HANSON – The Select Board heard updates on the MBTA communities program, the licensure of its building inspector and received an update of work being done to overhaul the town website during its Tuesday, Jan. 10 meeting.
Town Planner Antonio DeFrias outlined the states’ alterations to its final guidelines for its MBTA communities program to create multi-unit housing under MGL 40A.
The final guidelines had been issued last August by the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) and had already revised in October.
Changes include community categories, significant adjustments for small towns with no transit stations, changes to the reasonable size criteria, district location requirements and a multi-family unit capacity tool, DeFrias said. The October revisions included modifications to the definition of an affordable unit, allowing communities to set income limits for affordable units of below 80 percent AMI, allowing communities to require that more than 10 percent of units (but not more than 20 percent) in a project be affordable and create an exception to the 20 percent gap on affordable units.
He said no further amendments are anticipated. The town has applied for a $25,000 technical assistance grant to allow it to engage a consultant, such as the Old Colony Planning Council to help create regulations. The state recently released a press announcement that all communities that had filed for the grant would receive it.
“Massachusetts has one of the highest housing costs in the nation,” DeFrias said, adding that it is ranked as the fourth highest. It is also fourth highest for rental costs on two-bedroom apartments.
“There is this need to create additional housing,” he said. “Hanson is considered a commuter rail town. We have 3,960 housing units as of the 2020 census.”
The town would have to create a zone for a minimum of 750 affordable housing units with a required land area of 50 acres. There is about 500 acres of land within a half-mile radius of a transit station, and the state has determined that Hanson has 218 available acres in which to create a multi-family housing zone.
“They’ve created a tool kit,” DeFrias said, noting he has not yet been able to access it. “But that will help me look at and put a finer point on looking at the town, the 218 acres and the area around the transit station and start plugging in information to get us in compliance with the final regs that need to be in place by the end of 2024.”
Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett asked if there was a downside should the town decide it did not want to comply with the program.
“You lose the ability to apply for grants, such as MassWorks grants,” DeFrias said. But he said the DHCD commissioner made it clear what else might happen.
“Don’t think that’s the only grant you won’t be able to get if you don’t do the housing,” DeFrias said. “If you don’t do it, don’t. Hopefully, you’ll have enough money for any issues you have in your municipality.”
But he also made clear what the state was not saying.
“It’s creating the zoning,” he said. “It’s not saying you have to go out and build the units. It’s just creating an area for these units to be built.”
He filed an action plan, due at the end of this month, with the state back in October and it was approved in November. Hanson is in interim compliance until its due date for district compliance, which is Dec. 31, 2024.
“We have to keep the ball rolling,” he said.
On other business, Town Administrator Lisa Green reported to the Select Board that the town recently received a determination from the state licensing agency that Building Inspector Kerry Glass, who was in the process of receiving certification as building commissioner, but the timeline for courses and exams had not “come together.”
He therefore exceeded the 18-month window the state requires for obtaining certification. Green said the town has appealed that determination, but the state rejected that appeal.
“In that same letter they required our building inspector to resign as building commissioner,” Green said.
Glass would still be able to inspect any construction work being done in town, Green advised the board at FitzGerald-Kemmett’s request. He is still able to interpret Hanson zoning laws and provide guidance to any construction going on in town.
“Building commissioner is just one area, which is occupancy permits, Green said. “Mr. Glass can still be our local building inspector, he will go out and inspect any construction, look over anybody who submits a permit for any kind of a building or construction project … he just cannot sign the occupancy permit.”
The board was asked to accept Glass’ resignation as building commissioner and appoint him as a local inspector, appointing Joseph Stack as the building commissioner for an interim period, until Glass satisfies the state’s requirements for a building commissioner. FitzGerald-Kemmett said Glass has indicated he should complete the requirements by May.
The board voted to accept Glass’ resignation and appoint him as local inspector as well as to appoint Stack as interim building commissioner.
“I’m disappointed that the state did not allow you to continue in your position until … May,” Select Board member Jim Hickey said. “Because I really don’t want to accept your resignation, but I will, to keep you local, but I’m not happy about it.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett and Select Board member Ed Heal agreed with Hickey’s comments.
Web site
Capital Strategic Solutions representatives Blythe Robinson, Nicole Figueiredo and Jennifer Thompson virtually attended the Tuesday, Jan. 10 Select Board meeting to outline a proposed and updated social media policy as well as ways to strengthen internal communications for the town.
Robinson said the town made a sound decision in contracting with 2Revise for the town website.
“These days, people do so much electronically, they want to be able to do things with you electronically,” Robinson said. “Your new website can become more of that.”
She said the first step would be deciding on the appearance of the homepage, followed by building a site map.
“You want to make [using the site] as quick and seamless as possible,” she said. Centralizing social media in one location and highlighting every municipal email address and phone number can allow people searching the site by cell phone able to just click on a number and call a town office.
“When people can do those things more easily, they’re more likely to follow through,” she said. Application forms for committee posts are an example of that.
Content must be in compliance with state laws, including ADA and the aesthetic appearance of the site should be updated.
The firm likes to use a layered approach to social media strategies to allow the town to reach the largest possible audience with their social media.
FitzGerald-Kemmett said much of the recommendations are definitely needed. She and Green also said IT Director Steve Moberg is on board with the proposal.
The start-up costs, which are not to exceed $50,000, do not reflect the ongoing – and much lower – costs of maintaining the site.
“This is a very project-specific contract” Thompson said.
“I get a good feeling about working with you because delivered on coming back with specific things I think all of us are excited to see,” Select Board member Joe Weeks said.
The board voted to enter into the contract for the web site services, contingent on Capital Solutions providing additional information on a firmer project plan for immediate portions of the project – overhauling the town website and permitting posting to social media automatically when website is updated.

What to do a about the problem of motorists breezing by stopped school buses?
School Committee member Fred Small is advocating a get-tough policy in which cameras would record the license plate of every driver who passes a bus picking up or dropping off students and reporting them to the police. He broached the subject at the School Committee’s Wednesday, Jan. 11 meeting. Small attended remotely via phone.
“If it’s ‘legal’’ for us to do this, I would love for us to be able to – it’s such a safety hazard and, for me, has no place on our streets, so to speak,” he said.
Superintendent of Schools Jeff Szymaniak asked, for clarification, if that entailed placing a camera on the red stop signs that unfold when a bus stops, which records the information and for the district to report to the RMV or police.
“Yes, and we would report every instance,” Small said.
Chair Christopher Howard said several other school districts are also discussing the issue, wondering how big an issue it is, suggesting that Szymaniak could talk to First Student and get the bus company’s view. He was also concerned the other districts were dealing more with city streets or multi-lane streets.
“I don’t know how much it happens here,” Howard said.
“Usually, we would hear about that, and I don’t hear a lot about it,” Szymaniak said.
Small asked if the committee could at least make a start by seeking a consensus among the police chiefs and school resource officers over the legality of such a move.
Member Steve Bois asked what Mass. General Law outlines on the subject.
“That would be the first thing, to allow us,” he said. “Obvioulsy, I don’t want to see anyone blasting past a school bus.”
Vice Chair Christopher Scriven said, while the district wants to do all it can to ensure the safety of students, he said he could not remember the last time he saw someone blow by a stopped bus.
Member Glen DiGravio said he has seen it happen
“All you need to do is look on social media,” Szymaniak said. “Every now and then somebody gets blasted for it. Our drivers would try to flag that license plate if they did, but we don’t have that device.”
Scriven suggested a survey of First Student bus drivers might be a good first step in gauging the extent of the problem.
“If you’re asking bus drivers what their biggest concern is, it’s going to be the motorists who have their head down on their cell phones as they’re driving by them,” Howard said.
Szymaniak said, while cameras are not a bad idea, he doesn’t know if he can contractually push First Student to do that right now, but said it was an issue worth bringing to the committee for discussion.
Member Dawn Byers said she recalled the issue might center around a statewide effort.
“I’m certainly in favor of getting more information about it, but I don’t think it’s something us independently would do,” she said.
Assistant Superintendent George Ferro said there are 24 states where the cameras are legal, but only 12 have taken any action to implement it so far.
“It’s called bus arm stop cameras,” Ferro said, adding he had just Googled it. He and Szymaniak said the district maps bus routes to try and avoid having students cross roadways to get on the bus. He added that the high school parking lot during morning parent drop-off is a bigger problem from a safety standpoint.
“It does get active in the morning,” he said.
Howard agreed more research can be done while the district asks First Student.
“I’m certainly all for the safety of our students,” Howard said. “To me, there’s other things to consider, too.” He mentioned yellow caution light violations and speeding in school zones as well as people texting while driving as examples. He suggested it could be part of a larger brain-storming session on student safety.
DiGravio said a pilot program of Small’s suggestion was conducted in Medford in 2011.
In other business, members of the Student Advisory Council spoke in favor of the budget line item to return foreign language to the middle school curriculum.
“Foreign language has been an invaluable piece of my education here at Whitman-Hanson and being able to continue foreign language into senior year and being able to take a college-level course before I’m even in college has been incredible,” said Riley Getchell, adding it would bring a higher academic standard to the district’s middle schools. “The grades below [us] haven’t been able to experience this and they’re most likely going to see the effects of this in their college applications and not being able to have that advanced level of foreign language.”
SAC member Emma McKeon has a younger brother in the Duval School who’s been asking her to teach him Portuguese because he has a friend who speaks the language. He wants to be able to speak with his friend.
“The elementary schoolers, which is surprising because they are at such a young age there, are really striving to learn these new languages, which I think is amazing,” she said. “It activates all of the different strategies in your brain and helps a lot.”
Khloe Drake agreed that languages help with cognitive abilities.
“Learning these languages at a younger age helps [students] be more fluent,” she said.
Noah Roberts, who said he surveyed other students over the summer on his Instagram account, touched on what he termed a language-adjancent issue.
“As our schools, and our towns in general, have become more diverse with [residents of] different backgrounds and cultures, I think there’s an increasing need to have some type of education on these different cultures to make these people feel more represented,” he said. “What I’ve had is just one basic monolith of a specific parts of American history and not much outreach besides that.”
He said it could also provide outlets for students of other cultural backgrounds to express how they feel.
Vice Chair Christopher Scriven commended Roberts for his work in bringing students’ concerns about inclusion to the committee’s attention.
School Committee members David Forth and Dawn Byers thanked the students for speaking their minds reminding the committee that the high school students were speaking from the vantage point of having had no middle school foreign language instruction because of budget cuts that were made in spring 2019.
Ferro said that Spanish and French were cut from middle school curriculum in 2003 and then, in 2009, it was reinstituted on a limited basis with both schools sharing a single teacher, later hiring another teacher so each school had one.
But, it was still a matter of selecting which students could take a language, Ferro said, because there were more students wanting to take it than there was room for in the classes.
“A lot of it became political, I’m just going to say, and a lot of it became an issue,” he said.

WHITMAN – Former Treasurer/Collector Mary Beth Carter is being offered the position of Town Administrator, it was announced at the Select Board’s Tuesday, Jan. 10 meeting.
The offer is conditional based on the outcome of contract negotiations.
“I have some slightly good news,” Chair Randy LaMattina said in making the announcement that interim Town Administrator Frank Lynam was making that recommendation. “Well, not slightly, I have tremendously good news.
He said Lynam had reached out to a “former employee – a great former employee,” who recently left, noting that the person “absolutely checks all the boxes we could possibly ask for” in a town administrator.
Carter, he said before mentioning her by name, is a proven employee.
“You know where her heart lies – with the town of Whitman,” LaMattina said. He added that she is very interested in the position.
Lynam called her the “best possible candidate out there right now.”
“I think her close to 20-year employment record here, her track record, her knowledge of the budget, her knowledge of our town, her commitment to our town, makes her [someone who] if she was still working for us I could just see this being a transfer from one department to another,” LaMattina said. “It makes sense,” he added, seeking a motion to offer her the position, which the board approved unanimously.
Both LaMattina and Lynam spoke of the struggle to find solid candidates in the town’s ongoing search for a full-time administrator.
Lynam said he reached out to Carter out of frustration with the results of the search.
“It wasn’t for lack of candidates, it was for a lack of qualified candidates,” he said. “Even when we had three to present, we lost one before we even came to the door, and at that point, we held off to try and assess whether this was the right way to go. I really made a leap in even calling her.”
Not only had Carter just left her position in Whitman, she had just accepted a job with the town of Norwell.
“It wasn’t an easy decision for Mary Beth to make, because the same qualities that make her a good manager and a good leader are the ones that challenge her to say, ‘Wait a minute, I just took another job.’”
He said that, if Carter accepts to offer, Whitman will be better off for it. Lynam noted he has worked with Carter ever since she began working for the town in 2005.
“She’s an incredible employee,” Lynam said. “She’s committed, she’s smart, she can do anything.”
He recalled having asked her several times over the years to take on tasks that would not routinely be the responsibility of a treasurer/collector, and without question, he could count on all the boxes being checked.
Vice Chair Dan Salvucci lauded Carter’s work ethic, noting she worked Fridays even though Town Hall is closed that day each week.
“If she needed to be, she was here on Saturdays,” he said.
LaMattina said the focus should be on obtaining a town administrator when Salvucci began outlining considerations for an assistant, should Carter agree to serve.
“I couldn’t be happier,” said Select Board member Shawn Kain. “I couldn’t think of a better candidate [and] I’m really excited that she was willing to come back and work for the town, I think it’s exactly what we need.”
Members Dr. Carl Kowalski and Justin Evans also enthusiastically joined in the endorsement of appointing Carter.
In other business, resident Ken Lailer spoke during the meeting’s public forum to thank for Select Board and Fire Chief Timothy Clancy’s their tributes last month to his wife Marie, who passed away while on vacation — and to ask Select Board, historical boards in town and people of Whitman to try to establish a Whitman historical museum, which he would like to be named in his wife’s honor.
Mrs. Lailer was a dedicated CERT volunteer for many years, beginning as an EMT before she even became a nurse. But another of her passions, he said, was Whitman and its history.
“Her passion was with the old buildings, the research and surveys to place things on national registry, to refurbishing the old cemetery stones in Mt. Zion Cemetery and even … [being instrumental in the restoration of the Toll House sign at Wendy’s,” he said. “I’m here, willing to assist and fulfill her vision, but I will need guidance,” he said.
He added that Marie had written grants for some of the projects on which she worked.