Deb Anderson
Express staff
Kingston’s Board of Selectmen met Tuesday, Jan. 16, at the Kingston Town House, to continue the earth removal permit from Dec. 19, and hear the appeal for a senior citizen who has been permanently barred from the Kingston Senior Center.
In the open forum, Pine DuBois, from the Jones River Watershed, asked selectmen to to watch the drone footage taken by Jimmy Powell in the Landing Road area, showing the dangerous flooding on Jan. 13, where water flooded the road and vehicles were trapped in standing seawater. She asked selectmen for future preventative roadblocks and traffic control to avoid the damage to vehicles in an extremely dangerous situation. “I don’t think people know that salt rots their cars.” she said. The drone footage and flooding photos can be seen on the Jones River Ecology YouTube channel.
The earth removal permit hearing was continued as the peer review company has not yet been hired. Town Administrator Keith Hickey advised selectmen to wait until the peer review was complete. The hearing was continued until Feb. 13, at 6:15 p.m.
Selectmen were next asked to consider the appeal of a Council on Aging’s suspension of a patron to enter the senior center or attend activities there. Originally a 30-day suspension, the event involved a patron and the Director of Eder Affairs, foul language and inappropriate behavior. Upon appeal to the Council on Aging Dec. 15, the COA increased the suspension to a permanent ban, all of which was within their authority.
The patron, who is a resident of Carver, appealed further to selectmen. After much discussion, with several selectmen considering that a permanent suspension was “too aggressive”, and after several votes to amend the term of the suspension, they finally agreed and voted to amend the suspension to end at January 1, 2025, at which time the term of the suspension will have been served.
Selectman Tyler Bouchard said, “I used to umpire a lot of baseball games. I’ve kicked out a lot of Dads – a couple of Moms, too.” In all of his hundreds of games he has never seen a lifetime ban.
Selectman Eric Crone said he thought the purpose of the hearing was to see if the COA Advisory Board acted within its authority in elevating the 30-day suspension to a permanent suspension. He said that reviewing the tapes and the testimony it looked like they did what was within their authority. He did not vote to overturn the lifetime suspension.