Select Board Recap May 11, 2026

Hello Dartmouth. Welcome back to our May Select Board meeting recap. My name is Cody Haddad, your town administrator. We had a full meeting this week with almost 4 hours to discuss town meeting and a lot of happening in town.

So I'm going to get right to it. We started off with a municipal broadband committee update from Ripple Fiber. The municipal broadband committee has been working behind the scenes for a number of years to address the lack of opportunities for broadband in Dartmouth. And so they've worked to identify a potential provider, Ripple Fiber. They provided a thorough presentation on what they are planning

to do. Essentially, they are going to come into Dartmouth and offer fiber in the more dense areas, dense population areas of town. They plan to get to around 8 to 10,000 customers in Dartmouth within the next year to three.

And then from there they may expand outward. So great opportunities.

Their pricing is very competitive and more information can be found online in the next in the coming weeks. We'll be sharing that.

So you may have some new options for fiber coming to Dartmouth.

We also had a conditional offer of employment for a new police officer. This is an officer who is transferring from another department, comes well recommended and will be a great fit in the Dartmouth community. So we we welcome Brandon Powicki to the Dartmouth Police Department. We then appointed a Zoning Board of Appeals alternate member. There has been an opening for an alternate. We

advertised that a number of months ago.

We got a few responses. Those were then sent to the Zoning Board of Appeals.

They invited them in and Mr. Shawn Rodericks submitted his letter of interest and and he was selected unanimously by the Select Board last night to serve as an alternate on on the Zoning Board of Appeals.

Due to resident feedback, the town clerk thought it was imperative that we find a location inside of precinct nine. And so the select board last night approved moving that to the DYSA field house starting with the September primary election and it will remain there going forward. The town clerk also provided an update on the precinct three polling location.

The location has bounced back and forth between UMass Dartmouth and the Dartmouth Bible Church a number of times.

Most recently it was at UMass Dartmouth.

We heard some resident concerns about the location and so the town clerk came in to clarify the location really has worked and we've actually seen a huge spike in voter turnout for that precinct in local elections. There was less than 10 voters in local elections prior to this change and since we moved it to UMass Dartmouth, we're well over 100 voters. So still not where we want to be, but it's certainly great

progress. So that was good information from our town clerk.

We had another department head in, our harbormaster Steve Mello, and he gave a lot of updates on his operations, things that are going on within the harbormaster's office, uh particularly pertaining to the Warren Hathaway Marina, the new Marine Town's Marina. And so gave some estimates of revenue and new regulations that are all available through the harbormaster's website. He also shared that he

will be having open office hours at the Maritime Center over the next couple of weeks. That flyer is also posted online, so stop in. You can get your passes from the harbormaster and also meet meet the team who hopefully you see it out on the water this summer.

We also updated our shellfish regulations. Our shellfish regulations haven't been updated in approximately 10 years.

Uh previously, you were not allowed to uh go shellfishing on Tuesdays.

The recommendation was that you are now able to um go shellfishing on Tuesdays. And also, you weren't able to uh use go in the month of April. Uh going forward, you will be able to shellfish in the month of April. So, those those regulations were approved by the Select Board, and they will be posted online.

Now, we get into the part of the meeting where we prepare for our annual spring town meeting. Uh our team has diligently been working to uh prepare for town meeting, the budget, and and everything that goes along with the budget, and uh several different warrant articles, bylaw updates.

You have it. Uh like I mentioned before, we'll be posting a video soon with DCTV and our communications manager to go over the warrant uh and and have information on each of the articles. We also will be hosting a pre-town meeting uh session where we will go over all of the warrant articles, allow the community to ask questions. So, that it will be held on May 27th at 6:00 p.m. at

Dartmouth High School Auditorium. So, uh we encourage town meeting members to attend. We also encourage members of the community, whether you're a town meeting member or not, to come and and learn more about what's going to be on the warrant uh on the June 2nd town meeting.

So, the first was the review of CPC warrant articles. Buddy Baker Smith, chair of the Community Preservation Committee, came in. There's seven articles being sponsored by CPC this year. And so, he went through each of those uh to give an update.

We also had the proposed tree bylaw. The chair of the Dartmouth Tree Committee, Ann Parsons, came in.

We've been diligently working with the Tree Committee to get a tree bylaw on the warrant. Unfortunately, um there was the draft as presented uh had some conflicts with Massachusetts General Law. And so, um we're going to go back to the drawing board, and hopefully bring forward a tree bylaw for the fall town meeting that is uh accomplishes everything that the Tree Committee thinks is necessary here in

the town of Dartmouth, but also is legal um and and is consistent with Massachusetts General Law and our other bylaws. So, more to come on that. Then, the Select Board went through and recommended uh the annual and special town meeting articles. So, on the um the annual town meeting, we are going to have 28 articles.

We have three articles on the special town meeting.

Um the Select Board unanimously recommended um 25 of the 28 articles. The three articles that they did not recommend, which was also unanimous in not recommending, were uh three citizens' petitions. They they did not recommend them um because they are not legal the way that they were drafted. It's not that the Select Board disagreed with what they were trying to accomplish.

Rather, if they are even voted at town meeting, they will not um they'll not be legal. They will not be effective in in getting done what they're looking to get done. So, more information to come on that. Uh and with that, they did approve both the annual and special town meeting warrants. There was the former police station reuse committee charge. In 2019, the Select Board approved a committee

charge to look at the former police station property and and make some recommendations of possible uses going forward.

Although that committee had previously made a recommendation uh and town meeting had approved funding to demolish the property, there's been a renewed interest in the property from the community. Uh there were two citizens' petitioned articles, uh two of the three that I mentioned, that uh essentially would have created this committee.

There was a legal issues with overstep of Massachusetts General Law Chapter 30B procurement, but the Select Board was cognizant of the the concerns of the community, and they re-adopted the charge to look at uh the former police station and their the use of that. So, we will be posting openings for that uh later this summer. And then finally, we talked about the summer department schedule for a town uh

departments. What we found is um through 18 comparable communities, 14 of them run a schedule that is either a half-day Friday or off on Friday. With that, we're able to uh offer a later service on a weeknight.

So, right now Town Hall is 8:30 to 4:30, and your offices are generally the Monday through Friday during open during the days.

We want to expand service to be open on the evenings for individuals that may work all day, um or busy all day.

That way they can come into Town Hall and do what they need to do. So, the Select Board was supportive of this initiative. We are working out exactly what the hours will look like, and we will be announcing that in the coming weeks. As far as the Town Administrator's update, uh essentially just excited to share that we have the grand opening of the dog park, the Dartmouth Regional Parks and Trails,

will be June 5th at 9:00 a.m.

More to come on that. We want to let our residents know UMass Dartmouth's graduation is being held on May 21st and 22nd. So, as you know, if you live in the area, avoid the UMass Dartmouth area uh if you can during those days. Traffic uh may be a little bit brutal. Also, excited to share that our reserve parking lot behind Town Hall will be opening up uh later this month, just in time for the

Dartmouth High School Commencement. Uh there were no updates on proposed projects, uh and no real new information on proposed business. So, we look forward to the next Select Board meeting. It's going to be June 1st. Town Meeting is going to be on June 2nd at 9:00 a.m. at Dartmouth High School for Town Meeting members. And just a reminder, May 27th we'll have our Town Meeting Preparation Meeting

uh for all of the community to attend.

We particularly hope to see as many Town Meeting members there as possible. Thank you.