A review of the board’s 2026 minutes finds a legal budget that ran far past what members were told, a water system taken over without a signed copy of a key agreement, an audit still outstanding two years on, and, on its newest agenda, another health insurance deficit.

CARVER — When Carver’s Select Board approved a $10-an-hour raise for its town lawyers on Jan. 20, Town Administrator Glenn Cannon told members “the plan is trying to absorb the fee increase,” according to the minutes. The vote was 4-1. John Cotter, the lone no, had asked to see the firm’s rates compared with other firms’.

By June 22, legal spending had reached $178,000 against a $140,000 budget, with $50,000 more forecast, Finance Director Karen Preval told the Finance Committee. The committee voted 3-1 to cover the gap with $80,000 from its reserve fund. Its minutes name “ongoing lawsuits against the Gateway Health Group and personnel issues” as the drivers, and record that members “cautioned that repeatedly using reserve funds to cover these shortfalls was not the intended purpose.”

That pattern, an assurance followed by a larger bill, runs through the board’s year. The G.O.A.T. News reviewed the Select Board’s posted minutes from January through Sept. 22, the April 7 Town Meeting minutes, Finance Committee minutes and the board’s agendas. This account is drawn from those public records and published reports; explanations are quoted as the minutes record them.

The board has delivered on some goals. It got the Legislature to dissolve the North Carver Water District, moved employees out of the failing Gateway insurance pool before an April 1 deadline, and reported spending all of its $3.35 million in federal pandemic aid. Members have also faced problems they did not create, from a regional health pool Chair Mark Townsend said its consultant “completely failed” to a state housing mandate many local officials oppose. And the dissent has come from within: Cotter cast the lone or one of two no votes at least 15 times in the minutes reviewed, most of them on spending.

The health plan, round two

Town Meeting approved $4 million in April to cover Carver’s losses in the Gateway Health Group, the self-funded pool it shared with Lakeville and the Old Rochester Regional School District, as The G.O.A.T. reported Oct. 1. The employees’ 25 percent share, which Cotter put at about $1 million, was still unsettled in August. Cannon told the board on Aug. 4 that talks with the unions were continuing.

The board’s Oct. 6 agenda added a new item: “Discussion on FY 2027 health insurance deficit,” a shortfall in the budget year that began July 1. Minutes of that meeting have not been posted. Gateway’s own wind-down agendas, posted on Carver’s website, list Cannon as the group’s chairperson; the records reviewed do not show when he took that role.

In July, as members set goals for the new year, Vice Chair Dan Ryan raised “the huge expense of the Health Care issue last year” and asked how the board could “proactively be prepared,” the minutes show. On Aug. 4 the board ranked “Stay on Top of Important Town items” as its No. 1 goal.

Money, and who watches it

On March 3, all five Finance Committee members voted against recommending the fiscal 2027 operating budget, and the Select Board split 2-2, the minutes show. The board recommended it 3-2 on March 17, with Cotter citing “excessive spending.” By Town Meeting the committee’s recommendation was 4-1 in favor, and voters passed the $54.5 million budget 119-23, according to the Town Meeting minutes.

On March 10 the board voted 4-1 to “deviate from our financial policies” to tap the stabilization fund for health costs, a plan later switched to a solar fund surplus. Asked whether the town had strayed from those policies elsewhere, Preval said, “yes we have,” the minutes record. At a June 2 joint meeting, then-Finance Committee member Elizabeth Sulger said the committee had felt “dictated to and being put in a corner that they could not say no.”

At the same June 2 meeting, Preval said the town was “still waiting for the 2024 audit,” for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2024. The minutes posted since do not report its arrival. The town’s request for proposals for new financial software drew none, the software was cut from the fiscal 2027 capital budget after staff priced its first phase at $216,000, and on Aug. 4 Cannon said the switch was on hold amid a “transition of the Finance Director.” The board appointed a temporary town accountant effective Sept. 9. On Sept. 22, Ryan announced he had found “a $200,000 free cash mistake in last years budget,” in the town’s favor.

A water system and a missing signature

Gov. Maura Healey signed Chapter 152 of the Acts of 2026 on July 31, dissolving the North Carver Water District and handing its powers to the Select Board. Town Meeting had already voted, 92-49, a $400,000 subsidy from free cash for the system because its revenues “are not sufficient to operate” it.

On Aug. 4, Cannon told the board he had found only a draft of a 2018 DIF agreement, a district improvement financing deal, and could not obtain a signed copy. He also said the Department of Revenue had canceled a review meeting because the district had not included the Select Board. By Sept. 22, the town had hired a firm to determine “what the cost would be to get the water system working.”

Zoning, and the ballot

Carver still has no zoning that complies with the state’s MBTA Communities law. Voters rejected the town’s plan 394-26 on Oct. 7, 2025, after receiving a map but no zoning language, The Patriot Ledger reported; Cannon told the paper, “We didn’t bring a true article for town meeting.” The state denied an extension, the Jan. 6 minutes note. The new plan, a Chapter 40R district on Main Street, goes to a Dec. 1 Special Town Meeting. At a June 16 hearing, Townsend said there would be no water studies before that vote, “which will be a big issue.” The same night, the board’s executive-session notice listed a pending case, Attorney General v. Town of Carver, in Suffolk Superior Court. The minutes do not describe it. In January, the attorney general sued nine other towns over the law and left Carver out, giving it more time.

The board has twice this year narrowed early voting. On March 3 it opted out of vote-by-mail for the April 25 town election and limited early voting to one day; turnout was 5.3 percent, South Shore News reported. On Sept. 22, at the clerk’s request, it voted 5-0 to cut first-week early-voting hours for the Nov. 3 election, citing a shortage of poll workers and 193 early voters in the primary. Hewins, who is on that ballot as the Democratic candidate for state representative, voiced “concerns about limited voting hours” and voted yes. She and Townsend, then a primary candidate, had recused themselves on Aug. 4 from approving the primary warrant.

Barrella serves on the elected Middleborough Finance Committee and the Town Manager Search Committee. Middleborough sells water to North Carver under an agreement mentioned in this story. Select Board Chair Mark Townsend has appeared on The G.O.A.T. Podcast, and member Sarah Hewins has been invited.