Hamilton Select Board Sets 2024 Goals on Water, Town Hall, Gordon Conwell

HAMILTON -- July 29, 2024, Hamilton Select Board works through 2024 town manager goals at lengthy July session. The board and Town Manager Joe Doyle spent the July 29 meeting reviewing fiscal priorities including water supply regionalization, Town Hall renovation financing, and negotiations over the Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary campus. Doyle confirmed the town's secondary water treatment plant is complete and that Hamilton is active in the North Shore Water Resiliency Task Force alongside Ipswich, Wenham, Danvers, and the Salem Beverly Water Board, though any major infrastructure solution remains a decade or more away. On Town Hall, four financing scenarios combining ARPA funds, free cash, and borrowing are before the Finance and Capital Committees, with a special town meeting expected in early August; Doyle said no scenario would require a tax increase. Board members Caroline Federici and Armano discussed a three-part framework for the Gordon Conwell lower campus, roughly 200 affordable units, perpetual deed restriction on the middle campus, and an overlay district on the upper campus, with Armano asking to be included in future informal meetings after Gordon Conwell president Scott Sunquist contacted her directly.