Halifax’s two-night Annual Town Meeting May 11 and 12 ended with voters authorizing $999,777 of the $1.5 million Proposition 2½ override that appeared on Saturday’s ballot, after Town Administrator Steven Solbo disclosed a $625,000 accounting discrepancy three days before the meeting. The ballot question itself cannot be amended, but town meeting’s appropriation cap means only the lower amount can be spent in fiscal 2027 without a future town meeting vote.
Halifax voters confronted the town’s worst fiscal crisis in years across two long, sometimes contentious nights, ultimately keeping the override alive for Saturday’s ballot while reshaping nearly every line of the FY27 budget through floor amendments. Selectman Jonathan Selig framed the stakes for residents: “We’re voting tonight not knowing what the outcome will be but knowing that the state doesn’t know the faces of those that go to the COA. They don’t know the faces of your children, the educators that stand to lose their jobs.”
Solbo opened Monday night with a sober briefing. On Friday, May 8, he said, the town had identified roughly $625,000 in accounting and budget compilation discrepancies that “significantly changed the financial discussion surrounding the override.” He warned against treating the discovery as a permanent fix. “Using free cash responsibly is like using your savings to repair your roof, replace your furnace, or handle an emergency car repair. Using free cash continually to support recurring operations is like using your savings account every month to pay your mortgage, groceries, and electric bill because your paycheck no longer covers your normal expenses.”
Silver Lake Regional School Committee Chair Gordon Laws moved first to lower the town’s Silver Lake assessment on Line 70 by roughly $200,000, citing a double-count in the regional district’s budget process. That amendment passed unanimously. Resident Gordon Andrews then moved $175,112 from the town’s general stabilization fund toward the Silver Lake assessment, a transfer that cleared the required two-thirds threshold.
The real fight came over Halifax Elementary School’s appropriation on Line 69. Andrews proposed raising the school’s town-funded share to $7,732,771, arguing that combined with state grants and circuit-breaker offsets, the figure would let the elementary school avoid any staffing reductions and eliminate the school’s portion of the override request. The amendment, he said, “allows no staffing reductions to take place at the elementary school. We do not need to cut the teachers and increase the class sizes to outrageous numbers.”
The Finance Committee and Board of Selectmen both declined to recommend the amendment. Finance Committee Chair Jim Walters cited “moving money out of a stabilization fund that is not meant for operational costs, which is really directly in conflict with any type of budget discipline.” Halifax Elementary School Committee Chair Lauren Laws warned that the budget figure would not satisfy the state’s net school spending requirement under Department of Elementary and Secondary Education rules. After a hand count, the amendment failed 153 to 253.
Selig immediately offered a compromise: $7,532,438 for the elementary school, returning roughly $200,000 to the override and spreading the budget pain across both municipal and school sides. “I think we’re all in this together,” Selig said. “I think to completely excuse that one side, in my opinion, is not the way to go.” The compromise passed by majority vote, with the Finance Committee backing it 5–2.
By the time Article 3B reached a vote near 11 p.m., the override allocation had been rewritten in real time. Walters initially moved a $775,042 appropriation, reflecting the new accounting picture. Andrews and Selig then noted that earlier cuts to police and fire wages had not been restored in Article 3A, meaning the override needed to cover them. After a brief recess, Walters re-stated the motion at $975,042 — restoring $150,021 to police wages, $140,000 to fire wages, $375,385 to the elementary school, and amounts for the Council on Aging, OPEB trust, and a reserve fund.
Resident Robert Mullen asked whether passage would mean no one loses their job. Solbo answered that one part-time assessor’s clerk position remained unfunded. Selig moved to amend the override motion upward by $24,735 to restore the position, bringing the final appropriation to $999,777. The motion passed by majority vote after a motion to end debate.
Selig stressed that the ballot question must still read $1.5 million by law, but that the town will only assess the appropriated amount unless a future town meeting votes to raise the rest. “You’re only going to be taxed on the [$999,777] this year,” he told resident Jean Gallant. “You’re not going to be taxed on the full $1.5.” Solbo projected that the $999,777 appropriation translates to roughly $276.73 in additional annual taxes on the average Halifax home, assessed at $532,178 — compared to an estimated $531 annual increase under the full $1.5 million figure.
The night ended in procedural chaos. After Article 3B passed, resident Peter Beals filed a motion to reconsider. Moderator Robert Gaynor ruled it out of order because the body was still in the middle of paired Articles 19 and 20 establishing a PFAS settlement stabilization fund. By the time those passed, a motion to continue the meeting carried, and Beals was promised a chance to raise his motion again Tuesday.
Day Two: Reconsideration Fails, Government Reform Splits the Town
Beals opened the second night by renewing his motion to reconsider the override. “It really seemed like we were in a beta testing type meeting that should have been hammered out well before it came to the town,” resident Matthew Beals told the floor in support. After a brief debate and a successful motion to end discussion, the reconsideration motion was defeated by majority vote, locking in the $999,777 figure contingent on the override.
The remainder of the evening turned to recommendations from the town’s Government Study Committee, a volunteer group commissioned in fall 2024 to review Halifax’s governance structure. Board of Selectmen Vice Chair Tom Pratt, who serves on the committee, framed each article as a choice for voters rather than a critique of any sitting officeholder.
The results were mixed. Article 9, which renames the Board of Selectmen as the Select Board, passed. Article 6 (Town Clerk from elected to appointed) passed 149–79 and is headed to Saturday’s ballot for final approval. Article 7 (Treasurer/Collector from elected to appointed) also passed. Article 8 (Highway Surveyor) and Article 10 (Water Commissioners) both failed after pointed opposition from elected officials and residents who said they would not surrender voting power to the Select Board.
Current Highway Surveyor Steve Hayward, who earns $84,000 plus a $12,000 cemetery superintendent stipend, argued the town would face significant salary pressure under an appointed model since he also serves as tree warden, recycle supervisor, and stormwater team member without additional pay. “Who’s gonna come here and do all this work for $84,000?” he said. Water Commissioner Chair Richard Clark, who has served the Water Department for 40 years and as a commissioner for 12, told residents commissioners have never been compensated in the position’s 75-year history.
Articles 19 and 20 established a special-purpose PFAS Settlement Stabilization Fund to receive proceeds from multi-district litigation against manufacturers including 3M, DuPont, BASF, and Tyco. After debate over oversight, the body amended Article 19 to remove a clause requiring Select Board approval for Water Commissioner expenditures, leaving spending decisions to the commissioners with town meeting appropriations.
Article 22, a citizen petition from Chris Winiewicz to adopt a soil reuse and contamination bylaw, passed unanimously despite a warning from Town Counsel Paul DeRensis that the Attorney General is likely to reject it as conflicting with Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection authority. Much of the discussion centered on Marilyn’s Landing, a capped landfill on Route 106 currently accepting contaminated soil to rebuild the cap, with eventual plans for a solar array. Interim Health Agent Robert Buker told the body the site currently operates within federal, state, and local parameters but encouraged residents to consult the town’s Board of Health website for specifics. Resident Frederick Hawley raised concerns about uncontrolled runoff toward Stoney Weir Rd., identified as a future town well site.
Other articles disposed of in the second night included a 2% cost-of-living increase for non-union staff, an anti-canvassing bylaw for commercial solicitation, expansion of the disabled veterans’ property tax exemption, acceptance of state law allowing conversion of wine and malt beverage licenses to all-alcohol licenses, and a $300,000 Reserve Fund appropriation amended to remove specific earmarks for police and fire.
At the ballot box May 16, the Override failed 714 to 867.

The applicant for the 60-unit Ricketts Pond Estates 40B development walked into its twelfth hearing with a revised plan that reconfigures every lot in the subdivision — a structural change designed to neutralize the central objection raised by the Board of Health’s hydrogeology consultant: that the project violated state nitrogen-loading limits by roughly a factor of two. The Zoning Board kept the hearing open, scheduled three additional sessions before its May 29 statutory deadline, and began voting on the long list of waivers the applicant has requested from local subdivision and site-plan regulations.
Ricketts Pond Estates, LLC is seeking a comprehensive permit under M.G.L. Chapter 40B to build 30 duplex buildings — 60 ownership units, 15 of them affordable — on roughly 24 acres straddling the Plympton-Carver line off Ricketts Pond Drive. The project has been before the Zoning Board since fall 2025 and has consumed a dozen hearings. The May 7 session was the first since the applicant, working through engineer Brad McKenzie of McKenzie Engineering Group and hydrogeologist Peter Dillon of Geoscience, submitted a substantially revised set of plans, identified as Revision 5.
The redesign responds directly to a March 24 report from Scott Horsley, the hydrogeology consultant retained by the Plympton Board of Health. Horsley, a hydrologist who has taught at Harvard and Tufts and served on advisory boards for MassDEP and the EPA, concluded the project as previously designed would generate roughly 1,049 gallons per acre per day of wastewater across the developed footprint — well above the 440 gallons per day per acre limit in Title V for nitrogen-sensitive areas, and above the 550 gallon threshold that applies when enhanced nitrogen-removal technology is used. Horsley’s lot-by-lot analysis showed loading rates ranging from 624 to more than 2,200 gallons per acre per day.
Rather than litigate Horsley’s methodology, the applicant changed its strategy. Dillon told the board the revised plan eliminates the previous design’s reliance on “credit land” — an 11.28-acre open-space parcel that had been used to dilute the nitrogen calculation for the whole subdivision. Instead, lot lines have been redrawn so every individual lot stands on its own under Title V’s per-lot loading formula, either at 550 or 660 gallons per acre per day, with enhanced nitrogen-removal technology installed on each septic system. “Title V basically gives you two options,” Dillon said. “One is to do aggregation of flow, and then the other is to meet the nitrogen-loading limits either by land size or land size plus treatment.” The applicant chose the latter.
The visual effect of the change is striking. Several lots on one side of the proposed roadway are now roughly twice as wide as in earlier versions. Others extend back through narrow “panhandle” corridors solely to capture enough acreage to satisfy the loading formula. McKenzie said the same 30 buildings will be constructed, with the same bedroom count — six three-bedroom units and 54 two-bedroom units — but some structures have shifted on their lots and several pairs of duplexes will now share a common 20-foot driveway. The roadway design, stormwater facilities, and infiltration basins are unchanged.
Board of Health representative Jared Anderson said the underlying conditions on the ground had not changed even if the numbers on paper had. “They’ve generated acres on paper, but the actual conditions have changed very little,” he said, urging the board not to decide before Horsley could respond and before a pending Notice of Project Change with MEPA — filed by a private party — was resolved. The applicant’s attorney, David Henig of Galvin and Galvin PC, pushed back hard. “We would be strongly opposed to waiting until something is done with MEPA,” he told the board. “It’s going to be a condition of approval that we have to comply with state law.”
The chair indicated the board would keep the hearing open to allow Horsley to respond to Dillon’s letter and to give the board’s own consultants — GEI Consultants on hydrogeology and JDE Consulting on civil engineering — a chance to review the revised submission. The board also acknowledged an arrearage on its 53G consultant account of roughly $14,000 to $15,000, most of it owed to GEI, which will need to be replenished before further peer review proceeds.
Plympton Fire Prevention Captain John Sjostedt, who described himself as the chief’s designee under Chapter 148, examined the new plan during the hearing and flagged several issues. He questioned whether vehicles parked along the new 20-foot common driveways could block emergency access to rear buildings, whether the spacing between adjacent buildings — McKenzie estimated 15 to 20 feet — was sufficient for fire exposure, and whether the new configuration would allow proper ladder-truck placement. Sjostedt said he would submit written questions to the board after reviewing the plan in detail. McKenzie noted buildings can be shifted on individual lots when septic and grading plans are finalized.
The hearing recessed shortly after 7 p.m. to allow the Board of Selectmen to convene in the same room for a separate hearing on an earth-removal permit. When the Zoning Board resumed, it returned to the comprehensive permit and continued working through the waiver list.
The board began voting tentatively on waivers from Chapter 350 (subdivision regulations) and Chapter 340 (site plan regulations), reserving final votes for a later meeting. The board indicated it was prepared to grant most requested waivers, in many cases with conditions recommended by peer-review consultant JDE: a partial waiver for plan-scale requirements (1-in-60 for the 40B plan set, 1-in-40 for construction roadway plans), waiver of the requirement for a second sidewalk, waiver of the standard 100-foot tangent between reverse curves, waiver of the 500-foot dead-end-street limit (the proposed road will run roughly 2,780 feet), and waiver of street-light requirements in light of Plympton’s dark-sky bylaw, with each lot to have a hardwired, photocell-controlled lamppost instead. The board provisionally granted the fire-protection waiver pending Chief consultation. Waivers tied to Title V — separation distances, advanced treatment technology, and wetlands — were held until the next hearing.
Resident Rebecca Lipton raised concerns about red-bellied turtle habitat on and around Ricketts Pond, arguing the species nests in the sandy soils that have been mined from the site. McKenzie said the site is not listed in the Natural Heritage atlas as priority or estimated habitat for rare or endangered species. Town counsel Carolyn Murray noted that state agencies, not the Zoning Board, would address protected-species concerns.
The board worked through the applicant’s request for a waiver from Plympton’s earth-removal bylaw. Counsel Murray noted the bylaw already exempts earth removal “incidental to” permitted construction. Henig said the applicant wanted clear authorization to remove excess material as needed to grade the site for the approved plan, without a separate permit process. The applicant agreed to delineate a “limit of work” line on a revised plan, with no removal or disturbance beyond it, and to accept conditions on hours of operation and truck traffic similar to those imposed in other Massachusetts 40B projects.
Ricketts Pond Estates, if approved, would add 60 ownership units — 15 deed-restricted as affordable to households earning up to 80% of area median income — to a town that, as of MassHousing’s December 2024 review, had a Subsidized Housing Inventory of just 4.99%, leaving Plympton 53 units short of the 10% threshold that protects communities from 40B overrides. The development’s path through the Zoning Board has been shaped by a fight over whether 60 septic systems and 25 private wells can coexist on roughly 24 acres above the town’s Groundwater Protection Zone without compromising drinking water. The applicant’s decision to redraw lot lines rather than continue arguing the science is a procedural pivot — but whether it actually changes the hydrogeology on the ground, or simply changes the math on paper, or did it even need changing, is the question the board will have to answer in the next three weeks.

Town Administrator Scott Lambiase delivered the first detailed look at the fiscal 2027 budget picture at the April 21 Board of Selectmen meeting, telling the board the state has certified Kingston’s free cash at $3.1 million. He called the certification a critical figure for shaping decisions on roughly $1.4 million in capital requests, snow-and-ice capital leases, and supplemental department requests.
Updated cherry-sheet numbers arrived earlier the same day and brought no significant change. Lambiase reported a roughly $116,000 increase in education aid, a $42,000 decrease in unrestricted government aid, and a $72,000 reduction in state assessments — leaving Kingston “basically flat from the last budget” without the help officials had hoped for.
Lambiase flagged two potential revenue developments. The vendor approved to install an electronic billboard on Cranberry Road has cleared a five-year state Department of Environmental Protection review and could generate approximately $150,000 a year for the town, though the project still needs Conservation Commission approval before site work, including tree removal, can proceed. Town meeting voters first authorized the Cranberry Road billboard in 2020, Vice Chair Kim Emberg noted. Separately, the town continues to work with Eversource on a parcel adjacent to the Pembroke Street fire headquarters that has been eyed as a potential future police station site, though Lambiase said Eversource has its own long-term plans for the property and the arrangement may not work out.
Chair Eric Crone, attending remotely, asked about federal reimbursement for snow-and-ice costs. Lambiase said the request has been submitted to FEMA at the governor’s request but cautioned that any award would likely cover about 75 percent of eligible costs and would not arrive for “a couple of years” — and probably “more towards years” than months.
The June 6 annual town meeting will carry roughly 38 articles, Lambiase said, most of them housekeeping. He described the operating budget under preparation as a “level service” budget, with the Finance Committee meeting Thursday to finalize recommendations.
Kingston selectmen voted to approve a two-year extension of Police Chief Brian Holmes’ employment agreement, locking in department leadership for what will become a five-year tenure. The vote was 4-0-1, with Selectman Missy Bateman abstaining.
Holmes thanked the board with brief remarks at the podium. “Two years has gone by in a blink,” he said, calling Kingston “a great town, great workforce” and describing the position as “the best career choice I’ve ever made,” 40-minute commute and all. He told the board the department has engaged in recent training and is preparing for additional work ahead.
Emberg moved approval of the agreement as presented. Selectman Carl Pike said he had reviewed the final document and that it incorporated everything the board had discussed during negotiations.
The board’s only divided vote came on a request from Andrea Cunningham, an administrative assistant in the Town Clerk’s office, for permission to work the May 16 election. Cunningham’s husband, Joseph Cunningham, is a candidate for the Board of Selectmen, creating a financial interest tied to the position’s stipend.
Cunningham’s disclosure form, submitted under G.L. c. 268A § 19, listed restrictions on her election-day duties: setup and breakdown, filling in at voter check-in tables during worker breaks, logging hourly ballot-box totals in the clerk’s book, and food setup. She would not count or tally votes, and she would defer her usual responsibility for checking the ballot drop box to another worker.
Pike opposed the appointment. “I was brought up in the defense industry where any kind of a conflict, even the appearance of a conflict, is just as bad as the conflict itself,” he said. He argued she should not work this single election while her husband is on the ballot.
Emberg disagreed, pointing to the limits in the disclosure form. “There are things that are related to the elections that have nothing to do with the ballots, like setting up food, setting up tables,” she said. “It’s very clear that there are things unrelated to ballots that are part of the election duties that she could potentially do.”
The board approved the disclosure 4-1, with Pike opposed. Because Crone was attending remotely, Emberg as vice chair was authorized to sign the determination on behalf of the board.
Will Cushman of Main Street used the open forum to flag uneven sidewalks on the Route 3 overpass, describing sections that are sinking on both sides of the bridge and creating what he called a tripping hazard. He acknowledged the location may fall under state rather than town jurisdiction. Emberg directed residents seeking road or sidewalk repairs to the Highway Department’s Request Tracker on the town’s website. Cushman also encouraged residents to contact the Selectmen’s office about open seats on the Commission on Disability.
The annual town election is Saturday, May 16, at Kingston Elementary School. The annual town meeting is Saturday, June 6, at Kingston Intermediate School.