HANSON — The town will continue to be taxed a uniform rate for all property classifications for fiscal 2017.

The Board of Selectmen voted to set the annual tax classification rates following a brief hearing with the Board of Assessors on Tuesday, Nov. 1. Such hearings are required by MGL Ch 40 §56 before a tax rate may be set.

Assessor/appraiser Lee Gamache made the presentation to Selectmen before their vote on a uniform or split tax rate as well as whether they would accept residential or small business exemptions. She also reported that the excess levy capacity for the town is $208,477 and that the town has seen a good year for growth in residential properties and free cash.

“Single-family [property] value has increased and is increasingly going up year-to-year,” Gamache said. “We’re in a condo boom right now and people are paying a lot of money for the condos in Hanson … the values for condos are also increasing.”

At the same time, commercial properties in town have lost a little value, she said, noting there has not been a lot of business coming into town.

The board voted 5-0 to support the uniform rate. Neither exemption was accepted.

The town’s residential tax classification is the largest, comprising 91.7741 percent of the actual levy for fiscal 2017. At a uniform tax rate — meaning all classifications, including commercial, industrial and personal property as well as residential — would be at $15.98 per $1,000 valuation.

“There’s very little commercial-industrial [property],” Gamache said. “We’re definitely a bedroom town, and that’s why the board has historically always recommended a uniform tax rate — so that the shift doesn’t go on the small amount of commercial property that we do have here.”

Gamache explained that the two exemptions apply mainly to communities with a high rate of rental properties such as Boston, Brookline, Cambridge and the Cape and Islands. In Hanson, residential property is 98-percent owner-occupied so the assessors have historically recommended against adopting a residential tax exemption.

Selectmen voted 5-0 against such an exemption.

She also explained that the commercial exemption, which only benefits small businesses that own their property, is not guaranteed to be passed along to companies that rent space. Again, Selectmen voted 5-0 against such an exemption.

In other business, the board acted on Water Commissioner Mary Lou Sutter’s resignation from her position, effective Nov. 12, due to health reasons.

“It has become increasingly difficult to attend meetings as my health worsens and winter approaches,” Sutter wrote in her letter of resignation. She added that she did not want to resign without leaving a full board to address the town’s water needs.

The board accepted her resignation with regret following a round of applause from the audience in honor of her many years of service.

In a divided vote, Selectmen and members of the Water Commissioners approved — 6-3, with Selectmen Bruce Young, Bill Scott and Chairman James McGahan dissenting — to appoint Dennis O’Connell to fill a vacancy on the commission. One vacancy remains open, but was not voted on during the Nov. 1 meeting. Selectman Don Howard had two votes, as he is an elected member of both boards.

O’Connell has worked as a union electrician who has worked with the MWRA and Deer Island as well as the MBTA and Boston Housing Authority. The second applicant, William John Garvey is a South Shore Vo-Tech grad with an HVAC certification, who has worked on the town’s committee overseeing repairs to roofs at the elementary schools. Selectmen and water commissioners voted 3-5-1 against Garvey — with only McGahan, Scott and Young voting in favor and Howard abstaining from his vote as a water commissioner.

“In two weeks we can have another appointment,” Howard said.

Young congratulated O’Connell on his appointment, saying he was sure O’Connell would do an outstanding job.

“For the record, I made my decision based on experience,” Selectman Kenny Mitchell said of his vote for O’Connell. The board also voted to hire Jamison E. Shave as the new administrative assistant for the Hanson Highway Department.

Town Administrator Michael McCue said of the17 applicants — six of whom were interviewed — Shave was determined to be the best-qualified for the position. Shave’s extensive resume includes experience with the Hanson Water Department and as Fern Hill Cemetery superintendent of the cemetery.

“He comes with a plethora of experience in both administration and payroll,” McCue said. “Of particular interest was … in his capacity at Fern Hill, he was familiar with an awful lot of things that he would have to deal with in the Highway position having to do with groundskeeping and plowing and all sorts of things.”

(Express intern Michael Hughes contributed to this report).

Early voting is a hit with local residents.

“We’re doing very well and people seem to really appreciate it, that’s the best part,” said Hanson Town Clerk Elizabeth Sloan. “I would like to see it for all elections. I think it’s great.”

Whitman Town Clerk Dawn Varley would agree, as 2,210 residents turned out to cast early ballots along with 276 absentees between Oct. 24 and Nov. 2 — and there were two days left in the early voting window, which closes at the end of the business day on Friday, Nov. 4. Hanson’s total as of Nov. 2 was 1,160 with 220 absentee ballots.

“We’re very busy today, very pleasantly busy,” Varley said during the extra Saturday early voting hours Whitman offered Oct. 29. “During the first hour today we had about 100 people.”

Working couples with families and seniors hesitant to stand in long lines seem to appreciate the convenience equally, Sloan said. As she spoke, all five of the voting booths set up in her office and the hallway outside it were busy and more people were arriving to cast ballots.

“They don’t have to make their families drive them, it’s difficult to make arrangements because they’re working,” Hanson resident Leah Guercio said of her fellow seniors as she waited for a friend to finish voting Friday, Oct. 28. Guercio works with the Hanson Multi-Service Senior Center’s supportive day program.

“I love it,” another resident said as she checked in to vote early at the Hanson Town Clerk’s office. “It’s amazing. I don’t know how anybody else feels, but I think it’s wonderful.”

“They love it,” Varley agreed regarding Whitman voters.

Whitman saw more voters cast ballots before the end of its second day, nearly 600, than turned out for the state primary in September, according to Town Administrator Frank Lynam at the Oct. 25 meeting of Whitman Selectmen. Only 375 people voted in that primary in Whitman.

“It’s amazing the traffic that’s coming in [Town Hall] just to early vote,” Lynam said.

By the morning of Oct. 28, Sloan had seen 540 early voters cast ballots and had received another 200 absentee ballots. Whitman also had about 200 absentee ballots before they dropped off during early voting. She said absentees will resume once early voting ends.

“I think there’s a lot of people that just don’t want to wait in line,” said Whitman Selectman Brian Bezanson, who also reminded residents watching the Oct. 25  meeting on Whitman-Hanson Community Access TV to vote on Election Day, Nov. 8. “It’s obviously a very important election and we need as many people as possible to chime in on this as we can. There’s many ways to vote, so please do it.”

In addition to early voting — from Oct. 24 to Nov. 4 — and regular voting hours from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Nov. 8, voters unable to go to the polls in some circumstances may cast absentee ballots.

Whitman Selectmen Chairman Dr. Carl Kowalski, who voted early, had a concern about the security of the process.

“I’ve had a lot of questions,” Varley said as she checked in voters Saturday. “I’ve had a lot of people questioning how many hands are going to touch these ballots, what happens to these ballots — things like that. My answer to them is, if you want to know what happens to your ballot show up here on Nov. 8 at 8 o’clock at night, and you’ll see.”

Early voters place their ballots in a signed and dated sealed envelope, which poll workers run through voting machines in the appropriate precincts on Election Day.

“They do that at a time when they don’t have heavy voting, because the folded ballots could jam the machine,” Lynam said.

“Whoever opens it, knows how I voted, if he or she decides to glance,” he said. “This is something that struck me.”

Varley said the security of ballots is an issue she takes very seriously.

“It’s a process,” she said. “We have to do the check-in and the check-out for your ballots. This makes more work for the clerks.”

Selectman Daniel Salvucci said he has also spoken with Varley, principally about the time involved in counting the ballots Nov. 8, noting a final tally in Whitman is expected to be available by 11:30 p.m. that night.

“She also said that, if we wanted to, the room will be open [during the count], but lines will be drawn where people can stay there and watch them do what they have to do,” Salvucci said, echoing Varley’s comments. “You have to stay a certain distance away.”

“The final numbers are going to take a while on Election Night,” Kowalski said of the time involved in processing early ballots in the 28 states and the District of Columbia, where early voting is permitted. Another 20 states allow early votes with an excuse. There are 10 states that still prohibit early voting.

HANSON — Candidates for the Plymouth County offices of sheriff and county commissioner fielded questions from voters during a candidates’ forum Sunday, Oct. 16 co-sponsored by the Hanson Democratic and Republican town committees.

Hanson Town Moderator Sean Kealy moderated the event at the Selectmen’s meeting room in Hanson Town Hall.

Incumbent Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph D. McDonald Jr., a Republican, and Democratic challenger Scott M. Vecchi squared off in an often-heated exchange in the room filled with McDonald supporters. County Commissioner candidates Lincoln D. Heineman and incumbent Greg Hanley, both Democrats, and Republican incumbent Daniel A. Pallotta answered a few questions in more subdued exchange. Voters select two on the Nov. 8 ballot.

The 6th District incumbent Josh Cutler, D-Duxbury and his Republican challenger Vince Cogliano were joined by state Sen. Mike Brady, B-Brockton, as well as a statement from U.S. Rep. William Keating, D-Mass., read by Hanson resident James Egan were also involved in the event. None of Keating’s opponents took part or provided statements.

Right out of the blocks, in his opening statement, Vecchi went on the attack, describing his campaign as a reform effort against “the corrosive impact of employee campaign contributions, nepotism, patronage, and exploitation of our pension system.”

He said he misses the Joe [McDonald] of a 2004 debate.

“That Joe railed against the same things I’m railing against right now,” he said. “That Joe lashed out against hiring friends and family members [and was for] fiscal responsibility.”

Vecchi charged those problems not only still exist, they have multiplied.

“My colleague likes to say a lot of very bad things about individuals at the sheriff’s office, the budgets,” McDonald countered. “I’m never going to overspend. The budget’s been very fiscally responsible. The people that I work with are the best. There is no patronage, there is no nepotism, there is no pension abuse.”

McDonald said there is only one of the candidates poised to double-dip on a pension.

“It’s not me,” he said.

McDonald, who has been sheriff for 12 years, said for his part, that while elections can be won, re-elections must be earned and he strongly asserted he has earned re-election.

“I’m going to share with you the good news about what’s going on at the sheriff’s office,” he said in his opening remarks. “I have the best staff in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and, I dare say, in the United States of America.”

He refuted Vecchi’s claims that budgets are over-spent.

“We’re right on budget,” he said. “In fact, we have the lowest per-inmate cost of any sheriff’s office in Massachusetts, and at the same time we are providing the highest level of community service.”

He pointed to his department’s work with Hanson, state and other local community departments in the response to an investigation of the Sept. 29 armed home invasion in Hanson.

“They came, they helped with the apprehension, they helped in gathering evidence,” he said of his department’s K-9 units. “This was tangible, this was real.”

He also lauded the work done by inmates on work crews for municipal projects.

A Plymouth resident, Vecchi is a member of the Alden and Mayflower Societies and is a sergeant on the Plymouth Police Department and a retired Marine gunnery sergeant — a combat veteran of Iraq. He is also an attorney with 23 years of police and corrections experience.

“When elected sheriff, I’ll be the only sheriff who’s actually been a corrections officer,” he said. As a police officer, he said he has been on the “front line” in the fight against the opioid epidemic, having administered Narcan and other first aid measures to overdose victims. He said the Police Association of Mass., MassCOP, the Professional Firefighters of Mass., and “numerous other unions” have endorsed him.

A Marshfield native, McDonald has a 25-year history in law enforcement, has a law degree from Suffolk University Law School and is a graduate of the National District Attorney’s Association National Advocacy Center in Columbia, S.C., the National Sheriff’s Institute of Longmont, Colo., the Municipal Police Training Committee Basic Reserve Academy in Plymouth and the FBI Academy’s FBI Leads Academy 59th session in Quantico, Va. He is the immediate past president of the Mass. Sheriff’s Association, and its current vice president, and was a member of the Governor’s Opioid Task Force and council on criminal justice reform.

Commissioners
candidates

Scituate native Heineman congratulated forum organizers for the mostly respectful exchange of views, terming it a “refreshing from what’s happening nationally.” He has worked on municipal budgets in Scituate as well as for the state inspector general’s office and holds an MBA, and he stressed the need for making county government more efficient. He said the commissioners must also do more to combat Lyme disease.

“We have a Lyme disease epidemic going on on the South Shore,” Heineman said. “Approaching it in a regional way is something we must do.”

Hanover resident Pallotta, who is the current chairman of the Plymouth County Commissioners, said that while he and Hanley are “on extreme opposites on the political spectrum,” they have worked together to return a sense of fiscal responsibility to the commission.

“Plymouth County should have been filing for bankruptcy when I took office four years ago,” Pallotta said. “It was selling land, they were selling buildings, they were selling everything they could to balance the budget. They had fraudulent revenue projections and it was just hack-o-rama down there with jobs and everything else.”

He said they worked together to “clean up the mess — and we did it the hard way — we cut people.” Unnecessary programs were eliminated or reduced and, for the first time in a decade, the county will have an audited set of books with a $400,000 surplus for the first time over the same period. He also said the county has already applied for a grant to address the Lyme disease issue and has also filed legislation to eliminate the sheriff’s liability for retirees and to allow the county commissioners to have a savings account.

“When we got into office, the cupboard was bare,” agreed Hanley, who is a Pembroke resident. “The previous commissioners wanted to end county government.”

He echoed President Kennedy’s comments on Russian advances during the nuclear era that, “It’s not the Republican answer that we should seek, nor the Democratic answer — it’s the right answer.” Hanley said, of the hundreds of votes he and Pallotta cast as commissioners, they have differed only once, in a philosophical vote on a labor issue.

They partnered with the legislative delegation on both sides of the aisle and, most important among those bills, saved the county communities from having to foot the bill for $32 million in legacy costs for retirement liabilities when the correctional facility was taken over by the state. The debt was forgiven by adding 10 cents to every transaction at the Registry of Deeds, Hanley said.

“We have a function to do and if we don’t do the function it’s going to go to the state,” Pallotta said.

“I give a lot of credit where credit is due to the existing commission for righting the ship,” Heineman said. “What we need to do now, is to take a new [direct] approach to, across the aisle in a bipartisan way, to make sure the commission is not just meeting its obligations, which it is now.”

He said it is largely agreed that more services can be provided in more ways than are currently being delivered.