TRURO — The Community Preservation Committee agreed on Jan. 27 to recommend more than $1 million in grants for housing and historic preservation in fiscal 2024, with the largest chunk — $750,000 — going to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. The committee also approved a $100,000 grant to Provincetown to help fund the construction of 65 affordable units at 3 Jerome Smith Road. Provincetown had asked for $500,000.
Overall, the committee approved, either in full or in part, all 10 of the applications it had received. All of its recommendations will go onto the warrant for this spring’s annual town meeting on April 25.
Community Preservation Act funds, which make up the grants, come from a combination of a surcharge on property taxes and matching funds from the state.
The $750,000 grant would replenish the town’s housing trust fund, which currently has $65,000 in it.
“We’ve always thought of this as a kind of savings account that we could go to if we needed money to support affordable housing in any way,” Truro Housing Authority Chair Kevin Grunwald told the committee on Dec. 14. Grunwald said that in the past year the fund had provided $800,000 for the 39-unit Cloverleaf project along with $434,000 to relocate two buildings to a town-owned lot to be used for housing town employees who meet affordability guidelines.
Money from the trust fund also went to the emergency rental assistance program, Grunwald said, which was first established to help people who lost income because of the pandemic.
“We’ve since expanded that to include anybody in town who meets affordability guidelines,” said Grunwald, “and we’ve hired the Homeless Prevention Council to take applications and to vet applicants.”
As of the Nov. 1 grant application deadline, the trust had given out $21,000 in emergency rental assistance. Another $30,000 went to Jenn Goldson, a consultant hired to help the town create its housing production plan, Grunwald said.
The housing authority initially requested $50,000 for a housing consultant for the coming year but reduced it to $25,000 after concluding that it would need fewer hours of consultation and that there were leftover funds from the previous two years that had been allocated for that purpose. The committee approved the $25,000 request.
The $100,000 for the Jerome Smith Road project was approved even though the committee’s Dec. 2 meeting minutes noted that “with Truro planning its own big housing at Cloverleaf and considering options for the Walsh property, giving Truro Community Preservation money to another town is a problem.”
Truro residents who work in Provincetown or whose children go to school there will be eligible for the Jerome Smith affordable units. Preservation committee cochair Mary Rose voted for the $100,000 grant, saying, “When we have our large projects going on, we should do the same thing and see if we can get reciprocation from other towns.”
A request from the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill for Edgewood Farm building restoration was approved at $36,700. The funds would restore two chimneys and a cupola and could pay for use of a construction crane. Castle Hill had initially requested $61,000 to restore the farm’s greenhouse. “We decided to put that project on hold,” the organization’s revised request stated, “since no one wanted to touch it.”
Other grants that were recommended on Jan. 27 were $25,272.79 for restoring the Congregational Cemetery, requested by the Friends of the Truro Meeting House; $19,675 for a field guide to the historic cemeteries of Truro, requested by the cemetery commission; and $13,075 for the rehabilitation of the Bunker cottage at 42 Corn Hill Road, requested by the Truro Conservation Trust and Castle Hill.
“What they’re doing is removing the chimney because it’s pretty much crumbling,” said Rose, “and installing a Rinnai heater so that it can be occupied for more of the year.”
“I have a problem with the Rinnai heater because it’s not helping out any workers in town,” said Diane Messinger, the conservation commission’s representative on the preservation committee. “It’s for artists who are coming for a short time.”
The Bunker cottage proposal was submitted as a historic preservation project, which also contributed to the committee’s decision to reduce the size of the grant. “The heater is not allowable,” explained committee secretary Mary Rogers, “because you cannot ‘create’ historical items.”
The committee also approved an $18,691 grant to the Truro Historical Society for display cases and seating at the Highland House Museum and a separate grant to the society for $11,023 to restore the gutters at the Cobb Library. A $5,630 grant will go to the Truro Historical Commission for the publication of its Historic Truro Self-Guided Tour booklet.
Rogers estimated that the total amount available for community preservation grants in the next fiscal year will be about $1.9 million.
