HANSON — September 29, 2026 — The Hanson Finance Committee declined to recommend several articles on the Oct. 5 special town meeting warrant, including $25,500 to update the town’s subdivision control regulations and a pair of $20,000 requests, Select Board members learned Tuesday. Members questioned why the committee declined to back community preservation spending that does not come from free cash.
The Full Story
The warrant voters take up Monday is the same one the Select Board voted on at its Sept. 22 meeting, the board was told. What is new is the Finance Committee’s split verdict.
The committee did not recommend Article 16, $25,500 for the Planning Board to update the town’s subdivision control regulations; Article 17, a vehicle for the highway department; Article 23, $20,000 from free cash to replenish the conservation fund; Article 24, a $20,000 survey funded through community preservation; or Article 28, a proposal from the treasurer-collector. It also did not recommend security cameras for the transfer station.
The committee did recommend Article 13, a separate camera request, along with the library article and an alarm system, and referred the warrant’s remaining bylaw changes to town meeting. The board was told the Article 28 recommendation came as no surprise.
Article 24 drew the sharpest reaction. A board member noted the survey money comes from community preservation funds, not town funds, and asked why the committee would object to spending it. Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said the Finance Committee was within its rights but did not know what its objection was, since the money was not coming from free cash. Joe Weeks said it looked like the committee had done the same on all the community preservation articles, and suggested free cash is usually where the committee draws its line.
Kemmett’s overall read was that the recommendations held no major surprises.
The board spent more time on Article 5, which asks voters to transfer $76,664 in free cash for Hanson’s share of replacing the high school staff parking lot. Frank Milisi who plans to address the article on the town meeting floor took up a question that had been circulating: whether Hanson already paid for the work.
A 2022 article introduced in both Hanson and Whitman paid to pave from the main road up to the staff parking lot, Milisi said, not the lot itself. Hanson’s description of that article read essentially the same as this year’s, while Whitman’s specified paving up to the staff lot. He said the earlier wording could have been clearer, and described researching the question and driving past the site the day before the meeting.
And it is indeed, it stops right at the entrance of the staff parking lot where the paving is. The rest of the staff parking lot all the way behind has not been paved.
— Frank Milisi, Select Board 12:09
Milisi said the new article’s language is accurate because the work covers the lot itself, not the access road.
The warrant is at the printer, with 150 copies coming, and the recommendations chart is set in larger type across two pages so voters can read it.
