Dartmouth Town Administrator Cody Haugh Head provided a recap of the Select Board meeting held on February 9, 2026. The meeting began with a public hearing regarding several new poles on High Hill Road, which applicant Eversource had installed prior to receiving approval. After discussion and considering abutter concerns, the board granted after-the-fact approval. The board also approved a temporary trailer permit for a family on Jason Drive who are building a new home, contingent on sign-offs from the DPW and public health departments. A significant outcome was the approval of a committee charge to create a new five-member Economic Development Committee, aimed at supporting existing businesses and attracting new ones. The board also reviewed and expressed excitement for a new Citizens Academy initiative, an 8-week program for 20 residents starting April 1st, designed to provide insight into town operations. Gary Corraro, Director of Budget and Finance, presented an overview of the Fiscal Year 2027 budget process, noting a slowdown in revenue growth and anticipated challenges, particularly with the school department's needs. Finally, the board began preliminary discussions on topics for the June Town Meeting. Potential items include updating the 1947 snow removal bylaw, a possible ban on cryptocurrency ATMs due to their frequent use in crime, and future revisions to the town's stormwater and site plan review bylaws.
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City Officials
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Hello Dartmouth, Cody Haugh Head, your town administrator here. Very excited to start our new segment, which is going to be a brief select board meeting update.
0:15So, the first meeting that I will be updating you on is the February 9th meeting that the select board just had.
0:21We're going to run through each of the items, give you a brief overview.
0:24The meeting started with a public hearing for several new poles proposed on High Hill Road. These are typically very straightforward. However, this one was interesting because the Eversource was the applicant and they actually put the poles in before they got the approval from the select board. So, there was a lot of discussion from the board sharing their concerns. They took the abutters' complaints and concerns
0:48into account and we came up with a good path forward and the select board did give that after-the-fact approval with the caveat that if any neighbors direct abutters have concerns to bring that forward to Eversource, that can certainly be addressed in the future.
1:02Then we went on to look at a trailer permit for Jason Drive. The applicant has a lot on Jason Drive that they will be building a home on in the future.
1:14They're looking to place a trailer for them and their family to live in temporarily while the home is being built. The board did approve that permit after much discussion with the caveat that all of the departments do need to sign off on the permit still. There's some concerns regarding public health and DPW. So, once those all are addressed, the applicant will have their permit and can move forward with the
1:35with the trailer.
1:37Next on the agenda was the review of an economic development committee charge.
1:41So, economic development committee is something that we've heard that the community would like to see here in Dartmouth. We really need to focus more on our economic development.
1:50Where we want to see development occur, supporting not only the businesses that we already have in town, but also how do we attract new business that we want to we want to come into town. Redevelopment is really important. So, the board had some discussion on that topic.
2:06They shared that they were excited to see something like this come up. We want to work on our relationship with the local Chamber of Commerce and other community partners. So, the board did approve that committee charge. That will have five members of the public. We we hope to attract members of the business community.
2:22So, you can look forward to that coming out and you can apply for that on our boards and committees page on the town's website in the next month or so.
2:30Also on the agenda was to review the Citizens Academy, which is really exciting initiative that coincides with the select board's goals for the year.
2:39The Citizens Academy will begin on April 1st and run for about 8 weeks on Wednesday evenings from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. We'll take 20 participants.
2:49Information on how to sign up for that will go live on our website by the end of next week and we encourage residents to get informed. This is again the board was really excited. There was a lot of discussion on this on the initiatives, reaching the board's goals, and making sure that the town and the residents have a good insight into what goes on day-to-day here, not just at Town Hall,
3:09but what your DPW is doing, what your school department is doing, all working to make Dartmouth a better place. And next on the agenda, there was an overview on the fiscal '27 budget. So, we're we're in the thick of budget preparation. Our director of budget and finance, Gary Corraro, has been working diligently with our finance committee.
3:28Gary gave an update on the process so far, what the board can expect, what the public can expect, and where our revenues are. We're we're certainly seeing some growth slowdown.
3:40This is not just unique to Dartmouth.
3:42It's unique throughout the Commonwealth and really around the country.
3:45But we we looks like most of our departments have submitted level service requests, which is great. It allows us to continue forward. We do anticipate some challenges, particularly where our school department, you know, has continuous needs year over year and our revenues have not kept up with that, but it was a a good overview. I encourage if you want to get more information, you can watch
4:06the full select board meeting and and see that full presentation by our director of budget and finance.
4:11Uh the last topic on the agenda for the Monday meeting was an overview of topics for town meeting. So, although it's only February, uh we begin discussions on what the board would like to see on the agenda for town meeting in June.
4:25In addition to our regular housekeeping items such as the budget and appropriations to stabilization funds, funding our enterprise funds, it's a good opportunity for us to make changes that need to that need to occur.
4:39So, the board talked about a couple items. One of them being the snow removal for sidewalks bylaw. Hasn't been updated since 1947.
4:49That's when it was implemented. And so, there's a number of things, particularly with this last storm that we we realized we probably should work on updating to bring that more in line with current practices.
5:01So, you will see some information on that. We want to really focus on the Route 6 corridor and the Fons Corner Road corridor to make sure that public safety is a top priority. One of the other topics that was discussed within this was a potential ban on crypto ATMs. So, this is cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is is kind of the most common one that you probably have heard of. These ATMs are more often
5:25than not used for crime purposes.
5:28Could be fraudulent purposes. And so, it's something that we really need to consider if we want to have these in Dartmouth or not. So, you may see a ban on those, a potential bylaw.
5:37So, one of the select board members brought up the need to revisit our stormwater bylaw regulations.
5:42So, we'll be working with our planning director and DPW team to review that. That may not appear on this time meeting warrant, but you certainly can expect some changes going in the future.
5:53And you can also expect some revisions potentially to our site plan review bylaw, which the planning board is currently reviewing. And that is a quick review of what occurred on the Monday, February 9th Select Board meeting. And I look forward to doing this again at the next meeting on March 9th. Thank you.