HANSON – The Select Board conducted a final review and voted to close the Town Meeting warrant at its meeting on Tuesday, April 9.
Town Administrator Lisa Green said there were no changes to the special Town Meeting warrant, but said the annual Town Meeting warrant changed in view of the new budget figures.
“Town Counsel did review the articles and provided information, suggestions and edits,” Green said.
Vice Chair Joe Weeks questioned putting the budget article near the end of the warrant.
“I get putting the budget in the back to try to strategically keep people in Town Meeting as long as possible,” he said. “But part of me questions whether or not people are going to be able to make judgments, because you do see people that kind of follow along with what we are doing.”
Green noted the budget is Article 5.
“One of the budgets is Article 5,” Weeks replied. “If we’re giving two budgets I think they should be side by side.”
Select Board member Ann Rein asked which should be moved.
“That’s tricky,” said Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett. “I’m neutral about where it is, but they do need to be side-by-side.”
Weeks advocated for placing both budget articles early on the warrant. Town Counsel Kate Feodoroff agreed, more from a practical standpoint, as it is not legally required.
“I don’t like the idea of putting it early in the meeting because I fear once the decision is made about the override or no override, we’re going to have a mass exodus, and we [then] won’t have a quorum,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “That’s just a reality. I know it will happen.”
Weeks said the budgets have to be moved up, because he disagrees with having Town Meeting make decisions on capital expenditures without approving the budget first.
“I’d be afraid to put them at the end, because what I you [lose] a quorum, and then you don’t have a budget,” Feodoroff said.
Weeks agreed that would present a worst-case scenario.
“People won’t leave,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “I’d bet on that and I’m not a betting person, because that’s the main reason people are going to be coming to the Town Meeting.”
“I don’t disagree, but I think we have to vote on the budget before we start spending money,” Weeks said.
The School budget, which had been Article 32, was then moved up to Article 6.
“We don’t need to know the order in order to close the warrant, because we’ve voted on placing and what order they are doesn’t really matter,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said before the board voted to close the warrant.
Town Planner Anthony DeFrias provided some information on Article 4, pertaining to a Right-to-Farm bylaw, as well.
“If you recall, in our last meeting, we just felt like we should have the Planning Board kick the tires because it was going to be a zoning bylaw [changes] and have some impact,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
The Planning Board, on April 8, met to discuss the article and offered it comments, including asking the Select Board to table it until the October Town Meeting to allow further discussion and research of the law, and that the Select Board consider seeking an opinion from town counsel as well as from communities that have implemented the Right-to-Farm law.
The board voted to postpone the article to the October Town Meeting.
“I think that’s kind of where we were at,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “We just felt that we needed more info because we weren’t sure if there would be pitfall for the unwary, so I think all those suggestions are excellent.”
She added that board has asked town counsel to review the bylaw.
“Town counsel is not going to necessarily advise us on whether this is good for Hanson or not good for Hanson,” she said. “That’s our decision, but I do feel it’s a good idea to talk to other towns and find out if there were pitfalls for the unwary that [they encountered]. … And there wasn’t any particular sense of urgency to get this done. We were just trying to be responsive.”
The budget, on the warrant as Article 5, was being reviewed by the Finance Committee that night, as Town Accountant Eric Kinsherf had finished the budget article that day, Green said.
Article 6, covering zoning violation fines from the Building Department, was questioned by Feodoroff.
“If it’s housed in the Zoning Bylaw, it needs a public hearing, [and] I don’t know if that’s happened,” said Feodoroff, who attended the meeting virtually. “It needs to be published and a public hearing.”
She said that, if it is a Zoning Bylaw change as the article suggests, the Planning Board must hold the hearing. Because of the time required for posting hearing notices in the newspaper – twice within the two weeks before a hearing – the Select Board postponed the article to the October Town Meeting.
Article 10, involving new equipment for the Highway Department, using free cash, were recommended, despite Kinsherf’s warning that it is unaffordable at this time as the articles would leave only $311,000 in free cash.

HANSON – While Whitman’s Select Board was hearing a list of consequences – including layoffs and shuttered departments – of a $63.5 million level-service fiscal 2025 school budget on Tuesday, March 26, Hanson officials were seeing the same handwriting on the wall, but a flicker of communication was being nursed into the flame of another joint meeting between town officials on Monday, April 1.
“We may get to a better point,” said Hanson Select Board Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett. “It certainly can’t get worse. … There’s not a lot of town budget to slash.”
In the meantime, the Select Board reached the consensus that, if an override of Proposition 2 ½ is necessary, it would be a contingency school override, with dual budgets proposed at Town Meeting as Whitman is doing, allowing Town Clerk Elizabeth Sloan to have the ballot printed by April 12.
The W-H School Committee on Wednesday, March 20, certified the budget, first unveiled on Feb. 1, without any of the cuts discussed the previous week.
“After many conversations that [Whitman] Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter and myself had with Superintendent [of Schools Jeff Szymaniak], we really voiced our ability to afford 5 percent assessment [increase],” Town Administrator Lisa Green. They also met with Szymaniak and School Committee Chair Beth Stafford in which she and Carter reiterated the towns’ ability to afford only a 5 percent increase.
“I think we’re back where we said we were going to be last year,” said Finance Committee Chair Kevin Sullivan. “The schools are not willing to be a rational partner, in my opinion.”
He noted that financial consultant John Madden has been telling Hanson officials that a $5 million operational override has been needed to put the town on solid financial footing.
“I don’t know how this went from such a cordial relationship over the 12 years I’ve been doing this,” he said. “We’ve never had this kind of problem. … The math just doesn’t hold up in the long run.”
He said the choice comes down to playing a “dangerous game of chicken” with the entire process and see what happens, predicting there would be another override next year and another after that; or the town can try to reach an agreement with the district this year and go for an operational override next year for FY 2026.
He said the April 1 meeting should take place after the April 1 meeting.
“If we don’t do an override, the changes are fairly draconian,” said FitzGerald-Kemmett. “I’ll be quite honest, you’re looking at library, Town Hall employees, obviously, some fire and police would be impacted. I personally don’t even want to talk about those types of cuts. … We would be talking about absolutely crippling the operations at Town Hall.”
Most of the positions residents take for granted like a full-time Building Department, Conservation and then Board of Health would all be cut.
“Why do we have to cut on our side, when the School Department doesn’t have to cut on anything?” Select Board member David George asked.
“We are not the School Committee,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
While insisting she was not trying to be critical of Szymaniak or to take potshots at anyone, FitzGerald-Kemmett, she said the Select Board “could not have been clearer any earlier than we were this year” about Hanson’s financial situation.
The town could say no and include a budget with a 5-percent in the warrant and present the school budget as contingent on an override happening. That is the avenue Whitman is taking.
Failing passage of the school budget on the town side and an override fails, cuts would be forced. If an override passes, the school budget would be funded.
FitzGerald-Kemmett said her feeling is that things would fall somewhere in the middle.
“Even if they come down a little, we literally cannot afford any more than 5 percent,” she said. “We weren’t exaggerating, we weren’t being dramatic. We cannot afford any more than that.”
Even at a 5-percent assessment increase, the town would be making cuts and “limiting spending severely,” she reminded the board. “What we’re saying is all we have is 5 percent and even that was a stretch.”
The Hanson Select Board had initially told the School Committee that all it was comfortable in allowing very moderate growth – and even negotiation with the unions – was 3.8 percent, FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
“With this 5 percent, we now have to try to deal in good faith with the unions and say we don’t know what our financial situation is going to look like next year,” she said. “It’s not a great place to be as we enter into negotiations with all of our unions this year.”
Green said it was very unfortunate after attending the School Committee meeting last week.
“To see that the committee did not take into consideration any of Superintendent Szymaniak’s scenarios for lowering the assessment, which would have included using some of their excess and deficiency and circuit breaker, cutting some positions to bring the assessments down,” Green said. “They were starting to go in the right direction, but they got to 6.69 percent, a 7.68 and a 5 percent scenario.”
The Committee’s 8-1 vote took all reductions off the table and was opposed by Whitman member Fred Small. Member Michelle Bourgelas of Hanson was absent.
Green said the School Committee’s vote leaves them needing to close the funding gap and that “an override is one of our options.”
“It’s not out of the question [that the School Committee could make cuts], but we have a very short runway right now,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “We’ve got to make a decision and lock down our warrant, really, within the next week in order for us to be able to do this.”
Hanson’s assessment increase went back to the original 10.2 percent and Whitman’s to a 11.88 percent increase.
Green has since been working with Town Accountant Eric Kinsherf to determine what that type of assessment means to the towns – roughly $15,532,479 as an assessment for Hanson, and about $20 million for Whitman. Hanson’s free cash totals only $1.486 million.
“That brings us to a shortfall of $1,579,947,” she said. “Obviously, we don’t have enough free cash to cover that amount.”
Hanson needs to find $723,176 to balance.
Green said a chart is posted on the town website: hanson.ma-gov, that gives residents an idea of the impact of an override on their real estate personal property tax based on the average assessed value – $499,873 based on FY 2024 figures. Such a home would be a tax bill of $6,688 or about $179.75 more annually. The chart covers tax changes connected to an override on property valued from $250,000 all the way to $1.5 million.
George asked if the school district had any free cash. Green noted the districts doesn’t have enough free cash to cover it. The School Committee typically cannot empty their excess and deficiency account, even as they often contribute some of that money to help balance the budget, because laws mandating the schools educate all children ages 2.5 to 22 means they need to keep some cash in reserve in case a family with a special needs child moves into the district.
Szymaniak had suggested in one of his scenarios that $250,000 of the approximately $700,000 in E&D toward lowering the school budget deficit.
“I’m a neophyte to all of this, but it just seems to me to be extremely – I don’t even know what the word is … arrogant comes to mind – to ask the towns to cut other budgets and not even take a glance at what they could have cut,” said Select Board member Ann Rein. “I don’t understand that kind of attitude, especially in this day and age, when everything has done nothing but go up and we’re just supposed to pull it out of somewhere.”
She said non-instructional staff hired with one-time funds should go – “I don’t care what they do at the school,” Rein said. “Some of them could go.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett said the schools don’t have to be told where to cut, but they should have to make cuts.
She pointed out that Szymaniak had presented several scenarios in which some programs would be cut and some E&D and circuit breakers funds would be transferred to help close the budget gap.
FitzGerald-Kemmett said there will be more discussion between the two towns and the district, and that she feels hopeful that the dollar amount might be reduced, but that is hard to say by how much.
“We are dealing with the most severe case … and without any further movement from the School Committee and we’re trying to make a decision,” she said. “What are our options?”
“Hope is not getting us anywhere,” Rein said.
“I just think it’s funny that they hired a lot of people over there that are not teachers that they don’t want to lay off,” George. “They got something that they can’t afford, just like if I bought something I can’t afford, I’m going to get rid of it.”
He said the district has people on the payroll they obviously can’t afford and they are trying to retain them.
“They’ve taken a stand … they’re doing what they believe is their mission … what they were elected to do and our job is to respond and say we are responsible for managing the town’s budget,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “If you want that money we have to go to an override, and it has to be for the schools because we don’t need it for the town budget.”
She called Whitman Select Board Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski and Stafford to see if there was any potential that groups from either town or the district could come together and discuss the budget and it was agreed to, with the town administrators, Szymaniak, Kowalski, Stafford and herself to have such a discussion April 1.
“I don’’t know if that will work, but I’m willing to try anything,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
Vice Chair Joe Weeks said he is struggling with the issue.
“One of the things I’m struggling with is how it, ironically affects the kids that we’re trying to advocate for,” he said, noting that a lot of people will end up in a difficult position. “We go to the ballot with something like this, you’re putting a lot of stock in that it’s going to pass. … I just don’t like being in a position like that in the 11th hour.”
He said his main concern is what happens if it does not pass at the ballot.
“It really is an all-or-nothing scenario,” he said.

by Linda Ibbitson Hurd
Special to the Express
S hortly after I moved to Halifax in the 1970s, an older couple moved in across the street from me. They were to become very important to my kids and me.
My marriage had broken up and I was alone with two young children. My son Brian was starting second grade and my daughter Heidi was four and also deaf. I was holding down a job so I could keep my house and I needed someone to get my son off to school in the morning and to take Heidi until I got home in the afternoon. 
The man and his wife who moved in were friendly and my kids and I liked them right away. Their names were Kitty and Les. They were from the Boston area, Les a retired Respiratory Therapist from the Deaconess hospital and Kitty a seamstress. As we got to know each other and they found out my situation Kitty offered to help with my kids and agreed to the price I could afford to pay. 
My ex was not good about keeping in touch with our kids and Heidi especially became attached to Les. Kitty and Les were a couple of color and one Winter morning when my kids and I were in Cumberland Farms on a Sunday picking up a few groceries, Les walked into the store. Heidi spotted him from the back of the store and started running, her blonde ponytails flying out behind her while she yelled as loud as she could, “Dada!” Les kneeled down on one knee and opened his arms as she ran into them for a big hug. He was smiling and chuckling as people were curiously looking on. The memory still touches my heart.
Kitty and Les were good to my kids and they went willingly every weekday morning to their house. As time passed we grew closer to them and I got to know them very well. They became like family to us. Some years later when I married again, they came to my wedding. I met and got to know some of their family, one being a niece of Kitty’s who was a mounted police officer in Boston and patrolled on horseback.  
As Les aged, he developed diabetes. He’d walk over to visit me when Kitty was busy with a customer who needed sewing done and begged me to make him a lemon meringue pie. My heart went out to him but I told him I couldn’t because of his health and because it would upset Kitty. What did finally pacify him was being able to have a small dish of ice cream on a regular basis. 
As his health declined, I went over to visit with him often. He became like a second father to me, I could talk to him about anything. He eventually needed a hospital bed which was delivered to the house. Kitty took such good care of him and he was able to stay at home with help from a Visiting Nurse.
One morning when I got up I had a sinking feeling something was wrong. I saw one of my neighbors come out of Kitty’s house and he looked sad. As I stepped outside he looked at me, nodding towards Kitty’s house and I went right over. When I went in Kitty was standing beside Les’s bed, tears running down her face. I gave her a big hug and she said Les had just passed.   
Every Easter Les gave Kitty an Easter Lily and every year he’d plant it in their front yard in hopes it would bloom the next year. Some bloomed but were scraggly, they never did well. The Easter after Les passed I was in my kitchen when I heard someone calling my name. I looked outside and Kitty was coming up my walk.
“Come, you have to see this, please come!” she said.
She seemed dazed and close to tears. Alarmed, I went with her. As we approached her house a strong scent filled the air and to my amazement her small front yard was filled with beautiful Easter Lilies, all in bloom. She gestured toward the flowers saying, “This is not of this world, do you think this is the sign Les promised me when he got to Heaven?” I told her without a doubt I knew it was. 

HANSON – The “runway’s too short” to land the budgetary plane with an operational override this year, according to officials discussing the fiscal 2025 town budget on the eve of the certification of the W-H regional school budget.
“I think it’s a bit premature for us to zig or zag since we don’t know what the assessment’s going to be set at,” Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said at the Select Board’s Tuesday, March 19 meeting. “But we certainly need to be ready and be agile, depending on what that amount is set.”
Finance Committee Chair Kevin Sullivan agreed the town’s last override experience demonstrated that it takes a lot of education and groundwork to pass an operational override.
“I don’t think we have time,” he said “You have to make the citizenry aware that, while you’re approving the $5 million [for an operational override], it is the Select Board that decides how much of that is tax. … There’s no bank account where this money is sitting.”
He argued for going for a full operational override next year.
That said, Sullivan said he has done the math and personally has thought “for years, thought we needed a significant override,” to reset town finances.
Stressing that a decision on any form of an override, if any, is needed this year it would have to be a school override, FitzGerald-Kemmett said. She added she had spoken with Whitman Select Board Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski and School Committee Chair Beth Stafford this week, telling both chairs where Hanson is at and what the board has discussed in open session – “to the extent that, if the assessment didn’t come down to a point that we had felt comfortable with that we might entertain an override, but if we did, it would probably be a school override.”
By the end of their discussion, the Hanson Select Board reached an unenthusiastic consensus for accepting a 5 percent school assessment increase, but member David George refused to budge from 3.8 percent.
“That, combined with [consultant John] Madden’s presentation to us last week, indicating that next year we would need an operational override, it seemed ill-timed for us to do an operational override this year, with such short notice, such a short runway,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “We really need to educate people on what that money would be used for [in] an operational override.”
Even if the board decides to seek an operational override next year, they have a lot of education of the public ahead of them concerning what it means, how it would work, whether to do $5 million up front or break it up into annual overrides, how the average tax bill would be affected, and other issues she argued.
“Like I said, the runway’s too short for us to do an operational override this year.” she said.
Board member Ann Rein urged the board to stick to 5 percent.
“We’re not the only ones that should have to cut budgets,” she said.
FitzGerald-Kemmet agreed.
“I feel 3.8, but I’m going to be reluctantly, saying 5 percent,” Board member Ed Heal said. “But other departments are sticking to 3.8, by the sounds of it on average.”
“Or making a case [for more],” FitzGerald-Kemmett said, something she said the schools should be doing again as they did when Dr. John McEwan and Dr. Ruth Gilbert-Whitner had done.
At a 5 percent assessment increase, Select Board Vice Chair Joe Weeks said there would be just enough free cash to balance the budget with the remaining $44,000 easily wiped out with capital projects.
“No matter how you do the math, it comes out somehow to $1.4 million – which is exactly what we have,” he said.
Sullivan said the Finance Committee was willing to use that figure one more year, yet it would cause the spending of all the town’s free cash.
FitzGerald-Kemmett said Town Administrator Lisa Green and Town Accountant Eric Kinsherf have been thinking through different financial scenarios in preparation for the school budget certification.
“None of them are particularly bright spots,” she said.
Green noted that she and Kinsherf had calculated the effects of the different scenarios Superintendent of Schools Jeff Szymaniak outlined March 13 to get a broad picture of the increases and their effects on Hanson and what its budget shortfall might be.
“We don’t know what direction the School Committee is going to go into, but this will give an idea of where we will be should any of these assessments be voted in,” Green said, suggesting that the reduced schedule of the Building Department for a few weeks, due to the prolonged sudden absence of an employee, could offer a vision of what Town Hall could become if the town was forced to cut staff.
Green admitted when asked, that she had not yet discussed the potential for layoffs with department heads as yet.
“I want more information to provide them with,” Green said.
Anticipating that the schools may set a 5-percent increase, Kinscherf said the choice becomes balancing the budget with free cash this year or implementing budget cuts.
“If we have a 5 percent increase with the schools, the town of Hanson will have to use free cash to fund the budget, there’s no doubt about it, unless you want to cut the operational budget,” he said. “We’re either going to use free cash … to get us through one year as another Band-Aid, or do the budget cuts this year.”
If the schools are over 5 percent, Kinsherf said it leads to an override for the amount over the 5 percent. Right now, Hanson has $1.4 million on hand in free cash and there are already $396,000 in expenditures included in the Town Meeting warrant.
“I think we can balance the budget with the approximately $1 million that’s left over,” he said, cautioning it would leave the town with zero. FitzGerald-Kemmett asked about grants or other funding sources could be used to help town finances.
Kinsherf said he and Green were searching past warrant articles for unexpended funds, but warned any money found that way can only be used for capital projects – not to fund the operational budget.
“We’re already putting ourselves in the hole for $1 million next year,” Weeks said. “I feel like we’re just in this hamster wheel of the same conversation every year.”
“We did not have the data to make any decisions last year,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said, noting that was when they brought in Madden. “Now we’ve got that. Now, if we don’t act, it’s on us.”
Weeks replied they didn’t need John Madden to go over the numbers.
“We knew this,” he said.
Weeks then asked Sullivan if the Finance Committee supported using free cash that way.
“I know that, while we haven’t voted any actions, I know as a group, we are not fans of using free cash for the operational budget, but we are realists of the fact that sometimes, you’re just not going to get there [otherwise],” he said.
“To me, it’s a school override, and I know some people disagree,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said, acknowledging some people see a domino effect happening if it should fail. “But we just can’t keep using free cash.”
“We need to have people understand why we’re doing what we’re doing,” Rein said.
“Personally, it’s just a matter of what [the schools] can justify the spending of,” Weeks said.

HANSON –The Select Board on Tuesday, Feb. 27 voted to issue a letter to the Natural Resource Damages fund (NRD) supporting a vision for restoration of the Indian Head River and potential dam removal at the as well as the safety and security of the State Street bridge.
The conditional letter of support all three towns are being asked to sign says they believe that dam removal and river restoration are ideally what their vision would be for the site and river, according to Becky Malamut, of the North and South Rivers Watershed Aassociation (NSRWA).
Hanover submitted its letter earlier that week and Pembroke had not yet committed their letter as of the Hanson board’s Feb. 27 meeting, although a majority favor it. Two other members want to see the letter first.
“It’s tough for me, because you’re telling me you can’t tell us the dollar amount, we can’t know for certain what it’s going to cost us,” said Select Board Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett.
Malamut said the whole project has a probable cost $600,000 with town asked to put in between $50,000 and $100,000 to show “skin in the game.”
In response to a question from Vice Chair Joe Weeks about whether commits the town to a project or specific course of action, Malamut said it was non-binding.
“This is just telling NRD and DEP that you’re still interested in seeing what happens,” she said. “You haven’t just decided that dam removal is off the table.”
Malamut said the feasibility study was completed about a year ago. Town officials and about 160 residents had been updated on that completion at a public meeting in December, which found that dam removal is possible and would not increase flooding either upstream or downstream nor impact infrastructure in the area, she said.
“To no one’s surprise, the big question is sediment,” she said.
Composite sampling has been done behind both dams, focusing on the State Street area in Hanson, Malamut said.
“There was one area where we found the level [of lead] exceeded the state thresholds for soil [or] sediment,” she said. Lead and mercury were below the MVP thresholds.
Select Board member Ed Heal asked if samples were or are being done on the other side of the dam. Malamut replied that only the upstream side had been tested.
By removing the dam, she said there is not going to be much difference in sediment levels, according to Malamut and two areas of sediment would not mobilize, the study concluded.
Based on conversations with the state DEP, it is believed they would approve removal of the dam without having to do any major excavation or taking contaminated sediment off-site because they don’t believe that sediment will move, Malamut said.
That brings up the end of the study and of SuperFund, she told the board.
“We don’t know, obviously, what’s going to happen upstream, but what we do know is that State Street [dam] is already breached in two places,” she said. “We have some extra funding left in the contract and we have an opportunity to extend the contract and do some additional work with that funding.”
She said the NSRWA would like to further the designs for State Street to 60 percent, from the 30 percent mark where the design process now stands, as well as designing scour countermeasures needed to make sure the bridge maintains its footings and water levels are maintained lower. They also want to begin preparing permit documents. None of that means approving the dam removal, it is, rather, the next step in the process.
“This is not, ‘go ahead and remove the dam,’ this is continue to do more of the study to determine is it something you guys are ultimately going to propose,” Select Board Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett asked.
“Exactly,” Malamut said. “Specifically, we’re focusing on State Street with the additional funds because it’s already breached. Whatever is upstream is already flowing downstream.”
The EPA will do an assessment to enable communities to understand what their plan will be for the Fireworks site and do additional sampling behind both dams and to better understand the extent of sediment contamination and how to remove it.
FitzGerald-Kemmett asked how the town could commit to a dam removal without the full facts about contamination, but Malamut said the letter was simply committing to the vision for the site.
Select Board member David George asked whether State Street would have to be closed for the work if and when the board approved the work. But Malamut said she didn’t think that was necessary.
“It depends on the scour countermeasures,” she said.
“The town of Hanson will not be responsible financially whatsoever for what happens to that bridge, including future problems that might happen because of the removal of the dam,” Select Board member Ann Rein asked, noting the project is fraught with danger of contamination of the North River all the way to the seaboard.
While acknowledging it is an important question, Malamut said she didn’t have that answer.
“I think it’s important for us to read the letter,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
Funding for the Natural Resource Damages Fund is unique Malamut said, in that the majority of dam removal projects don’t have a bucket of money in pocket.
“There is $7 million there,” she said. “I think we’ve got about $400,000 for this project. … It’s also important to think of costs moving forward.”
While the “bucket of money” available will be used, the town will also be asked to put in some money for the project because funders want to see dam owners doing that.
“[We] won’t be reliant on the town to fund the removal of the dam itself in addition to these scour countermeasures for the bridge,” she added.
Hanson’s letter to the NRD, which FitzGerald-Kemmett read aloud during the meeting states the town supports moving forward with river restoration as the objective of the site with the understanding that Hanson doesn’t have all the data needed to determine how to safely remove contaminated sediment through the Indian Head River, and requiring following conditions: EPA to complete an assessment of the fireworks site upstream to determine the extent of contamination, who is responsible for the cleanup and an appropriate plan for it; and project partners must set up an appropriate sediment management plan for contaminated sediment behind both dams, which could be mobilized as a result of dam removal.”
The letter also states dam removal is possible and is the preferred alternative for Hanson, after reviewing the feasibility study, if funding is available, as well as the vision of returning river fowl and fish. It is also aware soil samples from the dams exceed soil standards for upland reuse and that further sampling is required to better understand the scope of the contamination and an appropriate sediment is needed to determine the extent of contamination and an appropriate management plan.
Rein said a third bullet point about the safety of the State Street bridge must be included.

HANSON – South Shore Tech is working to provide its member communities with as much information, at a household level as possible.
“You can tell me things are going to change and you’re going to get into more detail, but don’t hold that information off until the eighth inning, at least that’s how I see it – it does nobody any good,” said South Shore Tech Superintendent-Director Dr. Thomas J. Hickey during a presentation to the Select Board Tuesday, Feb. 27 on the 900-student school preferred design, approved by the Building Committee last week [see story above].
The school provides information on the project at a dedicated website, southshoretechproject.com. The school would remain fully operational while construction, with the district’s share being $176 million, is done and is aimed at opening for the 2028-29 school year.
“We’ll submit the preferred schematic report this Thursday [Feb. 29] and, if we stay on track then we will have meetings with the MSBA in the spring,” Hickey said. A meeting with the MSBA’s Facilities Assessment Subcommittee will take place in March, and the hope is for the project to be before the Board of Directors in October, at which time a project funding agreement will be decided, including the total project cost.
Once the town clerks from the district’s member towns approve a date, district-wide special election would be held in late January 2025.
“We don’t have any say in when that date is and it’s really a collaborative effort,” he said. “The communities are going to run these local elections and they’ve got to agree on the date and the hours of these local elections.”
Hickey said the district is mindful of the cost involved in running a special election, but asking residents to support the project must go hand-in-hand with asking how they would be willing to pay for it.
“With minor exceptions, our district communities are going to likely need a debt exclusion,” he said, noting towns might want to consider piggy-backing the question on another ballot, election laws permitting. “There’s nothing that says that decision has to be made anytime soon.”
The first financial effects of the project would be in the form of a bond anticipation note for the interest on the borrowing of $20 million – probably about $700,000 divided among member communities – in fiscal 2026.
“It would be in fiscal 2027 and ’28 that it would start to cascade,” he said.
The district is also working on an amendment to its regional agreement to adjust how it assesses debt. That is aimed at going before the communities this fall.
Currently, SST’s debt assessments are fixed for the life of the borrowing at the time a debt is authorized. The amendment would provide an avenue for adjusting debt as any new member towns join the district. Marshfield is already joining, and Pembroke is currently considering joining. New member communities would mean lower cost-share percentages for all towns.
Hickey said SST is the only vocational district in eastern Massachusetts with municipalities near it not currently aligned with another vocational school.
“It’s part of what we can do to create a more equitable pay-as-you-go model,” Hickey said. “It’s a good idea whether this project passes or not.”
While there is a total project number, voters in debt exclusion election would only be voting on their share of it.
In the first year, Hanson’s share would be 13.03 percent, he said, based on the current regional agreement, doing a three-year look back on enrollment.
Select Board member Ed Heal asked how the region-wide special election would work.
“What if two or three of the towns say no?” he asked.
“This is an aggregate vote,” Hickey said. “For one Saturday, we become one community that [goes by] the total yeas and total nays. That’s why we would want to know from voters, at the same time whether or not you support the concept of the project, that you support how it’s going to get paid for – we can’t afford to have a disconnect between the two.”
Select Board Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett asked if increasing the number of member communities would mean fewer Hanson students would be able to attend SST in the future.
“At a time when technical and vocational training is really what we’re seeing a lot of kids migrating toward, because it’s pretty difficult to off-shore HVAC stuff or electrical or plumbing … I’m all about saving money, but I feel kind of conflicted that actually reduces opportunities for our students,” she said.
Hickey said seats are apportioned to communities based on eighth-grade enrollments.
“Every town starts with an initial allotment,” he said. Hanson now has 95 eighth-graders and currently have 11 seats available at SST with 34 applications. They historically assume unused seats from under-enrolled towns like Cohasset and Norwell, to admit wait-listed students.
“In a 900-student school, Hanson’s initial allotment would increase from 11 to 13,” he said. “We don’t know who’s going to love us in 20 years or where the demand is going to come from.”
Select Board member Ann Rein, referring to the Building Committee’s decision against the addition/renovation option said she hates the idea of “just throwing things out and building new.”
“It was a slow boil for me, personally, to get to that point,” Hickey said.
“The problem is, we have our own budget fight right now in this town for our own high school,” Rein said. “I keep thinking about the taxpayers that live in the town right now that want to stay here.”
She and Vice Chair Joe Weeks expressed special concern for older residents.
“There is no cheap option here,” Hickey said. “There just isn’t.”
Budget concerns
The Select Board also discussed the fiscal implications of the W-H school budget on Hanson’s fiscal picture.
Town Administrator Lisa Green, when asked where Hanson had started as their assessment ceiling, said it had been 3.5 or 3.8 percent, but agreed with Whitman’s 5 percent limit.
The school assessment likely to force an override is 10.2 percent.
“Hopefully it’s going to come down from that, and they’ll find some other money to winnow down,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “Then the voters decide what gets funded for the schools.”
The board agreed withTown Accountant Eric Kinsherf that a unified amount of 5 percent with Whitman is enough of a challenge.
“Prop 2 1/2 comes into this, and 2 1/2 is what’s epected,” Heal said. “Five percent is twice that. You can’t keep doing 5 percent.”
Providing Green with some direction, the board advocated having an inter-board dialog with the School Committee.
“It was very difficult conversations to have,” Weeks said of the last time they took that route. “But, I just feel that, year after year, it’s really difficult because I do feel for the schools. I always feel like their always begging and it becomes such an adversarial relationship — and it’s not fair to anybody.”
He said the School Committee is only fulfilling its mission of advocating for students’ education.
“But it’s every year we’re trying to survive the budget process,” he said. “I really value those conversations all in the same room and, the sooner we start that again, the better off we’re going to be.”
Just watching each others’ meetings on TV or YouTube is not effective, he argued.
FitzGerald-Kemmett agreed to reach out for such a meeting. Hanson’s warrant is closed March 12 and is slated to be approved March 19, however.
“What have we got to lose?” she asked.
Both Weeks and Rein noted that there is a lot of uncertainty over job security both in town departments and the schools.
“We have to do our due diligence,” he said. “There’s a lot of unfortunate stuff that comes with budgeting and budget cycles.”
Rein said she wants to know what the schools have done to consolidate and eliminate positions where necessary and economize in their budget before the towns ared faced with cuts.
“They’re going to be asking us to cut people that we shouldn’t cut,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to see any of our departments cut, I just don’t.”
“You put 31 people on with one-time money, yeah, people are going to lose their job — 100 percent,” said board member Steve George.
Weeks and Rein also agreed they opposed balancing an operational budget with one-time money.
Whitman Select Board member Shawn Kain attended the meeting out of professional interest and a willingness to listen,
“My thoughts are not toward Whitman,” Rein stressed. “My thoughts are toward the school board.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett said school budget growth is simply outpacing town departments’ growth — as well as the town’s revenue growth.
Weeks also raised the concern of seniors again, as they face another potential assessment increase.
“You can’t always be like, ‘We have to fund this thing,’” he said. “The people that we’re asking to pull funds from, it’s not like their Social Security’s going up, it’s not like their fixed their income’s going up – it’s not keeping the same pace.”
Heal agreed, pointing out that the senior citizen demographic is going up and the school enrollment is going down.
“And the school budget gets larger and larger with fewer kids,” Rein said.
Heal said, by contrast, the amount Hanson pays for SST has been going down.
Rein countered by relating a conversation with a Bourne principal who said that the vocational schools are stealing students from town schools.
“The kids are leaving the public school system, going into the vocationals and other private schools, and they just don’t have the student numbers that they used to have,” she said. “It’s a continuing problem.”
Vocational schools are public schools, however.