HANSON – Town officials want to take Town Meeting back to school – the regional high school, that is.
The Select Board discussed the possible need to switch the location of the annual and special Town Meetings to Whitman-Hanson Regional High School during its Tuesday, April 8 meeting.
“[Town Administrator Lisa] Green contacted me last week to ask, ‘Do you think we’d need, out of an abundance of caution, to have the annual and special Town Meetings at the high school,’ rather than planning overflow and all the other stuff that we deal with, which doesn’t tend to go super-well or super-smooth?” Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said in bringing up the topic.
Board member Ed Heal asked if the School District was open to it.
“I have spoken with the high school, yes,” Green said. She said the auditorium is an 845 individual capacity, the gymnasium is larger. Both are available that night and the high school has penciled us in.”
Green said they just have to fill in a form to relocate the meeting to the high school, and which area we’d like.
Board member Joe Weeks asked if the call for changing locations wasn’t a decision the town moderator has to file a motion with the courts to make the change in location, because the high school is listed as partially located in Whitman.
She said the paperwork is really a measure to protect the town.
“You don’t want the entire Town Meeting to be invalidated,” said Town Counsel Kate Feodoroff. “It’s just a smart move to do, and that’s what we’ve done in the past.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett said that, ultimately be the moderator’s decision, but she made a motion that the board support the move and that Green work with the town moderator and Feodoroff work together to make it happen, which the board supported.
Library committee
The Hanson Public Library has been given the green light to add an article to the May 5 Town Meeting warrant to appoint a standing Building Committee to pursue that goal.
The Select Board had opened the Town Meeting warrant to address the issue, during the April 8 meeting. They also voted to add a bill for $1,250 received that day pertaining to the last fiscal year. The bill had been erroneously sent to the School District, where it “languished” around the district’s offices for about a year before being redirected to Hanson’s Highway Department, where it belonged, Green said
FitzGerald-Kemmett said she had spoken with Library Trustees Teresa Santalucia and Corinne Cafardo and Library Director Karen Stolfer regarding the “proposed, potential library project,” they are advocating.
Part of that effort needs to adress some “late-breaking moving parts that need to be addressed sooner rather than later,” FitzGerald-Kemmett informed the board, one of which is the creation of a short-term design and planning committee.
That short-term committee is aimed at assisting the library through the request for quotes (RFQ) process and down-selecting the people who will be working with them to develop plans for a site.
A standing committee would also be created via the Town Meeting warrant.
The Select Board is also being asked to support allocating some land for the purpose of enabling the future library project.
“Not all of [that] needs to be in the warrant, but the Library Building Committee does,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “The warrant is open for the purposes of voting that, and then I will close the warrant.
“Although we’ve added the standing committee to the upcoming Town Meeting warrant, they need a short-term committee to be created by us, and it will be the Library Design and Planning Committee,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. She noted that, at a recent Select Board meeting, it was discussed that a number of people were interested in serving on such a committee, and were appointeed.
Select Board member David George, who was named to the Building and Design Committee, asked if three acres of land adjacent to the building was going to the library.
“It’s not going to the library,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said, She said the intent was to be able to demonstrate to an architect that the Select Board was OK with the land being considered as they work on their design.
“We won’t know [if it will be needed),” she said. “If it gets to the point where they really do need [any of] the three acres, then that will go to Town Meeting and it will be on the Town Meeting warrant, and everybody will vote on whether they want to give that land to the library. This is just a vote of support.”