PROVINCETOWN — Bobby Anthony, 74, a retired police chief and native of Provincetown, hopes to win a third term on the select board in the June 30 election.

A Vietnam War veteran of the Navy and Provincetown High School graduate (class of 1965), Anthony was a cop in his hometown from 1972 to 2002. For his last decade on the force, he was chief, at a time when hate crimes — often against gay people — were common, and he, along with other leaders, served on a hate crimes task force. After the implementation of community policing and other measures spearheaded by the task force, the number of hate crimes in Provincetown dropped from 29 in 1992 to zero in 1997, Anthony said.

Now, Anthony is one of two select board members serving on the recovery coalition, which has been recommending policies to allow for a tourist season during a pandemic.

Both the hate crimes task force and recovery coalition brought together health, safety, and town government leaders who cooperated and “really got to know each other,” he said.

Anthony came back from the recovery coalition meetings earlier this month and made an extreme recommendation to his board. He wanted the public ordered to wear masks everywhere on Commercial Street, regardless of the ability to maintain six feet of distance.

“When there are public safety needs, you always had the obstacle in front of you,” he said. “With the pandemic, no one knows where it is at, but you know it’s from droplets. So, my way of thinking, when you’re isolated in your home for 90 days, you watch a lot of TV, and I was watching the experts, and all of them were saying ‘masks, masks.’ ”

He was outvoted in favor of a mask order in the central district only.

“I’m the type of guy, I can take a negative vote and I don’t get offended by it,” he said.

Anthony said the pandemic convinced him that he should serve a third term. The financial and psychological toll has created a crisis worse than any Cape Cod has seen in years.

“I don’t want to blow my own bugle, but I feel I have the experience to deal with it,” he added.

His main goal, beyond providing leadership this summer, is to persuade voters to approve a police station. The full-court press by town officials to get the station constructed on Jerome Smith Road was derailed last spring by failure to add another $3.9 million to the earlier approved $8.6 million.

Lately, the opposition has focused on location, with Fire Chief Michael Trovato arguing that it should be constructed at the former V.F.W. site, where there is room for added bunk space for his firefighters.

As a next step, Anthony said he supports a $50,000 feasibility study of Trovato’s idea.

Trovato is also talking about a new ambulance, a new EMT coordinator, and separating from the regional ambulance service, Lower Cape Ambulance. All of this costs money, as does delaying construction of a police station.

“But people vote on emotions, they really do,” Anthony said.

PROVINCETOWN — As the one new candidate running against two incumbents in this year’s town election, Austin Knight has some criticisms of the current select board.

Knight and incumbents Louise Venden and Bobby Anthony are running for the two seats in contention. The board’s recent vote to make people wear masks on Commercial Street between Bangs and Pleasant streets from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. makes it one of the most regulated towns in the state during this pandemic, which Knight said is alarming.

“First of all, I think we need to follow the governor’s regulations,” Knight said. “He has professionals in all areas looking at this. I’m comfortable with the governor’s regulations.”

He’s concerned about economic ramifications. “How are we going to get through this financially?” he asked. “I know friends who are not even going to open up their restaurants. They cannot make it with so little seating.”

Knight also criticized the select board’s vote to close off Commercial Street to cars from June 4 to June 7, and perhaps longer, to allow expanded pedestrian access and outdoor shopping and eating.

But, Knight said, the closure also restricts pickup by car of takeout food and merchandise.

“We need to be a little bit more clear in our thinking and our spending,” Knight said.

Knight, a 62-year-old contractor, was on the select board for seven years, from 2007 to 2014, before resigning. At the time of his resignation, enough signatures had been collected to hold a recall election about him.

Voters had become outraged by his perceived support of the former police chief, Jeff Jaran. Jaran was fired in 2014 after he lost his temper at the Squealing Pig bar when the bartender played N.W.A’s “Fuck tha Police!” and for interfering in a local election in support of Knight.

The police arbitration board ultimately ruled that Jaran’s termination violated his contract and awarded him $512,797. The costly legal error was what Knight had tried to avoid when he argued against firing the former chief, he told the Independent.

Now, he said he wants to return to the board in order to help deal with shrinking the budget in a post-pandemic landscape.

The fiscal year 2021 budget must be approved at a fall town meeting, and Knight said cuts must be considered everywhere except for maintenance projects that protect valuable property or depend upon grant funding.

As for the police station, he supports it being located at the former V.F.W., where Fire Chief Michael Trovato would like to see it — but he added that the location should be placed on a ballot for the voters to decide.

Knight also sees the logic in Trovato’s desire to end the town’s relationship with Lower Cape Ambulance, which it has shared with Truro since the 1930s.

“I think we should have one system,” Knight said. “I believe the billing and administration should go through one source.”

Why, he asked, is Lower Cape Ambulance based in Truro and coming to Provincetown, when Provincetown has the greater population?

Knight himself came to Provincetown in 1997. A graduate of Ledyard High School in Ledyard, Conn., where he studied vocational agriculture, Knight is a Shriner and a Mason. He was also state president of Connecticut’s Future Farmers of America in the 1970s.