TRURO — Town meeting is not until Tuesday, April 25, but Truro’s select board is already discussing six citizen petitions that will appear on the warrant. Petitioned articles are authorized by state law, and for the annual town meeting only 10 signatures of registered voters are required to qualify.
A petition submitted by Darrell Shedd, a member of the zoning board of appeals, proposes an amendment to the town’s zoning bylaw limiting building gross floor area in residential districts. The petition seeks to close a loophole in the bylaw that allows projects to seek special permits and easily exceed the bylaw’s limits, Shedd said.
Truro’s current bylaw specifies a minimum residential lot size of .775 acres and a maximum floor area on such a lot of 3,600 square feet. On a one-acre lot, the maximum floor area is prorated to 3,668 square feet, but by special permit this maximum may be exceeded by 1,000 square feet.
“If you go before the ZBA and ask for 1,000 additional square feet, basically, you get it,” Shedd told the Independent. At a March 7 meeting, Shedd told the select board that “Biblically speaking, it’s ask and you shall receive. I’m trying to make it so 3,668 per acre is the ceiling,” he added.
The “building gross floor area” section of the bylaw was approved at town meeting in November 2018. Shedd said that his petition seeks to reinforce “the whole point of our vote years ago.
“We did not want to see mansion-ization in this town,” Shedd told the select board. “We did not want to see Truro become the Hamptons.”
“You’ve identified a source of frustration for us,” said planning board Chair Anne Greenbaum at the March 7 meeting. “I like this.”
Greenbaum said the planning board will “dive into this” at its March 22 meeting, before a public hearing on March 29.
A petition by Shaun Pfeiffer and Violeta Villamil seeks to amend the town’s regulations on dogs. Pfeiffer and Villamil’s petition says that “existing regulations are vague and unclear, and offer no mention of the rights of individuals to be protected from dogs.”
The article would require that dogs be kept on a leash unless restrained inside a car or behind a fence. Currently, dogs need to be on a leash “unless under the command and visual control by their master, except when used for hunting during the hunting season and while under the control of its owner.”
A March 3 memo from Health & Conservation Agent Emily Beebe to Town Manager Darrin Tangeman also suggests removing the “command and visual control” language from the town’s leash law.
“This ambiguous language pertaining to the restraint of dogs by a leash has proven ineffective and extremely difficult to enforce,” Beebe wrote.
Pfeiffer and Villamil’s petition also permits people to demand that a dog be kept at a distance of 20 feet; if that demand is not met, it permits people to “use any means necessary to stop the dog.”
Pfeiffer and Villamil’s petition was not on the select board’s agenda on March 7, but during public comment Truro resident Steven Stahl addressed Beebe’s proposal.
“The impact is going to be draconian and far-reaching,” Stahl said. “There is ample area for both people and dogs. We are not a high-density area.”
Just after the select board’s 2:30 p.m. meeting, however, was a 4:30 p.m. meeting of the board of health with leash laws on the agenda. That online meeting became raucous, with more than 128 people in attendance; a report will appear in next week’s Independent.
A third petition from Cynthia Conroy addresses the damaged culvert at the Mill Pond salt marsh, which is currently being assessed by the town’s dept. of public works. Conroy’s petition would “send a nonbinding resolution to the select board that any repair or replacement of the Mill Pond Road culvert will not permanently close/abandon Mill Pond Road to vehicular traffic.”
This followed a presentation by the DPW and the town’s engineering consultants regarding the damaged culvert. In a memo dated Feb. 2, DPW Director Jarrod Cabral wrote, “My recommendation to the select board is to permanently close the road and install a 95-foot breach with a 10-foot-wide inner channel.”
Conroy’s petition says that Cabral’s recommendation “is the most impactful choice, and the town has given little or no consideration to the other alternatives.”
A fourth petition, filed by Martha Magane, calls for an amendment to the town charter that would involve the board of library trustees in the hiring of a new library director.
At the March 7 select board meeting, Tangeman presented an amendment to policy memorandum #35 regarding the town manager’s powers of appointment, saying, “In the case of the appointment process for the Library Director, the Library Trustees will designate one member of their body to assist the town manager in the review and recommendation of applicants for interviews and then participate as one of the members of the three-person interview panel with the town manager.”
“What the lead petitioner communicated to me,” said select board Chair Kristen Reed, “is that they want to be involved in the process, and this policy does that.” The town’s charter review committee will be next to review the petition.
“The only reason a citizen petition wouldn’t go to town meeting,” Tangeman said, “is if it weren’t in proper legal form.”
The last two petitions are both from Raphael Richter; they have a bit of overlap in their purpose if not their funding. The first is for a comprehensive out-of-school program, or COSP, that “shall provide services before school, after school, on vacation days, and during summer vacation for students enrolled at Truro Central School starting with the 2023-2024 school year.” To fund the program, the petition asks that the town raise, allocate, or borrow $400,000.
Richter’s other petition is a three-item proposal that would cost $782,500. That petition is called the community livability and sustainability article, and the petition itself says it might require a Proposition 2½ override to take effect.
The three-item proposal includes the COSP as well as $300,000 for a permanent version of the child-care voucher program, which currently exists in a pilot form that is funded year by year, Tangeman said. The voucher program provides funding for Truro residents, town employees, and local business owners with children ages four years or younger to attend state-licensed child-care programs, with a maximum voucher of $7,500 per child per year.
The third element includes $82,500 annually toward the salary for a full-time housing coordinator.
“There’s a tradition in Truro of splitting up these questions,” Richter told the select board on March 7. “In the context of what the community needs, I think it makes sense to consider them all at once.”
“I’m so grateful that this is the type of thing our community is working on,” said Reed. Her motion that the select board take on the petition and conduct a financial analysis related to the housing coordinator position passed unanimously.
“The select board can choose to adopt a citizen petition article and modify it,” Tangeman told the Independent. Last year, he said, the eligibility guidelines for the child-care voucher program were adjusted after that warrant article was adopted by the select board.
