WHITMAN – Select Board members heard concerns about potential municipal layoffs as a result of budget pressures, public meeting decorum and progress on a proposed DPW building during their Tuesday, April 11 meeting.
In the wake of last week’s joint select board meeting with Hanson counterparts, the board received a bleak financial forecast.
“We have presented a level budget here,” said Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter, adding that the town has used almost $293,999 in free cash to balance the budget, making their calculations based on a 5-percent increase in the school assessment. Most of that free cash is used between the warrant articles and closing the gap on the budget, with only about $9,000 left
“We’ve used everything on this budget, so it’s very tight,” she said. “I trimmed a lot as I went through the budget. It’s balanced.”
Chair Randy LaMattina warned of “significant cuts” to town services if the school budget not reduced. He said that, at some point, the board must be ready to make close to $600,000 in cuts if the schools do not make reductions at the Wednesday, April 12 School Committee meeting.
“The cuts are going to be real, so we’re probably talking about multiple firefighters, multiple police officers, possibly closing the library, and it’s unfortunate,” he said.
“We’re talking about significant cuts,” Carter agreed noting that, considering municipal salary levels, some 10 to 12 positions might be lost. The town personnel staff is “a little over 100 people, she said.
“It will be significant and several departments will be impacted, there’s no way around it,” she said if the schools do not make budget cuts.
Meeting decorum
The budget picture, and some of the emotional discourse surrounding it, has motivated former Town Administrator Frank Lynam, who had been serving as an interim TA until Carter was hired, to sponsor a citizen’s petition article for the Town Meeting warrant on public meeting decorum and the recording of public sessions as a way of ensuring it, while furthering transparency.
The bylaw revision would require all town boards and committees to make either an audio or video recording of all meetings, excluding executive sessions, and transmit the recordings to WHCA for broadcast or streaming on its YouTube channel for future access.
He noted that a number of boards and committees meet publicly and the information they discuss and the presentation of those meetings are public.
“I have an issue with a particular board that seems not to be very concerned about either propriety or professionalism – and I am talking about the Finance Committee,” he said. “In several meetings that I have listened to audio recordings of, they participate in a bantering discussion that belittles the employees of the town that present to them, myself included.”
While Lynam said he is “not that thin-skinned,” he finds it difficult to understand why a board charged with the responsibility to make financial recommendations to the town “would take such a side road into personal attacks on the various people that present to them.”
He suggested the way to sure that is to make sure everyone participates in the public process.
“If it was going on cable rather than for the benefit of the nine members of the committee and perhaps the four or five people present from the public, you would see a different demeanor and a different presentation,” he said.
Town employees work very hard and diligently to do their jobs often facing public scrutiny and concern about what they are being paid, what they “really do” and how hard they work, Lynam. Still, he doesn’t take umbrage when people unfamiliar with town government ask such questions.
“But I really resent it when somebody who should understand it, and has been involved in the process, chooses the route of character assassination to talk about the town administrator, or the director of technology or any of the other department heads that have appeared before them to present budgets,” he said.
Lynam said he has listened to it enough and thinks it’s time to professionalize things.
“In the end, you’ll have access to more information,” he said.
Select Board member Shawn Kain, expressing mixed feelings on the issue because he has served on the Finance Committee, but he has also felt some of the tension Lynam referred to.
“For selfish reasons, I’d like it if [meetings] were either on cable or if there was an audio because I’d like to – on my own time – just to go through and listen to some of the meeting to gain more knowledge,” he said, adding that transparency in that way does hold people accountable.
Lynam said he received recordings under public records request in researching the petition. The logistics are relatively simple, he argued because the technology already exists, but current practice for some boards and committees has been keeping an audio recoding until minutes are done – at which time they are supposed to be deleted. He was able to obtain them as a result of his request because that process is not fully followed.
“We are accountable for how we conduct business,” he said. “I don’t see it as punitive, I see it as informative.”
He pointed out that Hanson already follows the practice of either audio or video recording all of their committee meetings, posting them on YouTube.
Lynam has discussed the issue with the Finance Committee chair, who is opposed to it out of concern that recordings would make people less likely to speak candidly.
LaMattina said he “100-percent agrees” with the article Lynam proposes.
“Although we’re on TV and we might have a crowd sometimes, the lack of a crowd does not mean you can just talk about people, slander people, lie about people and think, ‘this is what we do,’” he said.
Recent discourse at the Finance Committee meetings have centered on Carter allegedly receiving a job she didn’t deserve, that Lynam’s service didn’t amount to much.
“It’s pretty disgusting, to be honest with you,” LaMattina said.
While Cultural Council Secretary Julia Manigan expressed concern over the discomfort cameras in meetings could cause, School Committee Vice Chair Christoper Scriven argued it’s “the least we can do to be as transparent as possible.”
“I think we owe it to the residents of this town to conduct all of our business in a civil manner,” he said.
Select Board Vice Chair Dan Salvucci said all meetings should be recorded to avoid finger-pointing at a specific committee.
Select Board member Justin Evans agreed it is a “good move toward transparency.”
DPW project
DPW Commissioner Kevin Cleary updated the board on what the DPW is doing to educate the public about the new building project, upcoming events and current cost estimates. The Building Committee has been working on the project since $1.1 million was appropriated at the last annual Town Meeting for hiring the owner’s project manager (OPM) and architect/engineer, and they have been working through schematic designs over the past four months, he said.
Another day of public tours is scheduled from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., on Saturday, April 22. A few trucks will be available for children to explore, and hamburgers and hot dogs will be available as refreshments on that date.
A question-and-answer presentation on the project is slated for 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 26 in Town Hall auditorium. The OPM and architect and Building Committee members will attend and provide a short presentation.
The website is also up and running at whitmandpw.com.
Cleary said the project’s design work began with three different options and went with the option for a complete facility with administrative, storage and mechanic’s workspace.
The front building will be demolished and the back building refurbished, using as much as they can retain. The design work is between 50 and 60 percent complete at this point.
Initial cost estimates make for an warrant article seeking $17.8 million in addition to what has already been appropriated. Cleary said he was confident in the cost estimates he has been receiving.
“We are still looking at that number, talking about what we can do to lessen it without taking away from the size of the building,” Cleary said. Sub-bids would be sought in early to mid-June if the article is successful, followed by general bids and a 12-to-13-month construction period.
Evans and Kain expressed their concern about holding a Town Meeting vote before the numbers are firm. LaMattina said it just makes sense to finish the building right, rather than have an outlying building that will need serious renovation after that.
“The cost is in the forefront of everybody’s mind, which I greatly appreciate,” he said.
“What we’re doing now is trying to lower the cost,” Cleary said. “We’re not going to add anything more that’s going to increase it…. We’re getting information so, if anything, we lower the cost.”
Kain was impressed by the building design and agreed it is warranted and necessary, but he also has reservations about the timing.
“Especially with the climate of us borrowing money and the number of projects on the table I think really being thorough and taking time and doing things right, I would rather wait and have the number in hand rather than go without the number,” Kain said.
Building Committee member Frank Lynam said the project cannot go to bid before Town Meeting votes even if all the numbers and estimates are in hand.
“Until Town Meeting votes, we don’t have a project,” he said.
COVID update
Giving the regular COVID update in Fire Chief Timothy Clancy’s absence, LaMattina reported that there were 212 tests performed since the last board meeting, with five positive cases for a positivity rate of 2.36 percent.
“Once again, [it’s] trending in the right direction,” LaMattina said.

HANSON – Members of the Hanson and Whitman select boards unanimously voted, in a joint meeting on Tuesday, April 4, against either endorsing or supporting the fiscal 2024 WHRSD budget as presented to the two towns. Each board voted separately on the motion.
They have requested their respective town administrators to send letters to the district about the vote, and stressed it was not intended to signal a lack of support for education.
“The thing that I really love about you guys being here is that this opens up a dialog between the two boards which is very much needed, in fact, it’s a dialog between the two towns, which is very much needed and, in fact a dialog between all parties is very much needed,” Hanson Select Board Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said in opening the session she termed historic. “We’re here to talk about the elephant in the room, which is the school assessment.”
Members of both boards stressed their concerns and votes were not an indication of any lack of support for education, but of fiscal sustainability for their communities. The boards met in a joint session at Hanson Town Hall to discuss the financial implications of the school spending plam on municipal budgets, the urgent need for sustainable school budgets and their disappointment that there was a need for the towns to unite on budget issues in an effort to prevent cuts in other departments
“We’re really struggling right now,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said of her town’s budget, which she said could afford a 3.75-percent assessment increase, but still has more than $600,000 worth of cuts to make somewhere – after one round of budget trimming had already been done.
“When I say cuts, I want to be crystal clear that we have not targeted a department or people or positions, or anything. We may have to look at capital improvements and the like.”
She said cuts do not always translate to people’s jobs being cut.
Whitman Select Board Chair Randy LaMattina said that community is at a point where it can shoulder a 5-percent assessment increase right now, but “not a single penny more.”
“Anything more than that, we will have to start cutting,” he said. “If this [school] budget, as presented, were to go through, we would be facing crippling cuts within our town departments.”
While LaMattina declined to speculate on cuts, he cautioned they will be real, they would include jobs and would be “disastrous” for the town.
“I don’t think it’s the same as previous budget years,” he said. “We’re basically less than two weeks away from having to post our budget and I don’t think we’ve ever come down, since I’ve been involved in town politics, to a situation like this where it doesn’t seem we’ve really been listened to.”
He said that while Whitman has been pretty clear for a while about what the town could afford, “it seems to have gone over people’s heads” and he hopes the boards’ unified position will be clear.
“Their ask is what we’re really here to talk about,” LaMattina said.
FitzGerald-Kemmett agreed that the budget the towns are being asked to agree to would eviscerate Hanson’s budget.
“I don’t even want to speculate about what it would look like,” she said, making it clear that the Hanson Select Board is one that supports education, and she expressed confidence that Whitman officials feel the same way.
“You are looking at the daughter of a career high school history teacher,” she said. “I am not an anti-education person by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve spent years of my life raising money for the schools in a variety of capacities.”
When budget asks are reasonable – or even slightly beyond – she said she could probably support it.
A couple of years ago an override effort carried the threat that, without it police and fire layoffs would be needed, FitzGerald-Kemmett said, adding she is certain the residents do not ever want to see the town go through that again.
“There’s no way that this board can include the budget presented to us in our warrant,” she said. “We just can’t.”
Hanson Select Board members Joe Weeks, Ed Heal, Ann Rein and Jim Hickey were especially vocal in agreeing with FitzGerald-Kemmett that, while education is important, there are members of the Hanson community that simply cannot afford what is being asked.
“My grandparents live in town, and other people’s grandparents also live in town and we don’t want to tax people out of the town,” Weeks said, noting that, as Hickey has pointed out before, that a third of Hanson residents are of retirement age and on fixed incomes.
“We have to be mindful that we are advocating for the entirety of our constituency – not just a portion of it,” Weeks said, adding that the schools are doing their job advocating for education. “I may agree with that, but in tough times like this, it becomes incredibly more difficult, for us as leaders, to make incredibly hard decisions and lead and try to come to a decision that makes sense for everybody,”
“I’m against mismanagement,” Hickey said, emphasizing that he is not against education. “There are positions that are not needed. … The district got money from COVID, as the towns did, what did [the schools] do with that money if we were giving so much more of the one-time money?”
LaMattina said the boards, as policy makers in their respective towns, cannot support the school budget, but also stressed it’s not an education issue.
He also said the boards have to look at what got them to this point with the school budget, arguing it’s the district’s use of COVID funds such as the one-time ESSER grants for recurring cost positions, that concern him most.
“I actually used the word ‘reckless’ last year,” he said.
Using the funds to institute all-day K, while a predictable and needed risk, was still a risk and Whitman is having to use some one-time funds of its own this year to afford the 5 percent.
“We’re not seeing any growth in any other department,” he said, noting that both towns have been very vocal in where they’ve made cuts and what they can afford.
He said he was also disheartened to learn that the budget has not been included in the Wednesday, April 5 School Committee agenda.
Whitman Vice Chair Dan Salvucci said even a 5-percent increase would hurt other departments and that, like Hanson, Whitman has already made cuts.
“We’re running real thin to get to 5 percent,” he said.
Ambulance service challenges as well as staffing issues have cropped up in both towns due to the need to transport patients to hospitals at greater distances since the Brockton Hospital fire late last year.
Whitman’s Shawn Kain also pointed to sustainability as a key concern.
“We’ve gone to great lengths to understand how to create a financial plan that’s going to keep us in a sustainable situation,” Kain said, noting that Whitman has been lean on public safety over the last few years, but that the hold-harmless situation with the schools is eating most of the revenue.
“I think the 5 percent represents a number that allows us to fund the schools at a level that is sustainable, but also gives us some revenue to work with in other departments,” he said, but added a argument could be made that even that is not enough. “It’s not an easy dilemma.”
Whitman Select Board member Justin Evans also pointed out that, even at 5 percent the town is projecting about $270,000 in free cash.
“Because the schools are building the one-time money they used last year into their budget, into the assessment this year, we are using one-time money to keep up with it,” he said.

WHITMAN – The timing of a debt exclusion vote on the Whitman Middle School building project is still an open question, as the Select Board works through the process of deciding when to schedule a vote and how many ballots would be involved.
The Board on Tuesday, March 21, again discussed whether a separate election day should be set for a school funding vote, or whether it could be included on another voting day, since 2024 is also a state Presidential Primary election year.
The Board is slated to take up the issue again at its Tuesday, April 4 meeting.
“I’m most curious on what the impact would be on your department, either holding a special Town Election before a Presidential Primary – when we’re probably already early voting – or is it possible to have it concurrently with a single, two-ballot election?” Select Board member Justin Evans asked Town Clerk Dawn Varley.
Varley strongly cautioned against scheduling it for the same day as a March Presidential primary election day, because that election always involves more than two ballots.
“You’ve got three parties, then you have absentee/early voting ballots,” she said. “Now there’s six ballots, then you have the debt exclusion ballots, plus, that has to have an absentee ballot, so you’re talking about my office juggling eight ballots.”
A special election in conjunction with the annual Town Election is the simplest, cheapest way to accomplish the goal, Varley said, describing it as a “whole election,” including both ballots. She said if the town can’t wait that long, the best alternative is a special election.
“My position has always been that I think we need to look at what draws more of the voting population out,” Chair Randy LaMattina said. “We have to look at this and say, consistently, we have more voting population brought out during a Presidential Primary.”
Vice Chair Dan Salvucci agreed.
“The voices of as many town residents that we can get on the vote is the main thing,” he said.
Evans said the turnout numbers are certainly higher on the Presidential primaries, but in years where one party did not had a competitive primary, the numbers are more in line with an debt exclusion election.
Member Shawn Kain said the decision should hinge on whether it is the right thing to do.
“I’m not concerned with more work and more money,” he told Varley. “If it’s the right thing to do I think we can find a way to help you out.”
Varley said she was more concerned about confusion.
“The whole process is very confusing,” she said.
“A single day, two-ballot election is disastrous, especially with it being a Presidential Primary,” Varley said. “What happens is, you basically run two elections. You have to have two check-ins … You can’t “sell” the ballot [ask people if they want a school election ballot when a person asks for a primary ballot]. … I would strongly recommend not to do that.”
Presidential primaries generally have a higher turnout – 34 percent in 2000, 16 percent in 2004 – and in 2002, 22 percent of Whitman voters cast ballots in an initiative for the Fire Department. Other override elections have had turnouts in the range of 39 to 48 percent, however.
Varley said that her only requirement would be 35 days’ notice in which to schedule a vote.
“If it’s advertised – which I think it would be – and the interest is there, you would have the voters come,” she said.
Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter said having a single election with two ballots would save the town the cost of a separate election in some ways, and would reimburse some costs, but not for two elections.
The town does not use check-out tables any more. The town also “owns” the school referendum ballot, she said, explaining Whitman wouldn’t obtain state reimbursement for election costs and early voting would also be required because the state permits it for the primary.
Varley said mail-in ballots for absentee voting in the school election would have to be mailed separately with different labels on them. She also has them printed on different colored paper along with the needed instructions.
It would also not be possible to know – or check – to see if the ballots were put in the wrong directions, she said, adding that Town Clerk staff would not be permitted to switch ballots if they believe ballots are in the wrong envelopes.
In the last election using two separate ballots, Varley said she mailed them out separately about a week apart to help with confusion, but early ballot depositing would also necessitate the rental check-in machines to maintain separate voting lists for each ballot.
A person voting in the primary, however, could return to Town Hall to cast a vote in the school vote, because they are separate elections.
Evans asked if it would be possible to schedule the special Town Meeting required before the school project goes to the ballot, in early enough before the MSBA vote in the fall before to capture the remaining excess levy before the tax rate is set.
That would be sometime in late September, according to Building Committee member John Galvin. He and Evans both made the point that the Board could schedule the process early enough to provide the 35-day window to schedule the special election, and permit the special Town Meeting on the ballot question for 14 days before that.
Galvin said both the owner-project manager on the Whitman Middle School project, and the designer said the full financial documents could be available to the Select Board in time for an end of September Town Meeting.
Both would take place before the final MSBA vote.
“We have been told by both the OPM and the designer – the MSBA meeting is on Oct. 26 – but the meeting is pretty much a celebratory meeting,” Galvin said. Whitman would not even be scheduled for that meeting if the answer was going to be no.
Carter said she was not sure if the excess levy capacity could be known by November.
“It is definitely an artistic science,” Galvin said.
Kain said any confusion about the timing of a vote would not be helpful.
In other business, Fire Chief Timothy Clancy gave his regular COVID-19 report, saying the town had only 11 cases out of 227 tests performed, for a positivity rate of 4.85 percent.
“This number is remaining steady … since two weeks ago when it went down 50 percent,” he said. “Overall, we are trending down with our COVID numbers.”
The town has also been approved for the wastewater testing machine, which will help with the monitoring of COVID levels in wastewater.