WHITMAN – The Select Board voted at the Tuesday, Feb. 20 meeting to support including a citizens’ petition for an article on the Town Meeting warrant to establish a Veterans’ Discretionary Fund.
Finance Committee member Rosemary Connolly made the request on behalf of the petitioners during the meeting’s public forum.
“As we know, a lot of our budgets are really squeezed tight and we have little room to spare financially,” she said. “This fund allows for public fundraising and for the veterans services officer to have immediate access to these funds.”
Connolly said when a veteran is faced with a catastrophic event, such as losing their house to fire, the law says they are supposed to go to their veterans’ service officer if they have such immediate emergency needs.
“We don’t have enough in that budget for them to provide immediate housing,” she said. “It would be nice for the fire chief to know to go directly to the veterans’ officer if they have a fire – to know that they can do something.”
Knowing that there would be questions about how the fund would be funded, Connolly said she went to a town that has successfully run one for a few years. She worked with Abington Director of Veterans’ Services Adam Gunn to get the wording ironed out.
“I think there’s about 10 times the amount of signatures we need t get on [the warrant], but I did want to ask for your support when this comes up and that we work together as a town to make sure that veterans’ needs are met,” she said. “And [we need to ensure] that they are secure and safe in our community and our veterans’ officer has the ability to access the funds she need immediately to care for those veterans.”
Vice Chair Dan Salvucci said the town can’t do enough for its veterans.
Select Board member Justin Evans said that, in the past, citizen’s petitions have been reviewed by Town Counsel before being placed on the warrant.
“Any article with 10 signatures gets put on the warrant,” he said.
Connolly’s fellow Finance Committee member Kathleen Ottina had also asked in public forum about the agenda item pertaining to a ballot question regarding an override.
Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski said it was being discussed, but not voted on that evening.
“This will teach Rick Anderson for giving us the night off,” she joked.
The board also took a few moments to accept a check from Plymouth County Commissioners for $2.2 million in ARPA funds, which will be used for the town’s sewer force main project.
“The award of these funds … had made it possible to forego the full borrowing for this project,” said Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter. “Instead, the town was able to redirect the borrowing of $2.2 million toward the new DPW building project as was voted at the October 2023 special Town Meeting.”
Attending the meeting to make the presentation of both a giant photo-op worthy check, and the smaller real thing, were Plymouth County Treasurer Tom O’Brien and County Commissioners Jared Valanzola, who chairs the commission, Greg Hanley and Sandra Wright.
“To be able to use these funds for water projects is really the highest and best use [of ARPA funds],” Valanzola said. “Your leadership team, your finance team has done a wonderful job advocating for and making sure that they get these funds.”
O’Brien noted the prop check’s “bank” and “routing” numbers were made up – 12211620 and 521202 representing the date of the landing on Plymouth Rock and the population of Plymouth County respectively – to prevent scammers from zooming into a photo of the check in an attempt to defraud the ARPA funds.
He also noted the Plymouth County program has only spent 1 percent on administrative costs, while many ARPA accounts across the country have cost 5 to 8 percent to administer the program.
“We’re doing it better, faster and cheaper than they are at any other level of government,” he said. “I’m also here to report that this is not our last check. We have another check coming in short order.”
More importantly, Hanley said projects like Whitman “really does the taxpayers of this town a great
service” because it is one-time money being used for a capital need without borrowing, which keeps taxes are limited.