WHITMAN – Could Whitman and Hanson share accounting services?

Interim Town Administrator Frank Lynam asked that question during the Tuesday, Dec. 20 Select Board meeting. The board expressed their willingness to give Lynam authority to explore the issue.

“I would like to look at the possibility of engaging either an accountant or an accounting service – probably, preferably an accountant that could divide his or her time between the towns of Whitman and Hanson and the formula should be relatively easily based on transactional workload,” Lynam said, suggesting a formula could be formulated that is acceptable to both. He stressed that he is not saying the town would hire someone right away.

“All I’m asking for is to see if the board is amenable to my pursuing this a little further in finding out what the level of interest might be in Hanson and whether or not it’s in our mutual interest to do something like this,” Lynam said. “If there isn’t, nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

Both towns are currently without an accountant after their accountants – who in both cases, were working one day per week – resigned in Hanson’s case,

[see related story page 1] and accepted a position as treasurer/collector in Whitman.

Whitman is currently contracting with Eric Kinscherf, who had also offered his services to Hanson, but that town is issuing a request for proposals for the work.

Lynam said that, while the arrangement with Kinscherf is working out well, it raised the question of what the town really needs in terms of accounting services.

Whitman is a town of 14,000 people with a budget of $43 million. Hanson has about 9,000 people with a budget of between $31 million and $32 million.

“The logical thought that occurs to me is, ‘Can we team together and take a regional approach to accounting,” Lynam said. “Franklin County Council of Government does that very well.

Hanson’s former accountant Todd Hassett also provided services for several towns, with Hanson being a one-day-a-week service, he noted. Whitman also has had accounting services for one day a week and it has been working.

With today’s technology, he said it is easier to maintain operations and records electronically, which takes a lot of the concern out of it.

Vice Chair Dan Salvucci asked if a larger group of towns would be worth looking into for a regional approach, but was in favor of exploring the idea.

The larger the group, the more demands are going to be placed on a person,” Lynam said about a larger regional effort.

Select Board member Shawn Kain said he felt having someone like former accountant Ken Lytle on staff is a valuable resource for the town and the Select Board, and a new town administrator might want to take a different path.

“I wouldn’t mind doing something like this for short term to get us through a period of time, but I feel like it’s a big decision to make as far as the financial team is concerned,” he said.

Select Board member Justin Evans said it is an interesting thing to explore and went a step further, asking if – since the two towns are already in a region with regard to the schools – there might be precedent for adding accounting services to that mix.

“Boy, what could go wrong with that?” Select Board member Dr. Carl Kowalski said.

“I think that our work load for the two towns vs the region are significant enough that I wouldn’t want to put one service handling all three,” Lynam said.

Meanwhile, Lynam is working to “develop a potential candidate” for the Town Administrator search in the wake of the withdrawals of one of the three finalists before the scheduled interviews at the last meeting.

However, he said he as not in the position to publicly “out” that person because they were not prepared for that at this point.

“But we may have an opportunity in the very near future to address that need,” he said.

Regional agreement

In other business, Evans sought the board’s consensus regarding issues they see are important during the regional agreement as the committee plans to meet next on Jan. 9.

“This is the third go at amending a regional agreement in the last five years or so,” Evans said. “Assuming that all the work we’ve done with MARS (Mass. Association of Regional Schools) and DESE (Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) and we use that as kind of a template for where we want to take the new regional agreement – and including the statutory method that we incorporated in 2020 – if we just take that as a framework, I’m looking at any other direction that the board would like to go.”

First on Evans’ list is middle school field leases, but that is further down the agenda and can wait. He also wants to focus on the way busing is handled in the district, especially since there initially wasn’t the financial incentive to discover deficiencies like they did last year.

“If we wrote into the regional agreement [that] non-mandated students wil be bused to school … that puts the effort back on the district to find savings,” he said.

Kowalski agreed that non-mandated busing must be formalized and the whole relationship clarified, including reimbursement questions, in the regional agreement.

WHITMAN – The Select Board on Tuesday, Dec. 13 to offer host community agreements (HCAs) to three of four applicants —Flower & Soul, Berkeley Botanicals and Stories — affording them the opportunity to move forward with the process of opening a retail recreational cannabis business in town.
All five board members selected Flowers & Soul and Berkely Botanicals and four selected Stories. Mitchell Cannabis Co. was not selected based primarily on the order in which applications came in.
“You can make a decision on the whole,” Town Counsel Peter Sumners said. “The decision should be based on the benefit to the town, weighing the pros and cons of each business.
The criteria were: geographic diversity of businesses coming in, anticipated impacts on the town or surrounding neighborhood where a business would locate; experience of applicants, anticipated tax revenue to the town; apparent ability of an applicant to actually open their business and succeed and the applicants’ social equity status.
No one reason should be the determining factor, and it is not “an exhaustive list,” but examples of pros and cons for the towns that the board should consider, according to Sumners. As a tie-breaker, if there was one, the board should consider the order in which applications were presented, he said.
Before the board’s decision, Sumners also presented amendments to the town’s host community agreement (HCA). While the board had not taken a formal vote on the HCA at previous meetings, it had agreed to move forward by consensus, according to Sumners, who said comments from applicants on how the agreement works in practice led to the changes.
“We’ve taken [the comments] into consideration and made a few minor changes to the form HCA that I’m recommending you use as your final version,” he said.
Those changes are: requiring the HCA to be signed by all the members of the board instead of only the chair with authorization of the board; corrections to some typographical errors; changed an unrealistic requirement that no air be allowed to enter or leave a premises, rather requiring that installation of equipment to filter air entering or exiting a facility to mitigate any odor issues; and clarifying the payment of impact fees to other municipalities.
“The new law requires impact fees to be directly related to impacts in your individual town,” Sumners said. “If another town gets more money from an impact fee than you, that’s not grounds for reopening [negotiations], that’s the terms and conditions of the agreement. You still have to identify the impacts in your own town.”
Sumners said he did not think any of the changes would be objected to by any of the applicants seeking an agreement and did not require a vote on the changes unless the board decided to enter into an agreement with any of the applicants by the end of the meeting.
The board concurred that the agreements would be in the form reflecting those corrections.
“At our last meeting, we heard four presentations from four very qualified applicants,” Chair Randy LaMattina said. “The town Zoning Bylaw only permits up to three recreational retailers. The mission of the board this evening is to determine which of the interested applicants … with whom it wishes to execute a host community agreement.”
Voters at the May 2022, accepted an amendment to the town Zoning Bylaw to allow siting of marijuana businesses within Whitman, with the condition that applicants must execute an HCA with the town. The decision to reach an agreement is at the discretion of the Select Board.
Sumners said the board must have a rational basis for its decision under the standards for accepting any retail marijuana businesses.
“This is a discretionary decision for the board,” he said. “You should have a reason for doing that.” The selection of any applicant over any other should also be based in a reason, he said, noting there is no specific criteria the board has to consider, but there are things the board should not consider, including any personal reasons based on personal relationships or discrimination on any basis toward any protected class.
Each board member went over the applicants they felt met the criteria before a consensus was reached and LaMattina asked for a motion to adopt a new HDA and to execute it with up to three applicants. Ranking of the applicants was permissible, Sumners said.
Shawn Kain pointed to his support of only two of the applicants; Flowers & Soul – because of its location 356 South Ave., in Whitman (operating as SoulFlower), in an area of Whitman identified as one the board wanted to see developed, its layers of a new and professional business and the fact that owner Brian Wall is from Whitman, has a strong financial background and currently owns another retail store in Halifax – Berkely Botanicals – because of the strong industry experience of the owner/mangement team, the location 305 Bedford St., is a good complement to the Regal Shoe building and the research put into their presentation.
“For a lot of reasons Shawn said, I thing Flower & Soul … differentiated their business,” said Justin Evans, of the proposal for three distinct businesses in an area the town wants to develop. He also favored Berkely Botanicals, which “had a great team, great location [and] a lot of experience,” with a good business plan and Stories.
“I really believe in their mission,” he said and cited their great management at security teams. “It also helps that those were, sequentially, the first three teams to apply.”
Vice Chair Dan Salvucci also preferred the Flowers Soul presentation as well as Berkely Botanicals and Stories.
“They’re on three ends of the town, and I think that that would cover the needs of the town in all areas,” Salvucci said.
Dr. Carl Kowalski concurred with the choices of Kain, Evans and Salvucci.
“I live in the neighborhood where Flowers & Soul is going in, and I’m really happy about that,” he said. “I was particularly impressed by the philosophy that Stories described.”
Kowalski noted that his wife had worked in the substance abuse field for nearly 50 years, and the emphasis on their knowledge of the opioid epidemic discussed by Stories affected him.
“I like their philosophy,” he said, adding that Berkely Botanicals also knows what they’re doing. “So does Mitchell Cannabis Co. All four of the applicants are qualified to have a position here.”
Kowalski leaned on the order in which the businesses applied to make his final decision for Flowers & Soul, Stories and Berkely Botanicals.
“When I thought about it, it was all about impact for me community and financial,” LaMattina said he said in support of Flowers & Soul. “Growing up in the east end, I worried about what happens to that building down there, and I think the development and the investment in that piece of property is absolutely outstanding.”
He also echoed Kowalski’s concerns about the opioid issue in preferring the medical aspect of Stories’ business plan at 769 Bedford St..
“I do want to thank everyone who applied and has an interest in this town,” he said before announcing his third choice. “My decision, again goes back to impact, community and financial. I would rather keep this in a commercial area, not so much between homes. For that, I would go with Berkely Botanicals.”