Rentham Select Board Votes to Form Seven-Member Housing Production Plan Committee

MIDDLETON — March 19, 2026 — Rentham Select Board creates housing committee, backs conservation pact, and debates secret-ballot bylaw. The board voted 5-0 at its March 17 meeting to form a seven-member ad hoc Housing Production Plan committee — four seats drawn from the Select Board, Planning Board, Zoning Board of Appeals, and Housing Authority, plus three citizens at large — to update a plan that lapsed in 2010, funded by a $55,000 Community Preservation Committee appropriation. State Representative Marcus Vaughn announced Rentham had secured $124,197 in state body-worn camera grant funding, the only community in the immediate area among 32 statewide recipients out of 85 applicants, and warned that the town faces nearly $200,000 in unbudgeted public safety costs around FIFA World Cup game days at Gillette Stadium, with a grant determination still pending. Town Manager Michael J. King reported the FY27 health insurance premium increase is 7.4 percent — a cumulative two-year increase of 1.8 percent compared to the 25 percent the town would have seen under its previous carrier — and that the governor's FY27 Chapter 90 authorization would deliver $635,000 to Rentham if passed. The board gave informal approval to a proposed intermunicipal agreement with Norfolk to share a full-time conservation agent beginning July 1, with Norfolk covering benefits and serving as lead agency, and directed King to work with town counsel on a warrant article that would raise the town's secret-ballot capital-expenditure trigger from $2 million to $5 million and replace the current unanimity-to-waive rule with a majority-vote-to-require standard.