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.

HANSON— The Select Board on Tuesday, Jan. 9 opened the warrant for the annual Town Meeting as Town Administrator Lisa Green announced she was sending out a memo to department heads the next day, giving them until Friday, Feb. 9 to submit articles.
Guidelines on how articles will be established, including supporting information necessary and that all articles must be reviewed for accuracy.
Frank Milisi said the Capital Improvement Committee plans a Feb. 26, asking if a placeholder article could be drafted until they can finalize its language.
“We may have some ARPA money that’s available for capital improvements,” Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett sad. “I suspect because we are drawing the line quite early – intentionally so because everybody procrastinates and then it ends up being a real burden on our office – that we will get a number of place-holders, and that’s fine, as long as people vet [articles] and flesh it out and make sure that the get the details to us in time.”
The board also voted to formally agree to a new contract with Town Accountant Eric Kinsherf and to appoint Kerry Glass as local building inspector.
Green said that the board entered into a new contract with Kinsherf in November, who had been hired as an interim to provide accounting services to the town, and “never quite took that away,” she said.
“This, basically, is a formality to appoint Mr. Kinsherf as our town accountant, not our interim accountant.”
His term, which began Dec. 21. 2023 runs through to Nov. 30, 2024.
In Glass’ case, when the board went through its appointments in May 2023, Glass was appointed as an alternate building inspector retroactively from July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2034.
FitzGerald-Kemmett said that was the role Glass had before former Town Inspector Robert Curran left. Glass had then been appointed to the post.
Hanover Building Commissioner Joseph Stack has been serving as the town’s alternate inspector as well, which Town Clerk Elizabeth Sloan had brought to Green’s attention. Sloan has to file the building inspector’s name with the state, as well as that of the alternate.
“What we’re doing here tonight is correcting that we don’t have two assistant local building inspectors,” Green said. Glass will be the local building inspector and Stack will continue to serve as Hanson’s building commissioner until Glass obtains his proper certification.
Glass is already licensed by the Division of Occupational Licensing and the Board of Building Regulation Standards said Green, who described the Stack’s main duty in Hanson as mainly to sign occupancy permits and Glass is a licensed building inspector with a updated license and can perform inspections, providing Stack with a verbal indication of whether or not permits should be signed. But Glass still must take more exams to have the title.
FitzGerald-Kemmett said the board would like a timeline for when that might be accomplished. There is also no charge for Stack’s signing of the permits.