Boxborough Swears In Two Officers, Relocates Annual Tree Lighting to Fire Station

BOXBOROUGH — October 16, 2024 — Boxborough Select Board welcomes two officers, shifts tree lighting, and banks a $19,238 safety grant. The board on October 16 swore in Officer Hannah Lima, a Boxborough native and Northeastern University criminology master's graduate who had served as a town dispatcher, and Officer Kreiser, a former UMass Medical Center systems engineer and UMass MBA who ranked first out of 36 recruits in physical fitness at the Lowell Police Academy — the second consecutive year a Boxborough recruit won that honor. The board also voted unanimously to accept a $19,238.88 Municipal Road Safety Program grant, with $13,200 for enforcement campaigns and $6,000 for a portable speed sign and laser-radar unit aimed at Hill Road cut-through traffic. In a separate unanimous vote, the board relocated the town's decades-old tree-lighting ceremony from its traditional hilltop site near Hill Road — where the tree has grown into overhead power lines — to the smaller tree in front of the current fire station at 502 Massachusetts Avenue, with the event set for December 7 at 5 p.m. The board also honored departing 25-year volunteers Francie Nolte and Hugh Portmiller with state Senate and House citations, accepted their committee resignations, and opened the warrant for a Special Town Meeting on February 10, 2025.