PROVINCETOWN — The warrant for the special town meeting on Nov. 9 is short and almost entirely focused on the town’s $75-million sewer expansion project. The planning board added one housing-related article, however, that would add dormitory or employee housing to the town’s inclusionary bylaw.
The planning board also expressed strong interest in another bylaw that would ban new short-term rental permits in the neighborhoods north of Route 6 but ultimately opted to hold that measure back for further discussion leading up to next year’s spring town meeting.
The inclusionary bylaw, which the town adopted in 2017 and has updated twice, uses a carrot-and-stick method to induce private builders to include some affordable units in their projects by charging fees to projects that fail to make at least one-sixth of their new units affordable and by offering perks to projects that do. Those perks allow applicants to ask the planning board for various waivers, such as relief from setback and lot coverage rules, extra height, or density beyond what the bylaws would otherwise allow.
Article eight at the upcoming special town meeting would allow projects that give 20 percent of their floor space to seasonal worker housing to request those same waivers from the planning board.
The town doesn’t have many levers to help build seasonal worker housing, Assistant Town Manager David Gardner told the planning board, but putting employee housing into the inclusionary bylaw would be one.
“There’s no public funds available for this type of development,” said Gardner, but “this would allow them to request the incentives. You can evaluate them like you do for any project.”
Gardner said the “Barracks” dormitory proposal relied on the inclusionary bylaw in various respects, which it was able to do only because it also included 15 deed-restricted year-round rentals. A smaller version of that project that included only seasonal worker housing would not have qualified.
Many of the employee housing proposals that come to the town are much smaller than the Barracks, Gardner said, citing “top-of-shop” housing above a retail outlet or adding bedrooms to existing buildings. The three-full-stories bonus in the inclusionary bylaw (or four stories in the Shank Painter Road district) would be especially helpful for smaller projects.
“I don’t necessarily think this is a bylaw for developers,” said Gardner, because such builders are usually looking to sell off the units they build rather than run them as rental housing. “I think it’s a bylaw for a business owner who wants to subsidize their project by adding an additional story in order to afford it.”
The planning board was broadly supportive of the bylaw change but wanted to know about the definition of seasonal housing. The zoning bylaw defines “employee housing” as having common kitchen and living facilities, occupied seasonally or year-round but definitely for more than one month. Short-term rentals are forbidden. But where people work is not part of the bylaw.
“It’s workforce housing, not work-down-the-street housing,” said Gardner. “We don’t follow them to work on Commercial Street.”
Some planning board members worried that owners could rent to remote workers rather than local employees, but they ultimately decided that wasn’t sufficient reason to oppose the bylaw. It won the planning board’s unanimous support and will require a two-thirds vote at town meeting to pass.
Short-Term Rental District
The planning board was also broadly supportive of a proposed zoning overlay district that would ban new short-term rental activity from the neighborhoods north of Route 6 — a handful of streets around Nelson Avenue and Seashore Park Drive. In initial discussions on Sept. 6, six members of the board signaled their support; one member was opposed.
“In talking to residents and some members of the select board, a lot of them say Nelson Avenue is the final stand for residential neighborhoods,” said planning board member Brandon Quesnell. “The intent is to keep that area residential.”
The bylaw that Quesnell drafted with his husband, board of health Chair Steve Katsurinis, would have permitted existing short-term rentals north of Route 6 to continue — thereby “grandfathering” their rights — but then terminated those short-term rental rights when the properties were sold.
Gardner said that, legally, short-term rental rights probably could not be terminated at a sale because, under zoning law, “land use goes with the land, not a current owner.”
“I think they’ll have the ability to renew,” Gardner said, “but we can certainly have town counsel take a look at it.”
Planning board member Greg Baldwin and Gardner both said that limiting short-term rentals could limit the flow of tourists into Provincetown. “You’d have a town full of unemployed bartenders and no visitors” if short-term rental restrictions were too extreme, Gardner said.
Quesnell and planning board Chair Dana Masterpolo disagreed.
“You have people at the microphone today who have been in town 10 years that are getting thrown out of their units for short-term rental,” said Quesnell. “You’re going to have a ton of tourists, and no restaurants or T-shirt shops or ice cream shops, because there’s nowhere to live. You have to have a balance, and right now it’s out of balance — you can ask anybody.”
“In my association on Atlantic Avenue there are seven units,” said Masterpolo. “Two of them are getting kicked out at the end of October for short-term rental. I had a conversation with one gentleman today — he’s literally crying, having anxiety attacks about not having a place to stay. We have to be careful, but we do have to find a balance.”
Board members were more receptive to Baldwin’s argument that the town did not have sufficient data on hand to single out these neighborhoods — and that putting the bylaw on the fall town meeting warrant carried the appearance of being aimed at a specific project, the 12-unit project at 22 Nelson Ave. that is currently under site plan review.
“I think we should wait until we have all our ducks lined up,” said Marianne Clements, who had already said she supported the bylaw. “We should not rush this, we should do it right, and we should have all the information to justify it,” Clements said.
“I changed my vote from a yes to a no, essentially to give us a chance to do that due diligence,” said member Donna Walker.
In a straw poll, Masterpolo also voted to wait and said she might call a special meeting of the planning board just to examine the data and make a studied decision.
That made three votes to proceed and four to wait, so the measure will not be on the November warrant but instead will be discussed over the winter and perhaps appear on a town meeting warrant come springtime.
