Just got home from Hanson’s Town Meeting.  All articles were taken care of in one night.  I’ll post more details tomorrow, but I wanted to get a few things in tonight for those who weren’t able to attend the meeting:

Folks held signs outside the Hanson Middle School in support of the Community Preservation Act –- but the bylaw to establish a CPA committee passed with no real discussion.

• The most debate tonight was over the budget.  This is the first time the budget was prepared in accordance with the new town administrator rules, which caused some confusion.  Voters were presented with a budget sheet that contained two numbers, one being the town administrator’s recommendation and one being the Finance Committee’s recommendations.  The numbers differed slightly (but not by too much overall) but the main differences were on the department head salaries.  Town Administrator Michael Finglas had given all department heads a 3 percent raise where the FinCom had cut that to 2 1/2 percent.  The Town Meeting body voted to go with the three percent number for department heads, but for the most part stuck with the FinCom budget.  There was some confusion before the meeting as to which would be the “default” budget, but Town Moderator Charles Mann read the FinCom numbers, and the selectmen had to make amendments on the floor whenever they wanted to insert numbers from Finglas’s budget.

• There was also some discussion, centered around a request by the Recreation Department that didn’t appear in the budget, about how the budget was constructed.  In the past, voters got to see a column labeled “requested” that showed the amount each department head originally asked for.  With the TA and FinCom budget both on the sheet, that column had been dropped, but residents seemed angry about it.  I’d imagine that information will be back for future meetings.

• The school departments request to send a letter of interest to the school building authority about future repairs to the Maquan School passed with little discussion.  No money was requested, just permission to send the letter.

• The school budget was rejected at the original assessment figure.  Whitman approved their assessment at their Town Meeting, held on the same night.  Now the School Committee will have to either come up with a new assessment or force a new Town Meeting to revote the money.

That’s the highlights.  Check back tomorrow and later this week for full coverage.