TRURO — A standing-room only crowd listened to the two select board candidates — Stephanie Rein, a farmer, and Karen Tosh, an attorney — during candidates’ night on Feb. 4.
The women will face off in a Feb. 18 election for a three-month partial term to replace the late Maureen Burgess. And both have now stated they will run in the May 12 regular election for a three-year term as well.
Rein, 50, owns a cleaning business and is one of the farmers who has a host community agreement with the town to grow marijuana. She has lived in Truro since the 1980s.
Tosh, 69, has owned a house in Truro for 21 years and lived there full-time for five. She is a lawyer and mediator specializing in family law, a member of the planning board, and on the board of the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill.
Select Board Member Kristen Reed asked them what their vision for Truro is.
Tosh said hers involves cluster development in the village center while preserving rural character elsewhere.
Rein said that 70 percent of the town is National Seashore, so rural character has a head start.
“We can balance rural integrity with providing housing” for firefighters, seniors, families, and others, Rein said.
They disagreed on one point. Tosh said she broke a stalemate with the High Dune Craft Cooperative by constructing a bylaw that would allow cannabis to be grown in Truro.
Rein, a member of the cooperative, said that’s not quite true: the cooperative had to amend the planning board’s cannabis bylaw at town meeting — not exactly the consensus Tosh described.
When it came to the 70-acre Walsh property the town owns behind Truro Central School, both candidates said there is room for open space and housing.
Both said that the Cloverleaf, an affordable housing complex now under review, can be trusted to the zoning board, the developer, and the third-party expert on water quality who has been hired.
To get citizens engaged in the budget process, Tosh said it would be worth considering holding meetings on weekends.
Rein agreed about meeting at different times and suggested that maybe younger people could be enticed into the budget process by making it fun, with, say, potlucks.
