HANSON— The Select Board on Tuesday, Jan. 9 opened the warrant for the annual Town Meeting as Town Administrator Lisa Green announced she was sending out a memo to department heads the next day, giving them until Friday, Feb. 9 to submit articles.
Guidelines on how articles will be established, including supporting information necessary and that all articles must be reviewed for accuracy.
Frank Milisi said the Capital Improvement Committee plans a Feb. 26, asking if a placeholder article could be drafted until they can finalize its language.
“We may have some ARPA money that’s available for capital improvements,” Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett sad. “I suspect because we are drawing the line quite early – intentionally so because everybody procrastinates and then it ends up being a real burden on our office – that we will get a number of place-holders, and that’s fine, as long as people vet [articles] and flesh it out and make sure that the get the details to us in time.”
The board also voted to formally agree to a new contract with Town Accountant Eric Kinsherf and to appoint Kerry Glass as local building inspector.
Green said that the board entered into a new contract with Kinsherf in November, who had been hired as an interim to provide accounting services to the town, and “never quite took that away,” she said.
“This, basically, is a formality to appoint Mr. Kinsherf as our town accountant, not our interim accountant.”
His term, which began Dec. 21. 2023 runs through to Nov. 30, 2024.
In Glass’ case, when the board went through its appointments in May 2023, Glass was appointed as an alternate building inspector retroactively from July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2034.
FitzGerald-Kemmett said that was the role Glass had before former Town Inspector Robert Curran left. Glass had then been appointed to the post.
Hanover Building Commissioner Joseph Stack has been serving as the town’s alternate inspector as well, which Town Clerk Elizabeth Sloan had brought to Green’s attention. Sloan has to file the building inspector’s name with the state, as well as that of the alternate.
“What we’re doing here tonight is correcting that we don’t have two assistant local building inspectors,” Green said. Glass will be the local building inspector and Stack will continue to serve as Hanson’s building commissioner until Glass obtains his proper certification.
Glass is already licensed by the Division of Occupational Licensing and the Board of Building Regulation Standards said Green, who described the Stack’s main duty in Hanson as mainly to sign occupancy permits and Glass is a licensed building inspector with a updated license and can perform inspections, providing Stack with a verbal indication of whether or not permits should be signed. But Glass still must take more exams to have the title.
FitzGerald-Kemmett said the board would like a timeline for when that might be accomplished. There is also no charge for Stack’s signing of the permits.