HANOVER – A project to build a new South Shore Tech building, in order to meet the educational and workplace needs of this century, is ready to take the next step forward.
The Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA), at its April 24 Board of Directors meeting, voted to authorize the South Shore Regional Vocational School District to move to the next phase of its high school construction project. The district now officially enters the Schematic Design phase, where its project team will continue to develop detailed plans for a proposed new 900 student building at 476 Webster St., Hanover.
“We’re very excited the MSBA invited us to go onto the next step in the process, which is preferred schematic design,” Superintendent-Director Dr. Thomas J. Hickey said this week. “It’s basically a six-month window [during which] our architect, working with our project team to refine and develop designs for the school.”
Those designs will be reviewed by MSBA on Oct. 30 for the decision on what the project is valued at and how much MSBA will reimburse the district. Bringing Marshfield into the district – even with increased enrollment – should help each member town’s cost share, Hickey said.
Approved in February by the SST Building and School committees, the design being reviewed had been referred to as “New Construction 2.0” for 900 students.
The district’s homework assignment between now and August, according to Hickey, is to start refining numbers during the design refinement phase.
“Right after we selected the design, and the enrollment number, the design team has been [doing] some preliminary work,” Hickey said.
“While there is never a perfect financial time for such projects, South Shore has served students since 1962 and it is the second oldest regional vocational school in Massachusetts. Its infrastructure and systems need attention,” said School Building Committee Chair Bob Heywood, who also serves as Hanover’s representative to the SST School Committee. “We have a waiting list that is only growing, and we have expanded our district to include the town of Marshfield in an effort to share costs. We look forward to having a quality design ready for further review by the MSBA in the fall.”
The district will be hiring a construction manager in May to help with the final schematic design. A construction manager will provide suggestions for more cost-effective ways to construct the building.
The MSBA, meanwhile, is beginning to interview participants in the school’s shops as well as academic departments, facilities and administration personnel to “zoom in” on what is now a “very rough, conceptual plan,” as Hickey described it.
“We know what the shell is going to look like and how the different spaces are going to be laid out,” he said. “We make shop number estimates.”
From there, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s (DESE) minimum recommended square footage guidelines based on employers’ stated need and projected enrollment.
Hickey said a lot of SST’s programs fit that description, especially the manufacturing shop, which has a lot of new equipment, so – even if there were no more students enrolled, that shop has a need for more space for the machinery used.
New program plans would also be reviewed by DESE.
“It’s not an overreach,” he said. “We have a sense of what our demand is right now, we have a sense of what shops would take more kids if there was more space. … I know which programs have waiting lists. I also know which programs are very tight for space.”
The district also has to submit viability documentation to DESE, to verify the need for programs either enlarged or added. SST is planning to add veterinary science and plumbing with the construction of a new school. Hickey said that, without a new school, veterinary science could not be offered and plumbing could only be offered as a small add-on to the HVAC program.
“It’s showing the need for it and also validating that what we’re currently offering gives kids a job or post-secondary pathway after graduation,” Hickey said. “We should not be running programs for career pathways that don’t lead anywhere in our region.”
Industry data also shows that, while a given industry might not be growing, some might be “graying out,” needing new people to fill retirements.
“While the industry’s not expanding, who’s taking these jobs?” he said. “I think that message is resonating, and people are in fact, at a younger level, seeing this as an alternative for their high school experience. All the while, it doesn’t mean that they can’t go to college.”
Refined decisions on the placement of instructional spaces, safety and security measures, landscaping of fields and parking will be made over the next four months.
The hiring of a construction manager this month will help make a more affordable plan by advising architects as they create the final design. That position will be paid for under already earmarked feasibility study funds.
The district is also committed to providing preliminary tax impact projections for member towns, and while the amounts won’t be finalized until Fall 2024 officials are prioritizing the importance of informing taxpayers on impacts at the town and household level early in the process, Hickey noted.
So, where does the project go from here?
● April-August 2024: The designers will complete the Schematic Design phase, making revisions along the way and submitting the proposed design and budget in late August
● August-October 2024: MSBA reviews Schematic Design Submission
● October 30, 2024: MSBA Board approval, if on track, will include final total project budget and precise amounts of the MSBA grant for the project.
● January 25, 2025: District-wide ballot question to determine local support for the project. “District-wide” means that all the votes are tallied and combined from each town and the total number of yes and total number of no votes are compared to determine the outcome.
In terms of how district communities will fund the project if approved in January 2025, Hickey points out: “Each town will determine how to fund the project. My sense is that most of our communities will suggest a debt exclusion approach, but that is a local decision. We stand ready to provide information as often as we need to keep residents in our district towns fully informed.”
As of now, the project is estimated at $283.6 million, with about $107 million in state subsidy expected, bringing the anticipated local share to around $176.6 million. Using these preliminary projections, it would put the first year of interest-only borrowing, FY26, at about $700,000 shared between the nine towns.
The amounts will increase for FY27-FY29 when entering the construction phase, with about 60 percent bonding in FY27, 90 percent bonding in FY28, and 100 percent bonding in FY29. If this all goes to plan the new South Shore Tech would open for the 2028-2029 school year.
Separate from this MSBA process, and prior to a project vote in January 2025, the district School Committee is making plans to bring a regional agreement amendment to the member towns in Fall 2024 to change how debt shares are apportioned, moving from a fixed amount to a four-year rolling average based on actual student enrollment. “The idea is that a ‘pay as you go model’ reflecting gradual changes in enrollment is a more fair system of apportioning debt shares over a 30 year period,” Hickey said.

Whitman’s Select Board voted on Tuesday, April 23 to close the warrant for Town Meeting after removing two articles deemed unnecessary. The warrant includes dual budget to present to the annual Town Meeting to fund town departments while offering an override to close a $509,212 gap in the W-H Regional School District assessment.
Vice Chair Dan Salvucci attended the meeting virtually by phone.
Select Boards in both towns again reviewed their warrants in preparation for the Monday, May 6 town meetings. Hanson’s Select Board, which had already closed the warrant, held its annual run-through of the warrant at it’s meeting Tuesday night.
One side of Whitman’s budget is marked recommended by the Select Board with an override, including a 5 percent increase over last year’s assessment for the W-H Regional School District. The balance of the certified district assessment of $509,212 included in a warrant article for an override.
The second column of the dual budget includes Select Board recommendation without an override, which would include the district’s full certified assessment of 7.87 percent over last year, however reductions in staff in several departments were necessary in order to balance that budget without an override.
“The budget, in both scenarios, do not include any one-time funds to balance the budget,” said Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter. “As many of you know, the use of one-time funds to balance the budget is not recommended.”
The amount to be placed on the override, if it is voted at Town Meeting and the Town Election is $509,212 and the estimated tax increase, based on the current average residential single-family home with an assessed value of $470,190 is $95.38 a year, Carter said.
Board member Shawn Kain also provided an updated financial outlook for the town.
“For some of us, who have been living the budget over the last couple of months, we’ve been trying to stay in tune with this, but we know for an everyday person this stuff can be overwhelming,” he said.
With the permission of the moderator, the board is planning to discuss the override question first at Town Meeting, Kain outlined.
“What we decide at the very beginning of Town Meeting will kind of set our course of action for the rest of Town Meeting,” he said. “We want people to vote yes [on the override question]. That’s formally our recommendation. We want people to vote yes to put the override on the ballot. If you agree with the override or not, we want it to go to the ballot.”
If it is approved at the May 18 town elections, then the appropriation if the full 7.87 percent, with $509,212 coming from new revenue. If it fails at the ballot, “We basically reject the school assessment,” Kain said. It then sends it back to the School Committee, which can lead to some “complex scenarios.”
Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski said, if Hanson voted not to support the override, it would have the same effect.
If Town Meeting votes against placing the override on the ballot, the school assessment would be funded at the full 7.87 percent, however, Kain said, warning that in order to balance the budget at that point, it would have to be taken from other town services.
He also provided some background on how the town got here and “what to expect, moving forward.”
The town should also be proud of the way it has funded education since fiscal 2012. There are more teachers and a better student-to-teacher ratio with a better per-pupil funding level. But enrollment, which is directly connected to state funding, is down.
Current fiscal policy also prioritizes the school department and the budget process will keep the town on sound financial ground while the School Committee unanimously agreed with the plan and leadership in Hanson is on board, he said.
“So an override will be presented to support the school department, but the key point to remember is this – whether you agree with the override or not, we need to support it at Town Meeting and send it to the ballot,” Kain said. “Doing so would ensure we collectively move forward in a way that is financially sound.”
Carter also noted that, if the override failed on Town Meeting floor, it will still be on the ballot – and absentee ballots now going out include it – and the ballot question passes, the town has 90 days to hold another special Town Meeting.
“We’re hoping for sure that this article moves to the ballot,” Carter said. “And that’s all that the article is doing: putting it in front of all the taxpayers to decide.”
“If the override passes, no one-time money is in the budget. If the override fails, no one-time money is in the budget,” Kain said. “That’s why it keeps us on sound financial ground.”
Article 54, which the Select Board proposed to appropriate a sum of money from available free cash to reduce the amount to be raised through taxes in fiscal year 2025, but was not recommended by a unanimous vote of the Finance Committee was left to Town Meeting. An opioid settlement article, deemed unnecessary was also removed from the warrant
“This was a placeholder a couple of months ago,” Carter said of Article 54. “As I was working on the budget, there was a deficit of over $100,000, so I put this in just in case we needed to use free cash.”
She didn’t want to end up in that position because using free cash for that purpose is not recommended as a sound budgeting practice and revenues and additional cuts had not yet been reviewed at that time.
“The budget we have now is a level-funded budget, so this article is not needed for budgeting purposes, for the reason I put it on there, however the Finance Committee is not for the override, [and are] looking for a different way,” Carter said. They have suggested using a different funding source and she was unsure if the article was needed for their overall plans.
“I just wanted to be honest on everything,” she said. “I put it on there because we had a deficit, and we don’t have a deficit.”
While Carter made no recommendations on whether or not to take Article 54 off the warrant, Select Board members Shawn Kain made a motion to remove it.
While Kain said the Finance Committee had good intentions in their vote, he said he argued their vote against recommending Article 54 puts town departments at risk.
He said he likes and is proud of the budget that Carter and Assistant Town Administrator Kathleen Keefe put together and feels strongly that the town should be presented with that plan and make decisions based on that.
“I think what the Finance Committee is doing is undermining that,” he said.
Carter later explained that it was the lack of a specific dollar amount that prompted the Finance Committee’s action.
Kowalski said it also undermines the relationship that the schools and Select Board reached a few weeks ago when the chairs of both town select boards met with Superintended of Schools Jeff Szymaniak and School Committee Chair Beth Stafford.
“They came back toward us and they reduced their assessment with the knowledge that what we woud try to do is to provide for the difference in an override election and they were all for that,” Kowalski said, agreeing that Article 54 should be removed from the warrant. “It was kind of a surprise that the Finance Committee did not support it.”
Board member Laura Howe agreed and commended Carter for the work she has done on the budget and the solid footing she is providing for the town.
“I think we have to give credit to the School Department and to Beth Stafford for approaching us to try to close that divide we were developing between the town and the schools,” Kowalski said. “What the Finance Committee is doing doesn’t help that at all.”
The schools are visibly supporting the override to get the towns through the year.
“I think that the only way the override passes in both towns is if it’s very clear that both [select boards] and the schools agree that this is the right path forward,” Board member Justin Evans said. “Doing anything else doesn’t make sense to achieve what they’re trying to achieve.”
Evans questioned what the Finance Committee’s vote meant.
“They need it to meet their plan, but they’re not recommending it?” he asked.
The previous night, when meeting with the Finance Committee, Carter said she told them that, where the town has a balanced budget, the Select Board may find Article 54 is not needed.
“[Finance Chair] Rick Anderson said, ‘that’s fine, whatever you decide,’” she reported. “They always just vote against the articles if it just says ‘a sum of money’ … until a number is inserted.” Then they give their final recommendations on Town Meeting floor.
“I still think we want this article,” Evans said. “Not for the thing the Finance Committee’s attempting to pull off but because this is our safety net.”
Salvucci also counseled for removing the article.
“We’re taking away the choices of Town Meeting and the public,” he said. “If they want to fund the schools through an override, I think we should leave it on there so they can make that decision.”

WHITMAN – The Select Board, in a brief remote meeting Thursday, April 11, voted 4-0 to place an override question for an additional $509,212 in real estate and personal property taxes on the May 18 Town Election ballot. The override would fund a portion of the fiscal 2025 Whitman-Hanson Regional School District operating expense assessment.
Select Board member Laura Howe was unable to attend.
The cost to the average taxpayer would be $95.38 annually.
Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski said he spoke to both Superintendent of Schools Jeff Szymaniak and School Committee Chair Beth Stafford that morning and “they are definitely supporting this override that we want to place on the ballot.”
“They know that the Board of Selectmen will be, in the town warrant, be asking to place this on the ballot, and they are fully in favor of that,” he said.
The move came after the School Committee certified the $62,930,345 compromise budget – representing – on Monday, April 8 and announced the special remote meeting on Thursday.
The board also voted 4-0 to place a question on the Town Election ballot asking residents to vote on whether the elected treasurer-collector position should become an appointed one.
The present treasurer-collector is in favor of the change.
Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter said Treasurer-Collector Kenneth Litel “wants to speak on this on Town Meeting floor” on May 6.
“He is very much in favor of this,” she said. “Last time this was before the town, it did pass at Town Meeting, it did not pass at the ballot.”
During its regular meeting on Tuesday, April 9 meeting, the Select Board welcomed funds coming into the town coffers as representatives of Plymouth County Commissioners returned to Whitman to make a presentation of $34,000 in ARPA funds for the purchase of a new ambulance for the Fire Department. They had been to a Whitman Select Board meeting only a month or so ago to present $2.2 million in ARPA funds for a water/sewer project.
Commissioner Jared Valanzola, state Sen. Mike Brady and state Rep. Alyson Sullivan-Almeida attended the meeting for what Valanzola said was “for the moment” the final check presentation to Whitman.
“We want to thank Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter for working diligently to secure these funds,” he said. Whitman is the fourth town to reach its allocation cap, according to the commissioners.
“That’s not saying there won’t be more, depending on what other counties do, but you are the fourth town to cross the finish line, in terms of using all these funds,” Valanzola said, repeating his goal that none of the funds be returned to Washington, D.C.
While, he noted there had been some consternation about the county’s potential ability to efficiently handle CARES Act funds the commissioners handled it quicker, cheaper and faster than other counties.
“So far, we’ve done ARPA quicker, cheaper and more effectively,” he said. “We’re currently averaging 1 percent administrative costs, currently the national average is 7 to 10 percent.”
Brady agreed that Plymouth County did an excellent job.
“I know that the administration at the state level at the time didn’t want the county to control the money,” Brady said, adding he and Sullivan had supported the county in administering it.
Sullivan-Almeida thanked the Select Board, in turn, for its hard work.
“I know it’s not easy trying to find initiatives to use the money for, and I think it’s going to be a great thing for the town,” she said, noting she sees a lot of posts on Facebook when an ambulance is not available in town, either because one is out of service or out of town.
“I think this is going to be a tremendous impact for … our residents on the whole, so I want to thank the chief and everyone who’s had a part and parcel on getting the funds,” she said. “I’m very disappointed because I was trying to find more ways to get more money, but unfortunately, we reached that cap. Fingers crossed that we get more money.”
Select Board Vice Chair Dan Salvucci lauded the commissioner’s work.
“You know your county,” he said. “You know the state. You know who you need to contact and we just work so close together. Thank you.”
In other business, both Carter and Kowalski commented on an issue surrounding a letter from Sullivan-Almeida about Senate bill 2628: an Act Validating Results of the Town Election in Whitman of May 20, 2023.
Carter said bond counsel said the special legislation was needed to validate the election result to receive a “green light letter” which allows the town to proceed with borrowing for the DPW building.
Her April 2 letter sought to update the board on the legislation filed by Gov. Maura Healey on March 7 and referred to the Committee on Election Laws. On March 11 the committee began accepting written testimony and Sullivan-Almeida sent a letter of support asking for a favorable vote, which was achieved on March 28 and sent to the Joint Committee on House Steering and Policy Scheduling and on April 1 was reported by that committee for the matter to be placed on the orders of the day for the next sitting of the House of Representatives.
Sulivan-Almeida’s letter continued, saying that she is urging the bill’s passage.
“I would also like to correct the record regarding recent comments by some of the members of the Finance Committee, incorrectly claiming that I had incorrectly filed this bill,” she wrote. “The original legislation, Act 2516, was filed in the Senate by Sen. Brady and was not filed by me.”
She stressed that both she and Brady understood the request for a home rule petition could be filed by either of them and, when Brady did so, they both believed it was filed correctly.
It wasn’t until S2516 when the House was on its third reading of that bill, that Sullivan-Aleida was informed the governor would have to file the bill and that both the House and Senate had to vote on it. She quickly updated Brady and advised the town and, along with Brady, reached out to Gov. Healey’s office on getting the legislation filed.
The bill needed to be filed as a home rule amendment, not a home rule petition and for that reason had to be filed by the governor, instead, Carter said.
“The important thing is the governor actually filed 2628, I believe on the morning of the seventh of March,” Kowalski said. “That is the day after, on March 6 that our Finance Committee voted on sending a letter to the governor asking for action kind of suggesting that action was belated.”
Kowalski said the important consideration is that Sullivan-Almeida and Brady have worked diligently on this since they knew what had to happen.
“We have had unbelievable service from both our senator and our representative,” Kowalski said. “Rep. Sullivan-Almeida has been incredible in the way that she has given us information on a timely basis and pushing to get this done.”
Carter also said she was hopeful to see the issue conclude, noting she had sent the request after the project was approved by the Oct.30,2023 special Town Meeting and received additional funding for the DPW building. She sent a letter requesting the special Town Meeting to both Brady and Sullivan-Alemeida, including backup documentation.
Carter agreed that both legislators have been very helpful.