Signs have appeared saying “Can Canty”, referring to Select Board member Kevin Canty, who is running for reelection. Meanwhile candidate Scott Vecchi has targeted rival Betty Cavacco, using an AI-generated image depicting her in a prison suit behind bars, with the label “Betty the Crook.”
Four people are competing for two seats in the May 16 town election.
Dick Quintal and Canty are seeking re-election. They face two challengers: Vecchi and Cavacco. The winners will serve three-year terms.
Coming tomorrow: School Board candidate profiles.
Here’s where each Select Board candidate stands on key issues.
Jump to a candidate.
Kevin Canty
Canty, a public defender, was first elected in 2023 and is seeking a second term. He was elected chair of the Select Board last year but after only four months faced a coup and was overthrown by David Golden, who became chair with the support of Quintal and Bill Keohan.
He grew up in West Plymouth and lives in North Plymouth.
Priorities
Canty said he wants to focus on making Plymouth a more affordable place to live.
“We don’t have enough affordable housing options,” he said.
Canty said he wants to focus on bringing more good jobs to town. He said he wants to work with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to bring in more medical and biotech jobs.
He said he favors more long-term planning over short-term solutions to the town’s problems. He cites the deteriorating Memorial Hall as an example of what happens when officials focus on the short term.
“In 2011 we had a water intrusion study that showed that water was coming into the building, and we did nothing with it for 15 years,” Canty said.
What would you like to see done with Memorial Hall?
Canty points to his proposal, along with Bill Keohan, to make the Plymouth Philharmonic the artist in residence at Memorial Hall, which he said will raise the town’s chances of getting grants from the state and other sources to restore the hall or build a new one.
“I’d like to be able to maintain and restore the building if possible,” he said.
What is your plan to improve the Department of Public Works’ responses to snowstorms?
“I think we need more medium and heavy equipment, although that’s expensive and takes time to order,” he said.
Canty said the town needs to review its relationship with independent contractors who plowed the streets. After several mild winters before this one, many contractors decided not to insure their vehicles with the town or to find jobs somewhere else.
How would you fix the town’s budget crisis?
“We have fiscal challenges right now, but we’re not currently at a fiscal crisis,” Canty said.
He said the legislation he proposed and that was approved by Town Meeting is a step towards helping the town address fiscal issues, because it will allow Town Meeting to make more informed decisions. This is because the state legislature does not get around to indicating how much aid it will give to cities and towns until May.
How much should police cooperate with U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement?
“The Plymouth Police Department should only cooperate with immigration enforcement operations in order to ensure public safety and officer safety,” Canty said.
Canty was one of three Select Board members to support the new bylaw passed by Town Meeting prohibiting police from cooperating with ICE on anything but criminal investigations.
“What are your thoughts on the negative tone the campaign has taken?”
“I am not focused on the actions of the other people in this race or their supporters,” Canty said.
Betty Cavacco
Cavacco is running on a slate with Quintal, though voters are free to vote for one or the other.
She is running for a third term on the Select Board. She served from 2017 to 2023 and was chair for her last year on the board.
She is retired. She grew up in Plymouth and lives in Manomet.
Priorities
“Serious tax cuts for our residents,” Cavacco said.
“I hope to accomplish a much more cohesive board because they’re just totally out of control and I just hope to bring back some kind of decency in the way everybody treats each other,” she added. “We just went through almost 12 months of nothing getting accomplished. Nobody’s working together. You got five people basically going in different directions. Meetings are four, five, six hours. I’ll guarantee you that’s not going to happen if I’m there.”
What would you like to see done with Memorial Hall?
Cavacco said she would like to wait for the results of the historic preservation study commissioned by the town. The town has just put out a request for proposals for the study.
“I’d like input from the public,” she said. “Maybe we have a couple of meetings with just Memorial Hall on the docket.”
What is your plan to improve the Department of Public Works’ responses to snowstorms?
“We really didn’t have as many contractors as we should have,” Cavacco said. “Insurance premiums are really high for them. We have to do something because the roads have to be safe.”
How would you fix the town’s budget crisis?
Cavacco said she would like to use the $11 million in the Nuclear Mitigation Stabilization Fund to reduce taxes. The fund has been set up to buy 1600 acres from Holtec International should it ever sell the land around the former nuclear Pilgrim nuclear power station.
“They have put a ton of money into the switch yard, so that doesn’t tell me they’re going to close up and go away,” she said. “We’ve been a very good host community, and we should not have to buy anything. That land should be gifted to us.”
In exchange for the land, Cavacco said, the town could let Holtec build small modular nuclear reactors. Massachusetts law prohibits new nuclear power plants unless a statewide referendum approves them, but Governor Maura Healey is pushing to change that law.
How much should police cooperate with U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement?
Cavacco, a Town Meeting member, voted against the town bylaw to regulates police cooperation with ICE.
“I am appalled at article 37 and the complete disregard for our Police Department,” Cavacco said. I think it’s ridiculous. What happened to the days where you respect the professionals that are in office?”
What are your thoughts on the negative tone the campaign has taken?
“I get blamed for a lot,” Cavacco said. “I have absolutely nothing to do with signage or any of the stuff that I can see happening.”
But Cavacco blames Canty for the “Can Canty” signs.
“I can’t remember any other time that a chair has been taken out after 3 1/2 months,” she said.
Dick Quintal
Quintal, who is running on a slate with Betty Cavacco, has served for a total of 21 non-consecutive years on the Select Board. He served as chair from 2023 to 2025, when Canty challenged and defeated him.
He owns Quintal Brothers Wholesale Fruit and Produce and Squinny’s Pizza.
Quintal grew up in North Plymouth, where he still lives.
Priorities
“Trying to get this budget in order and somehow stabilize this tax rate,” Quintal said.
He said he would also like to address mental health issues for first responders. He proposed hiring a staff person or retaining a counselor on call to address their mental health needs.
He said he would also like to see more attention paid to mental health in the schools.
“That’s definitely a concern of mine,” Quintal said.
He said he’s disappointed with the way the Select Board has been run over the past year.
“I haven’t seen anything yet done in 11 months,” he said.
What would you like to see done with Memorial Hall?
“The verdict’s out with me on that,” Quintal said.
Along with the rest of the Select Board, he voted to make the Plymouth Philharmonic the artist in residence at Memorial Hall.
What is your plan to improve the Department of Public Works’ responses to snowstorms?
Quintal warned against buying too many snowplows and front-end loaders that might not be used every year simply because Plymouth had such catastrophic storms this year.
“First off, we don’t have enough people to drive them all,” he said. “It would be a crazy expense just to be sitting there, because that equipment is really overkill for regular storms. You’re never going to buy enough equipment to handle that kind of storm.”
How would you fix the town’s budget crisis?
Quintal has proposed saving any money that comes from the state to prevent tax increases.
“I don’t think an override is the answer.” Quintal said.
Under Massachusetts’s Propostion 2 ½ law, if a town wants to raise its total tax levy by more than 2 1/2 percent, it must get the approval of voters.
Quintal sees small modular nuclear reactors at the site of the decommissioned Plymouth nuclear power plant site as a possible source of more revenue for the town by taxing Holtec.
How much should police cooperate with U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement?
Quinto said he opposed the new town bylaw. He was one of two Select Board members to oppose it.
“It creates division,” he said.
What are your thoughts on the negative tone the campaign has taken?
“I’m trying to stay out of it,” Quintal said.
Scott Vecchi
Vecchi is a retired Plymouth police officer. Some readers might be familiar with him because of a 2024 story by the Independent’s Andrea Estes that focused on complaints lodged against him during his career.
Vecchi – who is also an attorney and an emergency medical technician – served as a U.S. Marine in Iraq.
He serves on the Advisory and Finance Committee. If he’s elected, this would be Vecchi’s first time on the board. He ran unsuccessfully last year.
Vecchi grew up downtown.
Priorities
“The biggest challenge that Plymouth has right now are our finances,” Vecchi said.
He opposes a Proposition 2 1/2 override.
He proposed an audit of Plymouth’s finances by the State Auditor, which would have to be requested by the Select Board and Town Meeting.
He argued that with closer scrutiny, the Select Board could find small savings all over the budget that could add up to a significant amount.
“If we keep doing what we’re doing, we’re going to be plowing right over this fiscal cliff,” Vecchi said.
What would you like to see done with Memorial Hall?
Vecchi opposes spending large sums of money on Memorial Hall until the town can get its fiscal situation in order.
“We might have to put band aids on things for a little bit until we can figure out a way forward,” he said.
Vecchi said he favors a new Memorial Hall.
“I think a brand-new Memorial Hall would bring a lot of draw to downtown,” he said. “I just don’t think that’s feasible right now.”
What is your plan to improve the Department of Public Works’ responses to snowstorms?
Vecchi proposed that after each snow storm the town evaluate what it did right and what it did wrong to figure out how it can do better in the future.
“We don’t do that,” he said.
How would you fix the town’s budget crisis?
In addition to asking for a state audit and opposing a Proposition 2 1/2 override, as well as scrutinizing the budget in greater detail, Vecchi proposed the town take over the town’s emergency medical services from Brewster Ambulance Service in order to make it a source of revenue.
“Run it as an enterprise fund, like we do the airport,” he said. “There’s a ton of money involved in this, so why are we letting that money go away to Brewster?”
He also proposed putting turbines in some of the town’s bigger water mains to generate hydropower, which the town could sell to Eversource, as well as using landfill gas to produce electricity.
“Right now, all we’re doing is venting it out into the atmosphere and producing greenhouse gases,” he said. “We got two landfills that are just sitting there doing nothing. What if we could make a little bit of electricity on each one?”
How much should police cooperate with U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement?
“Plymouth police officers are not empowered to enforce immigration law,” Vecchi said.
Still, Vecchi was a vocal opponent of the bylaw that regulates cooperation between ICE and the Police Department. He said he fears that the town could lose federal funding over the bylaw because the federal government could characterize Plymouth as a sanctuary town.
What are your thoughts on the negative tone the campaign has taken?
“Unfortunately, politics are negative,” he said.
He said he went negative on Cavacco because he wanted to correct her on what he said was her involvement in preventing him from being promoted to captain when he was a police officer.
Fred Thys can be reached at fred@plymouthindependent.org