WHITMAN – As the town approaches its 150th birthday celebration in 2025, the Historical Commission is using a budget of in $40,000 in grant funds to survey historic properties not currently researched to protect the properties and document their roles in Whitman’s history.
“With the results, we will submit the properties to the Mass. Historical Commission for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places,” the Whitman Historical Commission’s new chair Mary Joyce told the Select Board at its Tuesday, June 18 meeting.
The funds come from a $20,000 grant from the Mass. Historical Commission, paired with a $20,000 grant from the Community Preservation Act.
Molly Schnabel, who has been chair of the Historical Commission before informing its members at a June 4 special meeting that she is stepping down for personal reasons, spoke to the Select Board about a grant pending from Community Preservation Committee and the Mass. Historic Commission.
“That involved time constraints,” she said, having suggested reorganization and then present its decision to the Select Board. “It was unanimously voted that Joyce become the chair and that Sean Simmons’ request to be a full member be granted, since he [has been] active as an associate member for several years.”
Schnabel had also requested to move to an associate membership, where she could serve as an archivist.
“All three suggestions were unanimously approved by a quorum of six,” she said. “It has been an honor to serve as chair of the commission and I feel strongly that [Joyce and Simmons] will provide important skills to the WHC and the town of Whitman.”
Referring to the survey’s time constraints, Schnabel said the grant will continue the work of surveying Whitman’s historic sites and Joyce would provide a copy of the project deadlines to the Select Board to obtain their necessary backing to bring in the grant. The board was also provided with information, as Schnabel said the work would be helpful to people who own the survey sites.
“We [also] hope to provide information on restoration grants and visual history of the town,” she said.
According to Joyce, the grant aims to assess and document a number of sites in town – how many depends on the budget – for historical resources not previously surveyed, but that could be considered endangered.
“We will provide the Town Meeting, an article in the 2024 warrant, that will provide the town of Whitman with a demolition delay bylaw; we will establish community resources for the school system an interested public on these resources; we will provide plaques to indicate the history of Whitman and we will present the inventory as part of the 150th anniversary of the town of Whitman,” Joyce said.
Project deadlines are outlined by the state and the Mass. Historical Commission.
“We need support from the town’s senior management team to meet our milestones,” Joyce said of the need for a town single audit, a point person for other items and questions that the Historical Commission has and to ask if the Select Board wanted progress reports on the grant and how often the board wanted to hear updates as well as a point person to sign off on their work.
“When we’re successful with this grant, there’s opportunities to bring in more dollars to Whitman with other grant proposals from [the state] so we can make sure we are documenting all of Whitman’s history,” she said.
Assistance from the town’s IT resources was also requested to ensure the commission had the resources to print, copy and distribute materials to meet their deadlines.
Select Board member Laura Howe thanked the Historical Commission for the presentation.
“I was unaware of any of this,” she said. “This is very informative.”
Select Board Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski said the board had been unaware the presentation was planned, as it was not on the agenda.
“The issue is, what went out to the public wasn’t aware that we were going to have this discussion,” he said after a few questions he allowed led to more details that he felt the public should hear.
The discussion is being continued to the Select Board’s July 23 meeting, as well as Simmon’s official appointment as a full member of the Historical Commission.
Schnabel said there were two items on the project timeline that are due on July 1 that start the funding rolling.
Kowlski asked what was needed from the Select Board at the June 18 meeting.
Joyce said the single audit, IT support and appointment of a point person from the Select Board.
Assistant Town Administrator Kathleen Keefe was named as point person, and she indicated she would check with the IT department about the project.
Howe also asked how many unknown historic sites were in Whitman.
“We have a pretty extensive book of all the old homes, and some of them aren’t even there any more, that’s why I ask,” she said.
Schnable said about 170 such homes have been documented and about 140 have been targeted for the current project.
“We’re already into writing the scope of work with the Mass. Historical Commission,” she said. “We have 95 on the target now and we have to do approximately 50 more.”
Since houses are not entered, the commission does not require a homeowner’s permission to do the survey.
“What benefit of the town comes of it?” Howe asked, assuring the commissioners her questions were not intended as criticism.
“The homeowner can benefit because they can get grants as they are updating their homes,” Joyce said, adding that the survey also adds to knowledge about the history of the town.
Howe also asked what limitations the survey work might impose on a homeowner seeking to renovate a property.
“None,” Schnabel said. “You have some towns that have serious restrictions that [require] going to Town Meeting – Lexington, Concord, Hingham – but once you have these surveyed, then you are eligible for restoration grants.”
One such restoration Schnabel said she would like to see is the silo at Hornstra Farm, which is on the National Trust and is also eligible for such a grant.
“Putting them on these surveys makes them eligible,” she said of the program started in 1981. “It’s a federal survey.”

HANSON – After a lengthy discussion with town finance officials and two members of the School Committee, the Select Board on Tuesday, June 11, approved cuts to the budget [See list, page 15], including reductions in hours to several town employees, which will go before voters at next week’s special Town Meeting.
Town Meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m., on Monday, June 17 in the Hanson Middle School auditorium, with accommodations for an overflow crowd, if needed.
The warrant will present two articles to voters. Article 1 is the May 6 vote including the 5-percent increase in the school district operating assessment. Article 2, should Town Meeting decide they want to fund the school district at a higher level, makes the cuts recommended by the Finance Committee.
“If you want to keep the budget the way that it is, the motion is going to be to accept the reduced budget for W-H Regional Schools,” Select Board Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “If you don’t want to stay the course and you want to make cuts, then you vote no [on Article 1] and vote yes to Article 2.”
Town Counsel has worked with the Select Board on the wording of the articles, but FitzGerald-Kemmett agreed it is a difficult concept.
“It is confusing, I wanted to do it as multiple articles,” FitzGerald-Kemmett. “But we were told, no, we shouldn’t do that, so we’re taking the advice of counsel.”
Moderator Sean Kealy will work with Town Counsel on an explanation that will make the meaning of the votes clear to voters, but it boils down to: “Instead of coming [to Town Meeting] thinking, what am I voting against, you’re coming to ask, which of these options am I coming to vote for?” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “You vote yes to vote no.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett described the cuts as proposed by the Select Board/FinCom.
“We don’t have any discrepancies,” she said before the vote.
The reductions will be shown as Option 2 in the warrant.
Finance Committee Chair Kevin Sullivan listed the cuts he and Town Accountant Eric Kinsherf outlined, and the Select Board approved them by a 4-0 vote. Member Joe Weeks was absent from the meeting.
“The way I look at the warrant is this is an opportunity to amend those already voted on the budget,” Kincherf said, referring to the May 6 Town Meeting. “In order for us to fund the $372,141 for the W-H appropriation, the FinCom has recommended $207,194 in budget cuts, the use of an old article for purchase of the Sleeper Property for $126,000 and then the Local Aid, [state] Senate Ways and Means version, showed an extra $38,000 coming to Hanson.”
Those three revenue sources are being used to fund the school operating assessment appropriation as recommended by the Finance Committee.
“Obviously the Select Board can opine and weigh in,” Kinsherf said.
“I’m hoping we can align,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “That’s my ideal scenario, but I don’t know if it will happen.” The Select Board did vote in agreement with the Finance Committee recommendations.
“There seems to be a narrative that this can be done without a tax increase,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “Well, it certainly can, but it can’t be done without cuts.”
“We looked at spreading cuts across all the town departments with the exception of public safety,” Sullivan said.
The town is also looking to Beacon Hill, meanwhile, for an anticipated increase in Local Aid, but that has not yet settled out.
“It was a matter of the House and Senate coordinating and fine tuning, etc,” said FitzGerald-Kemmett. “That was going to be a boon to Hanson, potentially, if those numbers stuck for the increase in the reimbursements for busing and per-pupil of roughly $190,000.”
She said she reached out to School Committee Chair Beth Stafford to see if the budget could be reconsidered in light of that, but she said Stafford felt uncomfortable doing that because the numbers had not been locked down yet.
“[That] is understood, but if they are uncomfortable doing that, why would we be comfortable hedging a bet that we’re going to get that $38,000 [in Local Aid],” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
“The honest answer is we need the money,” Kinsherf said. “The second answer is, I was looking at the history: unrestricted local aid was one number, the House reduces by $38,000 and the Senate increases it by $38,000, so it is a little bit a roll of the dice, but …”
“We were in a meeting today – part of the Association of Town Finance Officers in the state and the lieutenant governor and they seemed to think that was a certainty,” Sullivan said to finish the thought.
In terms of stabilization accounts for both the district and Hanson as well as the town’s free cash outlook, Kinsherf said there is $627,000 in unexpended free cash, but financial officers do not want to touch any of it because the towns fiscal 2025 operating budget used $794,000 in free cash and they have an eye on next year’s budget. While there is $227,000 in the school stabilization fund, but an October 2014, special Town Meeting voted that those funds must be used for capital projects only. The school district is also planning to have capital requests on this October’s special Town Meeting warrant, and using the school stabilization for that would save free cash.
The town also has to prepare for the January vote on the proposed South Shore Tech school project, Sullivan said.
The complete discussion can be viewed on the WHCA-TV YouTube channel and will be rebroadcast on the cable access channel.
“We’re going with the numbers we have here,” Sullivan said of the Finance Committee’s recommendation going into the special Town Meeting. “This is our best and final offer.”
Kealy suggested that someone be prepared to explain at Town Meeting why the town cannot touch free cash.
“At the current pace that were at, we’re looking at an override next year,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “If that override does not pass, this [budget problem] is just going to be a drop in the bucket on the cuts we’ll have to make – we’re going to eviscerate Town Hall … get ready for your worst-case scenario.”
She said she was not threatening.
“It’s just realistic,” she said. “It’s just the way it’s going to be, because we just don’t have that money anywhere else.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett said that was the thinking in both towns as they went with the 5-percent budget increase, with the rest dependent on an override, but Whitman’s Finance Committee then offered a free cash and stabilization proposal on Town Meeting floor.
“That was not what their accountant had suggested, what their Town Administrator had suggested, or what the Select Board had suggested because they’re looking at the same fiscal cliff we’re looking at next year – not the same dollar amount, but essentially the same severity.”
She said the Select Board has a responsibility to everyone in town to be fiscally prudent.
“This has been a very thoughtful analysis, involving weeks of department head, accountant, FinCom and [Town Administrator] Lisa Green’s involvement,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “This isn’t willy-nilly.”
School Committee member Hillary Kniffen reminded the Select Board that, should the schools be placed on a 1/12 budget in the event that the budget is not balanced after Town Meeting, the Commissioner of Education can set the budget – and can increase the budget from what the school district is now asking [see related story, page 1].
FitzGerald-Kemmett said the Select Board understands that, and suggested the School Committtee have someone available at Town Meeting to explain it to voters and answer their questions.
“There’s lots of grenades, with lots of pins to be pulled here,” she said. “At the end of the day, it’s up to the voters, but I do think it’s important that, when people make their vote that they understand there may be unintended consequences and what at first blush might look good may not get you what you were ultimately hoping to get with that vote.”

HANSON – The outcome of Hanson’s special Town Meeting on June 17 will hinge on how effectively the sole article is explained to voters as to exactly what “yes” and “no” votes mean, and will do, regarding the fiscal 2025 budget and the W-H school assessment’s effect on it.
Select Board, in an emergency meeting on Thursday, May 30 voted final approval of the warrant article, contingent on minor language changes being made, for the June 17 special Town Meeting Town Administrator Lisa Green attended the session remotely via phone.
A lack of clarity, particularly centering on the explanation of the article which allows voters to have another conversation about the fiscal 2025 budget, which passed May 6, but after the May 18 Town Election result shooting down the Proposition 2 ½ override, there remains a $350,212 budget that has already been established with the deficit, and asks them to examine an insert outlining cuts the Finance Committee is working to recommend. The third option would be the discussion of other amendments from the floor.
“The article itself is just a recitation of what we already have, and what we have every year as the budget item in the warrant,” Select Board Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
“If they vote no on this article, it means we do not reconsider the budget, we do not talk about it anymore and then we have a $350,000 shortfall that we have to figure out on our side how to resolve and it goes back to the School Committee for a third assessment and a super Town Meeting,” Board member Joe Weeks said. “I understand that it’s frustrating to talk about this now, but I’m telling you right now, there’s a whole bunch of people saying ‘I’m voting no for this because they think no means [it rejects the assessment].”
“This is not clear,” Vice Chair Ann Rein said, agreeing with Weeks’ point. “People out there think no means no and it doesn’t. Voting yes means we stick with the budget as voted in May and they don’t get it.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett said people have to come not thinking what they want to vote against, but what they will vote for.
Both FitzGerald-Kemmett and Select Board Administrative Assistant Lynn McCowell reviewed the budget article and Town Counsel Kate Feodorff was asked to do the same and made some minor changes.
Noting her own suggestion at the last meeting that two warrant articles be used, FitzGerald-Kemmett said that after speaking to Feodoroff, who thought the approach would be more confusing to voters, it was decided that the article’s wording and an insert covering the board and Finance Committee’s recommendations, would “really be driving it and the way that it would be voted.”
Feodoroff, who joined the meeting late via Zoom, also “very strongly counselled” the Select Board that a single article was preferable to avoid confusion as to what voters would be asked to decide according to FitzGerald-Kemmett. Before she did join the meeting, FitzGerald-Kemmett suggested any tweaks to be made be done that night.
“We need to have this on lock-down so the warrant can be delivered by the constable tomorrow morning [Friday, May 31],” she said.
Member Ed Heal had already voiced concern over the final paragraph: “The purpose of this article is to deliberate on the budget as a whole to determine whether or not to ‘fully [missing word]’” and insert the word ‘fund,’ “the Whitman-Hanson regional School budget,” FitzGerald-Kemmett read. The board voted to make that change.
“I’m still kind of caught off-guard,” Weeks said, noting that on May 30, they discussed three options that do different things. “If we were to just vote ‘yes’ on this article, given that we have three options drastically different things. … I wish we just had something that says, a ‘yes vote does this.’”
He asked if the votes would cover two options.
FitzGerald-Kemmett said there would be just one vote.
“To approve the budget as it is, as it was voted at the last Town Meeting, and that is the way Mr. Kealy’s motion will be updated,” she said. “We are keeping the W-H regional school budget as the budget that was voted at the last Town Meeting.”
Heal asked whether it makes sense to declare it to be a yes vote.
“How do you get to a vote?” he asked. “How do you get to item one?”
“Through the motion,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “Mr. Kealy will read the motion.”
“How do you get to item one?” Heal asked.
“It’s through the motion,” FitzGerald-Kemmett replied. “If option one carries, there is no need for further discussion because we [would have] voted to stay the course. If option one doesn’t carry, then we go to Option two, which is the potential service cuts that will be outlined, but not necessarily recommended by us or the Finance Committee.”
To help clarify it further, Weeks said “If you vote ‘yes’ on this, then Option 1 is going to carry.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett said the article would not require multiple passes if Article 1 passes with the motion that the town will not back away from officials’ stance that they will only fund what Town Meeting has already voted.
“In other words, we’re saying we’re not changing anything,” she said. “We had to get together. We had to present other options, but what we’re moving tonight is ‘stay the course, then there’s no further discussion needed, and then we adjourn.”
Feodoroff, joining the discussion said if Town Meeting does nothing than the budget is approved.
“Since they sent that assessment back, if we do nothing, then their budget is approved,” she added. “We have 45 days – use them … without having a source of funding, you become obligated legally to fund the whole budget. … So you have to do something.”
The failed override would have created additional revenue capacity, but since it failed, Feodoroff explained, officials need to bear in mind that a different group of people show up at Town Meeting and would be well within their rights to vote to fully fund the schools. The situation demands that it be counter-balanced with budget cuts.
The Finance Committee is meeting to determine where they would prefer those cuts should be made.
“We don’t want people just randomly deciding they want to cut the whole thing out of police or the whole thing out of fire, without knowing what the impact is,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
By presenting a budget and moving it the exact same way that you did [at the May 6 Town Meeting] – the exact same budget, with not even a period changed and is resubmitted to the schools – it reaffirms what you did and that budget schools.
“But the option has to be given to the voters to make a different decision,” she said.
Rein confirmed that “staying the course means the 5-percent increase, and that’s it.”
“In order to revisit the budget, you have to say this language that’s in Article 1,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “It allows the conversation about any potential change to the budget.”
Weeks summed up that the average voter is going to want to know, if they’re voting “no” on this, they’ll want to know what kicks it back to the School Committee for the potential of a lower assessment.
“People that want to keep the assessment, know they are going to vote ‘yes,’ is what I’m guessing,” he said. “The people who vote “no” will want to kick it back to the School Committee for the potential for a lower assessment. … I’m just hearing a lot of people saying they want to kick it back.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett said the only way the issue avoids going to a super town meeting is if it’s voted to appropriate more money for the school district budget.