HANSON – Tax levys and EV charger malfunctions have sparked discussion among Select Board members over the course of their last two meetings.

The Select Board on Tuesday, Nov. 29 held its annual public hearing to allocate a uniform tax levy for each class of property for fiscal 2023,  as well as rejecting exemptions for residential and small commercial entities. The assessors were back as the board reconvened the hearing on Tuesday, Dec. 6.

The EV stations will now be carried over to another meeting after the Tuesday, Dec.6 discussion of the town’s malfunctioning charging station, as Town Administrator Lisa Green researches funding avenues for the $975 it is estimated to cost the town to get chargers up and running again.

Assistant Assessor Denise Alexander said in the Nov. 29 hearing that the classification hearing could not be closed that night because property values have not yet been finalized, but they can request the Select Board reconvene the hearing when final numbers are available. The board voted to reconvene the hearing at 5:45 p.m. Dec. 6.

Residential exemptions, generally for Class 1 properties that own and occupy properties, such as in towns with a higher rate of rental properties like Boston. Small commercial exemptions are applied to the owner of a commercial propery, not the business owners if they rent the property where they do business. Only 20 Hanson businesses would benefit from that split. 

“Hanson has such a small amount of personal property, that adopting a split rate would shift the larger [tax] burden onto the commercial/industrial properties, Alexander said. “Hanson’s Select Board has always voted to maintain a single tax rate for that reason.”

Tax rate splits are usually adopted when towns see 80 percent of properties classified as residential and 20 percent as commercial/industrial.

“Because we want to try to attract businesses and retain the businesses we have, we haven’t wanted to do a shift and unduly burden the few businesses who have decided to be here,” Select Board Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said.

She stressed that the figures were estimates, as the Board of Assessors is waiting for values to be finalized and sent to the Department of Revenue for certification.

Alexander said average single-family home and residential condo and commercial/industrial value have been creeping up over the last few years while the tax rate has gone down. 

The Board of Assessors agreed, and again recommended the uniform tax rate.

“Hanson is primarily residential, at 93 percent,” Alexander said. “Between the commercial/industrial and personal property, it’s about 7 percent.”

The average residential dwelling — valued at $455,543 for FY ’23 with a tax bill of $6,463.2 compares to $413,247 in FY 22 — and commercial/industrial values were used.

FitzGerald-Kemmett asked the assessors to provide some background on who assessors speak with when discussing setting the tax rate.

“Sales really push our values to be adjusted each year,” Alexander said explaining a commercial appraiser does the commercial/industrial property appraisal and she does residential. “It’s a complex system and a computerized algorythm.”

The excess levy capacity on Dec. 6 it was put at $20,265.95.

No charge

The two EV charging stations, placed behind Town Hall at the urging of former Select Board member Matt Dyer, were connected to an APP from which drivers in need of a charge for their vehicles could ping and locate them. The issue was tabled until more information on EV charging station costs are determined,

However, according to Town Planner Antonio M. DeFrias on Dec. 6, a driver earlier this year had contacted the town to report the stations were not working.

The station was funded by a grant filed by the previous Town Planner Deborah Pettey.

DeFrias, who said he is not familiar with charging stations, consulted Maintenance/Facilities Director Charles Baker to help determine the problem.

The core malfunction turned out to be, in the name of the song, “Time Passages.”

Baker reached out to the company and discovered the chargers are effectively obsolete — 3G components trying to communicate in a 5G technology.

“And 3G is long gone,” DeFrias said. “At that time, up until the citizen let us know, they were basically on an APP saying it was a legit charging station.”

The stations have been taken off the APP while an upgrade and cost is figured out. The company sent an email in August quoting the necessary parts and labor at $975.

DeFrias was seeking an appropriation to do the work.

“Obviously, with everything going green and that’s where we’re headed, and it is at the Town Hall, it makes sense for it to be up and running for not only residents, but in the future if the town purchases electric vehicles, there’s a charging station right here on-site,” he said.

“The obvious question is, Do we have $975 somewhere?” FitzGerald-Kemmett said, asking if it could be under the Energy Committee’s purview. Green said it could be funded from one of the maintenance of public property accounts.

“I think I asked the question two or three years ago, when we were debating if this was going to be installed, does the town make any money from the charging station?” Select Board member Jim Hickey said.

DeFrias said he would have to look back on files to determine that.

Select Board member Ann Rein asked who pays for the electricity. According to EV experts, typically the owner of the charging station pays their utility for the electricity used at a charging station, but can in turn charge a fee for the electricity to the vehicle owner. [quora.com]

“I’d rather table this until we have answers,” Hickey said.

“We don’t even know how long it hasn’t been functioning, so I don’t think buying another week or two until we can get a few answers about the economics of it …  will kill us,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.

Right now, the board wants to know if the town has made any money off the stations, how much it is costing the town to charge each vehicle, when the town is getting paid and if any grant funding is available to upgrade the stations. Green has been asked to look into it.

“No matter what, if we keep it, it needs to be repaired,” Rein said. “It hasn’t been able to communicate with the Mother Ship now for two years.”

“I do think there’s an increased demand for people to charge their cars, but only if it works,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.

Select Board member Ed Heal said the exact point at which the stations stopped working was needed before the town could determine what it was or would cost to continue operating it.

Solving transportation funding issues will likely be a lengthy process, according to Superintendent of Schools Jeff Szymaniak who offered some short-term objectives and long-term goals to the School Committee on Wednesday, Nov. 16, while focusing on it’s impact on learning time.

“This isn’t a multi-year process of looking at some things,” he said, noting that transportation has been an issue since he assumed the role of superintended on July 1, 2018. “There’s an issue every year of transportation … we have to get this right.”

While there has been a lot of “this is what we used to do” involved in past discussions, the focus of a working group among Committee members is to make changes that will be run by the panel. Transparency and communication with parents and town stakeholders is central to the process so residents know exactly what they’re voting on at Town Meeting, including what any changes would cost, he said.

For the short-term, Szymaniak said, includes compliance with the state law requiring 75-percent capacity on school buses. The district is now at 76.13 percent of students eligible to ride the bus as of Oct. 28, based on routes and capacity.

“That doesn’t mean that they’re riding the bus,” he said. “They are eligible to ride the bus.”

Committee member Hillary Kniffen said she reads the law as saying buses should not be over 75 percent of capacity, not that the district is required to put that many students on a bus.

Szymaniak said he has been advised by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) that, when he signs off on such a report, it is expected that buses are running at 75-percent of capacity.

“If you don’t equal or exceed the 75 percent, you don’t get reimbursement,” Committee Chair Christopher Howard said to clarify the law’s intent. “They wrote it kind of backwards.”

Routes have been designed to run no more than 25 minutes, according to Szymaniak, but Indian Head has seen the most changes over the past three years, which has lengthened time on the bus for some students.

“This is horrible,” Kniffen said. “There’s no consideration to the seven square miles that Whitman is and the 15 square miles that Hanson is. We’ve got kids on a bus [in Hanson] for 40 minutes.”

Member Beth Stafford noted that it’s not as bad for Hanson Middle School. Kniffen also noted that Whitman elementary routes are about 15 minutes long.

Transportation issues and current start times have also resulted in 30 more hours for students Hanson Middle School than at Whitman Middle School, a situation that Committee member Dawn Byers said is a violation of school district Policy J-B for providing an equal educational opportunity for all students.

“If all of us aren’t outraged over what’s happened here, then I ask why,” she said. “Students in the same grade are not getting an equal opportunity.”

She also argues that the half-hour more over 180 days equals 90 hours of more access to school, to teachers, to professionals – even if it’s a “brain break” of a recess that other students aren’t getting.

Byers does not advocate taking the extra time away from Hanson students, but giving it to Whitman students, and lauded Szymaniak for presenting some ideas toward that end.

“This is an ongoing conversation,” Szymaniak said, noting contracted busing and special education concerns could have an impact on any decision.

A survey on the start times and conferences is now being circulated to parents and students.

The Hanson Middle issue was brought up during a Whitman Building Committee meeting.

“This started in 2017-18 when the fifth-graders went to Hanson Middle School,” Szymaniak said.

Kniffen pointed out that a fifth-grader at Hanson Middle starts the day at 7:40 a.m., and a fifth-grader’s day at Duval Elementary begins at 9:15 a.m.

“The best compromise is what it’s going to be,” Stafford said.

“We’re living on decisions made that were strictly financial and not necessarily in the best interests of kids,” Szymaniak said. “We have to think things through because I think some of the decisions of the past, while valid, might not have been thought through for the next generation.”

He said he wants to fix the problems with transportation and start times, but wants to do it right so they do not turn out to be short-term decisions.

“This is the challenge,” Szymaniak said. “If you look at the root cause of where we’re at — and I don’t have a solution to this at the moment — it’s because we need 20 buses at the high school and then have to distribute out … to get to their next destination to pick up [younger students] causes a ripple effect in our transportation.”

A short-term move has put monitors on the Indian Head buses to ensure students behave, while as part of the long-term solution, the district is using the website schoolbusmanager.com, which overlays on top of Google to calculate more workable routes.

“We have good communication [with the towns],” Szymaniak said. “But what I think we need to do is come forth with a protocol and guidelines that can give direction to the towns.”

The School Committee also received information about potential scenarios for changing school start times and heard a review of district enrollment trends. Szymaniak said he would be looking to parents for feedback in start times and parent-teacher conferences, meanwhile, enrollment numbers were on the agenda.

“The numbers are more positive than I have seen in the past,” Symaniak said.

As of Oct. 1, 2022 general enrollment was: 101 in preK; 214 in kindergarten; 258 in first grade; 228 in second grade; 270 in third grade; 262 in fourth grade; 275 in fifth grade; 277 in sixth grade; 275 in seventh grade; 287 eighth grade; 256 in ninth grade; 257 in 10th grade; 253 in 11th grade and 316 in 12th grade — including community evening school enrollment.

“One of the things that strikes me is we will lose between 60 and 70 students from eighth grade to ninth grade,” Szymaniak said. “A multitude, and I’m seeing now [it’s] not just students going to South Shore Tech, they’re [also] going to Bristol Aggie and Norfolk Aggie.”

Szymaniak said one of the challenges facing him as a superintendent is that he has to sign off on those students to go, while he wants to see them pursue their educational interests, it does come out of town budgets.

The study he supplied School Committee members also broke the numbers down by the various racial groups represented by W-H students as well as programs at the different schools, but also school choice participation.  

Last year WHRSD assessed the towns for the cost needed to instruct 3,442 students. 

“This year … we’re down 15 students,” he said. “Once the state gives us their numbers — and that will be before we issue our assessments — they’ll give us a real number of choice students, or students that are not eligible for us to assess the towns.”

In view of “enormous dips” in enrollment in past years, Szymaniak said the numbers are promising. 

“We’re retaining kids and we’re getting new students moving into the district, which is a good thing,” he said.

The new full-day kindergarten program is helping with that, even as lower birth rates are still being seen in overall enrollment figures, according to Szymaniak. That is consistent around other area districts.

There are also 177 English language learning (EL) students in the district, up from the 167 recorded by the Oct. 1 reporting deadline.

Szymaniak also plans to attend an online program on Chapter 70 funds and EL and low-income families whose children receive free and reduced lunch.

“I’m curious to see if our Chapter 70 funds will have a correlation due to our increase in EL and our increase, or our low-income students,” he said.

Byers, who represented the panel at a  recent Mass. Association of School Committees conference, noted that access to the state database, and more accurate numbers, can allow districts to provide more services to EL and low-income students.

“It’s a lot of work for our central office to do, too, but it’s beneficial, because there are families who may not necessarily tell us they qualify for certain services,” she said.