HANOVER — Oct. 19, 2026 — The Hanover Select Board on Monday voted to approve and sign amended agreements for a proposed regional household hazardous-waste collection depot at the Hanover Transfer Station, under which the town takes on 40% of the depot’s fixed costs, up from zero, an offer made to keep the regional partnership together after some towns dropped out.
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The board took the depot item out of order because other towns were voting on it that night and the following week. The board had agreed to the arrangement in principle at an earlier meeting, but the intermunicipal agreement had to be revised after a few towns that had indicated they would join decided not to.
The change to the intergovernmental agreement between Hanover and the South Shore Recycling Cooperative, the siting agreement the town signed in March or April, is in Section 3. Hanover’s share of the depot’s fixed costs, originally set at 0%, rises to 40%, which Town Manager Joe Colangelo presenting the changes put at roughly $1,500. He called the offer a goodwill gesture from a town that had worked for years to site the depot and wanted to keep the regional effort intact.
The intermunicipal agreement now spells out a decommissioning process and insurance requirements the board had considered important, and the two documents were aligned to remove ambiguity; Colangelo said nothing in it was new relative to the board’s expectations. The cooperative is trying to award a grant-funded project to a bidder by the end of October, and the grant requires the project to be finished by March 2027.
No questions were raised before the vote. The board approved the amended agreements and authorized signing them; the action did not appropriate money, approve construction or grant a site approval.
The board also heard how Karen Preval, a newly hired Director of Finance and Strategic Planning, on the job about three weeks, is building Hanover’s five-year projections.
my objective was really not to produce a finalized five-year balanced budget but to provide the board with an understanding
— Karen Preval (17:08)
The conceptual projections, covering fiscal 2028 through 2032, will change once the state certifies Hanover’s tax rate, she said. They assume 2.25% increases for town departments, in line with board policy, 2.75% for schools and a 9% health insurance projection, and put projected fiscal 2028 appropriations at $82,955,948. A fiscal 2028 levy of about $64 million, a 3.5% increase, would leave roughly $84,000 in excess levy capacity. Preval flagged fiscal 2030 through 2032, when the maximum allowable levy falls significantly as debt-exclusion debt is paid off.
The figures leave out a proposed $2 million prepayment, drawn from stabilization funds, toward Hanover’s Plymouth County retirement assessment, which is tied to a special town meeting warrant article. Shown separately, the prepayment would cut that assessment by $770,800 in fiscal 2030, $851,100 in fiscal 2031 and $976,300 in fiscal 2032, lowering projected operating budget growth from 3.3% to 2.5% in fiscal 2031 and from 3.8% to 2.9% in fiscal 2032.
Colangelo said bond counsel and the town’s debt advisers, who met with officials Monday, asked for more information but felt the plan had merit and likely would not hurt Hanover’s credit rating if the town sticks to its plan to repay the stabilization fund. Board members noted the model does not yet include debt for the South Shore vocational school project; one said last year’s model had assumed $1.25 million. Preval said it would be added.
