Duxbury Hazard Plan Open for Comment

SCITUATE — September 28, 2026 — Scituate’s schools are on track for an increase of just about $400,000 in fiscal 2028, less than 1%, after recent years of close to $2 million, the School Committee heard Monday.

HINGHAM — September 28, 2026 — Weekend storm leaks at South School and Hingham High School required cleanup by facilities crews, the superintendent told the School Committee Monday, weeks before voters take up roof projects at both buildings and Plymouth River.

HANSON — September 29, 2026 — The Hanson Finance Committee declined to recommend several articles on the Oct.

EAST BRIDGEWATER — September 28, 2026 — Town counsel told the Select Board on Monday that the attorney general is likely to hold, as it has before, that town meeting cannot use a bylaw to direct town officials, a problem for the petitioned surveillance technology bylaw that leads the Oct.

Bus Drivers’ Union Opposes Driver-Facing AI Camera

Revenue Split Would Cut Town Budgets 3.7%

Long-Term Brockton Line Estimated at $8 Million

Week of September 21, 2026

MARSHFIELD — September 28, 2026 — State Sen.

Superintendent Signals Nursing Staff Request in FY28 Budget

Adjusting the trigger for a rebate

PEMBROKE — September 23, 2026 — The Pembroke Select Board heard from police, a Flock Safety representative and residents September 23 on the license plate reader cameras police lease, then put off taking a position until a later meeting.

HANSON — September 23, 2026 — The Whitman-Hanson Regional School Committee voted unanimously September 23 to send the member towns a capital request of about $250,000 to pave the high school’s senior parking lot, and to create a capital stabilization fund that would need approval from both towns’ town meetings.

KINGSTON — September 22, 2026 — Bringing Kingston’s 75 miles of roads and 28 miles of sidewalks to a pavement condition index of about 75 would cost roughly $17 million, the highway superintendent told the Board of Selectmen Tuesday, a figure from the town’s own pavement scanning data and set against local paving money of about $1 million a year without grants.

HINGHAM — September 22, 2026 — The Select Board unanimously recommended favorable action on three school building articles headed to the October 29 Special Town Meeting, including a $16.37 million Plymouth River Elementary School roof project that will now replace the full roof deck after the School Building Committee found the sections it had hoped to salvage are 92% loaded.

COHASSET — September 22, 2026 — The Cohasset Select Board voted not to recommend a citizen petition that would require its own approval before a town department acquires or uses surveillance technology, with members calling the bylaw too prescriptive even as they backed tighter oversight, then closed and signed the special town meeting warrant that carries the article to voters anyway.

Seafood Festival Licenses Move to Oct. 10

HALIFAX — September 22, 2026 — The Select Board voted 3-0 Tuesday for a heavy-truck exclusion on the western end of Old Plymouth Street and declared it in place, redirecting traffic toward a Pine Street intersection the chair called dangerous.

SCITUATE — September 22, 2026 — The Select Board recommended a $5 million Community Preservation commitment to the Gates Apartments elderly housing project and $3,835,165 for construction of Pier 44 Park, sending two articles that lean on borrowed money to the October 19 special town meeting — the harbor park a night after the Advisory Committee voted against it.

HANSON — September 22, 2026 — The Select Board voted not to recommend a special town meeting article that would let the treasurer-collector write off interest on overdue tax bills, and will move to pass it over at town meeting on Oct.

PEMBROKE — September 22, 2026 — Parent Natalie Sacco told the School Committee that her profoundly autistic son was shut out of a YMCA after-school program run on school grounds, that she was told to hire and pay for an aide herself, and that two escalation emails went unanswered.

NORWELL — September 21, 2026 — The Norwell School Committee’s year-end fiscal 2026 report put district spending at $33,433,131, with utilities close to $300,000 past budget after the coldest winter in almost 10 years, and left the special education circuit breaker account roughly $750,000 below the reserve level the state recommends — a position the district’s own forecast shows going negative in fiscal 2029.

HANOVER — September 21, 2026 — The Select Board opened, trimmed and closed the warrant for a special town meeting on Nov.

MARSHFIELD — September 21, 2026 — Marshfield’s new town administrator told the Select Board that departments townwide have not been adhering to procurement law and called the practice a liability, as the board adopted a 12-month list of expectations for the post on a voice vote over one member’s objection to the town-schools funding agreement.

WEYMOUTH — September 21, 2026 — The Town Council voted Monday night to spend $90,700 from Weymouth’s Historic Resource Fund on a new roof for the Church of the Holy Nativity, a South Weymouth parish built of Weymouth seam-faced granite.

KINGSTON — September 21, 2026 — The Kingston School Committee voted to move $311,936.08 of the $313,934.55 left over from the school budget into a stabilization fund rather than return it to the town, which gets back $1,998.47.

DUXBURY — September 21, 2026 — The Selectboard adopted a seawall easement license policy Monday over the objections of shorefront property owners, who argued that stripping decking, fences and other temporary structures out of the easement every off-season imposes cost and labor for no safety gain.

EAST BRIDGEWATER — September 21, 2026 — The Planning Board opened a public hearing Monday night on the town-wide data center ban it sponsored, then voted unanimously to set the article aside, asking the Select Board for a 12-month moratorium on data center siting and town meeting to pass the article over after residents warned it was too weak to survive Attorney General review.

9.75% and Counting

HANOVER — September 16, 2026 — The Hanover Public Schools closed fiscal 2026 with a balanced operating budget and a $1.9 million rollover into fiscal 2027, but Superintendent Matt Ferron told the School Committee the district runs out of money at the end of fiscal 2028 and made a three-year funding strategy through fiscal 2029 one of five goals for the year.

Board Protests Vo-Tec Permit Fee

For One Day in August, Massachusetts Sort of Tried It

HULL — September 16, 2026 — A divided Select Board voted 3-2 to adopt a policy directive backing the municipal light plant’s plan to stay at its current site and build a new garage, acting at a resident’s request from the floor and minutes after town counsel told the board that deciding how to spend a particular sum is the Town Manager’s call, not theirs.

MARSHFIELD — September 15, 2026 — Marshfield Public Schools have lost 75 staff positions from last year to this year, School Committee Chair Sean Costello said September 15 as he addressed the town’s failed override vote, and a district administrator reported a $57.8 million fiscal 2027 budget, down from $60.4 million, with no circuit breaker money carried into the new year.

COHASSET — September 15, 2026 — The Select Board put off recommending a $232,000 telephone system replacement until the Advisory Committee votes, pushing the decision to Sept.

Aquifer Tank Questions Unanswered for Months

April Construction Runs Through July 4 Parade

PLYMPTON — September 15, 2026 — Every Plympton department head will be asked for two budgets this fall: one at level services, and a second at level services minus 5 to 10 percent.

HANSON — September 15, 2026 — Hanson’s three automatic license plate readers stay switched on, because the Select Board declined to take a vote with two of its five members away.

WHITMAN — September 15, 2026 — Whitman’s public library is two years into a five-year state deadline to restore its municipal funding, receiving 87% of the state aid it could collect and opening 45 hours a week instead of the 50 required for a town its size, Chair of the Library Trustees Margaret McEwan told the Select Board at the town’s first joint meeting with board and committee chairs.

ROCKLAND — September 15, 2026 — The Select Board voted Tuesday to join a 12-town agreement building a permanent household hazardous waste depot at the Hanover Transfer Station, a regional facility that will be canceled outright if all 12 towns do not sign by mid-October.

MARSHFIELD — September 14, 2026 — The Marshfield Select Board voted 3-0 on Monday not to endorse a 32-home friendly 40B off Forge Lane, declining to sign the local initiative application the developer needed to reach the state and ending a plan the town’s own planning board had already rejected without a single vote in support.

DUXBURY — September 14, 2026 — Duxbury expects about $3 million more in operating revenue next year, a 2.9 percent increase.

HANOVER — September 8, 2026 — Fire Chief Jason Cavallaro asked the Select Board to stop treating a North Hanover substation as an active capital project and to back roughly $5 million in expansion and interior work at Fire Department headquarters instead, a pivot the town manager formally recommended and no board member opposed, aiming at a debt vote in May.

HINGHAM — September 14, 2026 — Thirteen rooftop units, five heating and ventilation units and every exhaust fan at Hingham High School are at the end of their life and moving toward complete failure, the district’s facilities director told the School Committee.

PLYMPTON — September 14, 2026 — The Dennett Elementary School has a failing flat roof, a chiller at the end of its life and a well that nearly ran dry this spring.

PLYMOUTH — September 14, 2026 — Out-of-district special education placements the district did not see coming, and federal grants that came in below last year’s, opened a hole in Plymouth’s school budget over the summer.

EAST BRIDGEWATER — September 14, 2026 — The Select Board will not touch the citizens’ petition that would regulate automatic license plate readers in East Bridgewater.

SCITUATE - September 14, 2026 - In a split 3-2 vote following rounds of deliberation, the Scituate School Committee chose “Satuit” as the name for the town’s new consolidated elementary school, selecting an indigenous term connected to the town’s historic brook and harbor over a bid to honor local suffragist and author Inez Haynes Irwin.