HANSON – The stark message on Hanson Public Library’s web page made the problem clear – maybe.
“The state Senate recently passed an Economic Development Bond bill that would prohibit municipalities from receiving library construction grant funds if they are not in compliance with the MBTA multi-family zoning requirement,” the message reads.
“We’re not saying anything about MBTA one way or the other,” Hanson Library Director Karen Stolfer said. “Our main concern is, it’s tied into our grant.”
She pointed to the important role the public library plays in a small community like Hanson – as an educational resource second only to the schools, a community resource.
“Just to have that in jeopardy of losing funding …” she said.
Stolfer said that, with the failure of the House and Senate committees to reach a compromise, the funding issues could get pushed to next year. The MBTA Communities Act could impact other funding for town grants and funding sources.
“That’s kind of good news for us because, obviously, it could come up again,” she said. “The senate version of the Economic Bond Bill says you have to be in compliance [with MBTA Communities], the House version doesn’t. … they couldn’t come to an agreement.”
Another point of concern for Stolfer is that the funding comes in two pieces.
The one now pending, up to $100,000 in matching funds for what has already been spent, will reimburse expenses laid out for preliminary work such as planning, including schematics for a potential library, and a second phase after a project attains all the necessary approvals, comes by way of a construction grant in the “millions of dollars.”
The first grant, which has already been applied for, stands to reimburse for the more than $77,000 already spent on the new library project planning, including grant money and trust funds the library already had, Stolfer said, stressing it was not all town money.
“We had to spend that money to meet the requirements to apply for the grant,” she said. “We just have to let them know our concerns and say, ‘This is what can happen – that Hanson could lose a new library and it’s a needed resource in town.’”
She said the alert was posted, along with state officials’ contact information as a way to give residents a way to voice their opinions on the funding issue.
“That [second grant] wouldn’t be until further down the line,” she said.
While Stolfer said there may have been other sticking points, the MBTA Communities portion’s effect on grants is, and has been, her main concern, with hopes for funding of a library building project riding on it.
“The town isn’t in compliance and the potential for this version [of the bill goes forward, then we would not be eligible for a grant,” Stolfer said.
The next round of grants will be announced in October and the status of the bills, combined with any potential impact of a lawsuit some towns are pursuing against the MBTA Communities program cloud the future for Hanson’s library plans.
“There’s so much work that we’ve obviously put in, and when the application deadline was May 31, we met all the requirements, and now, the possibility that that could be changed, just seems really unfair,” Stolfer said.
Select Board Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said the issue is not that clear-cut and pointed out that the MBTA Communities article, which was rejected majority of voters at the May Town Meeting did not involve the library grant at the time.
“Quite frankly, we didn’t anticipate that [the state] would pull the MBTA Communities card on us,” she said. “Although, ironically, at Town Meeting we were talking about MBTA Communities, at the time there was a list of grants that were off the table if we didn’t pass it. We were aware of those 13 grants. This was not one of them.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett said the town was also aware the grant sought by the library was a competitive one.
“With the financial shape that we’re in right now, even if we get that grant, I don’t know – the way that that grant works is that it’s a reimbursable grant, which means we’ve got to come up with the money up front and then get reimbursed,” she said. “I don’t think it’s happening.”
While the House passed a similar bill in June, that legislation does not link the library construction grants to the MBTA Communities requirement. The Senate version of the bill retains the language, and a joint conference committee session on Monday, Aug. 6 was unable to reach a compromise, the Mass Municipal Association was reporting, according to Stolfer said as she encouraged residents to call state legislators “if you would like to express your opinions regarding this matter.”
According to the MMA, the Senate bill (S. 2856) includes many of the same investments as the House bill (H. 4804), including:

• $400 million for MassWorks grants for local infrastructure
• $100 million for the Rural Development Fund
• $150 million for the Public Library Construction Program to help municipalities update and rehabilitate these essential facilities
• $100 million for grants, through the Seaport Economic Council, to provide support for the state’s 78 coastal municipalities to withstand and adapt to the impacts of climate change
• $400 million for climate technology bonding authorizations.
  A House-Senate conference committee also was unable to reach agreement on a proposed multi-billion-dollar economic development bond bill, including these provisions, which the governor filed in March as the Mass Leads Act.
  “In the closing hours of the formal legislative session for the year, the Legislature enacted a $5.16 billion housing bond bill, but couldn’t reach an accord on a multi-billion-dollar economic development package or a climate bill aimed primarily at promoting clean energy,” the MMA reported. “The housing bill is intended to kickstart housing production across Massachusetts, and the House and Senate had passed different versions in June.”
  Hanson residents had been advised at the May Town Meeting that a grant for programs at the Multi-Service Senior Center was in danger of a clawback or denial if they rejected the MBTA Communities Bylaw, but FitzGerald-Kemmett pointed to the actions of the Healey administration as bearing some of the fault for the situation, clapping back at municipalities unwilling to go along with the MBTA Communities program.
  “This isn’t going to be the last of it,” she said. “I’m sure there’s going to be other little ‘gotchas’ along the way.”
  She would have preferred the administration had approached it differently – adding grants beyond the ones already planned and applied for, that would have been attached to the MBTA program, instead of taking away grant programs for which municipalities would have been eligible.
  “Sometimes, I swear, these guys don’t think about [the] basic psychology of people,” she said. “You’re going to take something away from somebody for not complying with something they didn’t know they had to comply with.”
  Gov. Charlie Baker may have passed it, but Gov. Maura Healey is the one enforcing it – which is the real issue, FitzGerald-Kemmett argues.
  There are few, if any alternatives for the town’s fronting the money, FitzGerald-Kemmett argues.
  “I guess we could look for federal grants or there are private grants that we might be able to get, but of course, they would be competitive too,” she said. “But, if we don’t get the state money, this is just absolutely not happening. We don’t have the money for that.”
  The $70,000 already spent in the planning stages of the library project now represent funds that could have been spent on something else, FitzGerald-Kemmett noted.
  “We’ve got a million other things we could have spent that money on, a generator for the senior center/library – a bunch of other stuff,” she said.
  Opponents of the MBTA Communities, incensed by the apparent overstep of state government rejected the bylaw, vowing to fight it in the courts.
  But there is no class action lawsuit, FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
  “We’re going to have to put money away because we’re probably going to end up getting sued by the state,” she said. “Not only are we losing money and we’re going to have to defend ourselves.”
  While the law only requires towns to establish a district defined as “a zone of reasonable size in which an allowance for as of right multi-family housing is permitted” within a half-mile of public transportation, must comply with all Hanson building codes or be denied, and has been discussed at multiple public hearings by the Planning Board and the Select Board, which were sparsely attended and “when asked for input, the Planning Board received input from one office,” according to Campbell.
  At the May Town Meeting Town Administrator Lisa Green said the Attorney General has required towns to comply with the law or risk lawsuits and classification as ineligible for forms of state funding, including grants.
  “We don’t even have an estimate of what it would cost to fight this,” she said. “They are very serious with this. We’re trying to preserve the grants we’ve received in the last couple of years totaling $2 million.”
  Stoler, meanwhile, has been hoping for compromise language to salvage a $100,00 grant to fund the planning stages of a new Hanson Public Library, expressing concern that the nearly $75,000 in funds already invested in the project might go to waste, to say nothing of additional grants, potentially totaling more than $1 million for actual construction.

By Tracy F. Seelye, Express editor
editor@whitmanhansonexpress.com
WHITMAN – The Select Board hear – and expressed – concerns over the financial impact of changes to the host community agreement concerning retail cannabis business Berkley Botanicals, and over the effect of increased interest rates on the Whitman Middle School project at the board’s meeting on Tuesday, July 23.
“We recently heard from one of the holders of the host community agreement license – Berkley Botanicals, hoping to open a recreational marijuana store on Bedford Street – that the Cannabis Control Commission had rejected the host community agreement with the town of Whitman,” said Select Board member Justin Evans. “The short explanation for why is that, after we adopted the … agreement with Berkley Botanicals, as well as our other two licensees, the regulations changed.”
That left Whitman’s agreement with Berkely signed before the date of effective regulations with the state.
There are a couple of options open to the town, he said.
Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter outlined those options:

• Resubmit the existing host community agreement with a new effective date;
• Amend the existing HCA in a way that the town’s and Berkley’s lawyers negotiate and agree is “minimally compliant” with the law;
• Adopt the model HCA with modifications – adding some of the existing HCA provisions into the model;
• Adopt the model HCA. There are meaningful differences between the existing Whitman HCA and the model; or
• Waive the HCA requirement.
  Town counsel has made no recommendations about which option the town opts for, he is looking for direction from the board. The one recommendation he did make was to reject the last option.
  Evans recommended agreeing to the model HCA to get the business open. He said the town could use the revenue. He also noted that Whitman has spent a ‘fair amount of money’ negotiating with the business – as well as two others – and the town is effectively throwing that money away in signing the model agreement.
  The Select Board opted to table the matter until its Aug. 20 meeting in the absence of town counsel, ZBA Chair John Goldrosen and Select Board Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski. Evans said he would support drafting some points to discuss at that meeting.
  “There would likely be some benefit to adopting the model with some modifications, but it would likely get approved down the line somewhere not as quickly,” Evans said.
  There is also a provision in Whitman’s HCA that, if a more favorable agreement is reached between the town and any cannabis business, the town would reach out to the others and renegotiate their HCAs, he added.
  “We’ve seen very little progress with two of them and quite a lot of agreement in one of them – the one that’s reaching out to us to get open soon, so I think we may ‘feel out’ if the other two businesses are still interested in pursuing recreational marijuana dispensaries in town, or if they may want to turn their licenses back in,” Evans said. “That might be a side benefit of changing our HCA.”
  Putting it off for another six months or so does not benefit the community, either, he said.
  “What we’ve heard so far is that … the CCC has released the model and are only accepting the model to approve,” Evans said. “The thoughts of Berkley Botanicals’ lawyer is that, if the town were to adopt the model HCA and sign the agreement with them or waive the requirement that there’s an HCA – they’d get approved within the next round.”
  That round of agreements is expected to be approved in the next 90 days, Evans said.
  “If we did anything else, [town counsel] opinion, or perhaps gut feeling, was that they would reject it and, initially, we would have to submit some reason for why.”
  That could delay things yet another 90 days, he explained.
  The major differences, according to town counsel were a lot of zoning controls relating to noise, smell, Evans reported. He said he likes the timeline for effectiveness, which removes community impact hearings and vehicle management requirements.
  “Those are the kinds of things we put in to be over-protective that aren’t in the model HCA,” he said. “I know something that was close to [Select Board member Shawn Kain] when we were negotiating it, was some of the specific community impacts that we carved into our HCA to say, ‘This is something the town considers a community impact,’ they agreed to it, and would have theoretically mad it easier to have made it easier to collect for impacts they are having to the town that other, non-marijuana related businesses have not had on the community.”

Whitman Middle School interest rates
“Why I’m here is because I’m still following [the Middle School] meetings and trying to stay up with the information and over the last couple of months I’ve heard a lot of positive information from the middle school,” Galvin said
In a discussion not included on the agenda, the board heard questions raised by resident John Galvin concerning interest rate’s impact on the bottom line.
Galvin had served on the Whitman Middle School Building Committee, resigning when he no longer supported the project.
“But that’s not why I’m here,” he said, outlining his concern, despite good news he’s heard on the project’s budget. “The concern that I have is not the cost of the project, but the cost of the borrowing for the project.”
The building committee has been able to bond the amount of money that had arrived at this year and the interest rate that came along with that financing “is not pretty,” he said.
“It’s considerably higher than what we just recently borrowed for the DPW building,” he said. “I think it’s important that this board makes it a concern as well, because if we continue along this track, it’s my understanding that next year we will probably do another similar bond to what we did and then, the year after that, the big bond hits.”
Ending up borrowing against the same interest rate being paid now would cost taxpayers a “significant amount of money,” Galvin said, noting his rough calculations put that cost at almost $25 million more over 30 years for the same building if the bond percentage stays at the interest rate the district is now getting.
He also mentioned the district audit that both towns are demanding.
“I don’t know where that stands, but I would plead that both towns move forward with that as quickly as possible, because it’s not looking pretty right now with the borrowing for the Whitman Middle School,” he said.
Asked for a comment by Salvucci, Carter said she is very aware of the BAN taken out – expected to be at $4 million at 4 percent, the BAN the Schools took was $8 million at 5.87 percent, because more money had been needed up-front.
“Once [the towns] get both of their audits done, hopefully they’ll have their bond rating reinstated, allowing them to move forward with a more favorable rate,” she said, noting she has been told no additional borrowing until, at least, after the first of the year.
Salvucci – noting the Moody rating is down because the incomplete audits increased interest rates – asked, if a special Town Meeting would be required, should interest rates go up.
“Town Meeting voted the amount of the project,” Carter said. “The amount of the project they should stay on track with, however, the interest rate they applied to that project does make a difference in the end result to the taxpayers. … They’re waiting for a new cashflow for the financial adviser to update the strategy and planning on borrowing.”
Salvucci also asked if any consideration has been give toward making the project smaller.
Kain expressed hope that, after the audits are complete, the project can be “back on tract and rectified, adding that the issue “Is definitely on our radar.”

By Tracy F. Seelye, Express editor
editor@whitmanhansonexpress.com
WHITMAN – The Select Board heard a proposal for a new formula with the goal of creating a process that is “transparent, clearly defined and easy to understand” – a process that is fair to both the Whitman-Hanson Regional School District and to town departments and must be responsive to current data.
The 5-percent rule that emerged from the Madden Report, while transparent, was not that easy to understand, according to board member Shawn Kain, adding that while it was something discussed with financial consultant John Madden, he never actually included it in the report and guidance on how it should be implemented by the town.
“What I had hoped would have led to cleaning up the budget process with the school department, actually, I think, clouded the issue and made things really difficult,” he said. “Having a stagnant 5 percent doesn’t seem to capture the complexities of our budgets.”
Kain said he intended for own formula should also be a starting point for discussion.
The first step is to project revenue.
“We’ve done this over the last couple of years and I think we’re getting better at doing it,” he said.
The second step to Kain’s formula is calculating a 2 ½ percent increase for all departments, including the schools. In what he termed “Step 3A,” if there is a surplus, additional revenue, recurring revenue excluding one-time funds above 2 ½ percent, “the amount allocated to WHRSD will be proportional to the percent of the general fund expenditures that is spent on education,” currently about 50 percent.
“To me this is the baseline to calculate what we can raise the 2 ½ percent over what we raised the year before,” he said. “This is based on recurring revenue, not based on one-time revenue, which was a little bit of a bone of contention this last year.”
In deficit years, the percentage of decreases would also be felt equally until the budget is balanced.
“By no means is it the end-all, be-all – it’s just a starting point,” Kain said, as he provided the budget update during the Tuesday, July 23 meeting, focusing on the school assessment formula and the system through which the town monitors financial trends.
“The two do complement each other,” he said.
Kain said he was an advocate for hiring Madden, whose recommendations the town has been using as the basis for budgeting decisions.
“The process opened up a lot of healthy dialog, and his recommendations have really helped [us] move in the right direction,” Kain said. “For that, we should be grateful, but this last budget cycle has surfaced a vulnerability in our financial policy, specifically with the school assessment.”
While Madden’s information was a good starting point for moving the town in the right direction, according to Kain, but a lack of clarity and specificity has hindered completion of the budget process.
“For this reason, I’m proposing that we develop a new formula,” he said.
That need not be very complex, he said, especially since officials need to clearly communicate the budget challenges to the people of Whitman, assuring voters that they are working to improve the budget process.
“We want the people to know there is integrity behind our decisions,” he said, adding he was sharing the information to gauge the board’s support for those efforts.
“Hopefully, this is the start of a healthy conversation that will lead to a meaningful solution,” he said.

Financial trend monitoring
Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter, Assistant Town Administrator Kathleen Keefe, Finance Chair Kathleen Ottina and Kain met with financial consultant Zachary Blake from the state Division of Local Services on Tuesday, July 9 as part of a Community Compact Best Practice Grant the town received to help with making improvements in that area.
Blake and his team will help the town implement a financial trend monitoring system and to develop a financial forecast.
“He already has lots of data from Whitman though the Department of Revenue, and we are planning on developing a usable report for the fall,” Kain said. “This report will be essential for us to strategically address the upcoming budget.”
The monitoring system is intended to monitor factors that identify the financial condition of a community, arranging them into a more rational order so they can be more easily analyzed and measured, he explained. The goal is to predict and prepare so the town is better able to prepare for fiscal distress in order to prevent fiscal crisis.
The town of Northborough uses the system.
Select Board member Justin Evans said Kain’s presentation represented a great first start.
“The 5 percent has not necessarily been the easiest to stick to either for the town or for the schools,” he said. “It was a number based on some work that John Madden did a couple of years ago, but it’s time to rethink it.”
He agreed completely with steps 1 and 3.
“Finding a way to divide new revenue is the right way to do it,” Evans said. “I’m a little concerned in Step 2, because whenever the Select Board talks about 2 ½ percent to the schools and when the Finance Committee about 2 ½ percent to the schools, it’s not necessarily the same as the School Committee talking about 2 ½ percent budget growth.”
He noted that a 2 ½ increase in the assessment to the schools allows them to increase their budget to grow between 1 and 1 ½ percent, while permitting 2 ½ percent budget growth for the district, it breaks it away from Prop 2 1/2.
“That immediately takes some of our new revenue every year, but I think it puts a more equitable start to that system,” he said. “General government can grow 2 ½ percent, School Department can grow 2 ½ percent, new revenue above those parts can be divided up somehow, but that probably does lock us in somewhere around a 5-ish – 4- to 5-percent assessment increase every year until the schools come out of hold-harmless.”
School Committee member Rosemary Connolly thanked Kain for his work and said the regional agreement gives away the town’s educational rights under Chapter 71 and that training new school committee members take had stressed that the article at town meeting which tried to separate the two budgets was not legal.
“They had just come down, hot off the presses, with what they said, so I’m concerned that this gives the impression that we actually have control of this,” she said. “There is a financial process that we’re supposed to do to insulate and that is come to the assessor first, and at my end on the School Committee have a good sense of where we’re going … early in the fall.”
She advocated asking how much something is going to cost before talking about what the town has to spend.
“We’re going to have a big jump in the vocational, but it isn’t an unusual cost, when you spread it out and say ‘what is everybody paying for it,’” she said. “We may have to look at what did we overpay to another community and how can we get that [$4.5 million] back and then move forward in some sort of trending more appropriately.”
Kain said he does not want to send the message that Whitman is trying to develop a formula to coerce Hanson into a budget formula rather he was striving for a formula they could agree on.
“What I’d like to do is develop a budget formula that we can agree upon early in the budget process so that, when it comes time to actually compute the budget, we’re all on the same page,” he said. “I believe we are partners.”
Ottina said Kain has kept her informed and up-to-date on the proposal.
“Having this discussion in July is a lot better than having it in April,” she said.
School Committee member Dawn Byers, also of Whitman, asked if the Superintendent of Schools or School Committee was aware of the meeting, noting she had attended because she noted a budget presentation on the agenda.
“I’d be remiss if I didn’t say I’m disappointed that the agenda itself wasn’t more clear that, in fact, you’re talking about the school assessment,” she said.
She agreed with Ottina that this is a good time to be discussing next year’s budget, but noted Northborough’s budget may be different to W-H school deficit may be much different than it appears based on the budgeting formula.