TRURO — The hotly contested plans for a new dept. of public works facility, which dominate the warrant for a special town meeting postponed until May, are now partially in the hands of an ad hoc building committee. The select board appointed six people to the committee on March 4 after interviewing eight applicants.
The committee’s charge is to review the $35-million proposal and look for possible “cost-saving improvements.” It will report to and advise the select board and potentially meet directly with the town’s consultants before issuing recommendations. Town Manager Darrin Tangeman will be an ex officio member, and Bob Weinstein will be select board liaison.
Bob Higgins-Steele will be the energy committee’s representative on the ad hoc group. With more than 50 years in the construction industry, he said he is acquainted with the town’s codes and the existing DPW facility, which he believes is inadequate.
“The worst-case scenario would be to be so concerned about the cost that we end up with something that isn’t going to work really well,” Higgins-Steele told the select board.
Anthony Garrett, Leif Hamnquist, Michael Cohen, and Chris Lucy will be the ad hoc committee’s four at-large members; Todd Schwebel will serve as an alternate.
Garrett and Hamnquist are both architects. Garrett, president of the Truro Part-Time Resident Taxpayers’ Association, was also a member of the “DPW Study Group” that produced its own DPW proposal for the existing site on Town Hall Hill.
The petitioned article from the DPW Study Group was not recommended in a unanimous select board vote.
Garrett serves on a design review committee in Montville Township, N.J., where he lives and operates his own firm. His projects are “generally commercial and industrial,” though he has experience with DPW facilities, he told the select board.
Although he supported the study group’s proposal, Garrett said he’s no stranger to compartmentalizing roles. “I know when I have to stay in my lane,” he said.
“I actually was glad to see that you applied for the position because of your participation with the DPW study group,” said select board chair Kristen Reed. “I think it’s important to have somebody from that group be on this committee.”
Garrett said he would serve with “no preconceived notions” as to the project’s ultimate location. Weinstein said he supported Garrett’s appointment given that open-mindedness.
Hamnquist told the select board that most of his architecture work is on single-family homes. He was also on the building committee in Provincetown that revamped the police station project, serving for almost a decade before stepping down and moving to Truro.
Cohen is not Donald Trump’s former lawyer, he told the select board, but he is former owner of two transportation businesses in Pittsburgh: Just Ducky Tours, which operated eight 1940s duck boats, and Molly’s Trolleys. Those businesses taught him a thing or two about precious vehicles, he said.
“Jarrod’s equipment at the DPW is like moving museum pieces,” Cohen said, referring to the DPW director. “They need to be kept inside and taken care of.”
“If I was going to write a speech about vehicles, maintenance, and storage, I would’ve written exactly what you just said,” the select board’s John Dundas said after Cohen spoke.
Chris Lucy is a DPW employee who said he’d “like to get some input in terms of what we truly need” while eliminating extraneous elements from the plan. He said his workplace now is “just a mish-mosh of parts.”
Lucy said that despite being a DPW employee he is not biased toward a particular outcome. “I don’t care what it’s made out of, I don’t care where it’s located, so long as the building works,” he said.
Schwebel works in construction and said he is familiar with the existing DPW property. “It’s very dilapidated,” he said, adding that it’s “pretty astonishing they’re able to work there.”
Clint Kershaw applied to be on the ad hoc committee but said that no select board members should attend its meetings or serve as liaison, citing townspeople’s “mistrust” of the board. He withdrew his name from consideration during his interview.
Brian Boyle, a retired engineer, also applied to be a member.
Boyle was the original author of the Truro eNewsletter, an email put out by Truro News Inc. that weighs in on town affairs.
Select board members Reed and Weinstein said their experience with the eNewsletter, which is organized as a charitable nonprofit, led them to doubt Boyle’s ability to serve impartially.
“Some people are concerned that the eNewsletter has misrepresented facts regarding the DPW in the past,” Reed said to Boyle. “Given your newsletter’s history in promoting specific viewpoints and potentially engaging in illegal lobbying activity, how would you ensure that your personal bias does not influence your decision-making on the committee?”
“The newsletter has a policy that it does not take positions itself, but it is willing to communicate what townsfolk want other townsfolk to say,” Boyle said. “There’s a significant distinction there.”
“I have been a reader of the newsletter since it started,” said Weinstein. “Early on, there were definitely articles that suggested how people should vote.”
Boyle said he was familiar with the relevant laws and that he had both tax and legal counsel to advise him. The select board did not appoint him to the committee.
Editor’s note: Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article, published in print on March 7, inaccurately characterized a comment by Clint Kershaw during his interview. He talked about townspeople’s mistrust of the select board but did not say that he mistrusted the board himself.
