HANSON – Any way you look at it ARPA regulations and the calendar have worked out to give town officials the more pleasant headache of how to spend $350,000 in unused federal money – but a question over if funds approved at Town Meeting for a libarary/senior center generator could be spent on a larger model to help address “catastrophic emergencies” have complicated things.
The remaining projects – totaling some $319,000 were approved and town counsel’s opinion will be sought about the generator issue.
The town has some unexpended ARPA money, that the town didn’t know about, according to Town Accountant Lisa Green.
“Plymouth County reached out and gave us an exact amount of how much we had,” she said.
But Select Board Chair and Town Accountant Eric Kinsherf said $150,000 had been set aside for a library feasibility study and some of the projects that were approved and the task being funded didn’t come to fruition.
“What’s driving this is, by Dec. 31, you have to have the money spent or at least a contract to spend it,” he said.
The total for that unexpended cash is approximately $350,000, and there are, Kinsherf said, some suggested projects on which to spend it, that had already vetted by Green and department heads.
Select Board member Joe Weeks asked what, exactly, happened to the projects? He was already aware of the library project.
Green said under Plymouth County’s oversight, the town applied for ARPA funds for the generator for the senior center and library, which was denied. The library had also requested $200,000 for a new HVAC system, but Facilities Director Charlie Baker was able to bring in a company to maintain and service the current system, which bought an additional three years of life for the systems. The library then sought $150,000 and, through Town Meeting, set aside $150,000 if they were to receive a state grant for the building. But the town was not eligible for the grant after Town Meeting rejected that opened up the $150,000.
Kinsherf said among the projects that could be funded with the remaining funds are:

• $9,600 to Guilfoil Public Relations;
• $10,000 for Highway Department overtime;
• $6,500 for Select Board staff stipend;
• $8,800 for Assessors’ map software;
• $26,750 to replace Police Department computer battery backup;
• $26,900 for a Police Department motorcycle;
• $5,360.34 for a Smartboard for the Police Department training room;
  •$56,000 for a concrete walkway and handicapped ramp at Town Hall;
• $25,000 for five Fire Department radios;
  Police cruisers, storm water management bylaw update, Highway office improvements and additional funds for a portable generator round out the funding projects.
  “I know that at Town Meeting we did appropriate money for a generator specifically for the library and senior center,” Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
  She added that she had received a couple of calls from the library and the senior center to remind her that the generator funds had been approved specifically for the library and senior center.
  “When you and I had discussed it,” she said to Fire Chief Robert O’Brien Jr. “you had said this would give us more versatility with a generator we could move around. But then it gets into some questions about who decides who the priority is?”
  O’Brien said that is fairly simple.
  “Between the Police Station and the well field, those are the priorities in town,” he said. They found, after Town Meeting approved exterior hookups on the buildings, they found that all the generators that are in this region will not do the well field or the Police Station because their loads are greater than what he has at the Fire Station.
  “We needed a minimum of a 125-kilowatt generator,” he said they were told by a technician testing the Fire Department generator. During their talk it became apparent to O’Brien that, “if the Police Station goes down, the Fire Station goes down, the Town Hall goes down and the library/senior center goes down.”
  The new phone system in town offices are based out of the Police Station as is the majority of the town’s IT system.
  “That is why we went to the external hookups a year ago,” he said.
  Legal
  considerations
  FitzGerald-Kemmett countered that the Town Meeting vote was specific about a generator going to the library/senior center, and the Water Department runs its own budget.
  “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be that way, but the Water Department has their own money that they control,” she said. “That’s what we pay our water bills for and I think, if they need a generator then they ought to make the case for a generator out of water funds.”
  O’Brien countered that all the buildings have generators, but a portable generator should be prioritized as a back-up.
  “We know Town Meeting had voted for a generator for the library/senior center, but what I was personally looking at was trying to be more feasible,” he said. “As we know, money is tight, and if we’re able to get one generator that, while it is the library/senior center’s [and is housed there as the main user] if, during a major storm, the Police Station goes down, Charlie Baker or somebody can go take it, tow it there and hook up their stuff.”
  He did agree with FitzGerald-Kemmett that the issue will have to go back to Town Meeting.
  The difference between the generators being discussed is $30,000. The generator O’Brien discussed has an $80,000 price tag plus another $41,000 to do the transfer switch at the library/senior center and the outside hookups, as have been installed at the other buildings and the well field.
  “So we’re still talking about a generator for the library/senior center, it’s just a different type of generator,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “We don’t need to take a vote tonight.”
  But she wanted to hear where the board was leaning.
  “I think it’s incredibly smart,” Weeks said. “But it just comes down to what the town voted for vs what they’re potentially going to get. It’s overlapping issues we’re dealing with.”
  He wanted to hear the library/senior center opinion as well as a legal one from town counsel.
  SST vote
  South Shore Tech Superintendent-Director Dr. Thomas J. Hickey for a “preliminary discussion” on the Jan. 20, 2025 town Election on the school’s building plan.
  “Once that ballot goes through, the town will move forward with how we pay for [it],” Town Administrator Lisa Green said, indicating the discussion was just to establish a time line and introduction.
  “It’s a special District Election that the same ballot question will be on at polling places at all nine of our disrict towns,” Hickey said. “The question is really not a debt exclusion, it’s not an override. “It’s merely a question of, ‘do the voters in the nine towns support the project or not?’ So, it’s a yes or no vote.”
  If the project passes, each community will have to figure out its own path to figuring out how its community is going to pay for it,” Hickey said, adding that nearly all the district’s communities will go for a debt exclusion.
  But if the project passes on Jan. 25, the most popular choice would be to ask voters to approve a spending formula on a spring ballot question.
  He’s been telling towns that the high-water mark of their bonding costs would hit in 2030 of 2031.
  In the first year, the district would probably borrow about $11 million, paying $350,000 in interest, 12 percent of which would be Hanson’s cost as the fiscal 2016 installment, based on a division by enrollment percentage.
  “I’m hoping that, by the end of this month, I’ll have a projection of tax impact,” Hickey said.
  The MSBA approved the project at the end of October, costing about $164 million in total, divided between nine towns, as Marshfield has joined the district.
  “When we put out our numbers, one of the things that I’m looking at carefully is separating fact from projection,” Hickey said. “I can tell every town what their share would be in fiscal 2026 and ‘27 because we have those enrollment numbers in the can.”
  But for 2028 and beyond, the predictions take on the accuracy of a 10-day weather forecast.
  “I do feel comfortable saying that Hanson is one of four communities out of the nine who consistently wants to enroll more children than there are available seats,” he said. “I can look at that [available unused seats] and make a projection.”
  Right now, he said Hanson is probably looking at a 10.5-percent share of the cost, if all towns stay constant with their enrollment.
  Select Board member Joe Weeks asked what happens if the issue fails at the ballot in some towns, but a majority votes yes.
  “It’s a district-wide election, so it’s treated as one entity,” Hickey said. “It’s not town-specific.”
  Voting would be only in-person or by absentee voting.
  The School Board will officially vote the warrant on Nov. 20.
  Weeks then asked what happens if towns that approved the project in January fail to pass the funding articles at Town Meeting or Town Election?
  “That’s probably the best question that could be asked at this early stage,” Hickey said. “If the project is approved, then each community is obligated, so the messaging has to be clear … if there’s a municipal debt exclusion and the debt exclusion fails, the project dies.”

As one of the most acrimonious political seasons in U.S. history draws to an electoral deadline on Tuesday, Nov. 5, there’s no guarantee the division will automatically heal.
That will require work, specifically in listening to each other and offering respect. It was the message of speakers during a Unity Night presented at W-H’s Dr. John F. McEwan Performing Arts Center on Thursday, Oct. 24. The Whitman Freedom Team, whose mission is to explore ways of offering dialogue and support to the entire community, with a goal of promoting love, inclusion and trust, produced the program. The group aims to “move beyond tolerance, to embracing, celebrating and sharing our community’s diversity.”
“The key to unity is better understanding,” said psychologist Dr. Joshua Twomey, PhD, a member of the Freedom Team’s Board of Directors, and an assistant professor of family medicine at UMass Medical School.
“I fundamentally believe that an essential element in pursuit of unity is the practice of listening.”
Bridgewater State University’s Assistant Vice President for Student Success, Diversity and Inclusion Yolany Gonell continued that thought, saying, “unity requires us to work across difference.”
The evening’s discussion was aimed at fostering a return to civility in discussing “tough and difficult conversations, particularly in the political climate we find ourselves in today,” founder Tom Evans, a retired teacher, said in opening the event.
The evening’s theme was civility and respect, featuring speakers who devote their lives to promoting those goals.
After opening with a series of quotes on the meaning of communication, Evans introduced each speaker before they offered their message for the program.
“All of our stories are subject to bias,” Twomey said. “They are influenced by our fears and our disappointments and our needs. … Bias is not inherently good and is not inherently bad, either.”
Gonell began by asking who in the audience were athletes in school or parents of an athlete now, or if any are active-duty service members or veterans. She was greeted by a smattering of applause to each question.
Both these categories that people can fall into, forge community – and help build unity.
“Unity requires common ground,” she said. “We ask questions. Do students and employees feel a sense of belonging here? If they don’t, what do we do as a community to break down barriers?”
Conversations, celebrations and shared learning communities are created.
“The more welcoming we are, the more economic progress we can make,” she said.
“Listening is where change takes place,” Twomey said, noting that telling someone how they should feel – in daily life as well as counseling – simply doesn’t work,
“Genuine listening allows for people to examine biases of their own stories and allows them to be open to a multitude of other perspectives,” he said, and agreement is not required.
“The only thing that is required is to see them as a person,” he said. “Listening establishes trust.”
The evening’s first speaker had been Dr. Carl Kowalski, an educator, former member and chair of the School Committee and chair of the Whitman Select Board.
“Historians tell us that past is prologue, that one way of getting to tell what is, might be to review what has been,” Kowalski began and leaned on poets to paint a picture of humanity’s continual struggle against darkness.
“The only way to shed light is to join with, and be true to one another,” he said. “How fog-covered is our world? How can we find happiness in a world filled with hate, fake news and division?”
In seeking the answer, Kowalski turned to Aristotle and said, “If it’s in our nature to think, we can only be happy if we think logically. If it’s in our nature to feel, we can only be happy if we feel deeply. … The first step toward happiness is to know oneself.”
State Sen. Mike Brady, D-Brockton, touched on the theme of happiness, too, as he recalled a fundraising play he and Kowalski had performed in “many years ago,” to benefit the Brockton Library in an effort to make it more accessible to handicapped patrons such as their mutual friend the late state Sen. Thomas Kennedy.
“We used to do these plays called ‘Murder in the Library,’ and Dr. Kowalski and myself were the two suspects and it was a computer virus that caused a disease,” Brady recalled. “We sang a song that was to the tune of ‘Making Whoopie,’ and the theme was computer viruses.”
Brady said that experience, along with another in a community watch program, demonstrated the value of community.
“Nobody does this job alone,” he said. “Unlike what we hear in the media, and the division in this country is unfortunate, we have a good team in the commonwealth. We have Republicans and Democrats who work very well together.”
That cooperation will be needed for some of the rumors being spread in efforts to widen divisions.
“This past weekend, there were some rumors floating around [in Whitman], mostly on social media,” he said, noting he had seen screenshots that showed symbols appearing to be swastikas. “I’ve been in conversation with the chief of police, Tim Hanlon [who is a member of the Freedom Team], and I’m taking his advice and saying that the police will handle it and are well aware of it.”
Hanlon told Evans that he would say, “there are so many rumors out there, [and] people are getting all upset.” One of those rumors was that Gov. Maura Healey was going to use the Whitman Armory to house immigrant families.
“It’s not true,” Evans said. “But these are the kind of things that are out there and are making it difficult for people to stay calm and it causes a lot of dysfunction.”
State Rep. Alyson Sullivan-Almeida and the Rev. Michele Matott, rector of the All Saints Episcopal Church in Whitman, had also been scheduled to speak, but Sullivan-Almeida, had a scheduling conflict and Rev. Matott was ill with COVID, so neither were able to attend.
Dr. Michael Kryzanek and the Rev. Adrian Millik of the Holy Ghost Church filled in for them.
Kryzanek, filling in for Matott, is an author and retired professor of political science, and has served on the Board of Directors of Father Bill’s Mainspring as well as that of the Freedom Team.
“All people in Whitman should be involved in the common good,” he said. “And unity brings stability and strength and opportunity.”
He listed the ways the founding documents of the United States pertains to unity and diversity.
“Diversity is a goal worth pursuing,” Kryzanek said, referring to Unity Day as the beginning of a movement to make the values of our Founders come to life. “Diversity will only strengthen what we have here in Whitman.”
The Rev. Millik offered a blessing to the group following his remarks, as a person whose parents grew up in Poland before the Soviet-backed regime was removed.
“Totalitarians pit people against each other,” he said.
Former School Committee member Christopher Scriven, an unscheduled speaker, was also invited to speak, arguing that those who don’t have advanced degrees have something to contribute to community-building, too.
“I recognize what we’re dealing with in this situation, and it breaks my heart that our community is going through this,” he said. “I want to make a point about how important it is for all of us to be involved. … have a voice that’s no more, no less important, and that’s something we should all exercise.”
He noted that many in the meeting have been leading in Whitman and serving the community for a long time and more people should join in that work.