HANOVER – South Shore Tech School Committee honored its Parents Association during the Wednesday, May 22 School Committee meeting, for their “exceptional commitment to SST programs every school year.”
“It is with great pleasure that we recognize their outstanding contributions and to express our gratitude for their unwavering support for all things South Shore Tech,” said Principal Sandra Baldner. “Their tireless efforts and dedication have made significant impacts the success of our students and their well-being.”
She was joined by Erin Venuti, who spoke for the group and Cynthia Ortiz, Karen Burgio and Jessica Franceschini, both of Hanson and Leigh Gilcoine joined her at the meeting. The Parents’ Association works to make the school a positive and inclusive environment for both students and parents.
Venuti’s daughter is graduating this year, so she is stepping down from the Parents’ Association, but has been asked to serve as parent liaison with the School Building Committee.
Throughout the school year, the association puts in “endless hours of volunteer work,” advocacy of positive communication throughout SST, resourcefulness and collaborations with all members of the school community, according to Baldner.
“Their ability to bring people together and work toward common goals has been invaluable,” she said. “Their unwavering support and commitment have made a significant difference in the lives of our students and in the overall success of our school.”
Baldner said they could often be seen “lugging SST gear” from car to car and event to event, rain or shine, year after year. She also said she values the association as a working mom because he work at SST does not give her the time to volunteer with her children’s vocational school program.
Acting Parents’ Association President Erin Venuti offered some highlights of the current members time volunteering for SST students and programs.
Venuti said she joined when she heard Hickey speak of no fees for sports or athletics and giving every student a chance to participate.
“I don’t know if he realizes the impact that those particular things, and funding those opportunities really do have on our student body,” she said. “Through the course of that, I ended up here.”
Venuti said her running joke is that it’s like [The Eagle’s hit] ‘Hotel California’ – you can check in, but you can never leave.” To demonstrate how that is true for her, she said she is transitioning to her new department, to work with Hickey as a parent liaison on the new School Building Committee.
“This has been one of our most successful years,” she said, underscoring Baldner’s comments. “One of the most important things we looked at was bringing back an in-person community event.”
That led to member Cynthia Ortiz suggesting and given free rein on what became one of the most successful fundraisers ever – a singo event at Players Restaurant in Auburn. This year, there were a couple more – signature T-shirts for sale to support mental health awareness and suicide prevention at the annual car show. This year’s first-edition T-shirt sales brought in more than $4,000 from the sale for mental health and suicide prevention programs.
Students in the Graphic arts shop design them and teachers vote on which one to produce each year.
“That was one of my main aims to leave the school with, because it was very important and a very passionate project of mine,” she said.
Among the uses funds raised by the association are a monthly teacher appreciation coffee and pastry event and new sideline chairs provided for the gym for the use of volleyball and basketball games. They also purchased a new camera for the Graphics Department to use for producing the yearbook. They also continue the annual awards program to help support any student going on to higher education, or for specialized tools needed for their trades.
“But we wanted things that could transition into a new building,” Venuti said. “We don’t want to spend money on something that’s not going to stay. The sideline chairs can transition to the gym and really did make the kids feel special and people know, when they come to the gym, they are at South Shore Tech. They know our colors. They know our logo.”
The association is also bringing back the Class events, starting with the Class of 2024 – sponsoring the lawn signs given free of charge to the families of each graduating senior, bottled water for graduations in hot weather, shop cords for cap and gown ensembles, senior breakfast and senior lunch, the annual students’ civics project and leaving each sports team with a kick-start to help them fund raise. Smaller requests often come in from school administration for which the association tries to help as well as a $500 donation to SkillsUSA.
“The outgoing graduates lost a lot to COVID,” she said. “These were things we all agreed we need to bring back to make sure they feel they are leaving school on a positive note and not just leaving.”
She concluded by reminding the meeting that the Parents’ Association is “not a one-man-band.”
“It is all of us, together,” she said. “There are no titles. We’re all equal – we all talk the same, we all express the same. … We are all involved in the community, we are all selling the same story, the positive community atmosphere.”
Spring’s last chance to recycle hazardous stuff around the house
Register now for the last two spring Household Hazardous Waste collection days.
Five South Shore Recycling Cooperative (SSRC) towns will host the last two household hazardous waste collections this spring.
Registration is required, to reduce wait times.
The addresses and other important event details are revealed on the registration form at bit.ly/Spring24hhw.
All will take place from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. as follows:
Saturday, June 8 — Duxbury, Kingston & Pembroke NO LATEX/ACRYLIC PAINT
Saturday, June 15 — Scituate & Cohasset NO LATEX/ACRYLIC PAINT
Latex and acrylic paint “cleans up with soap and water.” It is not hazardous, just messy. It may be dried and disposed of with regular trash.
If you have questions after reviewing the registration form, visit bit.ly/ssrchhw or call 781-329-8318.
Closing the school budget gap
HANSON – Now begins the work of meeting the W-H Regional School District’s operational assessment in the wake of the second failure to pass an override – at Town Meeting on May 6 and at the ballot box Saturday, May 18.
A funding gap of $372,141 remains.
The Select Board on Tuesday, May 21, met with Superintendent of Schools Jeff Szymaniak in an effort to better understand what drives rising school budget costs and what the defeat of the override will mean for Hanson’s finances.
Now that the ballot question failed on Saturday [see related story], the Select Board discussed what comes next since the “override question is dead,” she said.
“That’s one path that’s been eliminated from the map,” she said of the override. “Now what we have before us is a question of how do we fund that delta between what we had budgeted for and what the school [operational] assessment was. … We’re in the same position we were in without any method of paying that difference.”
Select Board member Joe Weeks asked for a bumper-sticker view of what the current budget situation would mean to the district’s schools.
“If I don’t have a budget in place by July 1, the commissioner of education takes over and I have no say in what he decides on giving us,” Szymaniak said. “It can be even to fiscal 2024, or he could decide it could be more.”
What the bumper-sticker would say is: pink slips for staff, according to Szymaniak
“The challenge is, once you get a pink slip, you don’t have a job and you qualify for unemployment,” he said. “On July 1, if those are 60 folks, they will qualify for unemployment until I can give them a contract, and I can’t give them a contract until I have a certified budget.”
Szymaniak said the district is OK until July in paying teachers according to their contract.
“It gets a little gray by August if I don’t have a budget,” Szymaniak. “The day that a teacher doesn’t have a contract, they’re eligible for 40 percent of their salary going forward. Some would call that double-dipping because they’ve already gotten paid.”
The district had challenged the practice during COVID, but lost.
“We learned a lot during that time-frame just because of that situation,” he said.
Where things stand
Town Meeting voters were told at the May 6 Town Meeting that balancing the municipal budget was dependent on the $372,141 increase for the W-H operating assessment being “expressly contingent upon passage” of a proposition 2 ½ question on the May 18 ballot.
This time at Town Meeting, the question will be structures such that there will be two options – voting no and voting to fund the difference with various budget cuts the Select Board will explain, according to Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett. At that time, voters will be provided a line-by-line look at what the board has voted.
On Tuesday, May 14, she had advised the board that “there’s only so many things we can do to fund this budget,” while ticking off the options. They remain: drastic across-the-board cuts; funding some of the gap with free cash and make modest cuts at Town Hall and other departments; fund a bit more with free cash and make; use of free cash and more drastic cuts; free cash or even more drastic cuts or just cuts.
The Finance Committee has not yet voted on the new warrant article being drafted for the June 17 Town Meeting, FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
“Again, saying no is not an option,” she said. “We have to present some option to Town Meeting, or de facto that assessment is in place and we just don’t have a method anyone’s voted on to pay it.”
In fact, Hanson’s available free cash is $627,000. “To pay $350,000 for the assessment would perilous,” FitzGerald-Kemmett May 14.
Town Accountant Eric Kinsherf has cautioned that “It would be irresponsible” to balance the budget with free cash now.
Kinsherf, Town Administrator Lisa Green and the Finance Committee are all looking at whether there are open positions that the town should not fill right now or positions where hours can be trimmed back without drastically impacting services.
FitzGerald-Kemmett also put to rest – again – the rumor that the town has $1.4 million in free cash.
“We do not,” she said. “We have roughly $600,000 in cash.”
Kinsherf and Green are also meeting with department heads, considering options including whether it could be a lot of little cuts that could fill in that dollar amount.
“Some of it may be free cash, but we’re going to use as little free cash as we possibly can,” she said.
The board will be meeting again on Tuesday, May 28 to review and sign that warrant then.
It has been considered whether the meeting could be made to the high school…. but that option in recent years was permitted by the state because of COVID and may not be available again.
In the past, when a high turnout was anticipated at town meetings at Hanson Middle School, the gym or cafeteria had been configured to handle overflow crowd with a TV screen for people to follow the meeting and a teller to track questions and votes.
“We were caught flat-footed at the last Town Meeting,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “We didn’t anticipate that number of people and we need to do better.”
The town is planning on having the meeting at Hanson Middle School, but having the gymnasium in place with plenty of printed materials available for voters.
Budget craft
School budget is based on an estimate of funds the district expects to be refunded by the state.
“Every year, it’s a bit of a crap-shoot,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “It’s the best guess that the School Department can do.”
This year the important funds the budget was based on was $30 per-pupil reimbursement and a 74 percent reimbursement on busing. But right now, both the House and Senate on Beacon Hill have increased those numbers to $104 for per-pupil costs with an 84 percent transportation reimbursement. Those two budget bills translate to a $190,00 in state funds.
“However, that is not a sure thing,” she said, calling on Szymaniak. “It’s not on lockdown and it probably won’t be until mid-July.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett said the clock on the wall should make town and school officials look at the timing of everything.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever get to a point where we could have Town Meeting so late that we’d know [the state budget] numbers,” she said. “But there’s got to be a better way of doing this.”
“We don’t have those numbers, but they look encouraging,” Szymaniak said. “Last year, we expected a little bit more and when the budget came in on Aug. 5 with less, so we had to make cuts on the fly.” The state is asking the towns to pick up more funds and the towns say they can’t, he said.
“If they came back with $300,000 more in [reimbursements], we wouldn’t be here,” he said.
Those cuts amounted to $250,000 in personnel cuts.
There are two bills, with some teeth to them, on state Sen. Mike Brady’s desk to increase regional transportation and special education 100 percent, he said, urging people to call Brady and other state senators to support them.
“Regional transportation and special education reimbursement are the core of our funding,” he said. “If we can get more from the state, it will help us out.”
But there are four or five more conference committees to go through plus objections before it goes to the governor’s desk, Szymaniak added.
“There’s no way that we could time a super Town Meeting before July 1 at which point, you must go into the 1/12 budget,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
Ed Heal asked how the public could get salary information, to which Szymaniak said teachers are listed by unit salaries in Town Report. Complete budget information is available at whrsd.org.
“We’re looking at cutting staff also,” said Select Board Vice Chair Ann Rein. “It seems to me the School Committee needs to look at that themselves and not try to force us to go onto this fiscal cliff every year.”
Later in the meeting, Weeks also requested more meetings — joint sessions with the School Committee — be added to the Select Board’s schedule with the specific intention of making formal requests of the School Committee.
“We all know this isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and we had discussed last year being more diligent about being more transparent about having these financial meetings,” he said. “It’s really hard to put somebody on the spot when we didn’t provide them with an agenda, we didn’t provide them any materials to get ready. They weren’t here for this.”
Weeks said that kind of scenario can lead to people putting their foot in their mouth or promising something off-the-cuff that they cannot keep.
“Everybody here has had questions they’ve been asking to cameras and they haven’t had the ability — quite frankly, we haven’t done a forma request … and then we can have our questions answered.
FitzGerald-Kemmett said it makes sense for January or February.
“What’s stopping us from having a meeting in a couple of weeks that the superintendent was asked on the fly?” Weeks said.
Rein said it makes more sense to get throught the special Town Meeting first.
Member David George said he primarily wants to speak with the Hanson School Committee members about their support for the budget because he is still looking for an answer as to why 31 staff members were added with one-time money.
“I think you have to meet all of them,” Rein said.
“I don’t know the ask,” Heal said.
Weeks said he envisions a joint meeting with Whitman Select Board and the School Committee several times during the budget season.
George said he doesn’t see why it wouldn’t help just to get the Hanson members of the School Committee at Select Board meetings to ask the questions people have.
“We’re not asking them to make decisions or change anything, we just have some questions that we need answered,” he said.
Hanson voters reject override
The next round of school budget negotiations should go this well, but judging by the sentiment among Select Board members, it’s not likely.
Voters in Hanson soundly rejected the override with no votes winning the day 821 to 522. While Whitman’s Town Meeting voted to use free cash to bridge the gap in the school district’s assessment, 361 people voted for the override and 883 voted against. Whitman voters also rejected a ballot question supported by their Select Board to change the treasurer-collector’s position to an appointed one instead of an elected one, by a vote of 830 to724.
Assistant Town Clerk Michael Ganshirt said 422 people voted early via absentee ballot or about 45 percent of the 1,200 ballots mailed out. Hanson saw 500-plus mail-in and 116 early voters of the 1,471 eligible voters go to the polls for early voting in the election. There are 8,477 registered voters in Hanson.
In Whitman 16 percent – 1,771 – of the town’s 11,000 registered voters cast ballots.
“I hope I win,” Salvucci said that morning. “I’m never confident, until I [see the result].” He said that, win or lose, he wanted to remain in the post as liaison to South Shore Tech, a position not always held by a Select Board member.
Select Board member Ann Rein, who was the top vote-getter among candidates in the race for two seats on the board, has been a vocal opponent of the override and school budget in general.
She has been “totally against the override.”
“I want the school department to be held to the fire,” Rein said while sign-holding at the polls Saturday morning. “I’m ‘sick and tired about them bullying us into doing what they want. No. If we have to cut, they have to cut.”
Frank Milisi, who finished out of the win column for Select Board said there was no purpose of it to pass at this point, anyway.
“It’s not worth the fight to pass it,” he said.
Second-place vote-getter Joe Weeks also predicted the override would fail.
“I think the town is in a position now, where things are tight and services and costs are going up,” he said. “I have a feeling that, that’s going to impact people’s votes,” he said. “I do think we have to do a better job of some education around it because, I think if people understood why some of these overrides and what [they] mean for the bigger picture are in terms of longer-term savings, I think we’ll have a better idea a positive vote.”
But there was a note of positivity among the Select Board candidates themselves.
As Hanson Town Clerk Elizabeth read out the voting results and candidates with calculators handy added up the numbers that returned incumbents Ann Rein and Joe weeks to the Select Board, a spirit of bipartisanship was evident.
“You deserved it,” Weeks told challenger Frank Milisi more than once, incredulous that he had won. Weeks had said earlier in the day that he felt the result would be tight and voter turnout might hold the key.
“I am so proud of you, and – to be honest with you – you were better than me,” Weeks said, shaking Milisi’s hand at one point. “Honestly, I did not expect that result. You deserved it.”
Weeks persisted in saying Milisi was deserving of a win, as a handful of people double-checked the numbers, confirming what Milisi had first determined – that Weeks had, indeed been the winner.
“You deserved it,” Weeks said a few more times. “I’m blown away by this. It did not expect it.”
“You could have said that two weeks ago,” Milisi joked, adding with a laugh, “I’m going to have to go around with your recall petition now.”
“You probably would,” Weeks replied.
Select Board Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said both ran a good race in an election with a relatively good turnout.
“Somebody’s got to lose, unfortunately,” she said.
Weeks had just pulled in 731 votes to win re-election by a total of 731 to 683. Weeks did better with early voters and Milisi edged him on in-person votes. Rein, also an incumbent pulled in a first-place vote count or 833, also doing slightly better in early votes than with in-person voters.
There were 31 blanks and scattered write-in votes.
“I knew I was going to get smoked today,” Weeks said of Saturday’s in-person voting, but his 286 to 189 edge in early voting had made the difference.
“I honestly thought you and Ann were going to run away with it, I really did,” Weeks said to Milisi. “I don’t believe it. I want to see the numbers. I did not expect to win.”
The candidates also said they enjoyed being “tent mates” as the three Select Board candidates shared two pop-up tents to shelter against the day’s persistent drizzle.
“This whole time, it’s been not bashing each other and just going off and figuring out the ideas and let people decide make out the difference,” Milisi said.
“Well, there’s a difference between not bashing people and acknowledging that people are doing a good job,” Weeks said.
Rein had expressed confidence in the outcome that morning.
“I’m hopeful,” she said. “I think we’re going to be OK.”
Both Milisi and Weeks said Rein was worthy of being the top vote-getter in the field.
“Although I am disappointed with the result of the election, I cannot be happier for Ann and Joe, both are great candidates with whom I have enjoyed working with in other capacities,” Milisi said in a statement later. “The Town of Hanson was offered another point of view and set of ideas this election, and I still believe in those ideas I laid out during the campaign.”
He said his immediate plans involved returning to work at Camp Kiwanee Commission and the Capital Improvement Committee.
“I would like to thank every voter, taxpayer, and resident whom I spoke with during the campaign,” he said. “The town of Hanson has some financially rough years ahead of us, and I will do the best I can to assist the board in any way possible.”
In Whitman, Select Board candidates, incumbent Dan Salvucci and challenger Kathleen Ottina were out holding signs early in the morning, also expressing cautious optimism in the job they did getting their message to the voters.
“To all the Whitman voters who came out for the May 18th town election to cast their vote for the candidates of their choice thank you,” he said in a statement about the outcome.” When the numbers were read by Whitman’s Town Clerk and when we knew who the winner was, we greeted each other and congratulated each other on running a clean race.”
While falling short of her goal by only 57 votes, Ottina offered Salvucci congratulations after the results were read that she appreciated the support she received.
“Your support was encouraging,” she said in a statement. “I especially want to thank the people who kindly hosted my lawn sign, the wonderful supporters who braved the elements to stand out near the polls holding signs, and my terrific family and friends who worked so hard to help me. I appreciate you all so much.”
Ottina said she plans to continue her work on the Whitman Finance Committee to “advocate for sound financial decisions that benefit all Whitman citizens, especially those who are too young to vote.”
Before taking a break from sign-holding that morning, she was philosophical about the outcome.
“I worked as hard as I could,” Ottina said. “The voters will decide, but I would be proud and privileged to serve the Town of Whitman as a member of the Select Board.”
“I think we’re going to end up with a Super Town Meeting, which should be very interesting,” Salvucci said.
School Committee candidate Rosemary Connolly said she believed she was able to inform the public.
“I hope the public sees that they have other options out there,” she said. “Options that are knowledgeable about educational funding.”
She ended the day as the top vote-getter in the three-way race for two seats on the School Committee, with incumbent Fred Small garnering 963 and third-place finisher Kevin Mayer with 778.
Hanson’s School Committee race had three candidates vying for a single seat.
Kara Moser to the final contested office of the day, winning a School Committee seat to replace Michelle Bourgelas, who opted not to run again. Moser was the top vote-getter in that race with 520 votes, to Christine Cohen’s 431 and Barbara Connolly’s 293. There were 4 blanks.
Active Minds provides a caring space
Whitman-Hanon Regional High School’s organization, Active Minds, presented an update about their group to the School Committee during the Wednesday, May 8 meeting.
The group advocates for mental health among fellow students through their Read a Secret – Leave a Secret boxes at the school. Some of the messages – concerning everything from challenges of anxiety to coping with the loss of friends or family members – left were incorporated in a video presentation.
The students in the group said the messages show that mental health is a concern for everyone and that there is a real need for counselors at school, especially for students whose families might not otherwise be able to access or afford counseling.
“‘Out of the mouths of babes,’ is the expression, and what you just said, you don’t know how important that was, because we have people in the towns who think that we don’t need counselors [students] can go get their own,” Committee Chair Beth Stafford said. “They don’t understand that some people can’t just do that. They don’t have the insurance to cover [it], they don’t have the payments covered, plus you are in school all day.”
She said it was a message that was important to be said by someone other than the School Committee.
The students said they had the idea for the group after talking among themselves after the death of a friend. They made a presentation to the nonprofit group Kyle Cares for funding.
DiGravio applauded the group’s efforts to erase some of the stigma of seeking mental health services.
“The hardest part about getting help is asking for it,” he said. “Once you do ask for it, there’s this huge relief that comes over you, but taking that first step is so hard.”
Szymaniak stressed that Active Minds also runs a grief group.
“It’s really outstanding to have an organization where students feel free to share their thoughts with others who feel the same way, in a safe environment with professionals,” he said. “This will sustain and keep going.”
Dieso thankful for Project 351 experience
By Grace Dieso
Hanson Middle School
My name is Grace Dieso and I am the ambassador for Hanson for Project 351. Project 351 has taught me many things like how to be a leader and how to encourage others to rise in creating a better world, while also doing that myself. But most importantly, Project 351 has taught me how to show gratitude to those around me.
I am extremely grateful for the leadership team that I collected throughout this project. Some of the main members, Joshua Lopes, Nicholas Merrit, Alyssa Peitrasik, Jillian Dempsey, William Tranter, and Emerson Bourgalas. But also my peers that helped along the way. And whether that was to sort clothes or make posters to be placed up around the school, I couldn’t have done it without you!
I would also like to share my gratitude to those that have helped me collect clothes along the way. Thank You to Hanson Middle School and Indian Head Elementary School for all your support and help in creating this drive. And thank YOU for your donations.
Together, our community collected 20 total 13 gallon bags to donate to Cradles to Crayons, and 5 total bags to donate to another site! That alone is 25 total bags collected. Project 351 is over the span of 351 cities and towns which means over 350 towns and cities did clothing drives!
So thank you for your support and for your donations. Because of you, the world is one step closer to becoming a better place.
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”-African Proverb
Kinsherf can’t ‘in good conscience’ advise free cash use
HANSON – All eyes will be on the outcome of Saturday’s annual Town Election in Hanson – not only as an indication of where the town’s finances are now, and options for meeting the operating assessment for the Whitman-Hanson Regional School District in fiscal 2025, but also as a bellwether for the fiscal 2026 budget.
Polls are open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Hanson Middle School. Polls for Whitman’s Town Election are open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Town Hall auditorium.
After hearing a sobering opinion on the town’s assessment options, and expressing anger and frustration over Hanson’s representation on the School committee, the Select Board voted on Tuesday, May 14, to hold a special Town Meeting regarding the school district’s operating assessment at 6:30 p.m., Monday, June 17.
The budget issue must be settled before July 1, or a super town meeting and, failing that, a 1/12 budget based on the fiscal 2024 budget could be imposed by the state. [See accompanying story] A special Town Meeting not only must be held within a 45-day window (June 29 is day 45), but 14 of those days must be used for officially posting the meeting.
Town Accountant Eric Kinsherf and Finance Committee Chair Kevin Sullivan say passage of the $350,000 override rejected at the May 6 Town Meeting is crucial to helping the town meet its budget obligations this year – and in avoiding putting the town in a deeper financial hole next year.
“I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” Kinsherf said, noting that the town’s fiscal 2025 budget has, to this point used up $794,000 in free cash. “If we have to fund the schools, I can’t in good conscience, recommend anything other than budget cuts to fund it.”
“I think the vote this Saturday is going to give us a very good indicator of what our options are,” he said. “Or, if by some remarkable chance it is approved on the ballot, we can have Town Meeting take another bite of the apple and try to have another override [at Town Meeting], which, to be honest is the only way to fill this gap.”
He said he understands residents’ distaste for more taxes.
“But it’s $92,” he said, noting Hanson still has relatively low taxes, compared to other towns in the area. “If it doesn’t pass, we have to look at some sort of mixture, in my opinion of all free cash/no free cash.” Some Select Board members suggested it may have been principle over money that drove votes.
As it stands today, Kinsherf said Hanson already has to plan on making $800,000 from next year’s budget even if the override passes.
“It would be irresponsible,” he said of using the free cash now.
If the $372,000 override passes, it becomes part of the new base for next year and the town starts with that much more in the hole. For a healthy free cash account, it should total 10 percent of the entire budget.
“There’s no way you can do long-term fiscal planning if you don’t know what your fixed costs are from year to year,” Kinsherf said. “My advice would be to cut the current school budget by an equal amount.”
From a mathematical standpoint, Sullivan said, Kinsherf is “absolutely correct.”
He said he would prefer putting $100,000 in an unemployment trust fund in case there are layoffs next year and put another $500,000 in a stabilization fund for next year.
Select Board Vice Chair Joe Weeks said unemployment costs sometimes get forgotten when budget cuts are discussed.
“If you’re talking about peoples’ jobs, it’s not as easy as saying if you cut salaries – AKA people – that somehow the town saves,” he said. “That is not true.”
Discussions during last week’s School Committee meeting indicated that a Hanson official had put the town’s free cash at $1.4 million. Both Select Board Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett and Kinsherf were emphatic in pointing out that it is nowhere near that amount.
“There’s only so many things we can do to fund this budget, FitzGerald-Kemmett said, ticking off the options. They are: asking for an override again; funding it via free cash; funding some of the gap with free cash and make modest cuts at Town Hall and other departments; fund a bit more with free cash and make; use of free cash and more drastic cuts; free cash or even more drastic cuts or just cuts.
In fact, Hanson’s available free cash is $627,000. To pay $350,000 for the assessment would perilous, FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
“Both towns have to coordinate, otherwise there’s a disconnect and there’s a path,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said of Whitman’s Town Meeting rejected an override, meeting it’s assessment with a transfer of $509,212 from free cash. Hanson Town Meeting also rejected an override.
“Now we’ve got this dissonance, I’ll call it,” she said.
The issue went back to the School Committee, which recertified the same budget figure to go back to town officials for funding.
It was a move that left most Hanson officials frustrated and Weeks livid.
“Of the last School Committee meeting, how many of the Hanson representatives voted for the assessment?” he asked.
“All of them,” FitzGerald-Kemmett and Board member Ann Rein said, practically in unison.
“Going into Town Meeting, I heard over and over again, ‘We’re going to let the people decide,’” Weeks went on. “Over 100 people said, “No, we don’t want that,’ and then when it got kicked back they said, all of them unanimously said, they wouldn’t move on it.”
He lauded the hard work of Kinsherf and the Finance Committee, but repeatedly called the School Committee representatives on their “hollow words” and challenged them to show their solutions.
“The schools have proven they don’t want to be a good partner to us, so we’re going to have to take this on the chin, again,” Sullivan said. “But if it comes right down to it, we’re talking about services.”
Board member David George said the school department should be making layoffs.
“I know one of the things that people have been saying is the Select Board should just say no to the School Committee,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “That’s not an option. We can’t just say no.”
If the Select Board did nothing, the assessment is de facto approved, she explained.
“It is in effect without us having any power to determine how to pay, or having any input from voters,” she said. “The Select Board doesn’t set the assessment. All that we are able to do is propose from whence the funds will come to pay for that.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett and Weeks were among those Select Board members who said voters with budget concerns should be speaking to and attending meetings of the School Committee.
“We have no ability to lower our own assessment,” she said. “If we had that ability, we would have done it before now – we wouldn’t be here.”
“We’re not talking about the elephant in the room,” said Board member Ann Rein. “People have to get involved with the School Committee and they have to make their wishes known to the School Committee, because we can’t fix it.”
Both boards are elected separately with their own mission in serving the public. FitzGerald-Kemmett said sometimes those paths are followed harmoniously and sometimes it is more difficult. She added that communication with the district has not been the same in recent years. School Committee Chair Bob Hayes and Superintendent Dr. Ruth Gilbert-Whitner were regular visitors to the Select Board during budget season, but she said that is missing now.
Board member Ed Heal noted the voters’ confusion about the ballot question.
“Most people believe the question is moot after Town Meeting,” he said.
FitzGerald-Kemmett said Town Meeting isn’t voting a dollar amount, but decides the dollar amount, and the ballot question decides if it will be paid via a proposition 2 ½ override.
“In this case, you could have something weird happen,” she said. If an override fails at Town Meeting, but passes on the ballot, the opportunity opens for more options next year.
School panel resubmits assessments
The School Committee on Wednesday, May 8 voted 9-0-1 to reaffirm the April 8 vote setting the operating assessments to Whitman at $19,135, 687 and Hanson at $14,974,735 for the regional school district fiscal 2025 budget.
Member Fred Small attended the meeting remotely via phone. He abstained from the vote.
“In Whitman, we have a fully funded budget … with the operating assessment that we had asked for after we certified the assessments for both communities,” Superintendent of Schools Jeff Szymaniak said. “However, I believe, in Whitman there will still be an override number on the ballot for May 18.”
Szymaniak explained to the Committee, that in Whitman, the Finance Committee had voted 8-0 against supporting the Select Board’s budget because they had an alternative funding source of free cash and stabilization for everything in the budget (Article 2).
“That wasn’t an opportunity for the taxpayers in Hanson, a this point,” he said. “If we don’t have a budget by July 1, I then go on a 1/12 budget based on the current fiscal 2024 budget, which is problematic for our budget … which will mean pink slips at this point.”
Whitman member Dawn Byers said she had spoken with Hanson Town Moderator Sean Kealy and was told that town’s free cash was in the bank at $1.4 million and its and stabilization account is $1.4 million, with the town only $372,141 off on the assessment for the school district.
Hanson officials said flatly on Tuesday, May 14, that the number was wrong [see story, page 1]
She said she did not support the override on Town Meeting floor because of how it was being presented to the voters, but that she supported the assessment she voted as a School Committee member.
Szymaniak noted that Hanson’s Town Meeting result was different, as an operating assessment of 5 percent was voted by the community and the override number was not voted affirmatively – which leaves the district with no budget, even though the override number is also still on the Hanson Town Election ballotfor May 18.
“I did contact our attorney today and asked which was binding … Town Meeting or the ballot,” Szymaniak said. On Wednesday, May 8, when that call was placed, the attorney was in his car on the way to court and asked Szymaniak to send the pertinent documents on Thursday, May 9. The district’s main question for their law firm is, which is binding – the ballot vote, or the vote of town meeting?
“He was not sure which supersedes,” Szymaniak said. “He didn’t have the law in front of him. … Basically, my recommendation is we don’t have a budget right now.”
If the override passes in Hanson, it could have an excess of $372,141 and they would have to figure out what they want to do with that, according to Szymaniak.
“Knowing these things, and before we have more conversation, my recommendation … is to keep the assessment as is,” said School Committee Chair Beth Stafford. “I don’t want to go over, we’ve already had one community approve it.”
Stafford recommended the committee keep the assessment as-is, because there has already been a lot of discussion and debate on it and Whitman has already passed it. She said school officials are also talking with Hanson, but they have indicated they would prefer to wait until after the May 18 election.
Vice Chair Christopher Scriven said he would like to see a detailed opinion of what Hanson’s Town Meeting vote actually means, because he understood it to be a formality to avoid a Town Meeting to appropriate the funds if the override is approved.
“Even if this was basically as a formality to avoid having to reconvene a Town Meeting to appropriate the funds, if the override’s approved because if that’s the case, it’s not an either-or, it’s that they both are binding,” Scriven said, noting that he wanted to ask school district counsel about Hanson’s ballot question.
Szymaniak said it had been explained to him that, since Whitman appropriated from a different funding source, made that void.
“Hanson hasn’t appropriated from another funding source, and that’s why I asked what’s binding,” he said.
“It won’t have been appropriated,” Stafford explained. “You have Town Meeting to appropriate that money so we would hope that it would be appropriated to us, but what are the chances?”
“This is an ongoing dialog right now,” Szymaniak said.
Member Hillary Kniffen, who attended Hanson’s Town Meeting, said that was not at all how the situation was explained to Hanson’s voters.
“The way that it was explained – essentially the takeaway from Town Meeting – was that the override vote on the ballot is moot,” she said. “The consensus was, ‘there is no school budget,’ ‘they don’t get more money,’ ‘there’s no override, hooray,’ ‘we voted it down.’”
She said that perception is important because people who would come out to vote for an override, think the issue is moot and added she felt the Hanson town counsel should communicate with School Committee counsel to determine the facts and communicate them to voters.
“For us on this committee to make decisions moving forward, I think that [believing] the override will pass and they’ll have extra money, I don’t think we should put our eggs in that basket,” Kniffen said.
Committee member Glen DiGravio, also of Hanson agreed.
“If the law is … we have no budget, so we have to reassess,” Szymaniak said. “It would be up to the committee to reassess, based on your feelings of one town actually appropriating a budget and one town not.”
He said that he placed the topic on the May 7 agenda because there is no budget because we don’t have a consensus between the two communities.
“The dangling chad out here is that we have two ballot questions of an override in both communities,” Szymaniak said. “My assumption, based on town meetings is that Whitman would probably vote no on the override because it’s always been appropriated.”
The School Committee could send the towns a budget and the towns would have to schedule a Town Meeting in that case. With 14 days needed to schedule a Town Meeting, Szymaniak said the committee could send the towns new assessments ahead of the May 18 Town Election and go from there.
Whitman Town Counsel, who Szymaniak said was very clear, said both towns have to approve a budget or there isn’t one. If the School Committee doesn’t increase the assessment, however, there would be no need for another Town Meeting in Whitman since everything has been settled outside of an override in that town.
What comes next?
Any increase in Whitman’s assessment would require Town Meeting action.
Szymaniak is concerned the override vote was voided because it went through another funding source – free cash.
“What’s binding? Is it the Town Meeting vote from Handon? Or is it the ballot which supersedes it?” he said.
“The town thinks that this is a done deal,” DiGravio said, agreeing with Kniffen. He asked what the next step would be.
While DeGravio said he was all for sending the same article back to Hanson, but he warned residents won’t be happy to see it return.
“They voted because they didn’t want to take it out of their bank account – their personal bank account – not some town bank account,” he said. “They don’t care about a town bank account.”
Szymaniak reiterated the process of reassessment and revoting, but added if the article fails again, it goes to a Super Town Meeting in which voters of both towns meet jointly.
Whitman member Dawn Byer said she supported sending the budget back for a revote because “that’s democracy.”
“Those citizens will have the opportunity to say no again,” she said.
Scriven also addressed speculation he heard all Town Meeting night and since, that people were critical of the committee for not doing enough to support an override.
“I think that’s fair,” he said. “We didn’t do anything.”
“We can encourage people to vote,” member Fred Small said. “We can’t tell them how to vote.”
Scriven said state ethics law provides more leeway to policy making officials to advocate for ballot questions.
He also asked, on the subject of re-assessing, does it negate everything the committee had done before, and is it forcing Whitman into another Town Meeting.
Szymaniak said that, because Hanson voted before Whitman, town counsel had time to explain that a return of the same assessment, or lower, would not require a town meeting in Whitman. A new town meeting would only be needed if a higher assessment was put forth.
During the meeting’s public comment period, Rosemary Connolly, a Whitman Finance Committee member running for a seat on the School Committee, spoke about the frequent use of the term “best practices” when the committee discusses budgeting.
She noted that the state Department of Local Services’ opinion on the prevailing wisdom against using free cash and non-recurring funds to balance budgets is “something very different.”
“They say you’re supposed to be going your school budget first,” she said. “We have a budgetary process, which I believe, caused this debacle and uneven assessment – we’re not supposed to be putting just a 5 percent or a percentage on anybody’s budget.”
She said doing that risked the school budget being reduces by about $1.5 million each year, restraint only applied to one school while the South Shore Tech budget increased by 11 percent with no challenge.
“I am deeply concerned about some of the rhetoric about best practices that is inaccurate,” she said, arguing the current budget put forth by select boards isolates working families. She said she appreciated the School Committee’s five-year plan as appropriate and thanked the committee for working with the Whitman Finance Committee.
Tea in Mrs. Roosevelt’s garden
HANSON – What better way to follow up Mother’s Day than a Monday afternoon tea with the first lady?
A couple of dozen ladies gathered at the Hanson Muli-Service Senior Center for tea, strawberry shortcake – and Eleanor Roosevelt – and while she hasn’t been first lady since May 1944 when her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs, Ga., Eleanor looked great for woman who’s been dead for 61 years herself.
The program, sponsored by the Senior Center’s Friends Group, included strawberry shortcake as the ladies, many wearing hats or fascinators for the occasion sipped tea in an assortment of china cups.
“I’d like to welcome you to Val-Kil, Eleanor Roosevelt’s home in Hyde Park, N.Y.,” Senior Center Director Mary Collins said. “I’m just setting the tone. … It is the summer of 1949, you have been invited as guests to a luncheon. Mrs. Roosevelt has planned a recognition ceremony for those who played a major role in feeding America during WWII.”
Set after Mrs. Roosevelt’s work on the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, it takes place a couple of days after she returns from Paris and is hosting groups of old friends and fellow gardening enthusiasts at Val-Kil, her cottage on the grounds of Hyde Park.
The First Lady of the World, as she came to be known for her work for human rights advocacy, was brought back to life for an hour or so on Monday, May 13 by educator and historical interpreter Carol I. Cohen of Norton. But on this day the topic was Mrs. Roosevelt’s other passion – gardening – and the audience was part of the show.
“I’m purposefully portraying her when Franklin is gone and it’s later in her life,” Cohen said.
The second half of her presentation is a PowerPoint of garden photos and stories about Eleanor that “people don’t always hear about.”
Audience members were pulled into the narrative as everyone from a local garden club president, to fellow first lady Edith Wilson and published Henry Luce. This writer was mentioned in passing as a reporter from Ladies Home Journal.
“Edith! How are you?” she greeted the initially stunned Cathy Robinson. “When I met her … we might have called you President Wilson, referring to the period in which Edith Galt Wilson was acting president, beginning in September 1919, for a year and five months while President Woodrow Wilson recovered from a stroke.
Eleanor wanted to ensure her Washington D.C. and Virginia friends were welcomed by her Hyde Park friends.
Senior Center van driver, Bob Hyman, was addressed as a Richard D. Parker, who saved the Fenway Victory Gardens from destruction, and he also bemusedly played along.
“How was the trip up from Boston?” she said.
“Very nice, but there was so much noise on the train,” he said to laughter.
“For a very long time, I’ve wanted to do something to recognize people who did something very, very wonderful to help feed America during the war,” said “Eleanor,” before handing out “certificates” to a few in the audience.
Cohen related how Mrs. Roosevelt was interested in war gardens since people had grown them during the first world war, becoming re-introduced to them during her WWII travels as the “victory gardens” people were planting.
“I wanted to portray somebody that I believed in, that was a champion of women’s rights, but also a friend of mine at the time, who was also my student, portrayed Eleanor Roosevelt in the class,” she said.
Her student did such a great job it gave her the idea. Cohen traveled to Hyde Park a lot while researching her programs.
Cohen is also writing a short book about Eleanor Roosevelt, titled “Lessons from Eleanor.”
A college professor by trade, Cohen has taught at Leslie University.
“I teach teachers and I have a 50-year theater background,” she said before getting into character. “I wasn’t intending to do this as a theatrical thing, I was going to do a lecture, but I decided since some of my students had to portray people, I said, ‘You know what? I’m going to portray someone.’”
She used to assign her students to portray characters for five minutes, and she started at 10, but now does a half-hour on one of three program topics:
At Home with Eleanor Roosevelt; The Human Rights Declaration at 75 and this day’s program, A Walk Through the Garden with Eleanor Roosevelt.
What she doesn’t do is “the voice.” She’s been doing her interactive presentations since 2016.
Eleanor Roosevelt’s high-pitched voice was distinctive, but something she was rather embarassed by.
When Cohen performed one of her programs for a critique from her mom, she said, “It’s really great, just don’t use the voice. She was right, and you know what? I’m not an actress.”
Whitman board reviews Town Meeting
WHITMAN – The Select Board spent time taking stock of the events at Town Meeting the night before at its Tuesday, May 7 meeting and what lies ahead in reaching consensus on a fiscal 2025 school budget.
Select Board member Shawn Kain said he had done some reflecting after the Monday, May 6 annual Town Meeting.
“I was up late thinking, and I think the thing that is throwing me off and had me worried was, when they last had the April 8 School Committee meeting, there was some good discussion that was had,” he said, noting Chair Beth Stafford’s reference to the meeting school and select board representatives had together. “You had a good discussion, you talked about the override, you talked about the need for a smaller override, and it sounded like … there was a plan that was kind of made, and that’s kind of what she presented to the School Committee.”
During that School Committee meeting there was also discussion about how the school assessment would be split between budgets and the override.
“When I left the meeting, after everyone voted in favor for it, I thought, going into last night’s meeting, that the School Committee was going to support the small override,” Kain said. “So, I was a little bit thrown off when they didn’t.”
He said it occurred to him about halfway through the Town Meeting that it wasn’t going to work as a result of the division.
“I definitely felt some tension,” he said.
He said when the intent was for the towns and school district to step forward together to actively support getting the override to the ballot, when School Committee members not only acted counter to that, but also actively spoke out against it and school district officials were “very quiet about it” he found himself wondering how the plan could be implemented. Hanson did not pass the override for the same reason.
There was, in fact, no debate over the override in Hanson outside of School Committee member Hillary Kniffen explaining a procedural point.
“The best chance we had to increase educational funding was through an override,” Kain said. “Hanson’s in a much worse financial situation than we are, so for people in our community to be undermining the override … is worrisome for me. … What happens next?”
While healthy debate is good for the town, he said, and lauded the “impressive political move” the Finance Committee made, which changed the direction of the way things went. But he also expressed concern that, since they were able to do that, “it really undermined our ability to increase educational funding, which was ultimately the goal.”
Kowalski said the School Committee had made it clear they were not voting for an override so much as a change in the assessment.
“But it was clear, also that the plan was to cover that drop in assessment with a small override,” Kowalski said. “That was clear. But it shouldn’t be construed that they voted for it. … We’re the ones that have to put an override on the warrant – and we did.”
Other than that one correction, Kowalski said he agreed with everything Kain had to say.
“What I liked about the plan that had a small override in it was that it … lifts our floor for every year to come in a small way,” he said. “It’s going to be stressful.”
Select Board member also Laura Howe agreed with Kain’s concerns.
“I found it very disheartening, how divided we became,” she said. “Not of our own free will, but suddenly, I felt we were all outcasts, and a town cannot run divided.”
Discussing the news and information bubbles into which people sort themselves, Howe said that situation creates fear.
“When people get afraid, they lash out,” she said. “So I didn’t so much mind that they thought we were distrustful … I hope people will reach out [to town leaders]. Everyone is approachable. … There is no good or bad guy, there’s no winner or loser. This is our community.”
She said she felt town officials could bridge that division because they are “all strong leaders that love this town.”
Both Howe and Kowalski also lauded Select Board member Justin Evans for hissocial media posts in an effort to keep residents informed leading up to Town Meeting.
In other business, the Select Board voted to accept the sale of the town’s up to $20 million principal amount of general obligation building bonds and to execute the necessary documents.
“There are a number of votes to take,” said Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski, who read what the votes were before a single vote was taken at the end covering all of them:
- $19,070,000 general obligation building bonds to TD Securities USA, LLC at the price of $20,123,010.85 and accrued interest, if any. Bonds are payable annually on May 15 beginning in 2025 in the principal and bear interest rates for each year, changing as the years go on;
- Marketing and sale of the bonds, the prepaparation and and distribution of notice and sale and preliminary official statement;
- The bond is subject to redemption at the option of the town upon terms and conditions within the official statement;
- Town Treasurer and Select Board will be and are authorized to execute and deliver a continuing disclosure undertaking and compliance with SEC rules in a form approved by town counsel;
- Authorizing and directing the treasurer to establish post-issuance federal tax compliance and continuing disclosure procedures in the forms deemed sufficient by the treasurer and bond counsel and to review those procedures if they are already in place in order to monitor and maintain the tax-exempt status of the bonds;
- Any certificates or documents related to the bonds may be executed in several counterparts each regarded as an original (this vote also approved signing and mailing procedures);
- Electronic siguatures will be deemed original signatures; and
- Authorizes the each member of the Select Board, Town Clerk and town treasurer to take any and all actions to exercise and deliver certificates, receipts or other documents determined necessary to carry into effect the provisions of the votes.
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