WHITMAN – While the nation seems to grow further divided with each passing day, a group of Whitman residents have looked to area towns for an idea aimed at bringing residents together.
It’s called the Whitman Freedom Team (WFT), and perhaps the holiday season is the best time to explore it.
Former teacher and principal Thomas Evans, and School Committee member Steve Bois are heading up the project, based on similar efforts in Natick and Scituate. There is no limit foreseen regarding the number of people who might choose to become involved, to aid in drawing on expertise specific to a situation.
Evans pointed to the fact that he and Bois are on opposite ends of the political spectrum.
“He’s a very dear friend of mine, he’s very fair, and that’s what I want,” he said. “I don’t want people to agree with me, I want people to tell me what the problem is, define it and then go to reconciliation.”
Select Board Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski said both Bois’ and Evans’ involvement speak well of the program.
“My attitude about finance committees changed when Steve became the chair of the Finance Committee,” Kowalski said. “And you, Tom, absolutely best principal I have ever seen.”
“You don’t know any others,” Evans said.
“I know a few,” Kowalski said. “To have you as the headpin on this will work out perfectly and I’m looking forward to working with you.”
The freedom team mission: “to preserve freedom through unity in the community,” according to Scituate’s website scituatefreedom.org.
“This is something that is going to take a while to germinate and to become official,” Evans said in his first public opportunity to discuss the program and its aims. “It’s something I’ve been working on since last March after watching a TEDXNatic talk on the program presented by Jamele Adams. TED Talks are influential videos from expert speakers on education, business, science, tech and creativity. The X in the program’s title denotes it is an independently organized TED event. A former dean of students at Brandeis University Adams is the first Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the Scituate School District in Scituate.
He gave the TED talk in Natick, dedicated to inspiring others to “be L.I.T.” – as love, inclusion and trust are keys to bringing communities together.
“We’re going to do it,” Evans said. “The more we talk about things and the more that we talk about how our country is, is moving toward being as good as we can be. We can help with that.”
Evans said Adams was not only passionate about the idea of Freedom Teams, but was also willing to help people form teams in their own communities. When no intervention is needed, they discuss ways to improve their communities.
“That’s why I’m here tonight, because of my friend, Jamele Adams,” Evams said, noting that Adams, of Franklin, has been very supportive of his efforts to form a team in Whitman. “My hope is that those who might be interested in helping in making the WFT a reality will give me a call and then we’ll go from there.”
While he supplied the Select Board with some information on what a freedom team is, he began his remarks on Tuesday, Dec. 5 by stressing what it is not.
“It’s not political,” Evans said. “It’s not partisan and it’s not a law-enforcement agency. The WFT is made up of Whitman volunteers and is based on the 10-point communal engagement model that roots pillars of the community, and people central in the community as a team dedicated to love, inclusion and trust. It might sound corny, but that’s what we’re about.”
While not a law-enforcement agency, Evans said the key to the team’s success will be the police chief, a person trained in what is lawful and whose expertise the team would defer to in such matters.
Chief Timothy Hanlon, for example, has advised that should the WFT set up a hotline number as Scituate has, it cannot be affiliated with the police department because of town liability issues.
Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter and Superintendent of Schools Jeff Szymaniak have also had helpful discussions with the team, Evans said.
“The superintendent … has offered us support,” Evans said noting issues often come to the attention of freedom teams through the schools. “He has allowed [Director of Equity and MTSS] Dr. Nicole Semas-Schneeweis … to speak with students who are interested in getting involved.”
Parents, a lawyer, clergy, and local political officials (including three Select Board members) are involved. Evans said he is working to include a social media expert, a mental health clinician trained in trauma and multicultural lenses and a transformational justice facilitator.
“We hope that more people will hear about this will learn about it, respond to it and come forward,” he said. “Tonight is just the beginning. There’s still much more to do before the Whitman Freedom Team becomes a reality, but rest assured, it will happen.”
The WFT is also working to organize as a 501 (c)3 non profit, which will allow it to stay independent of the town, raise funds to finance some of its goals and programs.
Select Board member Shawn Kain, who does similar work professionally, urged caution in dealing with people in crisis, even as he supported the effort.
“Point well taken,” Evans said, noting that members of any organization should know their limits.
Police chiefs in Franklin and Natick have been supportive of their communities’ freedom teams and the positive impact they have seen from the teams’ work.
“The Freedom Team assists in helping our community heal when needed, and will join the network of the freedom teams, of which Whitman will be number eight,” Evans said. “It exists to listen and facilitate discussions for individuals and groups, encouraging people to be ‘up-standers,’ not by-standers in interrupting racism, bigotry and prejudice wherever it’s encountered, preserving freedom through unity and a commitment to gaining new understanding in the community.”
Those goals have been adopted from the teams in Scituate and Natick.
While Evans said he is not looking to be the only person making decisions in the team but he has suggested the motto: “Find a Way,” in memory of the late J.P. Drier, a young man who had so much to give to our community. The former W-H student athlete died from complications of Type 1 diabetes in July.
“The mission of the Whitman Freedom Team is to preserve freedom through unity in the community,” he said. The team will meet monthly, usually via Zoom, to explore ways of offering dialog in support of individuals and the entire community in the goal of moving beyond tolerance to celebrate and share the community’s diversity.
“We’re beginning to change, and we need to change,” he said. “We can be different, but we can also work together.”
Evans said he was advised by the seven other freedom teams in eastern Massachusetts – including Natick (where the first team was started in 2016), Hingham, Frankin. Hopkinton and Scituate – to adopt some of their organizational frameworks and goals. rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.
“Once we’ve formed officially, the members will decide what the wording should be, but this is where we’re starting” he said.
When a report of hate, bias-motivated threats, harassment or violence related to race, color, sex, gender, gender or sexual identity, age, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability or class, is received by the team it will offer a safe, private and respectful place to discuss such an incident, using a transformative justice model.
“We respond to violence without creating more violence,” Evans said. “We are trying to be healing – having parties come together, be educated and de-escalate situations.”

WHITMAN – While unanimously voting to set the tax rate on Tuesday, Nov. 28 the Select Board also signaled its concerns for residents who might be forced out of their homes by the decision.
The board to adhere to historic precedent and set a single tax rate for fiscal 2024 during the town’s annual tax classification hearing. The Board of Assessors had voted to recommend adoption of the single tax rate, with no commercial or residential exemptions, which is also customary. They estimate the excess levy capacity to be $4,435.48.
“The town has always voted a single tax rate, as opposed to a split rate,” Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter said.
By a vote of 4-0 the Select Board voted in favor of the recommendations. Select Board Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski was absent.
Resident John Galvin, of 41 High St., who has served on the finance committee as well as the Whitman Middle School Building Committee, voiced concerns about the ability of elderly and low-income residents to bear the tax burden.
“I stand here challenging the [Select Board], to start taking the lead instead of just letting all of this happen,” Galvin said. “In the last year, this board just let this all happen.”
He said it was time the board consider how to help seniors and low-income people, who are in “significant risk” of being forced out of their homes.
“I don’t know what, but we have to do something in order to help those taxpayers out,” he said.
The Board of Assessors has vowed to “leave no stone unturned” in an effort to help low-income and senior residents.
Select Board Vice Chair Dan Salvucci said that in his 30 years on the Finance Committee and Select Board, the town has always done a factor one tax rate. Why?
“By not doing factor one, we put more pressure on the businesses in town,” Salvucci said. “What’s going to happen is we’re either going to drive businesses out of own or they’re going to increase their prices. … Rents are going to go up. It’s going to hurt the citizens one way or the other.”
Businesses are what keeps the town going he said, but also expressed his concern for seniors.
“I’m a senior, but we have a town to run and businesses are a big part of it,” he said.
Select Board member Justin Evans agreed with Salvucci’s point on businesses and noted that a couple of other towns have begun to look at tax exempt properties and trying to negotiate a pilot payment from them.
Select Board member Laura Howe, who said she, too, is a “pretty much” a senior, too but noted Galvin brought up low-income residents and expressed her willingness to work with anyone who has a solution to help taxpayers in general.
“Low-income is huge,” she said. “There are people suffering and I have made note of that several times of what not being able to pay your bills does to a family. It’s very destabilizing and it affects [people] across the board.”
Galvin’s questions centered on the estimated status of tax receipts, and whether an exclusion has yet been taken for the middle school project.
“I’m thinking, now that we are out of the feasibility study that there will be significant expenses this year as we move forward in design, and I don’t know if that’s going to be something that we wait for the district to put that through in the upcoming budget, or is that something that needs to be considered?” he asked. “With the estimated receipts not being certified by the DOR, with an excess levy of only $44,000 as of right now, if there are any estimated receipts that are not necessarily approved, so that number comes down a little, do we still have room to adjust?”
Carter agreed with his characterization of the process that the town would have to wait until the district makes the assessment for the middle school project.
“We have not done any borrowing yet for either the DPW or the middle school,” Carter said.
Assistant Town Administrator Kathleen Keefe said the estimated receipts are never approved until the town submits them to the DOR to set the tax rate. The tax classification held this week is the first step in that process.
Figuring it out
Principal Assessor Wendy Jones provided a presentation to update the board on the town’s fiscal situation including approved values by the Department of Revenue for the valuation of all classes for the town of Whitman and approved new growth figures, most of which is new construction.
“This is the point at which we can vote to distribute, based on the percentages of the levy in each class, and shift the burden with factor ratings from residential, commercial, industrial and personal property classes,” she said. “This is something we do every year, based on when the values have been approved and adjusted based on [property] sales.”
The valid 2022 sales, also approved by the DOR, were the primary reference point.
“Based on those sales, it determines how much we adjust each class and what types of adjustments we do for each class,” she said. “We’re also looking at the properties in terms of the assessment as of Jan. 1.”
As a Chapter 653 community, Whitman is allowed to assess new growth and construction beyond Jan. 1, as well as sending out supplementary bills on new construction, Jones added.
A full property revaluation, also known as certification is completed every five years. The last one occurred in 2022. Interim year adjustments are based on the market sales analysis during non-certification years, Jones explained.
Whitman’s total approved valuation for 2024 is $2,510,191,250 – of that, 89.5 percent, or $2,246,581,005 is residential; 4.6 percent or $114,771,466 is commercial; 1.1 percent, or $27,947,905 is industrial and 4.8 percent, or $120,890,874 is personal property.
Estimated numbers still to be finalized and approved by DOR put the total amount to be raised, as voted by Town Meeting, at $50,522,578.95, with the town’s total estimated receipts at $18,542,742.43. The tax levy needed to be raised by property taxes is $31,979,836.52.
“That is the levy, based on last year’s levy, plus 2.5 percent, plus new growth and then the debt exclusion, and we haven’t exceeded that, so that’s good,” she said.
The tax rate is reached by dividing the tax levy by the total value of the town. Tax rate shifts, in 5 percent increments are permitted, up to a factor of 1.5, if the Select Board wished to vote in that way.
The usually supported factor of 1.0 puts the tax rate at $12.7 for all classifications. If a factor of 1.5 was to be approved, it would bring the residential rate down to $11.99 by increasing the other classifications up to $19.11.
Shifting the burden in such a way would be detrimental to the town’s business climate, the board has argued.
The average single-family house, valued at $470,189, would bring a tax bill of $5,990 in a 1.0 factor, with a factor of 1.5 bringing the bill down by $174, while increasing the tax for commercial, industrial and personal property classes of $1,588.
Galvin had asked if only single-family homes were included in the calculations, and Carter assured him they were.
“In a lot of the analysis that we were doing on the middle school we were just seeing how it affected single-family homes and not necessarily multi-family homes,” he said. “I sat here last year at this meeting and I voiced my concern over the impact that the taxpayers were going to get hit in the next year or two years, three years. Two of those projects – the DPW building and the WMS building. I have been voted and approved by voters of Whitman. Now we’re looking at South Shore Tech … low-income residential exemption – seniors. … In my opinion, there’s a crisis with that class – low-income seniors.”
Galvin noted that Whitman would not have a lot of say in the South Shore Tech project.
“I stand here, challenging the [Select Board] to start taking the lead instead of just letting all of this stuff happen,” he said, “In the last year, this board just let this all happen … and it all happened and, yet, we’ve got taxpayers – seniors, low income – who are in significant risk of being forced out of this town.”
A small commercial exemption, for property owned by a certifies business that employs fewer than 10 people and is worth $1 million or less, is permitted, but the board has not supported it because most small businesses lease their space – which benefits only the property owner. Residential exemptions are permitted for higher-priced owner-occupied homes or large numbers of rental properties.