An unusual mid-January election did not appear to chill voters’ enthusiasm for the Nauset Regional High School renovation project. The $38.1 million in added funding that the project turned out to require passed easily in all four towns of the district, winning 61 percent of the vote in Brewster, 75 percent in Orleans, 76 percent in Eastham, and 84 percent in Wellfleet.
In percentage terms, the numbers were almost identical to the results of the original renovation vote, which took place in March 2021. That vote authorized a total of $131.8 million for the high school rebuild, with $95.2 million coming from taxpayers in the four towns and $36.6 million coming from a state grant. At that time, 60 percent of Brewster voters supported the project, along with 74 percent in Orleans, 79 percent in Eastham, and 89 percent of Wellfleet’s voters.
Turnout this time was only about two-thirds what it had been that March. But that did not change the percentages or the outcome, and Chris Easley, chair of the Nauset Regional School Committee, was overjoyed with the results.
“We are in crazy times,” said Easley, “and it’s difficult to ask people to raise their own taxes. But decisions like these define communities.
“It’s a defining vote that people here support education, they support children and families, and they support their community,” said Easley.
The preliminary vote totals from the town clerks were: 614 in favor and 116 against in Wellfleet; 1,085 in favor and 346 against in Eastham; 1,104 in favor and 376 against in Orleans; and 1,467 in favor and 946 against in Brewster. For the regional funding measure, all the votes are added together, and a simple majority wins. The vote total across all four towns for the regional measure was 4,270 to 1,784.
At the same election, but on orange ballots instead of yellow ones, voters in each town also had to decide whether to pass a debt exclusion measure to allow the cost of the project to be paid with property taxes. These votes passed with almost exactly the same numbers as the regional vote, although in most towns there were two or three dozen voters who “split their tickets,” voting for the project on the regional ballot but against the debt exclusion on the town ballot. Orleans was the exception: the debt exclusion actually garnered three more votes in that town than the project itself did.
