light board member jake vaillancourt discusses this op/ed and details the votes on the grant project in this youtube video: https://youtu.be/NBk9k4nYyXk

Op/Ed by Jake Vaillancourt

Who decided to move Hull’s light plant? Not anyone you elected.

The town’s own study said the light plant could stay. On June 25, 2024, the town’s consultant delivered the final Phase 1 plan for the state-funded facilities project: two adapted facilities, each on its own site, with $150,000 budgeted for the next phase to design the light plant at 15 Edgewater Road. A month earlier, the same consultant had drawn three ways to fit the whole light plant program on that site. On June 12, 2024, the town’s own department heads reviewed the idea of a shared site and wrote that it “would complicate operations and financial responsibilities.”

Seven months later, the project had one building. The pivot happened between that June report and January 21, 2025, in staff meetings. The contract the town manager signed on January 13, 2025, bought exactly “(2) meetings with town staff to select sites.” The June 12, 2024 site-selection meeting included 18 town employees on the invitation list and no elected officials. By the January kickoff, which the town manager attended, the project carried a new, singular name, “Hull Resilient Facility Design.” On April 16, 2025, the select board was shown “Option 1, Combined DPW/HMLP Facility.” There was no Option 2. The light board was never shown any. The town’s climate director said it on June 10, 2026: “this is no decision from any of your municipal agents. This is independent consultants.”

That decision runs against the consultant’s own data. The town’s site-screening tool asked one resilience question: does a site have less flood exposure than the existing sites? Its own numbers put the projected flood depth at 9 Nantasket Avenue at 6.4 feet in 2050 and 7.9 feet in 2070, against 3.6 and 4.7 feet at Edgewater. Its June 2024 analysis listed 9 Nantasket as “entirely in flood zone” and listed Edgewater’s advantage as “expansion without moving.” The chosen site scored no better than the site it replaced. The town manager told the select board on October 14 that Edgewater “was more vulnerable.” Her own consultant’s spreadsheet says the opposite.

Who had the authority to decide? That was settled three ways. Chapter 164 gives the plant’s elected board the authority to construct, maintain, and operate the plant, and requires the plant’s money be spent on the plant; the plant’s counsel told both boards the land and building are held “for the use of the light plant... No exception.” Hull’s charter puts the town manager over the plant’s daily operations, and the select board over the town manager; town counsel wrote on August 12 that the select board had the authority to direct the plant’s removal from the grant. And the town manager herself told the light board in August 2025 that the select board’s only power over the plant “would be the hiring ability of the light plant manager,” which, under the charter, means her.

Both boards used their authority. The light board voted three times, November 2025 through July 2026, to stay at Edgewater. The select board voted 3 to 2 on July 22 to separate the plant from the grant and fund a study of staying, and 3 to 2 on September 16 that the plant stay. What followed, in her words: June 10, “I took the light board’s vote as advisory... and we proceeded accordingly.” September 24, she was asked whether she had requested the change: “no.” October 14, “I’m not sure what the vote is you’re referring to in July,” and “means and methods.” The town first asked the state about removing the plant on October 14, 84 days after the vote, while the grant’s scope was being revised for something else: fill.

The money follows the pattern. The cost has been $31.6 million, “sixty... is it sixty-five,” $45 million, and on October 14, “40 to 45 for just the DPW barn” without the plant. If the building costs the same either way, the plant’s $15 million buys the town a third of its building. The one number the light board asked for, the cost of staying, has never been priced.

None of this is new. Last winter the town manager hosted the lieutenant governor, our senator and our representative on a tour of town sites, and showed them the plant’s backup generators, a light board initiative, as the administration’s work. Neither elected board was invited.

Here is the problem. An appointed employee is making policy decisions she has no authority to make, and when the elected boards that do have the authority decide otherwise, she treats their votes as advice she can ignore without consequence. Town meeting saw this and voted, 236 to 82, for Article 40, which returns the plant to the governance Chapter 164 gives every other light plant in Massachusetts: a manager hired by, and answerable to, the board the ratepayers elect. The Legislature should pass it. But Article 40 fixes the structure. It doesn’t fix an employee who won’t carry out the decisions of the people she works for. That is what the select board is for.

So the path forward is short. On October 22, the light board adopts the scope of its own study, paid for by the plant’s ratepayers, and asks that it be posted within 12 business days. On October 28, the select board reaffirms its July 22 directive in writing, with a date, and the DPW project goes forward on its own. And if the manager will not carry out the select board’s decisions, the select board uses the one power she agrees it has: it decides who the manager is. An employee who won’t do what the board that hired her decides should be replaced by one who will. That isn’t personal. It’s the charter.

Don’t take my word for it. The four meetings, cut to the statements above with the dates on screen and the original audio, are at: https://youtu.be/NBk9k4nYyXk

Watch it, and come to both meetings.

Jake Vaillancourt is an elected member and clerk of the Hull Municipal Light Board. He writes for himself.