Two years ago, at its 2019 annual town meeting, Wellfleet bought 254 acres of tidal flats and salt marsh from the HDYLTA (How Do You Like Them Apples) Realty Trust for $2 million. Many townspeople were persuaded that it was better for the shellfish-producing areas of the harbor to be publicly owned than to risk having them fall into the hands of owners who might wreak havoc on Wellfleet’s traditional ways of producing and harvesting oysters and clams.
The way the sale went down left a bad taste on some local palates. But one thing was clear: the intent of those who voted for the purchase was to protect the town’s shellfishing industry, which is estimated to employ about 15 percent of Wellfleet’s workforce.
In last week’s Independent, K.C. Myers reported that the select board has scheduled a public hearing for this coming Monday, Aug. 16, to discuss plans for the management of this huge tract. About 30 percent of it is divided into aquaculture grants, for which there is a long waiting list of people who want to get into the business or expand their existing grants. Other sections of the town’s tract are fertile ground for wild shellfish harvesters.
Other competing interests were revealed in Myers’s report last week, including those of recreational boaters and upland property owners near the flats who want access to the water and space for moorings, which is at a premium in the harbor. It’s worth noting that when the purchase of the HDYLTA flats was proposed and then approved in 2019, no one said a word about protecting the interests of upland property owners or boaters.
Monday’s hearing is long overdue. Among the issues that need to be aired, besides the need for a comprehensive plan for the future of the flats, are questions that were never addressed two years ago. One of the most important was about the lack of transparency that surrounded the select board’s decision making at the time.
After the April 2019 town meeting vote, some citizens complained that they had been misinformed by then Town Administrator Dan Hoort and the select board and would have voted differently if they had been told the truth. They believed Hoort and select board member Helen Miranda Wilson, who said there was a contingency clause in the purchase and sale agreement requiring a favorable independent appraisal of the value of the flats. Hoort later flatly contradicted himself and revealed that there was no such contingency.
At a select board meeting on July 23, 2019, Moe Barocas asked that an independent task force be created to look into the sequence of events leading up to the signing of that agreement, and how the decision not to get an appraisal was made. That’s still a good idea, given what else we are now learning about the town’s mismanagement of financial affairs during that period.
“The town is losing confidence in this board,” said Barocas back then. “We need to grab this situation and correct it.” There’s still time to do just that.
