Kingston residents at the Annual Town Meeting on Saturday approved a $63.7 million operating budget for Fiscal Year 2027, authorized borrowing $700,000 for a new ambulance, and passed sweeping land conservation measures — before closing with a narrow 52-49 recorded vote to indefinitely postpone acceptance of a subdivision roadway entangled in a dispute over a speed hump the town said it could not legally compel residents to remove.
The centerpiece of the meeting, Article 7, appropriated $63,674,830 to fund the town’s general fund operating budget for Fiscal Year 2027. The budget was presented by Finance Committee member Derek Billnitzer and passed unanimously on a voice vote with minimal discussion.
When a voter asked whether the budget represented wants or needs, Billnitzer was direct: “This is not a budget where we are asking for more than is needed for this town to maintain level services.” He added that the school district cut services to meet its number. When pressed on whether FY28 would be sustainable, Billnitzer offered a sobering assessment. “That is the $63 million question,” he said. “Expenses are rising across the board, as we all are personally aware. The town is no different in incurring those costs.”
Billnitzer also noted that the Finance Committee is currently operating with only three of its seven authorized members — a consequence of Cowett’s election as moderator — and urged residents to volunteer to join. Without a quorum of four, the committee cannot take official votes.
Article 6, which drew brief but pointed questioning, transferred $500,000 from the Stabilization Fund and $318,113.89 from Free Cash to cover the FY2026 snow and ice removal deficit. Town Administrator Scott Lambiase confirmed that the Stabilization Fund balance stands at $3.6 million and certified Free Cash for the year was $3.1 million. The article required a two-thirds vote and passed unanimously.
Article 28 contained six separate Community Preservation Committee appropriations totaling $894,956, generating the most extended discussion of any single article.
The first motion transferred $43,120 in CPA affordable housing funds to the Kingston Affordable Housing Trust, which holds approximately $1 million. Finance Committee members who opposed the transfer argued the trust has no active projects. Jean Landis-Naumann, chair of the Affordable Housing Trust, countered that the funds are being held to partner with developers on projects that would expand affordable units — noting the town currently sits at about 5% affordable housing against the state’s 10% goal and has at least one 40B project pending. The motion passed with minimal opposition.
The second motion, appropriating $119,670 to purchase approximately half of a 10.35-acre parcel at 20 Maple Street for conservation purposes, drew considerable debate over both its language and its substance. Conservation Agent Matt Penella acknowledged the warrant description contained errors — references to “8 Maple Street” and “approximately one acre” were misprints — and clarified the article concerned only the dam, wetlands, riverfront, and buffer zone east of the existing development at 20 Maple Street. The purpose is to allow the Conservation Commission to breach the Maple Street Dam, improve fish passage up Stony Brook into Blackwater Pond, and improve stormwater resiliency on Route 3A.
Pine DuBois of the Jones River Watershed Association, which has been working since 2004 toward the dam breach, urged voters to act now rather than defer. “Having ownership of this land would make it so much easier,” she said. Resident and lifelong Kingston native Dot MacFarlane, 83, drew applause with a plainspoken case for fish passage: “Those fish are feeder fish. When they get out into the water, they become food for the bigger fish that we eat.” Opponents argued against these conservation articles, saying the town has sufficient conservation land and that removing parcels from the potential tax base is a recurring cost. The motion passed with minimal opposition.
The third motion, $387,166 to purchase a 3.82-acre parcel at 83 Wapping Road to improve access to Hathaway Preserve, also drew debate. Resident Ken Moalli argued the $375,000 purchase price was excessive for what he characterized as a degraded bog, and that the existing access easement was already adequate. Penella offered a detailed rebuttal, explaining the parcel allows the town to convert a rough, unseen two-track entry into a visible, fenced parking area off Wapping Road, extending the trail system and improving safety for visitors. He also walked through a cost-benefit analysis: a single-family house on the lot would generate roughly $8,000 in annual taxes, but a family with one child would cost the town more than $15,000 in school expenses per year. The motion passed with minimal opposition.
Motion four appropriated $75,000 for professional restoration of 70 to 100 of the most deteriorated gravestones in the Old Burying Ground. Historical Commission Chair Craig Dalton explained that the commission is addressing the worst stones first, noting the cemetery is on the National Register of Historic Places and contains the graves of Major General John Thomas, Hannah Thomas (the first female lighthouse keeper in the United States), and Commodore Jane Seaver, who christened the USS Constitution. Finance Committee members voted against the expenditure; Billnitzer said stone aging is natural. The motion passed with minimal opposition.
Motion five appropriated $20,000 to rehabilitate six rotted windowsills and exterior paint on the Stephen Drew Heritage House, and motion six appropriated $250,000 to rehabilitate the tennis and basketball courts at Gray’s Beach Park. Both passed with minimal opposition.
Article 40, accepting Timber Ridge Lane and Sequoia Drive in the 34-home Tall Timber Estates development, passed with minimal opposition despite the Planning Board’s stated opposition to accepting new private roads given the town’s strained maintenance budget. Highway Superintendent Shawn Turner told voters the roads are in good condition and present no significant cost concerns. The article passed.
Article 41, seeking acceptance of Captain Jones Way and Barrows Brook Circle in the Jones River Estates subdivision, became the meeting’s most charged moment and ultimately produced its only recorded vote. A resident of the subdivision delivered an extended presentation arguing the roads function as a de facto public connector between Routes 27 and 106, are used by emergency vehicles, school buses, and roughly 240 vehicles on a typical morning, and were kept open at the town’s own request years ago to address fire apparatus access issues.
The complication: a non-standard speed hump in the subdivision needs to be replaced with proper speed tables before the highway department would consider the road up to town standards. Subdivision residents said they had signed notarized agreements and engaged an engineer, with estimated removal and replacement costs of $27,000. But Town Counsel Kate Feodoroff advised that once town meeting accepts a road, it accepts it as-is, and there is no legally enforceable mechanism to compel residents to complete the improvement afterward.
Select Board Chair Kimberley Emberg offered an amendment conditioning acceptance on the speed hump issue being resolved at no cost to the town. The amendment passed, but Feodoroff reiterated the amendment was not legally binding. Billnitzer moved to indefinitely postpone the article. In the closest vote of the day, indefinite postponement carried 52-49, sending the article to a Special Town Meeting currently scheduled for Oct. 21.
One resident’s parting words as the meeting adjourned captured the stakes from the subdivision’s perspective: “The road is being closed. It’s closed. We’re done.”

The Kingston Board of Selectmen spent nearly four hours meeting May 19 and reviewing the June 6 Annual Town Meeting warrant, but the most pointed moment came over the fiscal year 2027 operating budget, when newly voted Chair Kimberley Emberg told the room the town’s finances are structurally broken and warned that without new commercial growth, Kingston could be forced to consider an override.
“I’m going to say it again. I think this is not sustainable,” Emberg said as the board moved the general fund operating budget toward favorable action. “I’ve said this for the last three years. We are out of room, so we either need to figure out new growth somehow or we’re going to be talking about an override.”
Nevertheless, the board recommended the FY27 general fund budget, sending it to voters without dissent. But the surrounding discussion laid bare how thin Kingston’s margins have become. Selectman Carl Pike, a former finance committee member, estimated the town would carry a free cash balance of roughly $750,000 to $800,000 into the fall after town meeting spending. He called that an acceptable cushion and said he would not be comfortable with a balance closer to $250,000, particularly with union contracts coming due in the fall and the town already pressed against its levy limit.
Town Administrator Scott Lambiase offered a measure of cautious optimism, noting that the available revenue could rise once the state finalizes its own budget. The figure Selectmen were working from reflected the House number, he said, while the Senate version came in significantly higher; a final state budget, expected by late July, could ease the squeeze slightly. “We definitely need to have a little buffer in that free cash,” Lambiase said. “I agree 100%.”
Selectmen worked the warrant article by article through enterprise fund budgets for the water, wastewater and renewable energy departments, a slate of Community Preservation Committee projects, zoning bylaw corrections, revolving funds and a string of routine appropriations. Several articles were held for further language review with Town Counsel before the warrant is posted, including two proposed revolving funds tied to opioid settlement money and injured-employee reimbursements, and a tax-title payment agreement that Counsel advised should be structured as a bylaw rather than a standalone vote.
The Community Preservation articles drew the closest votes of the night. The board split 3-2 on a proposed conservation purchase on Maple Street. Town Planner Valerie Massard explained that the parcel is likely intended for housing redevelopment in partnership with the Affordable Housing Trust, though the warrant language framed it around wetland protection and fish passage. The board also voted 3-2 to recommend roughly $387,000 to improve public access to the Hathaway Preserve off Wapping Road, including a parking area, split-rail fence and information kiosk. Less contentious CPC items, including restoration of headstones in the Old Burying Ground and rehabilitation work at the Stephen Drew Heritage House, advanced with little debate.
Earlier in the evening the board adopted Kingston’s 2026-2031 Housing Production Plan, clearing it for submission to the state’s Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities by the June 30 deadline. Jason Desrosier, Senior Housing Planner at the Old Colony Planning Council, told the board Kingston counts 272 units on the state’s subsidized housing inventory, or about 5.2% of its roughly 5,200 year-round units, well below the 10% benchmark. He framed the plan around “missing middle” housing and the needs of a rapidly aging population, emphasizing small-scale, context-sensitive growth rather than dramatic change. Pike used the moment to press a familiar point, urging town boards to hold firm against neighborhood opposition to development. “I just hope that we as town committees can be strong in trying to support housing development in this town,” he said. “I think that’s the only way we’re ever going to get anything built.”
The board also approved the issuance of $1.9 million in general obligation bond anticipation notes, carrying a 3.75% rate and sold to Piper Sandler & Company, to finance the elementary school roof replacement authorized at the October 2025 special town meeting.
The meeting opened with the board’s annual post-election reorganization. Emberg was returned as Chair, Melissa “Missy” Bateman was elected Vice Chair, and Sheila Vaughn was elected Clerk. Vaughn and newly elected member Joseph Cunningham Jr. were welcomed to the board. Vaughn was also added as a second authorized signer of the weekly warrant, and the board voted to move its regular meetings to the second and fourth Tuesday of each month.
The night’s most heated stretch came during a public hearing on the all-alcohol licenses at Indian Pond Country Club, where the board had to decide whether an illegal transfer of the licenses had taken place following the club’s sale. The new property owner and his attorney told the board the licenses remain in the name of the prior holder, who is staying on under an interim management agreement to run the liquor operation until a formal transfer can be approved by both the board and the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission.
Resident David Fuller, of Country Club Way, delivered a blistering five-minute statement welcoming the new ownership while excoriating the prior operator over what he described as decades of conflict with the surrounding neighborhood. Fuller questioned why the license holder was absent from the hearing and demanded documentation proving the management arrangement was being honored. Ken Moalli spoke in support of the buyer, urging the board not to put hurdles in front of a sale that he said would benefit the community, and arguing that the confidentiality prior to a private deal of that size was normal business practice.
Town Counsel laid out the board’s options: revoke the licenses, suspend them for a defined or indefinite period, continue the hearing, or take no action. After closing the public hearing, the board voted to take no action on all three licenses covering the grill room, function room and members’ club, accepting assurances that the original licensee retains ownership and day-to-day control until a transfer is formally approved. Counsel cautioned that all liquor-premises obligations remain with the original license holder in the meantime, and that the new owner cannot operate the licensed business himself without board and ABCC approval.
Kingston’s annual town meeting is set for Saturday, June 6, at 9 a.m. at the Kingston Intermediate School; a copy of the warrant is available on the town website.

Town meeting voters on May 13 defeated Article 19, the Board of Selectmen’s petition for special state legislation that would have stripped the Board of Health of authority to appoint and remove its own administrative assistant. The rejection followed sharp opposition from the Board of Health, the School Committee chair, and elected members of independent boards who warned the change would erode public-health independence and confidentiality. Voters separately approved a $16,179,691 fiscal 2027 budget that drew $823,340 from the general stabilization fund — a one-time fix that Selectman Nathaniel Sides said would not be available next year, when Plympton faces “a very real possibility” of needing a Proposition 2½ override.
Moderator Barry DeCristofano opened the combined Annual Town Meeting and Special Town Meeting at the Dennett Elementary School, working through 21 annual articles and two special-session transfers. Most articles moved quickly. Article 19 did not.
Sides, presenting on behalf of the Board of Selectmen, framed the petition as the latest step in a decade-long effort to professionalize personnel practices across town departments. The article would have asked the Legislature to allow the Board of Selectmen, rather than the Board of Health, to appoint and remove the board’s administrative assistant — bringing the position in line, Sides said, with support staff in other departments that already report through the town administrator.
“It’s not an attempt by the Board of Selectmen to take over the Board of Health,” Sides told voters. He said the Board of Health would still interview candidates and recommend its preferred hire to the Selectmen for ratification. “No one is losing their job, no jobs are being eliminated, no duties and responsibilities are changing, nothing is eliminated, there is no pay change involved with the passage of this act.”
Board of Health Chair Brad Cronin, speaking on his own behalf, was the first to push back. He called Article 19 “a bad solution in search of a non-existent problem” and laid out five objections: that it would undermine the intent of state public-health law, erode public trust by introducing political influence, create ambiguity over who supervises the position day-to-day, expose the town to legal and personnel risk, and set a precedent for other independently elected boards. Cronin noted that boards of health handle communicable disease investigations, housing complaints, substance abuse matters, and other confidential health information. “Public health decisions should remain independent, professional, confidential and insulated from politics,” he said. “Article 19 moves Plympton in the opposite direction.”
Board of Health member Jared Anderson told voters the board had voted 3-0 to reject the article. He said the administrative assistant also performs clerk duties for the board, including preparing minutes, and that splitting the supervisory authority would create ambiguity and possible legal costs to defend the new structure.
Art Morin, a longtime Board of Health member, invoked the board’s work during the COVID-19 pandemic and stressed HIPAA protections. He warned that a future Board of Selectmen — not the current one — could be tempted to pressure an administrative assistant for confidential information. “We need the independence for the Board of Health to protect it,” he said.
Opposition was not confined to the Board of Health. Plympton School Committee Chair Jason Fraser said he opposed Article 19 just as he had opposed an earlier move to make the town clerk an appointed position. “We as departments do have autonomy and independence, and I would like to see it stay that way unless there’s a problem,” Fraser said.
Ethan Stiles, a member of the Board of Assessors, argued that elected boards are best positioned to evaluate the staff who serve them day-to-day. Resident Brian Carr, of Buttonwood Drive, urged voters not to overturn what he described as 154 years of Massachusetts precedent giving boards of health autonomy at the local level.
One resident spoke in support, citing past instances of what they described as unprofessional conduct by town-house staff that they said had not been corrected under the existing structure.
The moderator called for a voice and hand-card vote and declared the article defeated. No precise count was announced.
Before the budget vote on Article 4, Sides delivered a prepared statement from the Selectmen, Town Administrator, Town Accountant, and Finance Committee. He told voters Plympton had built another level-service budget — no expanded programs, no new spending unless mandated — and had again taken the budget to the legal Proposition 2½ levy limit. To close the remaining gap, the town drew on its general stabilization, or “rainy day,” fund.
Town Accountant Lisa Hart read the funding breakdown: $14,849,622 from the tax levy (raise and appropriate), $823,340 from general stabilization, $300,000 from the ambulance fund applied to EMS salaries, $147,000 from capital stabilization for police station debt, and $59,729 from free cash. The $16,179,691 total passed unanimously, clearing the two-thirds threshold required because of the general stabilization draw.
Sides was direct about what comes next. “Unfortunately, that is something of a one-time fix. We simply cannot afford to do this next year,” he said. “For next year, there is a very real possibility of needing a Prop 2½ override, unless overall fiscal conditions and or state aid change for the better.”
He noted that almost half of Massachusetts cities and towns are pursuing some form of Proposition 2½ relief this year. Plympton is not among them — yet.
Voters approved a $35,000 transfer from capital stabilization under Article 20 to fund a limited building assessment of Dennett Elementary School, including review of current building systems, overall infrastructure condition, and development of a repair or replacement schedule. School Committee Chair Jason Fraser moved the article, which passed unanimously without discussion.
Other capital and infrastructure approvals included $200,000 from capital stabilization for road construction, resurfacing, and topcoating (Article 11); $63,199 in lease payments for two highway department trucks and a police vehicles and radios package (Article 9); $9,895 for a Meteor 87-inch double-auger snowblower (Article 12); a multi-year lease-purchase for a police patrol vehicle (Article 14, requiring and clearing the two-thirds threshold); and a multi-year lease-purchase for a new Ford F-150 or similar for the fire department, with $14,000 for the first-year payment (Article 16).
Under Article 6, voters approved $17,000 from the Community Preservation Fund’s undesignated balance for the Recreation Commission to add a pickleball court at the existing Parsonage Road basketball court facility. The project also funds restoration of vandalized basketball hoops, new landscaping, parking area refurbishment, a small picnic area, and motion-activated security lights, with oversight reports to the Community Preservation Committee at least every two months.
Other articles approved without significant discussion included $39,000 for the FY27 financial audit (Article 7, from free cash); $10,000 added to the town buildings emergency maintenance account (Article 8, from free cash); $28,500 for information technology upgrades, including security software and hardware (Article 10, from free cash); $10,000 for fire department grant matching funds (Article 15, from the sale of town properties fund); $2,200 for bylaw codification (Article 17); $31,400 for the FY27 real and personal property recertification (Article 18); and authorization to accept and expend Chapter 90 state roadway funds (Article 13).
The Annual Town Meeting recessed after Article 19 so voters could take up two FY26 cleanup transfers. Both passed unanimously: $10,000 from free cash to the OPEB (post-employment benefits) account, and $10,000 from free cash to the unemployment budget line.