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community preservation committee

    TOWN MEETING

    Two Housing Projects, PAAM, and Schooner Hindu Are on the Warrant

    Community Preservation Committee recommends $1 million in grants

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Every year since 2006, town meeting voters have dispensed special funding measures called community preservation grants. The money comes from a 3-percent surcharge on property taxes and can be used for historic preservation, affordable housing, outdoor recreation, and open space.

    Laura Ludwig and Josh Rowan at the Schooner Hindu rebuild project in Rowan’s barn in Maine. (Photos by Erin Desmond)

    This year, the community preservation committee has recommended just over $1 million in grant requests to town meeting voters. They appear on the warrant as Article 8 and include funding for two affordable housing projects, the affordable housing trust fund, the Chelsea Earnest Memorial Playground, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and the Schooner Hindu.

    The largest recommended grants this year are, as they have been almost every year, for affordable housing. The warrant contains a $500,000 grant request to The Community Builders Inc., the Boston-based nonprofit that is building 65 units of affordable housing at the former VFW Hall site at 3 Jerome Smith Road.

    In past years, Provincetown approved grants to support affordable units in projects at Seashore Point, Province Landing, and Stable Path. What’s unusual this year is that warrant Article 11 asks to transfer $2,250,000 to The Community Builders for the same project. That money comes from free cash ($600,000) and from the town’s tourism fund ($1,650,000), which is itself funded by the rooms tax on stays in hotels and short-term rentals.

    The Community Builders bought a parcel of land on Captain Bertie’s Way for $1.4 million last year to add to the Jerome Smith project, Town Manager Alex Morse told the select board at this year’s budget meetings. The town would otherwise have bought that land directly at a special town meeting, Morse said, but the developer was able to purchase it faster and for the same price. The relatively large contribution to the 65 units on Jerome Smith Road should be seen, at least in part, as financing the purchase of that land, Morse said.

    Article 8 also asks to transfer $225,000 to the affordable housing trust fund. The third housing grant in the article is $75,000 for the 46 affordable apartments at Juniper Hill, the new name for the 95 Lawrence Road project in Wellfleet.

    That request drew extensive discussion at the community preservation committee meeting on Feb. 16. Voters are often skeptical of giving money to other towns for their housing projects, said Chair Kristin Hatch.

    “We spent half an hour at town meeting debating $20,000 for the Cape Cod Five project in Orleans” in 2021, Hatch said.

    Provincetown was the first town on Cape Cod to offer support to another town’s housing project, Hatch added, but that was a special case: $50,000 for a supportive living center for adults with autism, also in Orleans.

    Some committee members wondered whether these transfers between towns weren’t simply canceling each other out. Others were not pleased that Wellfleet voted not to support a similar grant request for The Community Builders’ Jerome Smith project in Provincetown this year.

    Jay Coburn, CEO of the Community Development Partnership, which is developing the Juniper Hill project in Wellfleet, told the committee there were reasons for the requests that weren’t strictly financial.

    “By funding each other’s projects, it demonstrates strong regional commitment to the DHCD,” he said. The Dept. of Housing and Community Development is the state agency that makes the $20-million awards that actually fund these projects, Coburn said. “We are working very closely with The Community Builders, Rep. Peake, and Sen. Cyr to pressure DHCD to fund both of these projects this year.”

    Despite several board members voicing their disappointment with Wellfleet, the board voted unanimously to recommend a grant of $75,000 — reduced from the original request for $100,000 — to town meeting voters.

    PAAM and Hindu

    An open space and recreation grant for $100,000 to replace the sand in the Nickerson Street playground, formally known as the Chelsea Earnest Memorial Playground, with a poured rubber surface was approved by the committee with little discussion. It follows a similar project in the Mildred Greensfelder Park in the town’s East End.

    Josh Rowan working on the keel of the Schooner Hindu. Subsequent work on the decks would be 50-percent funded by a Community Preservation Act grant if Article 8 passes at Provincetown town meeting this year.

    The two historic preservation grants on the warrant sparked more discussion. The committee heard from a state expert in community preservation spending on Jan. 24, had a public hearing on Feb. 7, and ultimately decided on Feb. 16 to divide its available money for historic preservation projects equally between the two applicants.

    The Provincetown Art Association and Museum had requested $100,000 to help replace a roof at the museum, and the Schooner Hindu was seeking $144,580 to pay for the replanking of the deck of the historic vessel, part of a half-million-dollar rebuild of the boat that is currently taking place in Maine. (This reporter was a part-time deckhand on the Schooner Hindu from 2015 to 2019.)

    The committee forwarded each project to town meeting voters with a recommended grant of $73,500.

    PAAM has received grant money from town meeting voters before. In 2020, $60,000 went to a restoration of the museum. The Schooner Hindu has applied before, in 2021, but the committee voted its application down before it reached town meeting voters.

    At that time, committee members said that a for-profit company should not receive funds; that the vessel was not properly validated as historic; and that the boat could leave for another port, such as Newport, R.I. or Madagascar, and the town would be out its money.

    In the two years since then, the owners of the boat moved to address the committee’s concerns, said Erin Desmond, who is now the president of the nonprofit organization that will receive ownership of the boat.

    The Hindu is being transferred from Desmond’s husband, Capt. Josh Rowan, and his father, William Rowan, to the nonprofit Sail As You Are. That transfer should be complete by town meeting on April 3, Desmond told the Independent this week.

    Provincetown’s historical commission (distinct from the historic district commission) also made a first-ever determination last fall that the Schooner Hindu had “local historic value” and should be designated a historic vessel.

    Desmond told the community preservation committee that she could accept various kinds of conditions on the grant funding, including a “claw-back clause” that would refund the money if the boat were to sail away and not return. The expert presentation on Jan. 24 had included a discussion of such restrictions.

    Committee Chair Hatch said on Feb. 16 that “much to my surprise, I am sold on this as a historic asset.”

    Committee members were initially divided, but eventually voted 7-0, with one abstention, to approve $73,500 for the Hindu with various conditions included.

    All six grants will now come to a vote at town meeting. They are currently set to be voted on as a group as Article 8, but should a voter request it, they could be considered and voted on separately.

    COMMUNITY PRESERVATION

    Committee Votes to Put $750K in Truro Housing Trust Fund

    Asked for $500K, the group OKs $100K for Provincetown’s affordable housing

    By

    TRURO — The Community Preservation Committee agreed on Jan. 27 to recommend more than $1 million in grants for housing and historic preservation in fiscal 2024, with the largest chunk — $750,000 — going to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. The committee also approved a $100,000 grant to Provincetown to help fund the construction of 65 affordable units at 3 Jerome Smith Road. Provincetown had asked for $500,000.

    Overall, the committee approved, either in full or in part, all 10 of the applications it had received. All of its recommendations will go onto the warrant for this spring’s annual town meeting on April 25.

    Community Preservation Act funds, which make up the grants, come from a combination of a surcharge on property taxes and matching funds from the state.

    The $750,000 grant would replenish the town’s housing trust fund, which currently has $65,000 in it.

    “We’ve always thought of this as a kind of savings account that we could go to if we needed money to support affordable housing in any way,” Truro Housing Authority Chair Kevin Grunwald told the committee on Dec. 14. Grunwald said that in the past year the fund had provided $800,000 for the 39-unit Cloverleaf project along with $434,000 to relocate two buildings to a town-owned lot to be used for housing town employees who meet affordability guidelines.

    Money from the trust fund also went to the emergency rental assistance program, Grunwald said, which was first established to help people who lost income because of the pandemic.

    “We’ve since expanded that to include anybody in town who meets affordability guidelines,” said Grunwald, “and we’ve hired the Homeless Prevention Council to take applications and to vet applicants.”

    As of the Nov. 1 grant application deadline, the trust had given out $21,000 in emergency rental assistance. Another $30,000 went to Jenn Goldson, a consultant hired to help the town create its housing production plan, Grunwald said.

    The housing authority initially requested $50,000 for a housing consultant for the coming year but reduced it to $25,000 after concluding that it would need fewer hours of consultation and that there were leftover funds from the previous two years that had been allocated for that purpose. The committee approved the $25,000 request.

    The $100,000 for the Jerome Smith Road project was approved even though the committee’s Dec. 2 meeting minutes noted that “with Truro planning its own big housing at Cloverleaf and considering options for the Walsh property, giving Truro Community Preservation money to another town is a problem.”

    Truro residents who work in Provincetown or whose children go to school there will be eligible for the Jerome Smith affordable units. Preservation committee cochair Mary Rose voted for the $100,000 grant, saying, “When we have our large projects going on, we should do the same thing and see if we can get reciprocation from other towns.”

    A request from the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill for Edgewood Farm building restoration was approved at $36,700. The funds would restore two chimneys and a cupola and could pay for use of a construction crane. Castle Hill had initially requested $61,000 to restore the farm’s greenhouse. “We decided to put that project on hold,” the organization’s revised request stated, “since no one wanted to touch it.”

    Other grants that were recommended on Jan. 27 were $25,272.79 for restoring the Congregational Cemetery, requested by the Friends of the Truro Meeting House; $19,675 for a field guide to the historic cemeteries of Truro, requested by the cemetery commission; and $13,075 for the rehabilitation of the Bunker cottage at 42 Corn Hill Road, requested by the Truro Conservation Trust and Castle Hill.

    “What they’re doing is removing the chimney because it’s pretty much crumbling,” said Rose, “and installing a Rinnai heater so that it can be occupied for more of the year.”

    “I have a problem with the Rinnai heater because it’s not helping out any workers in town,” said Diane Messinger, the conservation commission’s representative on the preservation committee. “It’s for artists who are coming for a short time.”

    The Bunker cottage proposal was submitted as a historic preservation project, which also contributed to the committee’s decision to reduce the size of the grant. “The heater is not allowable,” explained committee secretary Mary Rogers, “because you cannot ‘create’ historical items.”

    The committee also approved an $18,691 grant to the Truro Historical Society for display cases and seating at the Highland House Museum and a separate grant to the society for $11,023 to restore the gutters at the Cobb Library. A $5,630 grant will go to the Truro Historical Commission for the publication of its Historic Truro Self-Guided Tour booklet.

    Rogers estimated that the total amount available for community preservation grants in the next fiscal year will be about $1.9 million.

    COMMUNITY PRESERVATION

    School Playground, Housing Are Top Priorities for Funding

    Committee holds back because of town’s financial crisis

    By

    WELLFLEET — The top priority for the Community Preservation Committee (CPC) in the upcoming funding cycle has been the Wellfleet Elementary School playground. Members of the group plan to recommend that the playground be given more than half of the money being distributed to seven applicants this year. The requests will be voted on at the annual town meeting in the spring.

    The CPC is being financially conservative this year because the town’s finances aren’t yet unsnarled. About $1.2 million in community preservation funding requests were submitted. The committee will recommend that annual town meeting voters approve allotments totaling about half of that.

    “We should have substantially more money next year,” said committee chair Gary Sorkin.

    Elementary School Playground

    The Wellfleet Elementary School has not had a playground since 2020. Built more than 30 years ago, the old wooden equipment at the school playground suffered wear and tear. In recent years, playground inspectors flagged needed repairs during annual checks, and the school had been dismantling components one by one. When a child was hurt on the equipment in August 2020, the town condemned and removed it.

    Paying for a new playground from the school’s capital budget was back-burnered a few times because of more pressing priorities, like installing a sprinkler system in the school building. Of the $385,000 needed for the project, fundraising has so far garnered $25,000.

    The school’s playground committee submitted a request to the CPC last fall for $370,000. The preservation committee spent a great deal of time considering the request. Sorkin initially recommended awarding $310,000, which would fund the first two of three phases, leaving only a zip line to be funded later.

    “That would give them a great playground,” said Sorkin at a recent meeting. “Not everything, but a good start.” Ultimately, the committee voted to ask town meeting to authorize $315,000 in community preservation funding.

    Based on a social media post, the playground committee has predicted that the entire funding goal may soon be reached so that every phase can be built this spring.

    Housing Requests

    A range of requests on the housing front were considered. For the Wellfleet Housing Authority’s buy down program, the committee recommended an award of $185,000; for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, $35,000; and for the Community Development Partnership’s Lower Cape Housing Institute, $7,500.

    Affordable Housing in Orleans

    One housing-related request was not taken up by the committee. Developer Pennrose LLC asked for a grant of $100,000 to help pay for converting the former Cape Cod Five Bank building in Orleans into affordable units. The committee decided to defer any recommendation on that request this year.

    Historical Commission 

    The CPC will recommend funding the commission’s full request of $20,300 to continue to work on filing the paperwork on local historic houses with the Mass. Historical Commission’s inventory and to continue to offer workshops for the public.

    The Wellfleet Historical Society originally requested $375,000 in community preservation funds for renovation and expansion of its museum on Main Street. The CPC has recommended a grant of $20,000. (Photo by Nancy Bloom)

    Historical Society and Museum 

    The Wellfleet Historical Society initially submitted a request for $375,000 to help defray the cost of renovation and expansion of its museum but told the CPC at a meeting in late fall that its members realized the request greatly exceeded what the committee could offer this year. They said they would be grateful for any amount from the preservation fund. The committee recommended $20,000.

    Lily House

    Dawn Walsh, executive director of the nonprofit hospice organization called Lily House, submitted a request for $92,000. The house, on Pocahontas Road, was bequeathed as a community home where people who don’t have the financial means or support to stay in their homes can get round-the-clock care at the end of their lives.

    The house can accommodate two people at a time. Walsh expects that Lily House will serve 20 to 25 people per year. Preference would be given to Wellfleet and Outer Cape residents. Presenting her proposal to the CPC, Walsh said Lily House will reach out to other Outer Cape towns for community preservation funding in the future, but there wasn’t enough time to do it this year. The cost of the care provided at Lily House is estimated at $250 per day, but some will likely pay more and others less, based on their means, Walsh said.

    CPC member Janis Plaue lobbied to boost the proposed allotment for Lily House at the committee’s last meeting. “It’s impressive that we in Wellfleet have our very own hospice,” she said. Member Rhonda Fowler argued for a lower amount, saying projects like Lily House will attract private donations. Ultimately, the CPC members settled on $20,000.

    PRESERVATION

    Committee Votes Down Grant for Schooner Hindu

    Motta Field, home repair grants get nod from CPC

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — The community preservation committee (CPC) voted down the Schooner Hindu’s application for $100,000 in Community Preservation Act funds at its meeting on Feb. 22. Had it been approved, the request would have gone to a vote at town meeting this spring.

    Members of the CPC pointed out that the Hindu is owned by a for-profit company, has not been deemed historic by any agency, and is movable, so could theoretically decamp to Madagascar or Newport, R.I. at any time.

    Josh Rowan, who owns the boat with his father, William Rowan of Key West, Fla., countered that the Hindu has immense historic value to Provincetown, is widely beloved, and is undergoing a costly high-quality rebuild for which the funds would be used. Rowan’s fiancée, Erin Desmond, added that she has repeatedly sought meetings with the Provincetown Historical Commission to gain a designation of local historic significance, but the commission has not met in many months. The most recent posted agenda for the historical commission on the town website is from February 2020.

    Polly Burnell, the historical commission’s representative on the community preservation committee, confirmed that the commission was unable to meet with Desmond, and suggested the CPC delay its vote until after the historical commission could consider the Hindu’s request. Several motions were advanced and withdrawn, but ultimately the committee decided they had other grounds on which to reject the application.

    CPC chair Kristin Hatch pointed out that the CPA money dedicated to historic preservation is currently exhausted because of debt service on improvements to town hall, so the money would need to come from the unallocated portion of CPA funds.

    Alfred Famiglietti pointed out the boat could sail off to Madagascar, and that the applicant had to be on either a local or state historic registry prior to approaching the CPC, so the application was improperly before the board.

    The committee considered seeking town counsel’s advice, but then took the vote, with one person voting for the application, four against, and one abstention.

    Pennrose and Home Improvements

    The CPC also debated allocating $100,000 of Community Preservation Act funds to the affordable housing complex being developed at the old Cape Cod Five headquarters in Orleans. That project is being done by Pennrose Development of Philadelphia, which is asking for contributions from eight Lower and Outer Cape towns.

    After some debate about the proximity of Orleans to Provincetown, and the likelihood or unlikelihood of Provincetown residents choosing to live there, the committee voted to reduce the grant request to $20,000 and forward the proposal to town meeting floor. Pennrose said a $100,000 contribution would secure Provincetown a place in a small local-preference lottery that would include residents of every town that contributes in this way. With 62 total units in the planned development, that lottery would be for six units total, divided among all the towns that contribute. This seemed of uncertain value to the committee members.

    A proposal to authorize up to $100,000 for micro-grants to lower-income home owners was approved unanimously. The grants of up to $5,000 each would be for necessary physical maintenance projects on single-family homes or condos, for people making 100 percent or less of area median income, which in Barnstable County is $67,620 for a household of one, or $96,600 for a household of four.

    Provincetown Housing Specialist Michelle Jarusiewicz pointed out that any unused money would be returned to the CPA account at the end of the year — or rather, never withdrawn in the first place.

    The board also approved up to $100,000 for a community process and preliminary design program for a renovation of Motta Field.

    All of the approved measures will go to town meeting floor for a vote.

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