WHITMAN — September 15, 2026 — Whitman’s public library is two years into a five-year state deadline to restore its municipal funding, receiving 87% of the state aid it could collect and opening 45 hours a week instead of the 50 required for a town its size, Chair of the Library Trustees Margaret McEwan told the Select Board at the town’s first joint meeting with board and committee chairs.
The Full Story
Whitman has fallen short of the minimum library appropriation the state sets for two straight years. The town covers 45% of the library’s budget. A part-time position that would have restored service to the 50 hours a week required for a town Whitman’s size was cut from the budget, leaving the building open 45 hours. To stay in the regional Old Colony Library Network that lets a Whitman card borrow from other collections, the trustees drew down trust fund money that is running out. The state allows five years to climb back to the required contribution, and failing at the end of it costs the library its state aid outright.
“It’s just that we’re in dire straits because of the mandates that we’re given,” Chair of the Library Trustees Margaret McEwan said.
The session was the Select Board’s first attempt to put every elected and appointed committee chair in one room, introduce the town’s new town administrator, Sabrina Chilcott, and collect each committee’s fiscal 2027 goals and what each one needs from the board.
The Finance Committee chair, Michael Warner, put the arithmetic in front of the room: spending is growing two to three times faster than the town’s income, against what the chair put at a $2 million deficit. The committee has worked from a zero-growth budget for seven or eight years, long enough that department heads laugh when the committee asks whether the same line still covers gas and electricity.
“Cutting your $500 expense line is not going to help our $2 million budget deficit, but it does an amazing amount of damage to that committee,” Warner said regarding some of the committees represented around the table.
The Board of Health has dropped its low-cost rabies clinic, which vaccinated animals for $20 to $25 twice a year with a veterinarian donating the time, and its twice-yearly drug and sharps take-back day, run with the police department. Both went because the money to advertise them and to pay staff to run them is gone. The Recreation Commission, whose only budget line is its Director’s salary, canceled swim lesson sessions when sign-ups came in too low to cover lifeguards, canceled its Fourth of July event, and expects the pool to run “bare bones” on what remains in a revolving account fed by camp fees. The Conservation Commission works from a salary line under $1,000 and an expense line under $500, while one required legal ad costs $173 to $200 in the Brockton Enterprise that replaced the closed local weekly Whitman-Hanson Express, which charged $50 for the mandated notice.
“I hope in a few years we can start talking about growing recreation instead of shrinking,” Recreation Chair Ryan Tully said.
