Due to the pandemic, meetings are held remotely. Go to provincetown-ma.gov and click on the meeting you want to watch.

Thursday, May 13

• Water & Sewer Board, 2 p.m.
• Bicycle Committee, 2 p.m.
• Planning Board, 6 p.m.

Tuesday, May 18

• Airport Commission, 2 p.m.
• Conservation Commission, 6 p.m.

Wednesday, May 19

• Historic District Commission, 4 p.m.

Thursday, May 20

• Board of Health, 4 p.m.
• Zoning Board of Appeals, 6 p.m.

Conversation Starters

Walkway for AIDS Memorial

Three years ago, the Provincetown Cultural Council placed a 17-ton Brazilian quartzite AIDS Memorial on the town hall lawn. Made by artist Lauren Ewing, the sculpture is a tribute to the compassionate response Provincetown had towards people with AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s.

It took 16 years to raise the $90,000 to build and install the piece. Now, it appears that putting an accessible sidewalk around it will also take time.

On May 10, cultural council representative Bill Burton presented to the select board the council’s intention to install a four-foot-wide concrete sidewalk around the memorial so that people in wheelchairs can read the inscriptions by poets Michael Klein, Mark Doty, Marie Howe, the late Tory Dent, and Reginald Shepard.

But the select board and the town’s public landscape committee didn’t take to the concrete walkway. Frank Vasello of the landscape committee said he desired something greener and more natural.

Select board members asked if brick would be better.

“I’m a person living with AIDS and … the whole idea of this big concrete slab sort of throws me off a little,” said select board member John Golden. “If there was a way to calm down the concrete, I’d probably be a lot happier. The white concrete with a dark slab of concrete on top of it, aesthetically it’s an odd thing for me.”

Ewing, who also attended the virtual select board meeting, said she preferred the concrete over other materials.

“I don’t want a pattern around the piece,” Ewing said. In her view, concrete “calms the eye down.” Brick, she said, “is too quaint for something that is as large and powerful as the memorial is.”

The select board did not approve the walkway.

“You’ll need to go back and work with the public landscape committee, the artist, and the DPW to look at a compromise,” said board chair David Abramson. “You’ll need to come back with something.” —K.C. Myers