HANOVER — September 21, 2026 — The Select Board opened, trimmed and closed the warrant for a special town meeting on Nov. 9, sending voters an $800,000 Pond Street well upgrade, water-use fines that would double to $100 for a first offense, and authorization to prepay Plymouth County up to $2 million in pension obligations before a Dec. 31 deadline.
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The article that will reach the most households rewrites the town’s water-use bylaw. Town Manager Joe Colangelo said the amendment raises fines to the maximum the statute allows — $100 for a first offense, up from $50, and $300 for each violation after that — and adds a sentence establishing that the restrictions do not apply to private wells, a point the current bylaw leaves ambiguous. Enforcement was far more aggressive this past summer than in earlier years, he said, and the town still caught 12 to 15 people watering on a typical night. He would have raised the fines higher if state law let him.
Member Steve Louko asked why irrigation systems are not simply required to be disconnected from the public supply. The chair left the door open:
I will say that I think the discussion for the future, based on any other episodes we have of water emergencies, that considering disconnecting sprinklers from our public water supply would be a discussion that we should have. I don’t think that by any means right now we’re ready to make that kind of decision. But I am not opposed to that discussion at all.
— Chair Greg Satterwhite (50:17)
The warrant’s largest single number is an $800,000 debt obligation from the water enterprise to finish the Pond Street well No. 1 upgrade. Other articles would complete an emergency-management fiber ring to town buildings with free cash, replace an ambulance, transfer a square of school-committee land to the Select Board for a monopole and authorize a lease of up to 25 years, and clarify that mobile integrated health work is covered under Chapter 111F.
The article carrying the most uncertainty is the pension prepayment. For a payment to Plymouth County to produce any advantage, the town manager said, it has to be made before Dec. 31, 2026, which makes the special town meeting the only chance to authorize it; he wrote the article for up to $2 million without a recommended figure. Member James Hoyes said the actuarial analysis that would settle the question is not finished and is on the county retirement board’s agenda for next Tuesday, and that a no-charge estimate on the older valuation suggested a $1.7 million prepayment would reduce the liability by that amount plus roughly $500,000 — a head start, not a cure, and a good chunk of the stabilization fund. Member Vanessa O’Connor pressed on whether appropriating stabilization money without a replenishment plan would itself hurt the town’s bond rating; Hoyes noted the financial policy adopted last year requires a plan to repay stabilization funds within five years. If the numbers do not hold up, the article can be passed over at town meeting.
