WHITMAN – A week after Town Clerk Dawn Varley’s attempt to publish the personal phone numbers of town officials in a press release concerning the decision to close the office on Thursdays, it is the phone numbers that are still being discussed more than the hours adjustment.
Ryan Tressel, of 210 Temple St., who serves on the School Committee as well as being the chair of Whitman’s Community Preservation Committee spoke about the phone numbers in the capacity of a private citizen during the Select Board’s public forum.
Noting that some of the vacancies on town committees were read at the June 24 meeting as well, he said the CPC alone has had vacancies for about two years.
“The reason I want to bring it up is because I want to tie it into the incident that happened last week, where on Monday, [June 30] your home phone numbers and cell phone numbers, as well as the Finance Committee’s were posted on the town website with a call for citizens to reach out to you with their complaints about the closing of certain town offices,” Tressel said. “This really bothered me for a number of reasons.”
With the exception of Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter, all those officials listed are unpaid volunteers and the town provides them with an email address and a chance to speak at their meetings’ public forum as opportunities for residents to voice their opinions.
“I thought the choice to put the private home and cell phone numbers on the website, while obviously, I’m sure, very annoying for you guys, I think it’s damaging overall for our town,” he said. “I think all of us probably know multiple people in town who are smart and dedicated and care about this town.”
But when people are asked to run for office, Tressel noted that few take that step. He and Select Board members Justin Evans and Shawn Kain all ran unopposed in the May election.
“By any other means, it seems like it was a threat to put the personal information up of committee members and Select Board members on the internet in that way, and I think it has a deleterious effect on people’s willingness to step forward,” he said.
While he wasn’t seeking any Select Board action, Tressel “didn’t want this to be couple days’ skirmish on social media and two lines in the Express.”
“I wanted it on the public record that this happened, and that I think, as a citizen and someone who does volunteer his time in this community, that I think it’s unacceptable,” he said. “This is not to say that I think you guys are immune from criticism. I think exactly the opposite, but that’s what this podium is for and what your emails are for – to be criticized, to be questioned, to have the choices you’ve made be examined publicly that way.”
Select Board Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski, said Tressel’s comments led into a couple of remarks he wanted to make during his chairman’s report.
“I was out of town last week, and off the grid,” Kowalski said. “Where I was, the internet was really sketchy so I was not fully aware of what Ryan was talking about as far as social media was concerned.” But he did have some conversations with Carter during the week and was aware that the town clerk published the personal phone numbers and addressed of the Select Board, Finance Committee and administrative officials.
“I thought that doing that was reprehensible, it’s probably illegal and completely out of line,” he said. “If it isn’t doxxing, it’s really close, because it was sort of threatening to the people who make those decisions.”
He also said that he liked Tressel’s remarks that speaking at a meeting is the forum for airing disagreements.
“There were more than two lines in the Express,” he said, noting the paper’s article covered the whole event, and very well, “ and that was partly because of Mary Beth’s talking to [the editor] when she heard that the town clerk was having that same message, wanting it to be published in the Whitman-Hanson Express.”
The Express did not publish the phone numbers.
“And the article covered a whole lot of other things that were involved in the situation,” he said. “That’s all I wanted to say. I thought I needed to say something as Ryan did.”
Carter said her phone number on the press release was her business cell phone number. By the time the press release had been sent to the Express, the Finance Committee members’ phone numbers had been removed from it.
Carter had also sought guidance from town counsel on whether publishing personal phone numbers was appropriate.
“And you found out that it was not, and you contacted the town clerk and asked her to remove it from the town website,” Kowalski asked.
Carter said she first went to the clerk’s office to ask that the Select Board members’ numbers be removed, and Varley responded that it was public information.
“I said that doesn’t mean that, because you have access to it, you can post that kind of information,” Carter said during the Select Board meeting. She then asked if Varley had filed a public records request for the numbers and addresses.
“She said, ‘Maybe I did,’” Carter said. “I said, ‘Then I’d like a copy.’ And she said, ‘Well, no, I didn’t.’”
She then instructed Varley to take the information down.
“That’s private information,” Carter said, asking the clerk not to be difficult.
“She said, ‘Get me something from counsel,’” said Carter, who had received that information just that morning. She followed delivering the letter to Varley with an email again asking her to take down the personal information – this time instructing that it be done within an hour, or Carter would have IT do it.
“An hour and a half later, it was still up, so our IT department went in and removed the information,” she said.
Select Board member Laura Howe addressed another point that had been brought up.
“I have been asking, since I ran, for people to join [and run for office],” she said. “I was very disappointed – and I actually asked publicly, and that is no offense against my colleagues here, but there was two seats up this year and nobody ran [against them] this year,”
She said she was also pleased with how Carter handled the phone number situation, even though Howe, herself, has already “given my phone number to half the town,” as ACO.

WHITMAN – Town Clerk Dawn Varley has begun closing the office on Thursdays in response to budget cuts to her department, specifically her salary increase request of 14 percent and an operations cut of $16,000 tied to the number of elections in 2026 – a state and Congressional off year with fewer elections than 2024.
Social media in the community was busy discussing the matter Monday night.
Varley currently makes $80,000 a year, and has decided to close the clerk’s office an additional day per week, so she feels she is being paid at a part-time salary,” a post stated Varley had sought a 14 percent raise, which would have brought her salary more in line with clerks in area towns.
But, according to FinCom meeting minutes, Varley had raised the issues of pay disparity between her position and others on the South Shore as well as the “intricate demands of her job including town meetings and elections supervision and the frequent updates of the regulations governing them” during the committee’s annual review of her department budget requests on March 11.
She raised the possibility of cutting back hours without a budget increase, at which the committee had balked since the Collins Report placed the town clerk in the same salary category as the assessor.
The Finance Committee was also decreasing the department’s operations budget for fiscal 2026, a reduction in this line item is due to just one town election and one town meeting next fiscal year. Ms. Varley emphasized her role’s complexity, managing elections with 40+ workers and various updated regulations and legal requirements.
According to the minutes, of March 11, Varleye asked for the support of the finance committee to support her salary request.
“What is going to end up happening, and this is not a threat, this is a fact, I’m going to go down to two days a week,” she said. “You’re going to pay me part time; you’re going to get part time. I’ve been overlooked for so many years, and I don’t think it’s fair.”
As an elected position, the Select Bard cannot make a change to her position.
Varley reached out to residents to explain her stance.
“As a result of reorganization /reduction in staff and salary in the Town Clerk’s Office, I am forced to close its window for the first time in over 50 years,” she stated in a press release Tuesday.  “This decision does not fall lightly on my Heart but is solely the decision made by the Select Board, the Finance Committee and the Town Administration not to fully fund this office.”
Initially, she had included home telephone (or personal cell phone numbers) of members of the Select Board and Finance Committee, but Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter intervened.
“I have instructed the Town Clerk to remove this information from her recent posting immediately after I consulted with Town Counsel,” Carter stared. “I have also instructed the IT Department to remove the personal cell phone and home telephone numbers from the posting, if not removed by the Town Clerk.”
Varley then re-issued the press release minus the phone numbers.
Meanwhile, the Select Board, meeting on Tuesday, June 24, Finance Chair Kathleen Ottina, speaking for herself, as the committee has not met since the Town Meeting, expressed her own dismay at the announcement made at the start of the June 11 special Town Meeting, that the Select Board had voted unanimously to appropriate $150,000 from ambulance receipts at a fall special Town Meeting in order to restore $75,000 each to the Fire Department and Police Department for their fiscal 2026 budget.
Not only was that decision last-minute, there was no time to communicate it to the committee because of that, leading to “a great deal of consternation” among Finance Committee members.
“On May 17, the voters of Whitman voted overwhelmingly to reject a Proposition 2.5 override of $2 million,” she said. “The result left us with a $2,053,431 deficit that needed to be closed.”
The decision was then made to split the deficit – with the town paying 48 percent and the schools picking up the tab for the remaining 52 percent, which translated to $98,000 paid by the town and $1,064,000 by the school district.
“The town proceeded to close the gap by using $340,000 in free cash to pay OPEB and Plymouth County retirement, which we all knew about ahead of time,” she noted. “Now, this proposal to use $150,000 in projected fiscal 2026 ambulance receipts results in a deficit to the town of not the $988,000, but $498,665.”
Recalculating the deficit translates into a 32 percent debt deficit handled by the town and 68 percent handled by the W-H Regional School District.
“[That’s not the 68 to 48 that we agreed on prior to Town Meeting,” Ottina said. “Whitman-Hanson voted to cut the assessment by the $1,064,000 that we asked them to,” she said. “We aksed them to. They didn’t have to. We all know how we fund regional schools. They cooperated with us. I anticipate that future W-H school budget votes will not be so cooperative,” because this is not fair.”
In three public forums prior to May 17, residents were told that a failed override would lead to cuts to police, fire, DPW, Town Hall, Library and the schools and the voters voted no.
“I sympathize with the Police and Fire departments,” Ottina said. “I don’t want to see them undermanned. I do not want to see citizens’ health and safety jeopardized, but if voters do not realize the impact of a failed override because they don’t see what happens.”
A clerk missing from one or two offices does not impact their day-to-day living, Ottina said.
“I’m not calling for dangerous levels of manpower,” she added. “I’m simply stating this is not fair.”
Ottina said she trusts that the FinCom and Select Board will be able to work on Article 2 over the summer and that they can arrive at a solution that is “as fair as a $2 million deficit can be.”
While Select Board member Shawn Kain said he obviously respects Ottina’s opinion [see guest column, page 7] he sees a difference between a $2 million deficit and how it’s spread out so services that have to be cut are evenly distributed.
The view at Town Meeting was likely that most of the revenue was going to the schools and very little was going to public safety.
“I feel the difference in those perspectives is where we feel the big rift in our community,” Kain said noting that how funds are distributed in ways that are both equitable and do the least harm is difficult. “Just going back to the drawing board early and thinking about strategies, I think, would be helpful.”

The School Committee has voted in favor of a new schedule of sports user fees at Whitman-Hanson Regional High School.
“We still don’t have a budget,” said Superintendent of Schools Jeff Szymaniak, filling in for Athletic Director Bob Rodgers who was away in Las Vegas at a poker tournament that had long been planned, to speak for the Athletics Department.
“I told him, if he wins, he’s going to solve our problems today,” he said.
Szymaniak and Rodgers had been in close contact on the issue all week, and Rodgers had drafted a proposal that is outdated already.
“[That’s] because we worked on a new proposal … to lower that fee structure” between Monday, June 16 and the School Committee meeting on Wednesday, June 18. “It’s higher than it was, but more amenable, I think, in a bad situation.”
To balance the budget, Szymaniak encouraged the School Committee to approve the proposal he and Rodgers drafted that increases sports user fees for this year, with the plea made by Rodgers in a phone call that morning – “if the budget looks better, we want to reduce those fees.”
“I hope,” Symaniak had replied, knowing there are more retirements scheduled for next year, “and, if we can get ahead of the game, we will.”
Hanson’s special Town Meeting was slated for 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 25 in the Dr. John F. McEwan Performing Arts Center at WHRHS.
“It’s imperative. Imperative, imperative that we get a quorum and hopefully pass a budget, so [Business Services Manager Stephen Marshall] doesn’t have to fill out umpteen documents for the state before July 1,” Szymaniak said.
“The user fee proposal, although not great, is different from the $500,” he said.
When we were looking at $500 and still reducing the athletics budget by $250,000 … but through some fund-raising and what Mr. Rodgers thinks we can do, based on students, I’m looking at a $375 first sport, $250 for a second and $100 for a third, with a family cap of $1,200.”
Fees are not delineated based on how much or whether they are a money-maker for the school, Szymakiak said.
“That’s not something we’ve done since user fees were enacted, except for the sports that are more expensive – which is hockey,” he said.
Ice hockey will go from $200 to $400 for varsity players only and the “outrageous cost of ice time right now might even still minimize the amount of ice time they can purchase,” Szymaniak said. “That [fee structure] should get him close to that $250,000 without cutting any sports. We won’t really know that until [Athletics First Night] and we can get some enrollment numbers.”
If a certain enrollment in sports is not reached by then, it is up to Rodgers to figure out how the district is going to run certain sport – similar to the way some sports were eliminated from the budget in 2008.
“We don’t want to do that,” Szymaniak said. “I think sports are invaluable. Everything extra curricular in our district is invaluable for our students that don’t love academics – that don’t love coming to school. … We want to minimize the cost, but there has to be an impact felt district-wide due to the lack of an override and the fact that, right now, we’re looking at a $1.75 million deficit from the proposed budget.”
But, Szymaniak warned, if the district goes on a 1/12 budget, all sports are of the table for September.
“I can’t have a football team when I’m going to RIF another 24 teachers,” he said. “I’ve heard, and I’m sure members around this table have heard, ‘You’ll just figure it out anyway, There won’t be any real cuts.’ This is real. $1.7 million is real. Last year was $1 million. We got by – by using some free cash and some different things, but we got by. This year, I can’t get by.”
“I hate this,” said member Glen DiGravio. “This stinks, it absolutely stinks, but it’s the position we’re in. … but, it’s like Hillary said, if we’re going to be the bad guy and do this, we have to be the bad guy the whole way through, because there has to be consequences to pay.”
He said that, if kids think they can get away without paying, no one is going to pay. But he also argued for hardship provisions as well as more fundraising avenues, such as an always open dedicated GoFundMe account.
“As bad as this is, I do think there are ways to get through this,” DiGravio said, adding he was willing to donate right away.
Member Stephanie Blackman also had some suggestions, such as intramural rather than freshman sports, and allowing sponsorships of teams.
Rodgers also wants to establish his own kind of scholarship program for students who can’t afford to pay a user fee or can’t work out a way to work it off. There also some residents who have donated money in the past toward the scoreboard or other needs.
Vice Chair Hillary Kniffen said the district should require that scholarship funds be deposited in an interest-bearing account with students only provided with partial scholarships.
“You’re going to wipe out that scholarship fund,” she said if scholarships paid user fees in full. She also said a payment plan has to be signed off on before a student goes out for a sport.
She also suggested a fee structure that takes into account that sports like football are more expensive than those like cross-country. Szymaniak pointed out that football also brings in revenue for the school and the fee structure takes that into account.
Jennifer Roback, 879 Bedford St., Whitman, speaking during the public forum about sports user fees.
“I’m deeply concerned about the recent cuts approved at Town Meeting,” she said. “While I understand the town has spoken, I continue to struggle over the way education is weighed against other departments in this town. Education is not simply another line on the balance sheet, it is the foundation of our children’s future.”
Highly qualified teachers, not software or other “minute-fillers” are decisions of long-term consequences, not short-term inconveniences she said, noting that she is the parent of a special education student as well as one enrolled in the high school’s Pathways Program and a third in elementary school.
“I understand that we all rely on vital services like emergency response and public safety, but cuts to education affect far more than the moment in time that may affect an entire generation of students,” she said, also expressing dismay that $500 user fees per activity are being considered, arguing that such a move puts undue pressure on working families.
“For many students, [sports] are a pathway to scholarships and college opportunities,” she said.
“What’s more troubling is this fee applies only to students attending our district,” Roback said. “While those who attend [South Shore Tech] or the [vocational-agricultural schools] are not asked to make comparable fees. Why is that?” She charged that it not only inequitable, it’s unfair and advocated renegotiating regional agreements with vocational schools is necessary to make sure W-H students “are not placed at a disadvantage simply for staying in our own schools.”
“We risk creating a system, where only families with the means, can afford to let their children thrive,” Roback said.
Asked this week about student fees at South Shore Tech, Superintendent-Director Dr. Thomas J. Hickey said his students already pay for uniforms for classes, exploratory shops and their ultimate shop choice, as well as work boots and some tools – the cost of which is why some unions or employers award tool scholarships to seniors joining their ranks or workplace.
Sports user fees are also under study at SST, “possibly as a proposal in our fiscal ’27 budget, in part because we’ll be entering a time period that we’re going to have increased costs because we’re going to lose access to all of our playing fields [as the new building is constructed],” Hickey said. “We’re going to have to do more off-campus, away travel.”
While it is not a done deal, Hickey said it is something he is looking into. With more towns joining the SST region, it also helps decrease assessments to Whitman and Hanson as their SST enrollment drops a bit – but more towns could also mean more sports participation as the school will be faced with stretching dollars.
“It’s probably going to mean we’re going to need some sort of fee structure to be able to add more programming, or other needs.” he said. “We’ve had costs that are just part of being a vocational student, but now we may need to keep that structure and possibly have a sports fee structure, as well.”
Whitman Finance Committee Chair Kathleen Ottina also spoke during the public forum, thanking them for the difficult work they did in helping come up with a balanced budget for the towns.
“Having grandchildren in the system, I am devastated by the cuts in the classroom, especially the interventionists who have been eliminated,” Ottina said. “I’m also concerned about the user fees, but I want to acknowledge the hard decision that you folks made, whether you voted for or against the budget cuts.”