The Plympton Board of Selectmen voted 2-1 on July 14 to offer the permanent town administrator position to interim administrator Robert Fennessy Jr., over the preference of Chair Nathaniel Sides, who argued the town’s looming budget pressures called for a candidate with a deeper municipal-finance background. Selectmen Dana Smith and Daniel Cadogan carried the motion, citing Fennessy’s experience running neighboring South Shore towns and his three months already on the job in Plympton.
The decision capped a two-meeting process that began July 9, when the board interviewed four finalists forwarded by a seven-member screening committee working with the consulting firm Community Paradigm Associates. Community Paradigm’s Bernie Lynch told the board the committee had winnowed roughly 30 applicants down to the four who appeared in public.
Fennessy has served as Plympton’s interim town administrator since late April, stepping in after Liz Dennehy — the town’s first-ever administrator — departed for Easton. An attorney of more than two decades and an adjunct professor at UMass Law School, Fennessy told the board he has held the administrator’s job, on either an interim or permanent basis, in Boylston, Kingston, Carver and Halifax, and served last year as interim human resources director in Brockton. He pitched himself as a package deal. “You’re not just getting a town administrator,” he said. “You’re getting an attorney,” an HR director, and “the only person who’s worn the town administrator shoes” in nearly all of Plympton’s neighboring communities. Asked what he saw as the town’s biggest challenge, he answered without hesitation: “Obviously, it’s financial.”
The other three finalists brought contrasting profiles. Christine DeMoranville, the Treasurer-Collector for the City of Taunton since 2022 and a 30-year veteran of banking and government finance, leaned on her investment and procurement record; she told the board Taunton had posted among the highest municipal investment earnings in the state on her watch and that she had earned her Massachusetts procurement (MCPPO) certification in March. Heather Hamilton, a former chair of the Brookline Select Board with a background at MassDOT and a municipal engineering firm, emphasized capital planning, grant strategy and communication, and said Plympton’s rural character and its prior female administrator had drawn her to the role. Sydney Viveiros, currently assistant town accountant in Lakeville and previously executive administrative assistant to the Acushnet town administrator, presented herself as a hands-on, budget-conscious generalist steeped in day-to-day municipal operations, and repeatedly likened Plympton to Acushnet.
Sides opened the July 9 session with a warning to the audience that the finalists were sitting for genuine job interviews and deserved courtesy. Each candidate fielded questions on their first 100 days, HR and collective bargaining, grants and procurement, economic development in a town with almost no commercial tax base, and their working relationship with a three-member board. Sides also closed each interview with the same offbeat prompt — “You’re a tree. What kind of a tree are you and why?” DeMoranville and Fennessy both chose the oak; Hamilton picked a willow; Viveiros, a Japanese maple.
When the board reconvened July 14 to deliberate in open session — a requirement under the state’s open meeting law — all three members went out of their way to praise the field. “I wish we had more jobs that we could hire all four of them for,” Cadogan said, calling every finalist a strong fit for the town in some capacity. But the members diverged on who should get this job.
Sides made the case for DeMoranville. “The biggest issues that are facing the town for the next five years or so are financial in nature,” he said, describing her as a proven financial manager with procurement, labor and roughly four to five years of municipal experience. He stressed the choice was “certainly nothing against Bob,” whom he called “a wonderful choice, a safe choice.” Smith backed Fennessy, pointing to his record in contiguous towns and the fiscal strain facing Plympton and the wider South Shore: “We need somebody with more experience on the ground, having worked in other towns.” Cadogan also backed Fennessy on the strength of his interim tenure and resume, while sharply criticizing the process itself. “I vehemently disagree with the open meeting law that makes us criticize people in public,” he said, declining to rank the other candidates and calling the public deliberation “a disgusting process that the state makes us do.”
Cadogan ultimately moved to offer the position to Fennessy. Sides added the standard contingency that any offer be subject to successful contract negotiation, and the motion carried on a roll call: Cadogan and Smith in favor, Sides opposed, a reflection of the finance-versus-experience split rather than any objection to Fennessy.
Fennessy accepted graciously. “I’m truly honored by your vote today, even though it wasn’t unanimous,” he told the board. “It’s been a privilege serving as interim town administrator here. I learned a lot in a short amount of time, and there’s a lot more to learn.” He pledged an open-door policy, “always have, for 20 years.”
The financial anxieties that shaped the vote were on plain display earlier in the same July 14 meeting. Before taking up the administrator question, the board reviewed the town accountant’s year-end internal budget transfers for fiscal 2026, which totaled roughly $317,000 in departmental deficits. Sides singled out the police department, which had run about $128,000 — roughly 10 percent — over budget. “Given the current fiscal state of the town, we need to know every step of the way,” he said, pressing for earlier notice when accounts head toward deficit. The board approved the transfers unanimously, pending Finance Committee sign-off on reserve-fund pieces expected later that evening.
That strain traces back to the town’s most recent town meeting, where — as board members recounted during the interviews — Plympton drew roughly $800,000 from stabilization to close its budget gap and avoid a Proposition 2½ override. Members told candidates repeatedly that the maneuver was a one-time fix: stabilization is now largely depleted, the town has no current five-year capital plan, a proposed new fire station failed at town meeting, and an aging population worried about affordability sits alongside an influx of younger residents. Whoever holds the administrator’s chair, Sides said, will need “creative ways to increase revenue” heading into what the board described as one of its toughest budget years.

Kingston’s highway barn closed after a chemical spill exposed two Streets, Trees and Parks employees and forced the town to relocate resident sticker sales for a few days, with officials awaiting air-quality results they hope will clear the building for reoccupation by week’s end. Town Administrator Scott Lambiase and Superintendent Shawn Turner offered only a limited public account, citing the potential for litigation.
The spill at the highway department building dominated the practical concerns of the June 23 meeting even as officials kept details deliberately sparse. Lambiase told the Board the town was “being a little careful on exactly what we’re putting out there, because this does have potential for some litigation, depending on how it goes down,” and directed selectmen to a written briefing distributed just before the meeting rather than a full public discussion.
Turner said the department was awaiting air-quality testing, with results expected “Wednesday afternoon at the earliest, Thursday morning at the latest.” If the air tests come back clean, he said, employees could return to the building. In the meantime, the department has continued limited operations, with Turner acknowledging it lacks “all the equipment we usually would to complete the job” for road work and thanking residents for their patience.
Turner credited a wide circle of town personnel for the response, singling out the fire department for ensuring two employees who were “somewhat exposed” received proper medical testing, the health agent for keeping people out of the building, and police for guarding the site around the clock since the incident. Chair Kimberley Emberg and Lambiase, in turn, praised Turner for managing the situation at all hours. “The biggest thing is making sure the employees are safe,” Turner said.
In the meeting’s most substantive debate, selectmen voted not to continue the process of accepting Nobadeer Circle as a public way, halting a resident petition after town staff estimated it would cost roughly $218,000 to bring the private road into acceptable condition.
Town Planner Valerie Massard walked the Board through a memo prepared after staff inspected the roughly 30-unit development, which was approved and endorsed in 2008 as a 40B project with roads designated private and maintained by homeowners. Massard reported 14 catch basins and 11 drain manholes, about 85% of which need reconstruction; four stormwater wetland areas; and two ponds connected by a 190-foot culvert running beneath the road. Staff estimated repaving alone could reach $200,000 at prevailing wage, on top of catch-basin reconstruction and crack-sealing, and recommended spending up to $1,500 on an engineer to produce a true cost estimate. Massard stressed that the prevailing-wage figures are higher than what private homeowners would pay for comparable work.
Selectman Carl Pike, who said he served on the Zoning Board when the development was approved, argued that a project built to be private should remain private. “I, as one selectman, am not interested in talking about converting it from a private road to a public road with all of the associated costs involved,” he said. Emberg pressed a different point, saying she could not identify the public benefit the road-acceptance policy requires. “I don’t know the public benefit. I just can’t see it,” she said, noting the circle functions as a dead-end neighborhood street.
Other members agreed. Pike moved that the selectmen not continue reviewing the road for public acceptance at this time, and the motion carried. Turner said the town would keep plowing Nobadeer Circle “just because we have,” but cautioned that once inspections begin, failing catch basins or overgrown trees would have to be addressed or plowing could stop.
The Board approved transferring $19,500 in opioid settlement funds to Plymouth County Outreach, an addiction-recovery and overdose-follow-up program housed on Main Street near the Plymouth line. Police Chief Brian Holmes said the program’s grant funding is “coming to a screeching halt in September,” prompting the organization to invoice every police department in Plymouth County to keep it running for at least another year. Holmes said he and department staff work closely with Executive Director Vicky Butler and are pursuing more sustainable funding with state officials. Under the town’s arrangement, the police department must seek the Board’s permission each time it draws on opioid settlement money.
In a quarterly update, Holmes reported that two new hires began the 22-week Municipal Police Training Academy in Plymouth, bringing the department to 28 sworn officers. He said a pending U.S. Department of Justice COPS Hiring Program grant, if awarded, would cover 75% of a new hire’s salary, with an application deadline in mid-July and a decision expected in early fall.
Holmes delivered a candid update on the long-discussed new police station. A plan to build near the Pembroke Street fire station collapsed after Eversource, which owns an abutting power-station property, indicated it has future expansion plans and could not grant an easement large enough for the town’s needs. Officials are now weighing an alternative town-owned lot, a purchase, or a creative reworking of the existing 244 Main Street site — an approach the department’s architect has called difficult while the current station remains occupied.
The chief also reported that the department’s Family Services Unit, operational since mid-January, now serves five partner communities — Kingston, Plymouth, Halifax, Hanson and Carver — and has completed 76 full evaluations, 56 non-traditional evaluations and four post-arrest evaluations, diverting people toward substance-abuse and mental-health services. That program has been funded for only one quarter of the fiscal year, through September, pending the state budget. Holmes added that Kingston officers assisted at Gillette Stadium during the FIFA World Cup and that the town is hosting this year’s Plymouth County DA’s DARE camp, with graduation set for July 31.

Plympton residents should expect a Proposition 2½ override question next spring, committee member Jason Fraser told the School Committee on June 15, after the town spent roughly $800,000 of its stabilization reserves to balance this year’s budget and left itself with less than $600,000 in the fund to fall back on.
Fraser, the committee’s legislative agent, delivered the warning during his legislative report, framing it not as a school problem but as a town-wide one. He said town leadership — the Selectmen, the Finance Committee and the Town Administrator — had sent a unified message that an override is the likely path back to balance when budget talks resume next spring.
The math, as Fraser laid it out, leaves little room to maneuver. “Even if we wanted to next year, it would be nearly impossible to go back to the well the same way,” he said. The strain already reached Dennett Elementary this year, which absorbed cuts and reductions in staff hours.
Fraser urged the committee and the town to think bigger than a one-year patch. “My advice would not be a Band-Aid override that would just whip us through one fiscal year, but look at an override that could replenish some of our stabilization funds so it could be sustainable over a three- to five-year period,” he said. He added that the pressure extends beyond the elementary school: “We could see serious erosion in all departments next year if we don’t do something to address that issue.” The squeeze, he noted, will hit all three Silver Lake member towns — Plympton, Halifax and Kingston — along with the regional district.
Fraser tempered the outlook with a run of good news on the revenue side. He reported that the committee secured roughly $59,000 in state earmarks for Dennett: $10,000 from Sen. Dylan Fernandes to replace the school’s voice-over-IP phone system, a $14,000 earmark from Rep. Kathleen LaNatra for emergency roof repairs, and $35,000 from Fernandes, with LaNatra’s support, for a building architectural and engineering report. Because Town Meeting separately authorized a $35,000 warrant article for that same report, Fraser said the state money may cover the work and leave the town’s appropriation largely untouched. He also reported that a retroactive $4 million statewide supplemental for rural aid should send about $18,000 to Plympton, with the statewide fund expected to climb from $12 million toward the $16–20 million range next year.
The committee opened the meeting by completing its reorganization for 2026, with Robert Montgomery presiding as chair. Fraser, who had chaired the committee, remains a member, and was thanked by colleagues for his service in the role.
The reorganization was paired with a vacancy. Montgomery announced that member Jon Wilhelmsen has resigned, leaving an open seat. Fraser explained the process: the committee will put out a public call for candidates, vet applicants as a full body, and recommend an appointment to the Board of Selectmen. Because of the summer schedule, members expect the work to carry into September. The appointee would serve a one-year term, running only until the next town election. The committee set a target application deadline of July 15 and agreed to publicize the opening through the school, the town clerk and local channels. No formal vote was required.
Principal Peter Veneto and K-6 Curriculum Coordinator Brian DeSantes presented end-of-year assessment data for Dennett, which will close the year with 251 students enrolled. The school’s DIBELS early-literacy score finished at 77 percent, up from 64 percent at the start of the year after a midyear dip to 59 percent that prompted an action plan re-allocating reading support. DeSantes told the committee the dip was an outlier, partly tied to a kindergarten staffing transition, and credited grade-level data meetings held three times a year for catching the problem early.
The presenters flagged a consistent weak point: third grade, K-2 DIBELS scores sit above 80 percent, DeSantes said, but third-grade foundational results lag district-wide as instruction shifts toward comprehension and writing. The school plans additional phonics training for third-grade teachers next year. STAR reading for grades one through six held roughly flat at 59 percent, while STAR math edged up to 63 percent in the second year of the HMH math program. DeSantes set a clear marker: “We’re not going to quit until we get to 70.”
Assistant Superintendent Tricia Clifford reported that the district has selected Wonders, a McGraw-Hill program, as its new K-5 English language arts curriculum, chosen by a teacher-led curriculum council over the other finalist, CKLA, after roughly six months of field testing. Both programs meet the state’s definition of high-quality instructional materials. Wonders will be paired with Orton-Gillingham foundational instruction, with professional development planned through the summer. Clifford said the work was funded largely by a state PRISM grant and that she is awaiting word on whether year-two funding will come through.
Superintendent Jill Proulx kept her report brief, thanking those who participated in her annual evaluation, which the Administrative Review Subcommittee completed in early June and which will shape her goals and the district’s improvement strategy.
On the building report, Fraser said the committee can move to bid the engineering and architectural work as early as July 1, with the $35,000 already in hand. Because Dennett is a town-owned building, he agreed to coordinate the procurement with the Selectmen and possibly the Town Properties Committee — complicated by the fact that Plympton is operating under an Interim Town Manager.