HINGHAM — Oct. 14, 2026 — Hingham’s light plant now holds a state permit for a $100 million transmission project, but the Light Board of Commissioners will not bring it to Town Meeting until next year, the board’s chair Laura Burns told a Select Board-hosted roundtable of town committee chairs, saying commissioners first want firm numbers on what the project will do to electric rates.
The Full Story
Select Board Chair Liz Klein called the Select Board to order at 7 p.m. for a meeting whose only posted business was a discussion of goals and projects with town board and committee chairs. Select Board member Julie Strehle said the goal was to improve communication among town committees and asked each representative for an update of two minutes or less. The only vote recorded was to adjourn.
Laura Burns, chair of the Hingham Light Board of Commissioners, said the transmission project was pulled from the spring Town Meeting warrant because the board could not yet tell ratepayers what it would mean for their rates. A planned return at fall Town Meeting also slipped, Burns said, because talks with the board’s rate consultant over a rate study are unfinished and the board recently learned of a possible new way to finance part of the project that it is now investigating.
We want to make sure that we have all the information nailed down about what the impact on rates will be when we bring it to the town
— Laura Burns, Chair Hingham Municipal Lighting Plant 32:17
Burns said the state permit arrived two weeks before the meeting, ending a two-year process that included multiple public hearings. The remaining approvals are from the Hingham and Weymouth conservation commissions, a process now beginning, she said. She described the second line as a redundancy measure, so a downed transmission line would not black out the whole town, and said it would also give the town the capacity to reach full electrification.
Burns said the board is also starting work toward time-of-day electric rates, which requires replacing every meter. Money accumulated in a green fund that she said does not cost ratepayers is now enough to proceed, with a pilot program and two to three years of phase-in to follow. The most expensive power the plant buys, between 5 and 7 p.m., is also the only power it buys that is not carbon free, she said. She also noted that water bills now come from the light plant, part of a move toward a single town utility bill.
Strehle reminded chairs that Special Town Meeting is Thursday, Oct. 29, at 7 p.m. at Hingham High School 2:45. Angela Thedinga, chair of the 2025 School Building Committee, said the committee has three articles on that warrant: full approval of roof replacements at South Elementary and Plymouth River Elementary schools, and design acceleration for a Hingham High School roof and HVAC project the committee intends to bring to April Town Meeting.
And if not approved, it would just pause the project from December until April.
— Angela Thedinga, Chair 2025 School Building Committee 51:22
Strehle, reporting for the Community Preservation Committee’s chair, who was in a meeting upstairs, said final applications total just over $3.5 million against estimated funds of just under $2 million, so the committee will not be able to fully fund every project. Requests include $850,000 for Lincoln School Apartments restoration, $650,000 for a Plymouth River School softball field, $644,000 for a South Shore Country Club pool spray deck and $600,000 for the Hingham Historical Society’s Old Ordinary Annex, she said; the committee’s budget will not be set until December.
