Select Board Recap March 9, 2026

Hello, welcome to the March 9th select board meeting recap. My name is Cody Hatad, town administrator. The first item on the agenda was a 6:30 hearing for Running Brook uh winery and vineyard.

This was for a p pouring permit. Uh the vineyard had a permit that had expired a couple of years ago. They never renewed it. And so they're looking to get that permit back which would allow them to essentially serve uh poured wine in distilled spirits. Uh that was approved unanimously by the board. We moved into new business. Very exciting.

We appointed a new animal control officer. Uh Devon Cloutier. She comes from a community in the region.

Uh brings a wealth of experience and replaces uh Sandy Goslin who is our longtime animal control officer who retired in July. So, we thank Sandy for her service and welcome Devon with open arms. If you see her out in the community, please say hello.

We also approved the annual town election warrant. This is something that the board must do anytime we have an election. Our election is on April 7th this year and will consist of all the local seats. Uh it also consists of two ballot questions which have to do with the charter changes that were approved at the uh fall town meeting. And so the board approved that unanimously and that is

something you can look forward to um seeing a a draft of the election ballot will be on the town clerk's website later this month. If you have any questions on where you should vote or about the election process in general, you can contact our town clerk's office.

Uh next, the board went over their town meeting schedule. So, town meeting is coming uh quickly upon us.

Town meeting, the annual June town meeting is June 2nd this year. To go over a few important dates having to do with our process and the select board, uh we will be having a joint meeting with the school committee on March 23rd. That is also the night of the Dartmouth Public Schools budget hearing and that will be the primary purpose of the joint meeting is to discuss the uh upcoming

budget. On April 13th, which is a select board meeting, we will review the draft uh warrant for the first time with the board and go over some of those proposed articles. April 27th will be a full review of the draft warrant. May 11th, the select board will vote uh to approve the warrant and also provide their recommendations. May 27th, we will actually be hosting a pre-Town meeting session. This is something I've

mentioned uh at various boards and committee meetings, but we will be hosting uh essentially a session where town meeting members, members of the community can come in and ask their questions, be provided with an overview of each of the articles uh and essentially hopefully get some answers prior to town meeting that allows our town meeting members to have the information they need uh to make informed decisions. The

fourth item under new business for the select board meeting was a cost of community services request for letter of support. Our agricultural commission uh has had done a cost of community services study back in 2012 approximately. They're looking to update that study. So Serped, which is the Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District, the regional planning agency that Dartmouth

is a part of, uh has offered to undergo this study. Uh essentially what it does is it'll allow the town to make more informed decisions on land use decisions and what is the actual cost of development and and when I say the cost it looks at things like the cost uh the impacts on our school system the impacts on our infrastructure um and and what that may mean so we can make

different decisions for zoning and where where different things should be built.

So, it can be a um useful tool and we submitted a letter of support to acquire some grant funds and it would be at no cost to the town if approved. It's about a $65,000 project. Uh DNRT is also partnering partnering with the town if approved to provide some uh educational resources to get information out about the project. We also went over our comprehensive emergency plan for the

first time. uh our emergency management director Tim Sheen provided an overview of what exactly that plan is, a blueprint for different types of emergencies, who's responsible for what uh what authorities of in is vested in various positions. And so we are uh in the process of updating our plan for the first time in more than 10 years. All of our departments have been meeting to come up with a plan

that we feel is going to keep our community safe and allow us to respond in a time of need. I think you saw that a little bit during the historic blizzard that we had in the end of February.

Our our team was prepared. One of the longer topics of the night was the long range capital planning presentation.

We have a long range capital planning committee that has been working on long range planning for about uh somewhere in that 2-year range, a year and a half. And we held several workshops in over in the fall, late summer, and into the fall of 2025.

Those consisted of reviewing DPW projects, Dartmouth public schools projects, and general government projects. We finally have made a recommendation, which is what was done last night to the select board on some of these projects that will need to be uh going forward in the next some as close as next year and others going forward into, you know, 25 years down the road. um they're significant investments and we

provided what we feel will be uh realistic for the community to afford while going out to debt and what the extra debt payments will look like. We also did a quick analysis of where we compare um in in comparable communities across the state with Dartmouth's tax rate. While we certainly recognize um that you know local taxes have an impact on our residents, we also look at we are in the body bottom 20th

percentile um of taxes of tax rate in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And and we think that we provide a a high quality of service to our our community here in Dartmouth. And we want to continue that.

We want to keep costs as low as possible, but we also want to continue providing highquality services.

So, some of those projects over the next couple years include um water and wastewater infrastructure investments.

We need to undertake some upgrades in our public school system. We have a high school roof which is currently in the process of the feasibility stage and we will need to um pay for our portion. The state will likely pay for about 50% but the town will need to fund the other 50% that could be in that $6 million range just for the town's portion. uh Memorial Stadium, you know, we under underwent

The track at the high school is potentially a million dollar project. Uh and then we start talking really large projects with um the need to replace our middle school and that will likely be in the next five or so years. Uh and it it would not be out of the realm of possibilities to say that could be $150 million project just from the town's portion. We would look to get funding from the state. That

would be at 50%. So um you know we are seeing new schools go for that $300 million range. Again, these are uh projections at this point, but we're trying to get ahead of this and plan so our community knows what's going on. That uh item will also be on the March 30th select board meeting, which is the next select board meeting for review and followup and further discussion. The last item under new

business on the agenda was the council on aging kitchen project update. Again, a project that we've been working on for some time. The kitchen at the COA is is in need of uh updates and repairs. meals on wheels program uses that kitchen daily uh and they provide meals to hundreds of Dartmouth residents uh Monday through Friday. The town meeting was fortunate to uh grant us funds to to finish that project

at the fall town meeting. Uh design is 100% complete and we anticipate going out to bid uh later this month.

Expectation is to start construction sometime early summer and have this completed by the end of summer, early fall. So, great news there. Uh under the town administrators update, we uh touched on several different topics within the meeting. Most notably, I just want to reiterate um the the town and all of the community's response to the historic blizzard that we had uh in late February. Uh we the team

really came together uh and and we think provided a great response to the community. We also appreciate the residents understanding that it took some time for us to dig out and we learned from this and there's certainly improvements that we need to make. However, uh you staying off the road is really what allowed the DPW in in in emergency services to provide the services that were needed and get us

cleaned out uh as quickly as possible.

So, uh thank you to all of our dedicated staff, but also to you in the community for uh listening to our guidance. Our collector's office has sent out over 31,000 motor vehicle excise tax bills and over 9,000 water and sewer bills.

So, uh if those are applicable to you, if you have not received those yet, you will be receiving those and those will be due back to the uh collector in the next 30 days or so. We have a compensation and classification study which is ongoing and our consultant will be in at the March 30th meeting to provide a detailed overview of the final result. Our health insurance steering committee, which the select

board formed over the summer of 2025, will be meeting for the first time on March 12th uh to discuss different health insurance options uh for the town to provide highquality health insurance, but hopefully save some money for our employees and also for the taxpayers by funding that line item. Um the community preservation committee is meeting on March 10th to review several applications for funding uh recommended

for funding, I should say, at town meeting in June. Those include DCTV building uh exterior which is a historical preservation project.

Uh the agricultural commission is looking to form an agricultural trust fund um to essentially preserve and buy properties agricultural properties in town. Uh the cultural center is looking to provide renovations for their building. DYAA is looking to replace all of their field lights and Buzzards Bay Coalition is looking for funds to purchase a conservation restriction for a piece of land

uh that is directly behind Deval's. Uh we also have our comprehensive wastewater management plan through the DPW is underway and we'll be providing an update on that in the future on 40BS which I know many of you in the community have been acutely aware of this and paying attention to this. Those next three meetings are March 16th for the Sherbrook project on Old Westport Road, March 23rd for the former

Hawthorne Country Club project, and uh April 6 for the project proposed on Hathway Road. And last but not least, uh on municipal broadband, which again we know has been a hot topic in the community uh Ripple Fiber has approached the town to potentially provide some uh fiber municipal broadband in town. um they're looking for their phase one to provide over 8,000 customers with the possible broadband. So, we

hope to have more information on that, but they have approached the town and it looks like they have a plan uh that may be able to provide some uh more cost effective options for our community, which which is great news. Uh and with that, I'll just end.

If you're looking for any more information on the town, what we're doing, uh or any of these meetings, you can go to the town's website, which is www.dartmouth.gov.

And if you're looking to reach out directly to the select board, you can reach them at select boarddmma.gov.

We'll see you on the next agenda review for the March 30th select board meeting.

Thank you.