Hanson spent more than $20,000 on water tower controversy, records show

HANSON, Mass. — Boston 25 News has learned the town of Hanson spent over $20,000 managing a political controversy last fall.

A homeowner projected a huge “Trump 2024″ sign on a public water tower, prior to the presidential election.

When the homeowner refused to turn the sign off, the town brought in a massive spotlight in an attempt to hide it.

Records reveal the town spent nearly $11,000 in overtime, meals, and fuel.

“The largest expense that was incurred was overtime for our highway department crews in the amount of $10,000,” a spokesperson for the Town of Hanson said. “It was the highway department’s responsibility to place floodlights on the water tower each evening and to turn them off each morning. Because this event went on for a protracted period of time and some of the functions were performed outside of the highway department’s scheduled hours, we were required to pay overtime.”

Town leaders also paid a public relations firm nearly $10,000 to help them deal with media inquiries from all over the country.

According to an invoice obtained by Boston 25 News, the town hired the firm for $9,600 on October 15 for a year-long contract. Of that $9,600, the public relations firm says $2,000 worth of services, including fielding national and international media inquiries and drafting statements, as well as attending meetings/zooms, were directed towards the water tower incident. Hanson can still use about 80% of the remaining contract worth of services until October 2025 and the public relations firm confirmed the town has used their services since then.

In total, the Town of Hanson says it incurred about $10,000 in overtime costs, $2,000 in communications support, and just over $200 in legal fees.

“Addressing this unfortunate circumstance came with clearly anticipated costs, but it is important to note that all but $203 of the expenses related to this matter were paid for with our federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds,” a spokesperson for the town said. “The Town of Hanson never sought to be at the center of this situation...while it is regrettable that any public or federal funds had to be spent to resolve a problem we did not create, we stand by our requirement to enforce municipal bylaws.”

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