to hold-harmless, which means we’re not looking to get more money from the state.”
South Shore Tech’s Whitman enrollment is down a bit, as well, Kain has included a level-funded number as a place-holder, but SST Superintendent/Director Dr. Thomas J. Hickey said that number would be reduced some to reflect that decline.
Kain noted that Whitman Fire Department’s budget is down by 2.36 percent, due mainly to recent retirements.
“We used free cash last year [$509,212], so that puts us behind the eight-ball a little bit this year,” he said.
Resident Robert Kimball of Auburnville Way said his calculations put SST at a 10-percent decrease in Whitman students for an $80,000 decrease in that budget.
Galvin noted that SST’s budget is a zero-based plan calculated on a three-year rolling average of the enrollment for each community.
“Even though [Whitman] is down 18, that average isn’t going to come down that much, it will, but not that much,” he said.
Kimball also pointed to a new cannabis retailer expected to open by mid-year, and expressed the expectation that it might help reduce the hit on taxpayers. He also questioned how WHRSD enrollment numbers could be continuing to decline when “we seem to have more and more people moving into the community.”
Szymaniak said the high school is down by 109 this year, and indicating the same trend has been true for lower grades – although there is anecdotal evidence of some classes bouncing back a bit. But the high school number “isn’t surprising” because some students opt for SST or carter and parochial schools.
“It looks like grades one and two are continuing to build back up to areas that might be sustainable, but those [families] aren’t having four or five kids anymore, they’re having one or two.”
“I’m very pleased that we’re having this discussion in January,” Ottina said. “The information has to be gotten out to the public.”
Noting that Hanson is using ARPA funding to help them illustrate the override need to its residents through the use of Guilfoil Public Relations, a firm already used by Whitman Police and Fire, as well as the schools to inform residents a how an override could hep the town’s fiscal outlook,
“Supporting an override doesn’t mean that you want the override to pass,” Kain said “But I do think the right choice is to allow the town to make that desicion.”

HANSON – The Select Board on Tuesday, Jan. 14, voted 4-0 after nearly an hour of discussion, to use Guilfoil Public Relations to assist them in presenting the case for an override in the run-up to the annual Town Meeting and Town Election in May. Member Joe Weeks was absent from the meeting
Guilfoil, already on a retainer of unused hours under which had initially been hired with ARPA money, to help the board deal with an election-related issue at the town’s water tower in October, had presented a media plan, including guest editorials to the Express and website information on the potential financial effects to the town if an override failed.
Select Board member Ed Heal balked at the whole idea, before finally voting on the proposal, because of concerns about cost and ownership of the site, how much of the work the board might be expected to do and whether it might come cross as an attempt to “sell” the public on supporting an override.
“When you say ‘educate the community,’ I think there’s probably going to be people out there who are going to say, ‘You’re not educating us, you’re trying to sell us,’” George said.
Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said the intent is that the board is fulfilling its job responsibilities of fully informing the public.
“We’re not trying to sell anybody,” she said. “It’s just the facts. … I would say ‘inform’ is a better term [than educate].”
Concerns aired
All four members present had some initial concerns on one point or another, but were swayed by the closing window for getting information before the public.
“I’m looking for the value in it, and I’m not seeing the value in what they are providing,” Heal said at the outset. “We’re still providing the data and information to them. They’re just going to host it.”
“They are going to work with us,” Town Administrator Lisa Green said, noting that her office had approached John Guilfoil Public Relations Agency and said they would be working with the town on press releases, the website posts, fliers and mailers, slide show presentations and guest columns for the Express.
“They were very good with helping us respond to inquiries and things like that,” Green said about the water tower issue. “With the hours that they gave us for that proposal, we only used about seven hours out of 36 [contracted for]. We still have 29 hours, which they [can use] to help us with communication of budget education and override education for our residents and the public.”
Green also pointed out that, at mid-January, time is not on the board’s side for getting information before the public to be of use for a May Town Meeting and Town Election and that, if not used, the ARPA funds would be lost. She had already spoken to department heads to have them start getting information to Guilfoil.
“We are working as quickly as we possibly can to start getting this information to them,” she said. “There’s a lot of moving pieces on this.”
She said their proposal includes creating a website for the town that will present all information regarding the budgets the budget process, an override and that process, look at town departments to provide “as much information as we can get out there” on town finances, services it provides to residents, to potential effects if an override fails.
“Their proposal was very, very reasonable,” Green said. “We will be using ARPA money to pay for this. They [will] keep the website up to date …”
“Can we talk about funding?” asked FitzGerald-Kemmett. “Where is the money coming from for this? We are in fiscal crisis and we’re heading into an even bigger fiscal crisis.”
Green said the town had ARPA money that had already been paid for the October crisis communications services and the remaining contracted hours will be used toward the budget education services.
“In other words, we bought a package of hours and we didn’t use them all up,” said member Ann Rein.
The $9,000 in ARPA funds would now be used toward the website design, Green explained.
“We have a year’s worth of service on this and the website is ours always,” she said. “I believe they’ll make a link to it so that people can go on our website and click on the link and come right to this website that will have calculators, questions, answers, it will have budget information for each department …”
Website
FitzGerald-Kemmett asked if it would be similar to the one that South Shore Technical High School has for their project, which is like a micro-site devoted to the building project.
“Which I really love, because it I don’t want to read about everything else related to [SST] I don’t need to,” she said. “I can just go to this thing to read about the SST article and everything I want to know is right on that link. … It’s been very thoughtfully put together.”
Green said Guilfoil has done the same type of project for other towns and school districts, noting that they are professionals who know how to word things.
“And they understand that we’re not advocating…” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
“It’s the facts only,” Green said. “It’s going to be beneficial because we’ve never had something like this before. We haven’t had an IT director, so having somebody with this knowledge build [the site] and, once we do get our IT director on board, they can help build it, as well.”
Earlier in the meeting the Select Board had voted to approve the hiring of Steve Burke as IT director on the recommendation of Green and Planning Board Chair Joseph Campbell (who has extensive professional experience in IT and helped with the interview process).
“But for now, we have these folks on board and they can start the process,” she said.. “We’re going to start feeding them the information – the budget process, and things like that.”
“If it’s ours afterward, I would truly love to use it prospectively, for future town meetings, to help with all the information that people need for Town Meeting on that one site,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
Rein said the town is paying the monthly fee after the first year of the website for domain registration.
“We’re going to own that, all we have to do is host it,” she said.
Heal said he had asked the same questions FitzGerald-Kemmett was posing and made notes on the proposal sheet and hadn’t received answers.
“Basically, we get the first year for free,” Green said of a budge webpage. “There’s no charge for the first year of hosting and supporting a website. After that, it’s $199 a month that we put into the technology line, but they will continue to host the site, software updates, nightly backup .. 24/7/365 support.’
He countered that, while the town owns the domain, and as long as the town pays Guilfoil, they will keep the site up and the town’s URLs will work.
“The minute we stop paying them, our URL that somebody gave somebody else is gone and we can’t get it back,” Heal said. “We can’t take it in-house. The domain is not the data.”
Rein said she would want the details looked over with respect that the town would have the ability to take the site over.
“This does not allow that,” he said.
“We could negotiate it, is my point,” Rein replied. “We can’t afford $200 a month. … It would be nice to know that we have that option to buy our stuff outright.”
“We could make it more sustainable for us to take the wheel,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
FitzGerald-Kemmett said it wasn’t a deal-breaker, but that the board would feel “a lot more encouraged about it” if they were able to get some assurances that Guilfoil would be good partners and give the town the wheel at some point.
“For at least one year, they’ll get us through, the information we need to get out there,” Green said.
But Heal’s objection was that Hanson would be providing the data and words to Guilfoil.
“They’re not massaging our words,” he said. “They’re basically putting them up on the site. Correct?”
Seeking value
Green said that was, indeed, correct, but if Guilfoil decided a submission could be worded better, they will put their PR skills to work. She said she would ask the firm for the specifics Heal and George were seeking.
Heal agreed on that point, but said he was “looking for the value in it.”
“They need to clear it up,” George suggested.
“The reason you hire a PR firm is to do this kind of work,” Rein said. “I don’t think there’s anything nefarious here. I think we’re getting what, at least we understood what we’re going to get.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett said that, when she spoke to them, Guilfoil staff said that is what they said they would be doing.
“They’re going to be managing the communication project, which we do not have the staff to do,” she said, including suggested website postings and press releases.
“I would feel comfortable if Steve Burke feels comfortable with this,” Heal said of the data management plans. FitzGerald-Kemmett said she would like to hear his thinking on sustainability and cost.

WHITMAN – The Select Board on Tuesday, Jan. 7 accepted a recommendation from Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter to set up a joint meeting with the Board of Assessors as soon as possible.
In her report to the board, Carter outlined in a lengthy statement, billing errors by the Assessors that have could have cost Whitman taxpayers millions of dollars on real estate bills before they were due, while failing to collect boat excise taxes or to mail other bills last year.
The current Board of Assessors has a total of 21 years of combined experience as board members, Carter noted.
When the Select Board holds its joint meeting on the budget with the Finance Committee on Tuesday, Jan. 21, the will schedule a February meeting with the Assessors.
“The magnitude of these recent errors is alarming to both the assistant town administrator and me,” Carter said, noting that just this past weekend the town’s printing vendor had found a fiscal 2025 Actual Real Estate Bill issue: the square footage on the bills is incorrect and it was confirmed that the file sent to the temporary treasurer-collector for printing by the Board of Assessors contained a database error.
Similarly, in December 2023, warrants to collect for actual real estate bill liens totaling $926,534.32 were not voted or signed by the Board of Assessors until May 21, 2024.
Warrants to collect are required by the Department of Revenue to be issued by the Board of Assessors to the treasurer-collector before payments can be accepted, Carter pointed out.
On Dec. 17, 2024, the Board of Assessors signed the official fiscal 2025 Actual Real Estate Warrant to Collect – the document empowering the treasurer-collector authority to collect real estate payments for the town. However the warrant and the corresponding billing file initially sent to temporary treasurer-collector Sharon LoPiccolo for third and fourth quarter real estate bills had an erroneous total that was $16,124,289.21 greater than what should have been billed to taxpayers. The fiscal 2025 real estate lien file, which should have consisted of unpaid water, sewer, trash and water bills from fiscal 2024, had an erroneous total $750,508.24 less than what should have been billed to taxpayers, according to Carter.
“Luckily the new temporary treasurer-collector realized there was an issue, and she reached out to me to review the warrants to collect before she posted the bills for printing and mailing to our taxpayers,” she said. LoPiccolo alerted the Board of Assessors of the erroneous files, which were replaced with corrected real estate and lien files.
“These two recent billing issues are quite concerning,” Carter said. “If the real estate bills had been sent out, as a result of these bills, the taxpayers would have been billed for basically a total of six quarters instead of the usual four quarters in fiscal 2025.”
They were only some recent examples.
In April 2024, the Board of Assessors sent a warrant to collect to both the treasurer-collector and the interim town accountant for 11 boat excise tax bills. But the Assessor’s office never sent the corresponding billing file, Carter said. As a result, the May 2024 boat excise bills were never issued and the revenue unable to be realized last fiscal year.
It was, in fact, never sent to the treasurer-collector for billing and the file was deleted from the Assessors’ software module titled “Add new accounts and omitted bills” on Nov. 25, 2024.
“I am hopeful that the Board of Assessors will commit the 2024 boat excise bill in fiscal 2025, so the revenue can be realized this fiscal year,” Carter said. “An additional concern is the fact that only 11 bills were voted on by the Board of Assessors. In the previous five years the town billed about 53 bills each year.”
From the data that Carter and Keefe were able to review, they “strongly believe” that data voted for the 2025 boat excise bills should have contained about 53 bills, as I has for the last several years, not just the 11 bills they intended to commit.
“The assessments and the related billing produced by the Assessors’ Office, which are under the control of the Board of Assessors, directly impact the revenue and, therefore, the town budget,” Carter said. “I feel it is imperative that the Select Board and the Board of Assessors meet in open session to discuss the numerous issues that have come to light regarding billing issues, as the enormity of the issue has escalated over the past year and a half.”
Carter also said that the Board of Assessors had made it “abundantly clear” in open sessions during more than one of their meetings last year that they “didn’t want any interference from the Assistant Town Administrator or me.”
“For well over a year now, the Assistant Town Administrator Kathy Keefe and I have been extremely concerned about several billing issues, which have been brought to our attention regarding the Assessor’s Office,” Carter read from her prepared remarks. “To avoid any confusion, it’s worth noting that the Select Board does not govern the Board of Assessors. The Board of Assessors is a separately elected board that is comprised of three members. Thw Board of Assessors is solely responsible for the operations in the Assessor’s Office.”
She added that, while the Select Board does not have authority over Assessors, “I feel that we need to take this action to call for a joint meeting between the two boards to better discuss our ongoing concerns.”
Carter had met with the Chair of the Board of Assessors John Noska early last year and in August with another Board of Assessors member she described as interested in those ongoing concerns.
“I presented and reviewed the issues that were brought to our attention up to that point,” she said. “Rather than Board of Assessors being receptive to our comments and concerns, they instead issued a letter dated Aug. 29 to the Select Board, accusing both Kathy and me of harassment and interference. More importantly, to date, the Board of Assessors has not taken corrective action on several of the billing issues that were revealed to them.”
The Select Board sent a letter to the Board of Assessors on Oct. 24, 2024 to inform them that, after reviewing the information in the Assessors’ letter, they had determined that the Board of Assessors allegations of harassment and interference were not supported and asked Carter and Keefe to continue making them aware of any future concerns about billing.