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.