Middleborough · Opinion · Town Meeting

Article 19 asks Town Meeting to let the Select Board sell water to Carver and Bridgewater for more than two years, on terms no voter has seen. Draft the full agreement first, then bring it to Town Meeting in the spring.

By John Barrella

On Monday night, Middleborough Town Meeting will be asked to approve Article 19. I’m voting no. Not as a member of any committee, but as a citizen who owns a share of the water system this article would commit for years.

Let me be clear about what a no vote is not. It is not a vote to shut off anyone’s water. No one in Carver or Bridgewater should wake up Tuesday worried about their tap. There is a better way to keep that water flowing, and I’ll lay it out below.

Article 19 asks voters to authorize the Select Board to enter water supply agreements with Carver and Bridgewater for longer than two years, “subject to such terms and conditions that the Select Board deems in the best interests of the Town of Middleborough.” No draft agreement is attached. There is no rate, no volume cap, no end date, and no billing schedule. We are being asked to approve a deal before anyone has been shown it.

That is backwards. Middleborough deserves to see any intermunicipal agreement in full before it votes, and the law gives Town Meeting the standing to insist on it.

Most of these agreements in Massachusetts are governed by Chapter 40, Section 4A of the General Laws. The state Department of Revenue’s Division of Local Services notes in its best-practice guidance that under that statute, a select board’s approval alone is enough to execute one. Middleborough is the exception. In 2012 the Legislature passed a special act for this town, Chapter 14 of the Acts of 2012. It says that, notwithstanding Section 4A, any agreement of more than two years to sell our water or wastewater service “shall be subject to authorization by vote of a town meeting.” The Legislature gave that power to the voters on purpose. It doesn’t mean much if we use it to sign a blank check.

Section 4A also sets the standard for what a finished agreement should contain. It requires every agreement to provide “sufficient financial safeguards for all participants”: accurate records of services performed, costs incurred and reimbursements, plus regular audits and periodic financial statements. It also expects the votes authorizing an agreement to set a maximum financial liability. Article 19 sets no maximum on anything.

Look at what the last agreements gave us. The North Carver Water District switched onto Middleborough water on June 23, 2022, after its treatment plant failed on manganese. The written agreement is dated Oct. 30, 2023, which is 16 months later. It has no expiration date, no rate schedule, no volume cap, and no billing deadline, and it says Middleborough “may but shall not be obligated” to supply the water. The meter pit that measures the flow didn’t come online until January 2025, 31 months after the switch. Last month Interim Town Manager Robert Nunes told the Select Board the town could not locate a signed copy. One of the two versions in circulation is missing a Middleborough signature. The other has every Middleborough line blank. Yet the North Carver signatures appear to be the same on both: Michael Palimeri and Eric Mueller signed for the district on the version dated Oct. 30 and again on the version dated Dec. 1. We have been selling water for more than four years, and the town can’t produce a fully signed agreement.

The billing has the same gaps. As The G.O.A.T. reported yesterday, the arithmetic on each of the 21 invoices Middleborough sent Carver and Bridgewater, about $2.93 million in all, checks out. But 556 days of water have no invoice behind them, including the 526 days before Carver’s first bill. Some Carver invoices went out as late as 118 days after the period closed. Bridgewater’s arrangement started as a roughly three-month emergency measure and was extended, and the public record doesn’t make clear what governs it now.

Whether these agreements were left vague by design or by neglect, the effect is the same. Vagueness never protects the town selling the water. Every blank became a decision someone got to make later, out of sight of the people who own the system.

That raises the question of who has been writing these deals. KP Law is Middleborough’s town counsel. The firm also appears as Carver’s counsel: its Gregg Corbo came before Carver’s Select Board in June 2023 about the firm’s rates. On Feb. 6, 2023, the North Carver Water District’s agenda carried an item seeking approval of KP Law’s “determination and consent” under Rule 1.7 of the Massachusetts Rules of Professional Conduct, the conflict-of-interest rule, for its representation of Carver, the district, and Middleborough in drafting the meter-pit intermunicipal agreement. That is one firm with three clients on one deal. And not even KP Law’s Gregg Corbo, the town’s counsel, had a Middleborough signed copy of the December 2023 agreement. Corbo won’t be at Town Meeting on Monday. Another KP Law attorney will take his place.

The rules allow that with informed consent. Allowed is not the same as wise. When the same firm sits on every side of the table, nobody at that table is paid to say no for Middleborough. I don’t believe KP Law should negotiate any more agreements for this town, least of all one in which it also represents the town on the other side. If a water deal comes back, Middleborough should be represented by independent counsel who answers only to us.

Then there is Carver. It has been running on Middleborough water for more than four years. The North Carver Water District no longer exists: the Legislature dissolved it this summer in Chapter 152 of the Acts of 2026 and handed its assets, debts and records to the Town of Carver. A 2025 study described Carver as having no alternative source if Middleborough closes the valve. That isn’t an argument for an open-ended contract. It’s the reason Carver has to fix its own system. Four years is too long for an emergency. Carver’s own Special Town Meeting on Dec. 1 is a good place to start.

Carver has also had its chance to open its own books. I filed a public records request with the Town of Carver. Its answer was a polite letter asking me to narrow my request.

That tells me all we need to know.

Bridgewater asks the same questions in a different way. MassDEP declared a water supply emergency there on Dec. 5, 2025, and Middleborough water began flowing on Jan. 11. Bridgewater’s Town Council has hired outside counsel to investigate Town Manager Justin Casanova-Davis. That followed a state Inspector General report finding he abused his leave at his previous job in Norfolk, and NBC10 Boston reported last month that records show dozens of workdays in Bridgewater with no key-card entry and no paid time off recorded. The investigation is ongoing, and he has not commented publicly. The verdict belongs to Bridgewater. But can any of us honestly say that town’s leadership is on steady footing right now? I’d want that investigation finished before Middleborough signs on for years.

And look at our own house. Auditors are reaching back to 2021. Appearing as determined as ever to resolve the financial issues and to his credit, Nunes has put the numbers on the table: on Nov. 2 he told the Select Board the unexplained gap across fiscal 2023 through 2025 is $1,215,164.22. The town’s finance director resigned Oct. 21. On Wednesday, five days before this vote, the director of public works, whose department runs our water, gave notice. Nothing suggests he is leaving because of Article 19, and he isn’t accused of anything. As a resident and Finance Committee member, I put nine written questions about Article 19 to him, the water superintendent, the town engineer, and town counsel. Nunes, again to his credit, required the department to answer them by Friday. Some of them were answered. In my view, what came back only documented the concerns in this column more clearly. We can all see why this is no time to approve a deal without reading it.

None of this makes Carver or Bridgewater residents the villains. They’re our neighbors, and they didn’t write these agreements. That’s why the order matters. If the Select Boards of Middleborough, Carver and the Town Council of Bridgewater all want a deal, they should hammer it out in advance, in public. That means the rate, the term, a volume cap, billing deadlines, interest on late payments, a way out, a maximum liability, and a signature from every party. Then they should present it to Town Meeting for approval. That is the reverse of how it has been done before.

Here is the middle ground. Within the next 30 days, the governing bodies of all three towns should sit down and sign a short bridge agreement that keeps the water flowing on written terms: a rate, a volume limit, metered billing on a deadline, the same restrictions Middleborough residents live under, and a signature from every party. It should run through Middleborough’s next Town Meeting, expected in April, and until a long-term agreement is signed. As I read the special act, an agreement of two years or less doesn’t need Town Meeting, so the boards can do that on their own, and quickly. Then use the winter to negotiate the long-term deal in public, and bring the finished agreement to that April Town Meeting. I’ll read it line by line and judge it on its merits, and I’d encourage every voter to do the same. That isn’t obstruction. It’s the order of operations the law already assumes.

“Sign first, read later” is how Middleborough got here. Vote no on Article 19.

John Barrella is the founder of The G.O.A.T. News. He serves on the Middleborough Finance Committee and the Town Manager Search Committee. The views expressed here are his own and are not those of the Finance Committee or the Town Manager Search Committee.