The Plympton Board of Selectmen is asking the Massachusetts legislature to override the state public health law and take away the only staff position the Plympton Board of Health appoints.

The Board of Health said no. Three to zero. In writing.

On Saturday, voters fill one of the three Board of Health seats.

The petition is Article 19 of the May 13 Annual Town Meeting warrant. It asks the General Court to abolish the position of Administrative Assistant to the Plympton Board of Health and recreate it under the appointing authority of the Board of Selectmen, "notwithstanding section 27 of chapter 111 of the General Laws."

M.G.L. c.111 §27 is the public health statute. It reads, in part: "Every such board… may make rules and regulations for its own government and for the government of its officers, agents and assistants… may choose a clerk… and may employ the necessary officers, agents and assistants to execute the health laws and its regulations." §27 is the law the petition asks the legislature to override. For one town. Plympton.

Recommended by the Board of Selectmen 2-0.

The third Selectman seat is vacant. It is also on Saturday's ballot.

The petition gives a reason for asking. The warrant text says it is "to bring the position in line with the appointing authority for staff with similar duties in other departments."

That reason is contradicted by Plympton's own records.

Six of Plympton's other elected boards or commissions appoint their own staff — directly. The Library Trustees appoint the Library Director. The Town Clerk appoints the Assistant Town Clerk. The Board of Assessors supervises the Assistant Assessor. The Treasurer/Collector supervises Treasurer staff. The elected Highway Surveyor supervises Highway admin. The Council on Aging appoints its own Director. The arrangement Article 19 calls anomalous is the norm in Plympton, not the exception. It is exactly the model the FY27 budget book and the town's Wage & Personnel Bylaw describe.

The Board of Health responded in writing.

April 15, 2026. Two days after the Selectmen signed the warrant, the three sitting members of the Plympton Board of Health — Bradford Cronin, Jared Anderson, and Arthur B. Morin, Jr. — sent a letter on Board of Health letterhead to Town Administrator Elizabeth Dennehy, Selectman Dana Smith, Selectman Nathaniel Sides, and Town Counsel Greg Corbo. The letter cited M.G.L. c.111 §27 and M.G.L. c.41 §21 by name.

The Board wrote: "An independent Board of Health structure has long been a feature of Massachusetts public health law, intended to ensure that health decisions are made based on public health expertise and statutory responsibilities. The ability of a Board of Health to select and supervise its own staff is an important component of that independence."

And: "Removing the Board's authority to appoint or employ its staff would significantly undermine this independence and may be inconsistent with the statutory framework governing Boards of Health. For these reasons, the Board of Health opposes the proposed article."

And: "We respectfully request that Town Counsel review the proposed article for consistency with M.G.L. c.111, §27 and M.G.L. c.41 §21 before the Annual Town Meeting warrant is finalized."

The warrant had already been signed two days earlier.

Town Administrator Dennehy resigned effective April 16, 2026 — the day after she received the letter. Robert Fennessy was appointed Interim Town Administrator on April 27.

May 5, 2026. The Plympton Board of Health voted 3-0 in open session to reject Article 19. The town posted the letter and a News Flash announcement.

May 13, 2026. Article 19 went before Town Meeting anyway. Recommended by the Board of Selectmen 2-0.

This is the second time in eight weeks that the Plympton Board of Selectmen has consolidated authority from another town body. On March 23, the Board voted to take direct control of the Town Campus Public Water Supply project. The project had been under the Town Properties Committee. South Shore News reported the takeover on March 30. The stated reason was a June 30 state-funding deadline.

The staff position Article 19 abolishes serves a board with a heavy current docket.

The May 12 Board of Health agenda — three days before the election — lists 18 approved septic plans plus two out for installation; 5 pending septic plans; four failed Title 5 systems including 50 Forest Street, failure report dated December 1, 2017 (eight years and five months on the list); the revocation of Wind River Environmental's septic hauler permit; pending well-permit business; "5 Palmer Road — Septic Plumbing Issue / Well Permits / Public Water Supply"; and the active litigation at "10 Mayflower Road — O'Hearn v. Town of Plympton."

5 Palmer Road is the Plympton Town House itself.

O'Hearn v. Town of Plympton began in 2022 as Plymouth Superior Court Civil Action No. 2283CV00462. The defendants then included the Town and Plympton Board of Health members Bradford Cronin, Arthur B. Morin, and Harry L. Weikel, Jr. The case was removed to U.S. District Court of Massachusetts as 1:22-cv-11161. On March 6, 2023, the federal court granted the individual Board of Health defendants' motion to dismiss; only the Town remained. On March 21, 2024, the court granted summary judgment to the Town on the federal claims, then remanded the surviving state-law claim back to Plymouth Superior Court. The state case is back on the BoH agenda.

April 14, 2026. Two meetings, same building, same room, one hour apart.

The room was the Deborah Sampson Meeting Room, in the Plympton Town House at 5 Palmer Road. At 5:30 p.m., the Board of Health met. The agenda included an executive session under M.G.L. c.30A §21(a)(3), the litigation-strategy exception, to discuss O'Hearn. At 6:30 p.m., the Zoning Board of Appeals opened a public hearing in the same room on a special permit application from Arthur Bloomquist for 36 Colchester Street — Assessor's Map 18-2-4 — to build an addition to the existing house and convert it to a two-family home, pursuant to Zoning Bylaw §300-4.2.

The parcel in the Bloomquist application is on the Board of Health's own failed-systems list, with a failure report dated June 6, 2025.

The ZBA approves the written decision on May 20, 2026. Four days after Saturday's election.

The Board of Health seat on Saturday's ballot is the seat held by Arthur B. Morin, Jr., Clerk of the Board of Health. The two BoH members whose terms continue are Bradford Cronin and Jared Anderson.

There is also a separate enforcement matter pending in court. On May 13, the same night Town Meeting took up Article 19, the Board of Selectmen entered executive session to discuss litigation strategy in Town of Plympton v. SLT Construction. SLT operates an earth-removal site at 0 Spring Street, Ricketts Pond Drive, Assessor's Map 19 Block 2 Lot 4. The Selectmen heard a fresh SLT earth-removal application on May 7 under Town Bylaw Chapter 145.

There is also a water issue at the school.

Per the Plympton-Halifax-Kingston Express reporting on the Plympton School Committee meeting of February 9, 2026, MassDEP PFAS-treatment-equipment requirements at Dennett Elementary School are on the Capital Improvement Planning subcommittee's radar. The committee was holding off on planning a well-room expansion "until DEP makes requirements clear." Article 20 of the May 13 ATM warrant — adjacent to Article 19 — authorizes $35,000 from the Capital Stabilization Fund for a Limited Building Assessment of Dennett Elementary.

Plympton has no town-wide municipal water. Most houses draw from private wells and discharge into private septic systems. The Plymouth-Carver Sole-Source Aquifer, designated by the EPA in 1990 under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, is the only drinking water source for the towns above it. The Board of Health is the office that decides what gets built over the aquifer.

There is also context for what kind of move Article 19 is.

Across seven years of Plympton Annual Town Meeting warrants — 2019 through 2025 — no prior warrant has asked the legislature to override §27 or to move the Board of Health Administrative Assistant from the Board of Health's appointing authority. Article 19 of 2026 is the first.

Across a survey of Massachusetts session laws over the last 20 years, no special act surfaced that does what Plympton is asking — surgically overriding c.111 §27 for a single staff position while leaving the Board of Health otherwise intact. The standard Massachusetts paths for this kind of reorganization are different. M.G.L. c.41 §21 lets a town meeting vote to consolidate appointing authority without overriding §27. M.G.L. c.111 §§26A–26E lets a town replace the Board of Health entirely with a Selectmen-appointed Health Department. Three recent town-administrator special acts in Berlin (2018), Hanson (2006), and Tyngsborough (2022) each explicitly preserved Board of Health appointing authority over its own staff.

Plympton has a working channel for public oversight when it uses it. Articles 5 and 6 of the May 13 warrant — Community Preservation Committee allocations, a Recreation Commission appropriation — moved through Town Meeting on full Board of Selectmen recommendations.

Article 19 also moved through that channel.

The Board of Health was not asked to recommend on the article that abolishes its own staff position. The Board of Health was told.

Plympton should have asked the Board of Health to weigh in on Article 19 before the Selectmen signed the warrant on April 13.

Should have used M.G.L. c.41 §21 — the routine Massachusetts mechanism for consolidating town appointing authority — instead of asking the legislature to override the public health statute for one town.

Should have published the Town Counsel opinion the Board of Health requested in its April 15 letter.

Should have filled the vacant Selectman seat before voting to expand Selectmen's appointing authority.

Should have closed the failed-systems entry at 50 Forest Street before voting to consolidate the Board of Health's staff under another office. Eight years is long enough.

Should have decided the SLT enforcement case before executive-sessioning its litigation strategy three days before a contested Board of Health election.

Plympton did none of those things between April 13 and May 13.

The Board of Selectmen is asking the legislature to take the Board of Health's staff.

The Board of Health voted 3-0 against being taken from.

The Board of Health Clerk's seat is on Saturday's ballot.

The room is the Deborah Sampson Meeting Room, Plympton Town House, 5 Palmer Road. Polls open at 8 a.m. They close at 6 p.m.