Whitman’s Select Board voted on Tuesday, April 23 to close the warrant for Town Meeting after removing two articles deemed unnecessary. The warrant includes dual budget to present to the annual Town Meeting to fund town departments while offering an override to close a $509,212 gap in the W-H Regional School District assessment.
Vice Chair Dan Salvucci attended the meeting virtually by phone.
Select Boards in both towns again reviewed their warrants in preparation for the Monday, May 6 town meetings. Hanson’s Select Board, which had already closed the warrant, held its annual run-through of the warrant at it’s meeting Tuesday night.
One side of Whitman’s budget is marked recommended by the Select Board with an override, including a 5 percent increase over last year’s assessment for the W-H Regional School District. The balance of the certified district assessment of $509,212 included in a warrant article for an override.
The second column of the dual budget includes Select Board recommendation without an override, which would include the district’s full certified assessment of 7.87 percent over last year, however reductions in staff in several departments were necessary in order to balance that budget without an override.
“The budget, in both scenarios, do not include any one-time funds to balance the budget,” said Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter. “As many of you know, the use of one-time funds to balance the budget is not recommended.”
The amount to be placed on the override, if it is voted at Town Meeting and the Town Election is $509,212 and the estimated tax increase, based on the current average residential single-family home with an assessed value of $470,190 is $95.38 a year, Carter said.
Board member Shawn Kain also provided an updated financial outlook for the town.
“For some of us, who have been living the budget over the last couple of months, we’ve been trying to stay in tune with this, but we know for an everyday person this stuff can be overwhelming,” he said.
With the permission of the moderator, the board is planning to discuss the override question first at Town Meeting, Kain outlined.
“What we decide at the very beginning of Town Meeting will kind of set our course of action for the rest of Town Meeting,” he said. “We want people to vote yes [on the override question]. That’s formally our recommendation. We want people to vote yes to put the override on the ballot. If you agree with the override or not, we want it to go to the ballot.”
If it is approved at the May 18 town elections, then the appropriation if the full 7.87 percent, with $509,212 coming from new revenue. If it fails at the ballot, “We basically reject the school assessment,” Kain said. It then sends it back to the School Committee, which can lead to some “complex scenarios.”
Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski said, if Hanson voted not to support the override, it would have the same effect.
If Town Meeting votes against placing the override on the ballot, the school assessment would be funded at the full 7.87 percent, however, Kain said, warning that in order to balance the budget at that point, it would have to be taken from other town services.
He also provided some background on how the town got here and “what to expect, moving forward.”
The town should also be proud of the way it has funded education since fiscal 2012. There are more teachers and a better student-to-teacher ratio with a better per-pupil funding level. But enrollment, which is directly connected to state funding, is down.
Current fiscal policy also prioritizes the school department and the budget process will keep the town on sound financial ground while the School Committee unanimously agreed with the plan and leadership in Hanson is on board, he said.
“So an override will be presented to support the school department, but the key point to remember is this – whether you agree with the override or not, we need to support it at Town Meeting and send it to the ballot,” Kain said. “Doing so would ensure we collectively move forward in a way that is financially sound.”
Carter also noted that, if the override failed on Town Meeting floor, it will still be on the ballot – and absentee ballots now going out include it – and the ballot question passes, the town has 90 days to hold another special Town Meeting.
“We’re hoping for sure that this article moves to the ballot,” Carter said. “And that’s all that the article is doing: putting it in front of all the taxpayers to decide.”
“If the override passes, no one-time money is in the budget. If the override fails, no one-time money is in the budget,” Kain said. “That’s why it keeps us on sound financial ground.”
Article 54, which the Select Board proposed to appropriate a sum of money from available free cash to reduce the amount to be raised through taxes in fiscal year 2025, but was not recommended by a unanimous vote of the Finance Committee was left to Town Meeting. An opioid settlement article, deemed unnecessary was also removed from the warrant
“This was a placeholder a couple of months ago,” Carter said of Article 54. “As I was working on the budget, there was a deficit of over $100,000, so I put this in just in case we needed to use free cash.”
She didn’t want to end up in that position because using free cash for that purpose is not recommended as a sound budgeting practice and revenues and additional cuts had not yet been reviewed at that time.
“The budget we have now is a level-funded budget, so this article is not needed for budgeting purposes, for the reason I put it on there, however the Finance Committee is not for the override, [and are] looking for a different way,” Carter said. They have suggested using a different funding source and she was unsure if the article was needed for their overall plans.
“I just wanted to be honest on everything,” she said. “I put it on there because we had a deficit, and we don’t have a deficit.”
While Carter made no recommendations on whether or not to take Article 54 off the warrant, Select Board members Shawn Kain made a motion to remove it.
While Kain said the Finance Committee had good intentions in their vote, he said he argued their vote against recommending Article 54 puts town departments at risk.
He said he likes and is proud of the budget that Carter and Assistant Town Administrator Kathleen Keefe put together and feels strongly that the town should be presented with that plan and make decisions based on that.
“I think what the Finance Committee is doing is undermining that,” he said.
Carter later explained that it was the lack of a specific dollar amount that prompted the Finance Committee’s action.
Kowalski said it also undermines the relationship that the schools and Select Board reached a few weeks ago when the chairs of both town select boards met with Superintended of Schools Jeff Szymaniak and School Committee Chair Beth Stafford.
“They came back toward us and they reduced their assessment with the knowledge that what we woud try to do is to provide for the difference in an override election and they were all for that,” Kowalski said, agreeing that Article 54 should be removed from the warrant. “It was kind of a surprise that the Finance Committee did not support it.”
Board member Laura Howe agreed and commended Carter for the work she has done on the budget and the solid footing she is providing for the town.
“I think we have to give credit to the School Department and to Beth Stafford for approaching us to try to close that divide we were developing between the town and the schools,” Kowalski said. “What the Finance Committee is doing doesn’t help that at all.”
The schools are visibly supporting the override to get the towns through the year.
“I think that the only way the override passes in both towns is if it’s very clear that both [select boards] and the schools agree that this is the right path forward,” Board member Justin Evans said. “Doing anything else doesn’t make sense to achieve what they’re trying to achieve.”
Evans questioned what the Finance Committee’s vote meant.
“They need it to meet their plan, but they’re not recommending it?” he asked.
The previous night, when meeting with the Finance Committee, Carter said she told them that, where the town has a balanced budget, the Select Board may find Article 54 is not needed.
“[Finance Chair] Rick Anderson said, ‘that’s fine, whatever you decide,’” she reported. “They always just vote against the articles if it just says ‘a sum of money’ … until a number is inserted.” Then they give their final recommendations on Town Meeting floor.
“I still think we want this article,” Evans said. “Not for the thing the Finance Committee’s attempting to pull off but because this is our safety net.”
Salvucci also counseled for removing the article.
“We’re taking away the choices of Town Meeting and the public,” he said. “If they want to fund the schools through an override, I think we should leave it on there so they can make that decision.”
South Avenue update heard
WHITMAN – It’s all about balance.
The town’s DPW, and the state Department of Transportation, are envisioning a balance of different needs by roadway users for more comfortable accommodations for bikes, pedestrians, motorists and transit users along a stretch of South Avenue – linking them all together.
“We’re looking to improve safety, promoting traffic to travel through efficiently, as it currently does, but making sure motorists are traveling at a safe travel speed,” said Principal Engineer Jim Fitzgerald of Environmental Partners. “The project, in general would [also] invigorate the local economy in that area. Complete streets projects have been proven to really provide a boost to local economies and allow for redevelopment with all the placemaking opportunities to be had with a project like this.”
Visual alerts to the presence of pedestrian crossings or a cyclist in the roadway are also safety goals.
Whitman’s DPW Commissioners, meeting with the Select Board Tuesday, April 9, provided an update on the South Avenue reconstruction project.
Select Board Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski said the update was billed as a joint meeting, even though not all the DPW Commissioners were present.
“We needed to say [it was a] joint meeting just in case anybody else showed up,” he said.
DPW Commissioners Chair Kevin Cleary said the South Avenue Corridor Improvements project has been discussed by the Commissioners for about two years, as a MassDOT Transportation Improvement Project (TIP) effort, a five-year program, in which the state’s transportation department would fund and manage, with the town funding only the engineering and right-of-way side of it. The potential timeline could see it ready for bidding by July 2030.
“It’s a multi-year process,” Cleary said. “The good news is we got accepted and approved to continue the process with MassDOT and we do have an article coming up on Town Meeting to continue funding that engineering and design [phase] and we just wanted to share with the board where we’re at, including next steps and the timeline.”
Fitzgerald and Senior Project Manager Benny Hung with Environmental Partners began by tracing the project timeline from the initial visioning in February 2018 to the present. The firm had also presented it to MassDOT.
“They were very supportive of the project and what it stands for,” Fitzgerald said before the department’s Project Review Committee which approved it for the TIP process.
Under the project, about one mile of South Avenue from Commercial Street to Plymouth Street will focus on multi-modal accommodations that are “safe and comfortable for all users, whether they be motorists, walkers, bikers or transit users,” according to Fitzgerald.
Land uses along the corridor involve a mix of residential amd commercial properties.
“A lot of residential development surrounds this area, but when you think about the ease of walking, or the close distance between residential neighborhoods and the Commuter Rail station, for instance, it’s really a lot of benefits that could be had from this project,” he said. “The project also stands to address or improve – or allow for – redevelopment in the area.”
Safety is also an issue, as Fitzgerald noted there are a few areas along the South Avenue corridor where a “significant amount of crashes have occurred,” including adjacent to the train tracks by the station that falls within the top 5 percent of statewide crashes as well as other locations with a significant number of crashes involving injuries.
“Certianly the intersection of South Avenue at Franklin and Pleasant streets is one that could stand to have some improvements made to it,” he said. “Instead of a single intersection, we’re faced with three, where we are creating additional contact points.”
Among the options there are conversion to one conventional, more perpindicular, intersection with Pleasant Street converted to an access road to businesses and parking.
There are also “skewed maneuvers” where drivers have to look back over their shoulder to merge and a lot of excessive pavement within the intersections, which allows for faster travel speeds and “uncontrolled chanellization of motorists.” For pedestrians, Fitzgerald said those intersections also mean excessively long crossing distances, which means safety risks.
The potential concept includes on-street bike lanes, areas of on-street parking, curb extentions – or bump-outs – at crossing areas to slow traffic and improve pedestrian safety and green buffers on one or both sides of the street.
Septarated or buffered bike lanes have also been considered.
“Ultimately, the preferred alternative is something that will be worked out with the group as a whole in advancing the project to the next phase,” Fitzgerald said.
“I travel those roads a lot and I’m really thankful for what you’re envisioning,” Kowalski said.
Vice Chair Dan Salvucci asked about the status about TIP funding, to which Fitzgerald said it has not yet been assigned a TIP year, which typically happens further along in the process.
“When do you expect that to happen – so I can push for it?” asked Salvucci, who is vice chair on the Joint Transportation Planning Council.
Fitzgerald estimated the pre-25 percent design could be approved by April 2025 and completed and approved by April 2027.
“That could certainly be expedited,” he said.
Select Board member Justin Evans noted the project is pretty close to that involved in the MBTA Communities compliance district.
“Taking these two projects together, it is a total rethinking of East Whitman,” he said. “This makes it a much more walkable community from, really, Colebrook Boulevard – which is already a community path – to Route 58.”
He noted the project’s estimated price tag is $14.8 million and asked for an updated estimate.
Fitzgerald said that was the latest estimate, with the design estimate at 14 percent of construction costs. The $14.8 million figure includes extra things over the construction costs.
Select Board member Laura Howe asked how specific design options will be decided.
“The town is leading the charge with the design and it’s a town-owned road, but it’s also a project going through the MassDOT process and they will weigh in heavily,” Fitzgerald said, noting it would be, hopefully a consensus decision.
Kids learn the straight poop on poop
By Tracy F. Seelye, Express editor
[email protected]
HANSON – Birds do it, bees do it. Mammals and reptiles, amphibians, insects, fish, and birds do it.
In some areas of the oceans, entire beaches are made up of the result of fish having done it. Ants and ladybugs fight over whether aphids should even get the chance to do it – and it seems butterflies are the only creature on earth that don’t do it.
Poop happens all the time and everywhere, and it seems no one likes to talk about it more than kids.
Except, maybe Susie Maguire.
A native of London who grew up in Rockford, Ill., and Pittsburgh, Pa., the eldest girl in a family of seven children with five younger siblings, she had learned a thing about kids – and poop – over her lifetime. She now lives in southern Netherlands and takes her online Poop Museum on the road to present her educational and entertaining program for kids.
Her large family, she said, was the source of her initial interest in her subject matter.
“Constantly, there was just poop, poop, it was just funny in our house,” she said after her hour-long presentation on how excrement figures into everything from digestion and cleansing the body to marking territory, showing off for prospective mates and even – in some species – nourishing their young. “I’ve always had a very lavatorial sense of humor and, during COVID, I was doing programs online for children and mucking around with my nephew – doing his normal, poopy, lavatorial thing – and I thought, ‘I should make up a poop museum.’”
A lifelong educator, Maguire, who has lived “all over the world” brings a world of poop to her young fans.
“I love [their] energy and enthusiasm for the subject,” she said.
Her program included a taste sample of “honey dew” honey made with the sweet-tasting poop of aphids, and a whiff of elephant poop, which smells like grass, she said, because that is what it is almost entirely composed of, and a sheet of paper to take home made from elephant dung. The children also received a certificate designating them as official members of “The Poo Crew” possessing “profound poo knowledge” of the subject, after the program.
Maguire worked her way through the animal kingdom – from the tiny aphid, daintily defecating a sweet-tasting bubble that ants covet, to the emphatic “poop tornado” emitted by the hippopotamus and spread with the aid of its propellering tail to ward of threats and impress females – using stuffed toys, photos and videos to illustrate her talk.
“My name is Susie, and I just absolutely love the poo, anybody else?” she said as youngsters’ hands went up. Her mission: to convince those who did not raise their hands that “poop is very spectacularly awesome.”
“The interesting thing about poop is that it is not just brown and stinky,” she said. “Sometimes it’s black, sometimes it’s white, sometimes it’s orange, sometimes it’s yellow, sometimes it’s pink, sometimes it’s red, sometimes it’s blue, sometimes it’s purple, sometimes it’s green – there’s lots and lots of colors of poop in the world. Not only does it come in different colors, there is poop that is sweet and tasty.”
To the delight of her young audience, and to the discomfort of some of their parents she discussed the scatological habits of dozens of species, including humans.
Some highlights:
- Snails can poop all the colors of the rainbow. “They basically poop whatever color they eat,” Maguire said, especially since they eat cardboard and paper for calcium and carbonate for shell repair. “Whatever color cardboard and paper you give them, that’s what color they’re going to poop.
- Aphids’ sweet poop bubbles, that ants covet so much, causes them to fight off lady bugs, who eat aphids, so the ants can ingest said poop bubbles that are the byproduct of the aphids’ diet of the sugars in plants.
- Bees can’t poop all winter because they can’t fly in the cold. So when they emerge in spring, a lot of yellow bee poop happens. “It looks like mustard,” Maguire said. They also eat aphid poop as part of their honey production.
- Butterflies don’t poop at all because they only drink nectar, blood, urine, the water in puddles and the fluid in other animals’ poop ie: “poop juice.” But that’s OK, because as caterpillars they eat and poop constantly, and usually at the same time.
- Egg-layers like birds, reptiles and amphibians have a single sphincter called the cloaca through which they urinate, defecate and lay eggs.
- Parrot fish defecate bits of rock and coral the fish had ingested in their feeding on algae. The rock and coral are ground into grains of sand as the fish passes the indigestible material.
“If you are on a tropical beach, then the beach is almost entirely made up of parrot fish poop,” she said. Atolls are created, in part, the same way, as parrot fish poop 1,000 pounds of sand a year. - Sloths only poop once a week. They are so slow, it is very dangerous for them to do. Many are killed by predators in the attempt. But, if they survive, because they have just rid themselves of one-third of their body weight, they do a kind of dance.
- Humans, if they are healthy, very in the way of little food particles is found in the passing of the “perfect human poop,” because the body absorbs the rest of ingested food to fuel the body.
“Your body turns your food into your body,” Maguire said. - Elephants’ poop is mostly food, she said as she passed around sample to sniff.
“It smells just like grass,” she said. “That’s because it is grass. Elephants poop out enormous amounts of the grass they eat. … Animals eat each others’ poop, animals eat their on poop, but there are a whole bunch of animals that eat their parents’ poop.” - Rabbits, koalas, elephants, hippos, pandas and termites produce two kinds of poop. One is waste, the other is a partially-digested form that their offspring count on for their diet. Rabbits take it further by eating the partially digested poop for their own nutritional needs.
There are also insects that camouflage themselves as poop, or cover themselves with excrement for protection from predators.
Looking for joy in ‘Mudville’
‘The outlook wasn’t brilliant’ as poet Earnest Lawrence Thayer put it in his classic baseball ode, Casey at the Bat,’ and there were mud puddles at first base and more umbrellas than bats for Whitman’s Annual Little League Parade, but spirits weren’t dampened as the teams made their way to the Whitman Park ball field for Opening Day ceremonies on Saturday, April 20. A player checks the rain situation during the ceremony, above. Here’s hoping for a sunny summer at the ballpark. See more photos, page 6.
Photos by Carol Livingstone
Whitman ballot questions OK’d
WHITMAN – The Select Board, in a brief remote meeting Thursday, April 11, voted 4-0 to place an override question for an additional $509,212 in real estate and personal property taxes on the May 18 Town Election ballot. The override would fund a portion of the fiscal 2025 Whitman-Hanson Regional School District operating expense assessment.
Select Board member Laura Howe was unable to attend.
The cost to the average taxpayer would be $95.38 annually.
Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski said he spoke to both Superintendent of Schools Jeff Szymaniak and School Committee Chair Beth Stafford that morning and “they are definitely supporting this override that we want to place on the ballot.”
“They know that the Board of Selectmen will be, in the town warrant, be asking to place this on the ballot, and they are fully in favor of that,” he said.
The move came after the School Committee certified the $62,930,345 compromise budget – representing – on Monday, April 8 and announced the special remote meeting on Thursday.
The board also voted 4-0 to place a question on the Town Election ballot asking residents to vote on whether the elected treasurer-collector position should become an appointed one.
The present treasurer-collector is in favor of the change.
Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter said Treasurer-Collector Kenneth Litel “wants to speak on this on Town Meeting floor” on May 6.
“He is very much in favor of this,” she said. “Last time this was before the town, it did pass at Town Meeting, it did not pass at the ballot.”
During its regular meeting on Tuesday, April 9 meeting, the Select Board welcomed funds coming into the town coffers as representatives of Plymouth County Commissioners returned to Whitman to make a presentation of $34,000 in ARPA funds for the purchase of a new ambulance for the Fire Department. They had been to a Whitman Select Board meeting only a month or so ago to present $2.2 million in ARPA funds for a water/sewer project.
Commissioner Jared Valanzola, state Sen. Mike Brady and state Rep. Alyson Sullivan-Almeida attended the meeting for what Valanzola said was “for the moment” the final check presentation to Whitman.
“We want to thank Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter for working diligently to secure these funds,” he said. Whitman is the fourth town to reach its allocation cap, according to the commissioners.
“That’s not saying there won’t be more, depending on what other counties do, but you are the fourth town to cross the finish line, in terms of using all these funds,” Valanzola said, repeating his goal that none of the funds be returned to Washington, D.C.
While, he noted there had been some consternation about the county’s potential ability to efficiently handle CARES Act funds the commissioners handled it quicker, cheaper and faster than other counties.
“So far, we’ve done ARPA quicker, cheaper and more effectively,” he said. “We’re currently averaging 1 percent administrative costs, currently the national average is 7 to 10 percent.”
Brady agreed that Plymouth County did an excellent job.
“I know that the administration at the state level at the time didn’t want the county to control the money,” Brady said, adding he and Sullivan had supported the county in administering it.
Sullivan-Almeida thanked the Select Board, in turn, for its hard work.
“I know it’s not easy trying to find initiatives to use the money for, and I think it’s going to be a great thing for the town,” she said, noting she sees a lot of posts on Facebook when an ambulance is not available in town, either because one is out of service or out of town.
“I think this is going to be a tremendous impact for … our residents on the whole, so I want to thank the chief and everyone who’s had a part and parcel on getting the funds,” she said. “I’m very disappointed because I was trying to find more ways to get more money, but unfortunately, we reached that cap. Fingers crossed that we get more money.”
Select Board Vice Chair Dan Salvucci lauded the commissioner’s work.
“You know your county,” he said. “You know the state. You know who you need to contact and we just work so close together. Thank you.”
In other business, both Carter and Kowalski commented on an issue surrounding a letter from Sullivan-Almeida about Senate bill 2628: an Act Validating Results of the Town Election in Whitman of May 20, 2023.
Carter said bond counsel said the special legislation was needed to validate the election result to receive a “green light letter” which allows the town to proceed with borrowing for the DPW building.
Her April 2 letter sought to update the board on the legislation filed by Gov. Maura Healey on March 7 and referred to the Committee on Election Laws. On March 11 the committee began accepting written testimony and Sullivan-Almeida sent a letter of support asking for a favorable vote, which was achieved on March 28 and sent to the Joint Committee on House Steering and Policy Scheduling and on April 1 was reported by that committee for the matter to be placed on the orders of the day for the next sitting of the House of Representatives.
Sulivan-Almeida’s letter continued, saying that she is urging the bill’s passage.
“I would also like to correct the record regarding recent comments by some of the members of the Finance Committee, incorrectly claiming that I had incorrectly filed this bill,” she wrote. “The original legislation, Act 2516, was filed in the Senate by Sen. Brady and was not filed by me.”
She stressed that both she and Brady understood the request for a home rule petition could be filed by either of them and, when Brady did so, they both believed it was filed correctly.
It wasn’t until S2516 when the House was on its third reading of that bill, that Sullivan-Aleida was informed the governor would have to file the bill and that both the House and Senate had to vote on it. She quickly updated Brady and advised the town and, along with Brady, reached out to Gov. Healey’s office on getting the legislation filed.
The bill needed to be filed as a home rule amendment, not a home rule petition and for that reason had to be filed by the governor, instead, Carter said.
“The important thing is the governor actually filed 2628, I believe on the morning of the seventh of March,” Kowalski said. “That is the day after, on March 6 that our Finance Committee voted on sending a letter to the governor asking for action kind of suggesting that action was belated.”
Kowalski said the important consideration is that Sullivan-Almeida and Brady have worked diligently on this since they knew what had to happen.
“We have had unbelievable service from both our senator and our representative,” Kowalski said. “Rep. Sullivan-Almeida has been incredible in the way that she has given us information on a timely basis and pushing to get this done.”
Carter also said she was hopeful to see the issue conclude, noting she had sent the request after the project was approved by the Oct.30,2023 special Town Meeting and received additional funding for the DPW building. She sent a letter requesting the special Town Meeting to both Brady and Sullivan-Alemeida, including backup documentation.
Carter agreed that both legislators have been very helpful.
Hanson its closes FY’25 warrant
HANSON – The Select Board conducted a final review and voted to close the Town Meeting warrant at its meeting on Tuesday, April 9.
Town Administrator Lisa Green said there were no changes to the special Town Meeting warrant, but said the annual Town Meeting warrant changed in view of the new budget figures.
“Town Counsel did review the articles and provided information, suggestions and edits,” Green said.
Vice Chair Joe Weeks questioned putting the budget article near the end of the warrant.
“I get putting the budget in the back to try to strategically keep people in Town Meeting as long as possible,” he said. “But part of me questions whether or not people are going to be able to make judgments, because you do see people that kind of follow along with what we are doing.”
Green noted the budget is Article 5.
“One of the budgets is Article 5,” Weeks replied. “If we’re giving two budgets I think they should be side by side.”
Select Board member Ann Rein asked which should be moved.
“That’s tricky,” said Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett. “I’m neutral about where it is, but they do need to be side-by-side.”
Weeks advocated for placing both budget articles early on the warrant. Town Counsel Kate Feodoroff agreed, more from a practical standpoint, as it is not legally required.
“I don’t like the idea of putting it early in the meeting because I fear once the decision is made about the override or no override, we’re going to have a mass exodus, and we [then] won’t have a quorum,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “That’s just a reality. I know it will happen.”
Weeks said the budgets have to be moved up, because he disagrees with having Town Meeting make decisions on capital expenditures without approving the budget first.
“I’d be afraid to put them at the end, because what I you [lose] a quorum, and then you don’t have a budget,” Feodoroff said.
Weeks agreed that would present a worst-case scenario.
“People won’t leave,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “I’d bet on that and I’m not a betting person, because that’s the main reason people are going to be coming to the Town Meeting.”
“I don’t disagree, but I think we have to vote on the budget before we start spending money,” Weeks said.
The School budget, which had been Article 32, was then moved up to Article 6.
“We don’t need to know the order in order to close the warrant, because we’ve voted on placing and what order they are doesn’t really matter,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said before the board voted to close the warrant.
Town Planner Anthony DeFrias provided some information on Article 4, pertaining to a Right-to-Farm bylaw, as well.
“If you recall, in our last meeting, we just felt like we should have the Planning Board kick the tires because it was going to be a zoning bylaw [changes] and have some impact,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
The Planning Board, on April 8, met to discuss the article and offered it comments, including asking the Select Board to table it until the October Town Meeting to allow further discussion and research of the law, and that the Select Board consider seeking an opinion from town counsel as well as from communities that have implemented the Right-to-Farm law.
The board voted to postpone the article to the October Town Meeting.
“I think that’s kind of where we were at,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “We just felt that we needed more info because we weren’t sure if there would be pitfall for the unwary, so I think all those suggestions are excellent.”
She added that board has asked town counsel to review the bylaw.
“Town counsel is not going to necessarily advise us on whether this is good for Hanson or not good for Hanson,” she said. “That’s our decision, but I do feel it’s a good idea to talk to other towns and find out if there were pitfalls for the unwary that [they encountered]. … And there wasn’t any particular sense of urgency to get this done. We were just trying to be responsive.”
The budget, on the warrant as Article 5, was being reviewed by the Finance Committee that night, as Town Accountant Eric Kinsherf had finished the budget article that day, Green said.
Article 6, covering zoning violation fines from the Building Department, was questioned by Feodoroff.
“If it’s housed in the Zoning Bylaw, it needs a public hearing, [and] I don’t know if that’s happened,” said Feodoroff, who attended the meeting virtually. “It needs to be published and a public hearing.”
She said that, if it is a Zoning Bylaw change as the article suggests, the Planning Board must hold the hearing. Because of the time required for posting hearing notices in the newspaper – twice within the two weeks before a hearing – the Select Board postponed the article to the October Town Meeting.
Article 10, involving new equipment for the Highway Department, using free cash, were recommended, despite Kinsherf’s warning that it is unaffordable at this time as the articles would leave only $311,000 in free cash.
MBTA bylaw may wait for October
WHITMAN – The draft MBTA Communities warrant article is being prepared for Town Meeting but may be postponed until an October Town Meeting.
The 2021 state law requires MBTA communities to “have at least one zoning district of reasonable size in which multi-family housing is permitted as of right” and is intended to address the housing crisis in Massachusetts and approximately 177 communities are subject to it.
The Multi-Family Zoning Requirement also calls for these housing communities to have a minimum gross density of 15 units per acre, the housing must be no more than 0.5 miles from a commuter rail station, subway station, etc., and no age restrictions.
The Planning Board held a public hearing, on the proposed chance to the town’s protective Zoning bylaw, in Town Hall auditorium on the issue on Monday, April 8. That board also met Tuesday, April 9 to vote on putting that amendment up for a vote at the annual Town Meeting or to submit it to the Attorney General’s office for prior approval for possible revision before putting it before Town Meeting voters.
“This would take several months,” Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter said. “It would need to go before a special Town Meeting in the fall.”
The deadline for compliance is Dec. 31, 2024 or affected towns will no longer be eligible for funds from the Housing Choice Initiative, the Local Capital Projects Fund, or the MassWorks infrastructure program.
Additionally, towns that fail to comply with the zoning changes may be subjected to civil enforcement.
Carter added that the draft language had been reviewed by town counsel, resulting in several revisions, forwarded to the Planning Board and incorporated into the draft article. She said she will update the draft article to send out for the Select Board’s review ahead of its April 23 vote.
“However, in speaking to the attorney, we were weighing out – a lot of towns are dealing with this right now – on whether or not it’s best to put forth the article and get approval from the state before we vote it,” she said. “Some towns have approved the article, sent it to the state, and then had issues.”
Select Board member Justin Evans said his understanding is that Judy Barrett, the town’s consultant tasked with drawing up the bylaw, believes the town will be in compliance with the proposed bylaw.
“Some of the minor amendments they made, even as late as yesterday, are to reduce the frontage required within the zone to 40 feet to be more aligned with properties that already exist within that bylaw,” he said. “That’s something that the attorney general has specifically called out.”
He noted that Abington had sent their revisions to the state and didn’t hear back from the state before their town meeting.
“So they voted is as-is and they will eventually get feedback from the state,” he said. “We don’t have currently a Town Meeting scheduled for the fall [and] I don’t particularly like calling it for one issue.”
But he said it was a course of action he would recommend.
He pointed to the marijuana bylaw, on which the state flagged one small provision for change after Town Meeting had voted, and that change was made.
“It was pretty much non-consequential,” he said. “The downside of putting forth an amendment that’s not pre-approved by the state would be striking small components of it.”
If those changes took the town out of compliance or ran afoul of what the town intended, it would have to be corrected at next year’s annual Town Meeting.
“I like the project,” board member Shawn Kain agreed. “I like a number of components connected to the project. I think talking about it at the Town Meeting would be helpful in many ways and the [downside] is relatively minor for doing it now as opposed to waiting.”
Vice Chair Dan Salvucci said he had an MBTA Advisory Board meeting that day and discusses with MBTA general manager his concern that, because towns are voting on the bylaw, that safety issues need to be addressed, especially where it would mean more pedestrians and was told that is being looked into and come up with aninformational safety program.
Unsung heroes
WHITMAN – Monday, April 15 was much more than Tax Day and Marathon Monday – in Major League Baseball stadiums and ballparks it was the 20th anniversary of Jackie Robinson Day, celebrating the first time Robinson stepped on the grass at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, N.Y., – 57 years before that to officially integrate America’s game.
But was Robinson the first African-American to play professional baseball?
Ted Reinsten, a Chronicle reporter for WCVB-TV, and author of “Before Brooklyn: The Unsung Heroes Who Helped Break Baseball’s Color Barrier” says the answer is kind of yes and no.
In a bit of fortuitous timing, Reinstein appeared at Whitman Public Library on Saturday, April 12 to discuss his book. The program was sponsored by the Friends of the Whitman Public Library.
“Libraries need good friends,” he said. “And this library has some good friends.”
With the start of Major League Baseball’s season only two weeks before his talk, and “the Red Sox are already almost in last place,” the timing couldn’t have been too much better.
“It’s been said that time begins on Opening Day and I often feel that way,” Reinstein said. “You get a whole new shot with spring – with everything, not just baseball.
He began with a basic question to prove how a major part of the Jackie Robinson story is not really well-known – after he broke the color barrier in 1947, who was the second Black Major Lague ballplayer?
One person guessed Larry Dobey, but while he is part of the story, his name was not the correct answer
“I’ve never had anybody get the right guess,” he said. That’s because – spoiler alert – it was Jacke Robinson and the failed guesses often come from people who know baseball history.
“It’s a bit of a trick question,” he said. “The second Black ballplayer was Jackie Robinson because Jackie Robinson did not do the thing you think he did. – Jackie Robinson did not integrate Major League Baseball. He re-integrated it.”
More than 60 years before, a Negro player named Moses Fleetwood Walker.
“That tells us we’re missing out on a central fact of what Jackie Robinson did and, by missing out on the central fact that he re-inegrated baseball takes nothing away from [him]. Do you know the year of inhuman hell he went through when he was breaking the Color Barrier?”
Death threats against him and his family were a daily part of his life.
But what the Jackie Robinson story does take away is the notoriety of Walker, who was the first and others who followed him in the game.
“One of the things with this book I was interested in was getting at how we learn history,” he said. “One of the things about doing this book was to get at a way … something that often happens with history, which is we may learn an event … and we often think, ‘I know what that is, I know what that’s about,’ and very often there’s a lot more context to the story.”
Whether it is how it is learned or it’s just a question of life getting in the way, some of those lessons are forgotten.
“In this case, its really unfortunate, because this is a case where we’re talking about really, the first civil rights victory of the 20th Century and the creation of a hero known around the world in Jackie Robinson,” Reinstein said. “And yet, he didn’t do this by himself.”
Others laid the groundwork for it.
It is also a story of how, in the years following the Civil War, baseball itself was an outlier.
“It was integrated,” Reinstein said. “It looked a little more like America. … And Moses Fleetwood Walker was a transformational player.”
He was not only the first of his race to play professional baseball player, he was a catcher who transformed how the position was played – and is played to this day. Teams used the position of catcher to stick the worst players up to then – they were just something of a human backstop.
Walker was different.
“He was fast, he was a great fielder, he was what we would call in baseball today, a five-tool player – he could play all five facets of the game,” Reinstein said. “He could run, he could hit, he could hit with power, he could field his position and he had a great arm. The last time the Red Sox had a player like that was a fellow named Mookie Betts, who they promptly got rid of and they’ve been in the toilet ever since. But don’t get me started.”
Walker was so good, he was signed by a Major League Baseball team in 1884 by the Toledo Blue Stockings of the National League.
From a social standpoint, he had been born to parents who had been born into slavery and the country was still recovering from the Civil War, but his talent for baseball could not be ignored.
But his career was short-lived because of the racism of another Major Leaguer – Adrian Constantine “Cap” Anson, the captain of the Chicago Cubs the time, and the first bona fide superstar of professional baseball.
“Cap Anson happened to be quite a vicious racist,” Reinstein said. “He was a bully and didn’t like the fact that his vaunted Cubs were starting the season against a team that fielded a Black ballplayer … [but] he used another word we don’t like to say.”
Anson played the game under protest and told Major League owners the Cubs would no longer take the field against any team that fielded a Black ballplayer. While the owners tried to ignore Anson, within two years, the owners had met and taken a secret meeting and vote and a majority decided there would be no more Black players signed and those already on teams could play out their contracts, but would not be resigned.
“The Color Barrier was now a reality,” Reinstein said.
In the years 1900-20, meanwhile, the Negro Leagues and barnstorming teams criss-crossing the country, often beat white Major Leaguers in exhibition games.
It would not be until after WWII, when the Black Press in America pressured that hypocrisy after Black soldiers, including those in units like the Tuskegee Airmen and the 761st Tank Battalion within Gen. George S. Patton’s III Army Corps fought heroically to defeat the racism of Nazi Germany. The 761st had once been commanded by –Jackie Robinson after an old knee injury kept him from going overseas with his men.
It was only a matter of the right owner finding the right player to withstand the racist taunts of fans and opposing players alike.
On April 15, 1947, it happened and Robinson strode to his position in the Ebbets Field outfield.
“Amid the din of cheering fans, and of exploding flashbulbs capturing it,” Reinstein wrote, “there were also two inaudible sounds – of a wall falling, and of cheering that could not be heard with the ear, only from the heart. It rose from those not present physically, but spiritually, those who could not be seen, but were there just the same.”
What made this a topic Reinstein wanted to pursue?
“Over time, I’m saying, ‘Who are these people?’” he said. “I think the part that was probably influential for me is that, even in my Chronicle work, I’ve always loved an underdog story. I mean, who doesn’t.”
This may have been one of the biggest underdog story out there.
While Ken Burns’ 1994 documentary “Baseball,” definitely primed the pump for some fans of the game to learn more about its history.
“[It] was the first time that a lot of people heard of who these people were,” he said.
What has been the most unusual question Reinstein gets on the book circuit about “Before Brooklyn?”
“It’s always neat and memorable when somebody asks me something that I had never been asked before,” he said, noting that this reported was only the second person to ask if he thought women would ever play Major League ball. He included a slide in his PowerPoint deck of Toni Stone, a Black woman who played for several men’s Negro League teams, including the Indianapolis Clowns after the first. “So much is trial and error with doing these talks,” he continued. “So many things are the result of somebody asking me something that I wasn’t prepared for.”
His next book, “Travels Through the Heart and Soul of New England,” is something he wanted to make sure he did while still at Chronicle, because it’s based on the most memorable people that I’ve met around New England, and I knew it would be easier to tackle it while he had access to the technology at the show.
Ed budget certified
Within some 26 hours Monday and Tuesday, April 8 and 9, the School Committee certified a $62,930,345 compromise budget that includes some contract non-renewals, retirements, and $250,000 taken from excess and deficiency as well as using $100,000 in Circuit Breaker funds to close the budget gap. Then Whitman and Hanson officials then moved to fill the rest of the budget gap with override questions at town meetings and on the May annual town election ballots.
The two select boards met Tuesday, April 9, with Whitman Select Board planning to meet again today [April 11] on the matter. Voters in each community will take it from there next month.
The scenario was one of the budget-trimming proposals Superintendent of Schools Jeff Szymaniak had put before the School Committee last month.
“We’re not asking for an 11 percent increase here,” Chair Beth Stafford said in her board’s meeting on Monday, April 8. “The 11 percent is the assessment, not the budget increase.”
Stafford added that the assessment to towns increased because the state did not provide the district the increase that they should have.
“It was a very low increase – $100,000 doesn’t go very far, as you know,” she said.
The School Committee voted 9-0 to approve the compromise, which would increase the operating budget by 4.04 percent. David Forth was absent from the meeting.
“Instead of being well over $1 million for both towns, if we kept the assessment as it is, it would be down to about $509,212 for Whitman and [$372,141 for Hanson],” Stafford said. “In looking at their towns, [the officials] felt those would have a better chance at passing because it would be a smaller amount. … We know it’s a Band-Aid. I know the towns are thinking about larger overrides or doing something else, we can also look at other things we can do [in the future].”
Hanson’s override would ask the voters to support a $372,141 or 2.68 percent over the 5 percent that town’s officials had indicated was feasible, and Whitman’s override would be $509,212 or 3.87 percent over the 5-percent assessment increase town officials had planned for. The Hanson Select Board voted 4-1 – member Ed Heal was unable to attend because he was traveling – to place the article and ballot question but voted to refer the issue to Town Meeting rather than make a recommendation one way or the other.
“It’s their tax money,” Hanson Select Board Vice Chair Joe Weeks said. “I want them to figure out what is the best use of their tax money. I refuse to cut any operating jobs, positions or line items to fund this. … I don’t think we should be influencing them in any way.”
Hanson’s 7.68-percent assessment increase represents $14,974,736. Based on the average home assessed value of $470,190 in fiscal 2024, Whitman taxpayers would see an annual tax increase of $95.38, according to Carter.
Hanson taxpayer would see an annual increase of $94.98 annually based on an average home assessed value of about $499,000 in fiscal 2024 to fund the override there. Hanson has plotted out the tax impact for a range of home values on the town website, hanson-ma.gov.
The original assessment increase for Whitman had been 11.3 percent and Hanson’s had been close to 10.2 percent.
The Whitman Select Board, meeting the same night, heard Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter announce that the board would meet virtually at 12:30 p.m., today [Thursday, April 11] to vote on the question pertaining to the override article being placed on Whitman’s Town Meeting warrant and on the Town Election ballot. Whitman’s 7.787 percent assessment total is $19,135,687.
Whitman FinComm opposes move
The Whitman Finance Committee, also meeting Tuesday, unanimously voted not to support the school budget as Chair Rick Anderson termed it a lose-lose proposition for the schools.
“They came down a little over $900,000,” said Hanson Select Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett during her board’s meeting Tuesday night. She repeated Szymaniak’s admonition that the budget would not negatively affect educational outcomes, but that they “needed to dig in in the interest of trying to meet everybody halfway.”
“It’s not our job to vote the assessment or even approve the assessment that is handed to us by the School Committee,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “But we do need to decide how we fund it, if voters want to do that. … This [budget scenario] was always on the table.”
She noted that the board had not wanted to make dire cuts to town personnel, so in order to do that, they have been talking about an override that is specifically for the schools, presenting it in the warrant as 5 percent being what the town can afford, and the budget for the schools would include an override.
“I don’t think anyone is leaving feeling victorious, but I do think it’s definitely better than it was a week ago.
Stafford outlined the meeting she and Superintendent of Schools Jeff Szymaniak had on Monday, April 1 with town administrators Mary Beth Carter of Whitman and Lisa Green of Hanson as well as select board chairs Laura FitzGerald Kemmett of Hanson and Dr. Carl Kowalski of Whitman.
“It was a good meeting,” Stafford said of the meeting with administrators and select board chairs. “It went about an hour and a half, almost. I do want to say they were not trying to micromanage us. They were not putting us down. They were understanding of what our concerns were, too.”
She said that she and Szymaniak felt the session was “very collaborative” and that the group tried to come up with something that would work, hopefully, but that such an outcome would depend on what the School Committee decided.
“I would like to remind the board, because some people have said we are going backwards, that we haven’t progressed, that we haven’t had any new progress,” Stafford said. “And I want to remind everybody that we certainly have. We’ve seen that in the last couple of months with all the data on the students’ progress alone. We’ve advanced, we’ve come forward.”
Stafford also emphasized that the district has, in fact come forward with new programs, such as Innovation Pathways to prepare students for the outside world in the medical and health as well as business fields. The district has also added curriculum for grades one through 10.
“What I’m going to suggest does not impact any student growth and it, hopefully, might be the best way of getting through this year,” Stafford said. “We have talked with them about more conversations forward with the town, too, and things that they have decided that they need to do, but we all know is that one of the main problems is the state.”
The district received “a little over $100,000” from the state for fiscal 2025, Stafford said, adding that representatives in the General Court must do more. She also reminded the public that the district is like it’s own municipality, with it’s own health insurance, maintenance and facilities costs – as any community does.
“We knew both sides couldn’t do much of anything without an override,” she said. “The issue was, if we’re going to do an override – what size?”
Budget impact on learning
“This was a level-service budget,” Stafford said. “This did not include anything else.”
Szymaniak had presented the different budget tiers and the assessment costs they carried last month. The tier voted on Monday was the first on that list, which gave back about $900,000 and calls for not filling non-renewals of some contracts and retirements.
“These positions would not affect student scores, would not affect the young students’ class sizes that everybody was so concerned about,” Stafford said. “It would be a loss of positions, but positions that Jeff felt could be absorbed.”
Stafford also alluded to questions from the public on whether the interventionists hired to help students transition back to classrooms after the isolation and remote learning during the COVID pandemic were necessary.
“I think that everybody could see that the interventionists made a difference,” she said. “All our scores went up and they continue to go up. That would put us backwards if we couldn’t have them anymore.”
Residents have also questioned recent hires.
Seven of the positions recently filled by the school district are now required by the state, including English Language Learners (ELL) teachers or tutors and the district also has to retain E&D and Circuit Breaker funds for midyear special education student enrollments or placements.
School Committee Vice Chair Christopher Scriven said Monday that he was interested in hearing what some of the discussions held during the meeting with town officials on April 1 about the future.
“How does this not put us right back in the same position next year?” he asked. “I’m curious to know what, if any, plans are in the works for the future?”
Stafford said Hanson Town Administrator Lisa Green has discussed her town’s consideration of a $5 million operational override next year as recommended by their Madden Report. While Carter has not specifically stated her town’s plan, there is also “discussion ongoing with them.”
Stafford also said she did not think a large override would pass this year and could cost upwards of 20 positions if it should fail.
“The real problem is coming from the state,” Scriven said. “We’re not doing anything to move forward here.”
He asked if there was any push back from the towns on whether the shortfall is due to anything other than a failure of the state to adequately fund schools and asked what the towns’ legislative team was doing to push the state to adequately fund schools, especially regional districts.
“If we look at the 5 percent assessment that the town’s kind of lock us into, we’re never going to get out of this with a .0001-percent increase from the state every year,” Szymaniak said. “We’re just not. It’s not going to happen.”
Whitman Select Board member Shawn Kain argued that, to say the state does not adequately fund schools is something of a misconception, however.
“Through their eyes, they’re giving us too much state aid, and they’ve given us too much state aid for the last period of time,” he said. “Once we come out of the hold-harmless situation, then we get back into the typical scenario and they start to fund us with state aid that’s proportional to our budget.”
Both Scriven and Fred Small acknowledged that the current budget practices are putting an undo burden on taxpayers, especially those on fixed incomes. Small again advocated for a five-year plan to better demonstrate the need to taxpayers.
Hillary Kniffen reminded the board they have already done that and agreed the problem is the state funding and a misunderstanding among local taxpayers that the schools are overspending.
Member Dawn Byers asserted there is more of a revenue collection problem on the part of the towns than a budgeting problem with the schools.
“To recognize the concerns about the taxpayers, we’re only doing them a further disservice by using E&D of $250,000,” she said. “Because when you go to borrow for a middle school building, that interest rate’s going to go up because the district has used E&D.”
She also said, while it’s comforting that education won’t be impacted, she is still concerned about what positions will be cut.
Stafford also said residents do not realize that $600,000 of the money taken out of E&D last year went toward helping the district recover from a damaging data breach the year before, on which recovery work is still being done. That was done so the amount not covered by insurance was not billed to the towns.
“We’re not unique,” said Committee member Glen DiGravio, attending remotely. “This is happening all over the state. Every town’s going to be voting on an override, pretty much… I think this is a fair compromise proposal. I think the motion before us is something that gets us through.”
He said he knows the Committee wants to fix next year and the next five years, but they have to fix this year first.
“If an override is going to happen, no matter what, I think making it as painless as possible is what we should be doing now,” he said, advocating Szymaniak’s proposal.
Hanson’s questions
In Hanson, Weeks asked a question many residents have been wondering about: What happens if the override fails?
Hanson Town Counsel Kate Feodoroff said if either town rejected the budget while the other approves it, that is considered a rejection and the School Committee may decide not to accept that, which would force another town meeting. If Hanson, for example, were to approve only the lesser amount and Whitman approves the greater amount, School Committee may opt to accept the lesser amount and adjust Whitman’s portion accordingly, Feodoroff said.
The Committee is, however, also able to force a Super Town Meeting, attended by residents, and would have to work within a 1/12 budget until it is settled.
FitzGerald-Kemmett summed up for her board that it seemed that, at the first budget certification vote in March, she felt the School Committee felt that, since the two towns were discussing an override, “We’re going for the gusto, we’re going to go for the maximum,” she said. “I’m not saying that for dramatic effect. I think their feeling was, ‘If they’re going to do an override anyway, and that’s how we’re going to fund this delta between the 5 percent and whatever we vote, then, let’s not cut back on anything and keep as much E&D and Circuit-Breaker money as we can.’ I am not defending this, nor am I trying to condemn them. I’m just stating this is the perspective.”
She also stressed that the School Committee is elected to do the job of advocating for students.
“We’re elected to do a different job,” she said. “That’s why, at budget time, it may feel like we’re at different ends of the spectrum, but they’re doing what they feel they need to do. … We’re trying to balance the town’s budget, and I don’t want to say never the twain shall meet, because I’m eternally hopeful that the twain shall meet at some point.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett also said the forensic audit is also continuing, with a meeting planned for this month perhaps as early as this week.
Hanson Little League opens the season
HANSON – “Some days you win, some days you lose, some days it rains,” off-kilter rookie phenom pitcher Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh intoned during his first big Major League news interview in the 1988 film “Bull Durham.”
Well, it rained Saturday, April 6, on the Hanson Little League’s Opening Day parade – and no one seemed to mind much, except for the fact that the Pitch, Hit & Run contest, as well as the scheduled games, had to be postponed.
The opener marked the 25th year of Hanson Little League’s charter with Little League International, and it would take more than a little rain to dampen that celebration.
The morning began with the promise of the sun peeking through clouds after a few days of sometimes heavy rain and, while the air was raw, parents and excited players – from T-ball to the Major League levels – gathered at the Town Hall green to receive new baseball caps and T-shirts, emblazoned with the name of the sponsoring business on the back, before marching to Botieri Field.
The rain held off long enough for a Hanson ambulance and fire engine to crawl up the hill on Liberty Street, sirens blaring, ahead of the teams and family members.
But just as the opening ceremonies were getting underway, a misty rain set in, and by the time Hanson Little League President Robert Kniffen began to speak, it intensified, driven by a steady wind.
“Baseball breaks your heart,” former MLB Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti wrote, but, as Kniffen noted, it also symbolizes community.
“Little League is a community game, played in thousands of communities across the world and there’s no better community than [the one] you are in right now – Hanson, Massachusetts,” Kniffen said. “As you can see, it’s truly a community effort, from the moms and dads, the aunts and the uncles, our first responders – so much goes into making this a special season.”
Opening ceremonies included former Hanson Little League board member and League President Paul Clark threw out the ceremonial First Pitch and a player selected from each team went to the pitchers mound to yell “Play ball!”
And the season was on.
“In addition to Paul’s 11 years serving the board, and three years as president of the board, Paul also spearheads the Damien’s 5K Freaky Road Race fundraiser, which also benefits community programs, including Hanson Little League,” Kniffen said.
He noted that Little League’s mission is to teach life lessons and build stronger individuals and communities.
“We all have an important role and an opportunity to teach and learn these life lessons through Little League baseball,” he said. “For the players, that means to … be a good teammate. To be a good friend. To do something kind – to help a teammate out. To be coachable – to listen to your coaches and what they’re teaching you.”
As glasses steamed up or got splattered with raindrops, a few umbrellas went up and several spectators turned their backs to the wind, Scouts from Troop 68 raised the flag as Brittney Prescott sang the national anthem.
Pastor Kris Skjerli of Calvary Baptist Church listed several MLB players who often credit their faith in their daily lives more than their on-field success, before offering the opening blessing.
“Thank you for men and women who have given their lives and their dreams to sports and baseball as we gather here today, and have been able to keep it in perspective,” he said in his blessing. “And I pray we can do the same this year, and have fun, play our hearts out and develop our skills. Give wisdom to the coaches, patience and understanding.”
He prayed that the players be protected from injury and that their attitudes and on-field behavior reflect respect for each other. The two attributes require no skill, but help players improve every day, Kniffen told the players ringing the ball field.
“In sports, and in anything else, there’s two things that you can control, and that’s your attitude and your effort,” Kniffen said. “It’s not how far you hit the ball. It’s not how fast you throw it. … We look for you to be a positive teammate.”
That means dependably showing up for every game and every practice, not complaining or giving up, by always trying your hardest and listening to coaches, no matter what the outcome.
“For the parents and families, it’s time to take a step back and appreciate the game in its purest form … it’s just kids, enjoying America’s pastime for the love of the game,” he said, reminding them that there are no contracts or scholarships being handed out by high-power scouts.
While there will be failures for players to experience, the consequences will be minimal, and parents were asked to keep that in mind.
“None of this would have been possible without the group and community efforts that have been put forth in the past year in preparation for today and this upcoming season,” Kniffen said. He gave a tip of the cap from the league to the players’ families’ participation and positive support; the league’s board of directors; coaches and volunteers who stepped up to lead teams this spring and the team sponsors, asking families to take note of sponsors’ advertising banners around the fields and support their businesses.
He also gave “a big thank you to the Hanson Fire and Police departments for their help in making the event a safe success.
Kniffen gave special recognition to Deputy Fire Chief Charlie Barends for donating his time to attend the annual coaches meeting to train coaches and volunteers on CPR, first aid and operating the use of AED machines as well as securing the three machines stored at the HLL fields for emergency cardiac use.
Kniffen also saluted the league’s fundraising partnership with Gold Athletics. Last year the partnership translated to $6,000 for the league, and this year they plan to exceed that.
Based on the current fundraiser’s success to date, that seems like a good bet.
Gold Athletics representative Matt Ross reported that, while, there has been success in the past two years of the partnership. Said he wanted to “address some of the pain points.”
Even though the families involved in Hanson Little League sold more than $17,000 worth of cookies dough last year, the company wanted to make it easier this year with a pretzel and waffle fundraiser in which orders will be shipped directly to customers’ homes anywhere in the country. As a result, three people are already close to their sales goal.
“We’re hoping to beat last year’s record,” Ross said. “Another new feature is somebody can actually just donate if they’d like to.”
Kniffen also asked the crowd to consider supporting Hanson Little League in other ways, such as the snack shack and raffles. One raffle, for four seats behind home plate at a Red Sox game, which will be drawn on April 26, and for tickets to an Aug. 10 New Kids on the Block concert tickets, for which more information will be soon be available about the $20 tickets.
All fundraising proceeds go directly back to the league.
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