TRURO — Elaine Eliopoulos told the Truro Select Board on Sept. 10 that she and the other owners of the 13 residential units at the Anchorage on the Bay condominiums at 596 Shore Road had spent two years trying to get approvals from the town for the year-round occupancy of their units, to no avail.
Speaking during the public comment period of the meeting, Eliopoulos said she had spearheaded the process of converting the units to year-round after she bought her place in August 2022 and was now facing a third winter in which she could not legally live in her condo.
The owners had made a series of changes to comply with the town’s codes and had submitted all required documents, Eliopoulos said, but the permitting process had been stalled for months.
She had been told, she said, that part of the problem was that an administrative assistant in the health dept., who had been handling correspondence, scheduling, and paperwork, went on leave in March and did not return.
“We were told the process could not go forward and that we were on hold until they filled that position,” Eliopoulos told the select board. She had sent multiple follow-up inquiries since then and received no further response, she said.
“We have done everything that we have been asked to do,” said Eliopoulos. “We just want to bring the process to conclusion. We need communication.”
The select board did not respond directly to Eliopoulos, but Town Manager Darrin Tangeman said that he would speak to her the next day.
On Sept. 30, Eliopoulos and Richard Frankosky sold their unit at the Anchorage on the Bay, according to the Barnstable County Registry of Deeds. The unit has still not been approved for year-round occupancy.
Truro Health and Conservation Agent Emily Beebe told the Independent that after the Sept. 10 select board meeting, her office sent the condominium association a request from the town for a final inspection, which has now been completed.
Beebe said she anticipates an agenda item approving the change to year-round occupancy at the next select board meeting on Oct. 8, which would be the final step in a process that began in July 2022 with the Anchorage on the Bay’s initial application.
Tangeman subsequently told the Independent that the matter had been delayed to the Oct. 22 select board meeting at the condominium association’s request.
Beebe said that after the July 2022 submission, health dept. staff scheduled a meeting with the association’s representatives. A second application submitted in August 2022 was followed by site inspections by the town’s building, health and conservation, and fire depts.
An inspection by the Provincetown Water Dept. was also required, since the complex, like most others on Shore Road, is connected to the municipal water system.
“The inspectors go in and look through all the units and identify code issues and concerns, with an eye toward year-round use and compliance,” Beebe said.
A list of required changes was forwarded to the association, Beebe said, but she acknowledged that staffing shortages had caused significant delays and lapses in communication.
“We really didn’t have the staffing to complete these applications, so we pretty much put them on hold,” said Beebe, adding that the health dept.’s administrative assistant job has been difficult to fill and is still vacant.
“I’m very sorry that it took so long for this particular application to go through,” Beebe said. “It was just some bad timing. I dropped the ball.”
For many years, Truro’s bylaws had prohibited occupancy from December through February in any cottage or condominium unit that had been converted from a colony, motel, or hotel, except for one manager’s unit per complex.
The bylaw was passed in the early 1980s; an attempt to remove it in 2015 failed at town meeting.
In 2018, voters passed a zoning bylaw amendment that allowed the town’s 515 condominium units to be inhabited year-round after town officials certified that the units were properly winterized and met other town building and health codes. Condo associations have to vote to pursue the change.
Since then, only seven condominium associations, all located along Shore Road, have been approved, representing about 100 units. Five other condo associations besides the Anchorage on the Bay have applied but have not yet been approved.
Sutton Place at 522 Shore Road, approved in November 2020, was one of the most recent complexes to go year-round, according to a list that Beebe gave the Independent. Beebe noted that the conversion process was largely “put on ice” during the pandemic because of the difficulty of sending inspectors into private residences.
The Bay Point condominiums at 660 Shore Road were approved by the select board in January 2023 for year-round occupancy after a process that also lasted more than two years. The owners of the five units there had initially voted in October 2020 to pursue year-round occupancy, the Independent reported in January.
