Meet Select Board candidate Jared Chadwick

“A thorough thought-out process takes time, there's stuff I still want to complete and I believe this town needs it,” said Jared Chadwick who is running for reelection to the Select Board this spring.

Chadwick recently succeeded in bringing an EMT class to Wareham High School, a goal he set during his first campaign for the board in 2022. But many of his initiatives are still ongoing, and he’d like to see them through.

As a firefighter and paramedic for the town of Dennis, Chadwick wants an additional ambulance in Wareham and higher pay for Emergency Medical Service workers.

In Dennis, he is part of a crew that staffs four ambulances and conduct roughly 4,800 service calls a year. Wareham’s two ambulances run closer to 6,000 service calls, he said.

“I’ve been there on the 24 hour shifts with the men and women that are working, they are busting their butts,” Chadwick said. “Pay needs to be increased, in my opinion, for Wareham’s staff so we don’t lose good people to private ambulance companies.”

He has also been working on bringing a bike park to town. He envisions a track certified by the Union Cycliste Internationale, which would be the only one of its kind in the region.

“If they put that in, everyone from Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine would be traveling down,” he said

In terms of new initiatives, he has quite a few. First on the list is a new police station. He wants to form a building committee and start looking for funding. On a smaller scale, he’d also like to bring a firefighting program to the high school and a gym class where students would earn credit for cleaning up the yards of veterans and senior citizens.

When it comes to schools Chadwick said “with the declining number of students, the budget is a concern.”

“But messing around with the budget is not something I'm willing to do, I’m not going to cut corners,” he said.

As for addressing vacant storefronts along Main Street, Chadwick said he’d like Main Street to “look like the Plymouth waterfront.” But not at the expense of existing businesses which he said must come first.

Massachusetts legislators have pushed for large-scale solar development across the state. In Wareham that often means clearing trees and constructing solar arrays on large swathes of land. 

Chadwick opposes large-scale solar development. 

“If we’re going to have solar somewhere, let's put it in places like huge parking lots and have the solar company pay for it. You wanna put it somewhere? Talk to Wareham Crossing,” he said.

He’s also concerned about the batteries used to store solar energy and the associated risk of fire. Chadwick said the state’s push for more solar is “overstepping.”

His resistance to pressure from the state extends to accessory dwelling units, commonly known as ADUs or in-law apartments, which are small additional residences built on properties zoned single-family.

Chadwick said he supports their construction as long as they remain close to the “original thought process: to be able to build an inexpensive home for your mother-in-law or other family members.”

Chadwick, 40, grew up on Nantucket and came to Wareham in 2008 with his wife and two sons ages 13 and 16.