An Independent-minded calendar of arts and events for Outer Cape Cod

Advertise in the Indie.

Reach more readers from Eastham to Provincetown.

Unchained news for Outer Cape Cod

The Provincetown Independent

Let us bring you the paper.

Your subscription supports real community journalism.

Provincetown select board

    TRAFFIC

    Select Board Drops ‘Walk Zone’ Idea Without a Hearing

    Board says a public awareness campaign is working

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — The select board’s proposal for a “walk only zone” on the densest part of Commercial Street between Memorial Day and Labor Day, which sparked vocal opposition and little support, is off the table.

    The public education campaign that was launched on May 13 emphasized that pedal bikes can travel against the one-way flow of traffic on Commercial Street but motorized vehicles may not. (Photo by Paul Benson)

    The board voted unanimously on June 24 to indefinitely postpone a public hearing on the plan to restrict a wide range of vehicles, although not cars or trucks, on Commercial Street between Center Street, near the town library, and Masonic Place, close to the post office. The users of pedal and electric bikes, scooters, and “wheeled or electric devices of any kind” would have been required to dismount and walk their vehicles. The rule would not have applied to electric wheelchairs, according to the public hearing documents.

    The proposal generated almost 100 pages of public comments, nearly all of them negative.

    When it was time for the hearing to begin, board chair Dave Abramson moved to indefinitely postpone it. There were 50 people in the room — “more than for pickleball,” noted board member Leslie Sandberg — and Abramson’s move surprised the crowd.

    Abramson said the measure was unnecessary because an education effort launched in May to publicize Commercial Street’s existing rules had been effective. Those rules allow pedal bicycles to travel both ways but prohibit electrified vehicles from going against the flow of car traffic.

    At the board’s May 13 meeting, Town Manager Alex Morse had said he would work with the police dept. to make those regulations better known. The town’s summer community service officers, or CSOs, wearing neon-yellow shirts, are chiefly tasked with encouraging commuters and visitors to abide by traffic laws.

    “They’re not there to overpolice, to hand out tickets,” Morse said on June 24. Their role is “to educate, to try to reduce the frequency of accidents, and just remind people to slow down and be courteous to folks around them.”

    Sandberg, who had expressed support for the walk zone on May 13, said she had changed her mind after speaking with the CSOs.

    “I concur that this proposal is not needed at this time,” she said, “and not because of the people who said they were going to sue us or come to our house with pitchforks. I went down to the street, I saw the CSOs talking to people, and I asked businesspeople who had said things were terrible before, and they said it’s going great.”

    “I apologize to everyone who came out here pretty worked up, thinking that we were going to discuss it,” board member Erik Borg added. “I had a whole spiel myself ready to go.”

    Written Comments

    The packet for the June 24 hearing included 95 pages of emailed comments on the walk zone proposal, including 76 messages against it and 8 in support. Many of the opposing comments touted Provincetown’s bike-friendly reputation and disputed that the walk zone would improve safety overall, given the risks associated with travel on Bradford Street.

    About 50 people were in the room when the select board moved to indefinitely postpone the public hearing on the walk only zone rather than open the hearing and take public comments.

    The Provincetown Bicycle Committee wrote a letter of opposition. “A ban on bicycles would likely trade minor, unreported injuries on Commercial Street with far more serious injuries on Bradford Street, where cars travel over four times faster and where crashes with cars and trucks are much more of a risk to life,” wrote Rik Ahlberg, Max Cliggott-Perlt, and Tracy Kachtick-Anders.

    Thirty-three commenters, including supporters and opponents of the walk zone, suggested that the board should consider banning cars on Commercial Street.

    Several commenters pointed out that “walk only zone” was a misnomer, since cars would still be allowed. “I would in fact support a decision that required everyone to walk in the zone,” wrote Colton Atkinson, “but prohibiting multimodal users and permitting motor vehicles is akin to having a no-weapon zone that bans knives but allows guns.”

    Just before the board voted to postpone, Borg said it still wasn’t clear to him how the proposal began. “How the cross streets were selected, who was consulted — I guess it’s irrelevant now,” he said.

    Board member Austin Miller, the other vocal opponent of the proposal when it was first introduced, said that “the most serious incident in the past week that involved an injury on Commercial Street” involved a car.

    “I’m sorry you guys came out,” Sandberg said to the audience, “but because we put this proposal out we have enforcement from the police. For me that’s been a big problem, and now we have a public awareness campaign.”

    TOWN ELECTION

    Borg and Miller Are Elected in Provincetown

    Both Proposition 2½ overrides are approved by voters

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Erik Borg, 38, and Austin Miller, 32, were both elected to the Provincetown Select Board at the town’s annual election on May 9. They will replace Bobby Anthony and Louise Venden, each of whom decided not to seek another three-year term on the board.

    Erik Borg was elected to Provincetown’s select board on Tuesday, May 9. (Photo courtesy Erik Borg)

    Borg, a co-owner of the Provincetown Brewing Company, has served on the visitor services board and the zoning board of appeals; Miller works remotely on financial compliance and served on both of Provincetown’s housing committees.

    Borg won 668 votes, or 72 percent of the total votes cast, while Miller won 602 votes, or 65 percent of the 933 people who voted. Because two seats were up for election at the same time, voters could pick two candidates from among the four who were running.

    Austin Knight came in third with 299 votes and Gordon Siegel got 128. One hundred sixty-three people left one of their ballot lines blank, while eight people wrote in a candidate.

    Turnout was actually down somewhat from recent elections, at least when measured as a percentage of the electorate. There are currently 3,502 registered voters here, so 933 voters is 27 percent. In the 2019 and 2020 elections, the turnout was just over 30 percent, while in the hotly contested race between Leslie Sandberg, Oriana Conklin, and the incumbent select board member Lise King in 2021, turnout was 42 percent of the electorate, or 1,354 voters.

    The 2022 election for select board was uncontested, and only 19 percent of Provincetown’s voters cast a ballot that year.

    Fundraising numbers were also lower than in the 2021 election, based on the disclosure forms the candidates must file with the town clerk’s office eight days before election day. Borg reported $5,570 in fundraising on his pre-election form, Knight reported $2,150, and Miller reported $1,250. Siegel’s documents were not posted online because he had raised less than $1,000 by that time; town clerk Liz Paine said that his pre-election disclosure form reported zero dollars of fundraising.

    These totals indicate that Miller and Knight raised amounts that would have been relatively typical for candidates in 2019; Borg’s total is closer to the numbers raised in 2021. By the time final disclosure forms were filed, the 2021 election reached $33,315 in fundraising; the current total for this year is less than a third of that.

    Austin Miller was also elected to Provincetown’s select board. (Photo courtesy Austin Miller)

    Miller attributed the slightly muted numbers to the overall civility of the race.

    “I don’t think this election was particularly flashy or catchy in the headlines, because all of the candidates were very collegial towards each other,” Miller said. He said he had focused on issues and his own strengths, and he thought other candidates had done the same.

    Borg said that he had come to respect and appreciate all the candidates running, and that they had agreed on many of the major issues. “I think everyone’s heart was in the right place,” Borg said, “and people conducted themselves admirably.”

    All four candidates campaigned on housing as the town’s most urgent issue.

    There were several uncontested races further down the ballot. Galen Malicoat was elected to a seat on the school committee; Joan Prugh and Burt Grossman were elected to two seats on the library board of trustees; and Frances Coco and Arlene Weston were elected to two seats on the housing authority.

    Nobody filed to run for a seat on the charter compliance commission. John Keith was elected with six write-in votes.

    Overrides

    The town’s two override questions, each of which passed overwhelmingly at town meeting, also cleared the majority-vote requirement at the ballot on Tuesday.

    Question 1, which authorized $1.7 million for a water line replacement project at MacMillan Pier, passed with 695 votes, or 74 percent of the vote.

    Question 2, which authorized a permanent expansion of the budget by $1,058,476 per year to pay for nine full-time positions in the town’s fire and emergency medical services dept., passed with 739 votes, or 79 percent of the vote.

    Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article, published in print on May 11, misspelled the last name of write-in winner John Keith in the charter compliance commission election.

     

    HOUSING SOLUTIONS

    Teaming Up to Bring Vail’s Strategy Home

    P’town, Vineyard, and Nantucket, ask state to OK new deed restrictions

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — A housing strategy involving deed restrictions that was devised in Vail, Colo. and has been duplicated in Lake Tahoe, Calif. could soon be coming to the Cape and Islands.

    Provincetown Select Board member Leslie Sandberg told the board on Jan. 9 that the housing directors of Nantucket and of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission are working with Provincetown and three state legislators to authorize a key component of Vail’s innovative deed restriction program on Beacon Hill.

    Leslie Sandberg of Provincetown’s select board. (Photo courtesy Leslie Sandberg)

    The three lawmakers — Reps. Dylan Fernandes of Falmouth and Sarah Peake of Provincetown and Sen. Julian Cyr of Truro — want to introduce a draft bill before a legislative deadline on Jan. 20, Sandberg said. The language could still be adjusted afterwards, she said, and the select board voted to have the town’s legal counsel, who also represents Nantucket, work with town staff to write the draft.

    These procedural moves could pave the way for other Cape Cod towns as well, Sandberg said.

    Policies that allow towns to pay homeowners (or would-be homeowners) to write restrictions into their deeds, usually in perpetuity, are nothing new. But in Massachusetts, public money has been spent only to secure deed restrictions that control the affordability of the house or apartment involved.

    The kinds of restrictions that are familiar here require that “affordable” units be sold to people whose incomes are below a certain threshold. Towns decide on their affordability policies by looking at federal area median incomes (AMIs) and considering the local economy. The restrictions also limit the resale price of the property, tying it to inflation.

    The cost to create such a deed restriction — that is, to “buy down” a unit from market rate to an established legally affordable level — has been rising rapidly. Provincetown housing specialist Michelle Jarusiewicz estimated last year that it would cost about $400,000 to buy down a single condo unit from the market rate to a legally affordable one.

    In August, the Cape Cod Commission invited Vail’s housing director, George Ruther, to explain his town’s deed restriction program to Cape Cod leaders. Vail’s housing crisis — like Cape Cod’s — was no longer limited to lower-income families, Ruther said, and was now affecting nearly everyone who earned a living in the county.

    “Nine-and-a-half times out of ten, which is as close to always as you’re going to get,” houses were selling to people who did not live or work in Vail, Ruther said. There were 7,200 houses in town and only 5,300 residents, but every time a property sold, it was going to someone who did not plan to live in it. The people who kept Vail’s economy running, from tourism workers to people in business, government, and health care, were being squeezed out.

    “In my way of looking at things, we don’t have a housing problem, we have an occupancy problem,” Ruther said.

    That became the basis of Vail’s strategy. The deed restriction program the town developed does not target incomes or control the sale price of property, Ruther said. Instead, it requires that the occupants of a unit, whether owners or tenants, live and work in the county.

    A committee worked out what kinds of restrictions homeowners would accept and what the town could pay in exchange for those restrictions, finding a sweet spot at about 15 to 20 percent of market price.

    Laura Silber, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission’s housing planner. (Photo courtesy Martha’s Vineyard Commission)

    Vail’s housing authority, using sales tax revenues, has now bought 175 such deed restrictions at an average price of $69,000 each, Ruther told Provincetown’s housing workshop last month. They have nearly all been condo units, rather than single-family houses, Ruther said, but a wide range of people have been willing to accept the deed restriction in exchange for cash.

    About 60 percent have been private individuals who are deed restricting a property they already own, Ruther said. Others used the money toward down payments, with the deed restriction making the purchase possible.

    “We’ve also had people sell us deed restrictions because they know that, without this program, their children will never be able to return here,” Ruther said. So far, Vail has spent about $12 million to secure its 175 deed-restricted units, which house almost 400 residents.

    By adding a policy affecting new development, the ski town of Lake Tahoe was able to get some deed restrictions in place “for free,” Placer County, Calif. housing planner Devin McNally told the Cape Cod Commission conference last August. Placer County copied Vail’s deed restriction program but added a rule that half the units in new developments must be deed restricted to people who will work in the county.

    “The goal of this is to get as many tools into the toolbox as possible,” Laura Silber, the housing planner at the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, told Provincetown’s select board Monday night.

    “It’s not going to be one silver bullet that solves the housing crisis,” Silber continued. “Particularly for smaller towns, we have to look at infill development and repurposing existing structures.

    “But Vail has been able to use this tool to capture existing inventory into perpetually attainable community housing,” Silber said. “This is not to take away from affordable housing projects — this is something to add.”

    Other Strategies

    The select board went on to discuss several other housing strategies at its Monday night meeting, some of which might be presented to this year’s annual town meeting in April.

    The board voted to commission the Donohue Institute at UMass Amherst to study the town’s short-term rental industry and its effect on year-round housing, including policies that might restrain the further growth of short-term rentals. That study will take about six months to complete, however, and Assistant Town Manager Dan Riviello said the town might consider a moratorium on new short-term rentals in the meantime.

    “Once we have new compliance software and a better idea of the true number of operators, we can come back to you with a recommendation on whether to cap short-term rentals with a one-year moratorium,” Riviello said. “It would give us time to study possible future regulations, have a community conversation, and decide the best way to go forward.”

    Select board members also discussed expanding the town’s down-payment assistance program. The affordable housing trust currently can assist with up to $30,000 toward down payments for people earning 100 percent of area median income or less. Board member Louise Venden said the Year-Round Market-Rate Rental Housing Trust would like to offer down-payment assistance to people who make more than 100 percent of median income but still struggle to meet down payment costs.

    Sandberg also proposed that the town work out a late-night transportation program with the Provincetown Chamber of Commerce and the Provincetown Business Guild.

    “Could we contract with a local cab company or the Funk Bus,” asked Sandberg, “or help offset the cost of parking or gas?” Workers are spending their wages on taxis because there are no good options after 11 p.m., Sandberg said, and so few places in town to live.

    The Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority does not appear to be developing a late-night bus of its own for the Outer Cape, Riviello said. The town might be able to run its own program for less than a CCRTA pilot would cost, Riviello added, especially if it were in concert with business groups.

    HOUSING

    As Rooms Tax Booms, Budget Decision Looms

    Provincetown Select Board has $4.7 million to parcel out

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — At its first meeting of the new year, Provincetown’s select board will have a pleasant problem on its agenda: more money than it expected.

    With $2.2 million in rental tax revenues in from the state for the quarter just ended on Dec. 31, Town Manager Alex Morse told the Independent that Provincetown has now raised its rooms tax revenue estimate for the current fiscal year to $4.7 million — $1.3 million more than had been projected.

    Before it was expanded to include short-term rentals, the rooms tax for an entire year brought the town about $2.2 million.

    The new estimate will anchor the discussion at the board’s meeting on Monday, Jan. 10, as town leaders take up how much of the new money to direct toward housing and how to rewrite the allocation formula that divides the rooms tax among various town funds.

    The extra $2.5 million per year has been a long time coming. Provincetown began asking for a tax on short-term rentals in 2010. The state did not allow such a tax until 2018 when it passed a law that expanded the existing “rooms occupancy tax,” which was already charged on stays in hotels, motels, and campgrounds, to cover bookings in short-term rentals through AirBnb and other such brokers.

    That expansion took effect in July 2019, but a lack of good data from the state and a global pandemic that blew a hole in the tourism sector meant it wasn’t initially clear how much new money to expect.

    Last fall, town staff forecast the rooms tax would produce $3.4 million this year, but several select board members said that was too conservative. At the time the Independent used state data and information from the market-research website AirDNA.co to predict the total would be $4.7 million.

    In December, Town Manager Alex Morse recommended waiting a bit longer before changing the official estimate, to see what the next quarterly payment from the state would bring.

    New Money for Housing

    The select board has expressed a desire to direct most of the new money toward housing. Because the rooms tax money is parceled out among funds on a percentage basis, that means defining a specific percent of the total to go to housing, and then adjusting the other parts of the formula so the other four funds traditionally supported by rooms tax revenues — the tourism fund, the sewer fund, the capital improvements fund, and the general fund — aren’t shortchanged.

    Morse showed how this would work at a Dec. 15 housing workshop. As the total amount of rooms tax increases, the percentage required to level-fund the other four beneficiaries decreases.

    With a total of $4.7 million in the pot to be divided, the town could level-fund the four others, give them each a bit extra, and still have $2 million left for housing.

    Town leaders have discussed a variety of ways that new housing money could be spent.

    “The idea isn’t to go out and buy a single-family home or a condo at market price,” Morse said in October. “This is about a subsidy, to get private developers to invest.” The state likes to see towns contribute to affordable housing projects, Morse added, and even a half-million-dollar investment can help a project secure more state funding.

    State and federal tax credits have their own rules, however. Almost all of them are for rental apartments for people making 60 percent of area median income or less. In Barnstable County, that means $40,860 for a single person, or $58,320 for a family of four.

    About 40 percent of Provincetown’s households have income in that range, according to the Cape Cod Commission’s datacapecod.org, including both working and retired people. The town’s housing crisis affects many people well beyond this income bracket, though.

    The Year-Round Market-Rate Rental Housing Trust was created because even median and above-median earners can’t afford a place to live here. Nathan Butera, chair of the trust, told the Independent that he wants to see if rooms tax money combined with zoning incentives could persuade private developers to include market-rate rentals in their projects.

    Select board member Louise Venden told the Independent that she wants to see ownership in the mix as well. “Stable housing, in my opinion, is not just rental housing,” said Venden. “You’ve got to create ownership opportunities for people who work here and make a reasonable but not outrageous amount of money.”

    The “buydown” strategy of purchasing deed restrictions on market-rate units has become more expensive, Venden said, but “there’s all kinds of variations. There’s no reason we can’t figure out a way to put this together.”

    The 2.5 acres of land at 90 Shank Painter Road cost the town of Provincetown only $1 million in 2007. The Community Builders produced 50 affordable rental apartments at the site, financed mainly with state and federal tax credits. (Photo by Paul Benson)

    There is also the matter of land.

    Provincetown bought the 2.5 acres on which the Province Landing affordable rental complex was built for only $1 million in 2007. The 1.3-acre former VFW site was purchased in 2013 for $900,000.

    But as land becomes more scarce, it’s selling for more. The one-fifth-acre parcel at 30 Shank Painter Road, where Brian O’Malley’s medical practice used to be, was bought by a private developer of market-rate housing in 2020 for $1.2 million. A half-acre parcel adjacent to the VFW project, owned by Paul and Victoria Mendes, was recently listed for sale for $1.7 million.

    At the Dec. 15 housing workshop, several people suggested that letting the select board control the new housing allocation, so it could be sent to different funds each year depending on specific projects and needs, made the most sense. Instead of having a fixed percentage go to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and the Year-Round Market-Rate Rental Housing Trust, the select board could decide each year what priorities mattered most.

    That could mean a continual, iterative conversation about housing strategies is in the town’s future. How much money to allocate is the near-term subject; how best to spend it will follow.

    ELECTIONS

    $33,315 Was Raised for Three-Way Select Board Race

    Sandberg led record-breaking campaign with $19,355

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — The May 11 select board election in Provincetown, in which Leslie Sandberg, Oriana Conklin, and incumbent Lise King all ran for one seat on the board, generated the highest fundraising totals since records have been kept online, according to a review of campaign finance filings.

    The pre- and post-election filings together show that Sandberg, who won the election, raised $19,355 in direct and in-kind contributions. Conklin raised $7,537 and King raised $6,423.

    The most recent comparable election in Provincetown was a three-way race for two seats on the board in June 2019. In that election, challenger Dave Abramson raised $2,500 and won a seat.  Incumbent Cheryl Andrews raised only $200 and lost her seat on the board. John Golden ran in and won two elections that year — a special election in February and the regular election in June — raising a total of $3,305 for both races.

    King said that, in Provincetown’s local races, “the typical amount you’d raise is a couple thousand.” Supporters are accustomed to the idea, she said, that “$50 or $100 is quite sufficient to express your support.”

    The filings show that was mostly the case this year, too. The people who donated to candidates in earlier elections mostly gave at about the same levels this year.

    What was different this year is that larger donations made up about half of the total raised. Eight people gave the maximum donation allowed, $1,000. Seven of those gifts were from donors who do not appear to have contributed to past Provincetown election campaigns. Six of the $1,000 donations went to Sandberg and two to Conklin.

    “I’m not surprised I raised the most money,” said Sandberg. “This is what I do. I’ve been in politics, on and off campaigns, since 1984. Everyone who gave to me, for the most part, I knew.”

    Records show the candidates used their campaign money on the usual expenses — mailers, internet ads, and graphic design. Both King and Conklin spent most of what they raised.  Sandberg spent $15,220. She’s wouldn’t say what her plans were for about $4,000 still in the bank.

    The prior record for select board campaign spending was Tom Donegan’s $4,226 in 2013. His campaign was entirely self-funded.

    Conklin’s campaign pointed to national politics as the reason giving and spending were up. “We really didn’t actively fund-raise,” said Adrian Butterton, who served as treasurer for Conklin’s campaign. “I think there’s a culture of political giving and fundraising at the national level now, and people are accustomed to giving to political candidates in a way that they weren’t before.”

    Did the money matter? Sandberg chalked up her win to what she called her “field campaign.”

    “Every day for 10 weeks, I spent a minimum of three hours a day knocking on doors and talking to voters,” said Sandberg. “I think I knocked on north of 360 doors. That was exceedingly valuable in this race.”

    Recent filings for select board races in Truro, Wellfleet, and Eastham show the upward trend in campaign fundraising has not extended beyond Provincetown. In Eastham, Jamie Demetri didn’t report any fundraising for her re-election.

    In Wellfleet, incumbent Helen Miranda Wilson hasn’t reported any fundraising either. Incumbent Justina Carlson reported putting together $1,134 of her own money and a $216 in-kind donation of stamps. Challenger John Wolf has loaned himself $2,675 and raised $450 for his write-in campaign for Wellfleet Select Board.

    In Truro, Kristen Reed has raised $925 for her re-election, and candidate John Dundas hasn’t reported any fundraising.

    ELECTION

    Sandberg Wins 3-Way Race for Provincetown Select Board

    Diversity, equity, and inclusion office override passes with 53%

    By

    Campaigning was lively in Provincetown for all three select board candidates in this week’s election. Here, Leslie Sandberg, right, with supporters. (Photo Elizabeth Brooke)

    PROVINCETOWN — There were only one race for town office and five questions on the annual election ballot this year, but 1,354 people turned out to vote in one of the most hotly contested select board races in recent memory. Three women campaigned for one select board seat, and broke fundraising and turnout records in the process.

    THE SELECT BOARD RACE

    Oriana Conklin Wants to Solve a ‘Crisis of Community’

    ‘Our voices aren’t being heard’

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Oriana Conklin, 30, is running as a first-time candidate for select board. She believes she can bring some much-needed perspective: if elected, she said, she would be the youngest person on the board by almost 20 years, the only person of color (she is Japanese-American), and the only restaurant worker.

    “Restaurant workers are the backbone of this community and our voices aren’t being heard,” Conklin said. Many in hospitality worked through the pandemic, she said, “to help people feel almost normal for a few hours.” But, she added, “it became clear there were not enough support groups or clinicians for the workers to turn to for support.” Conklin noted the town’s health dept. is developing plans to improve the situation, and she’d like to see the select board help move those along.

    Her father, Tom Conklin, moved to Provincetown in the 1970s and started Tumbleweed Connection, a head shop and record store. Her mother, Tara Conklin, has retired from a career as a special education teacher in the local schools.

    Oriana Conklin.

    When Conklin was born, her family moved to Wellfleet. A graduate of Nauset Regional High School and Emmanuel College, she’s been working at restaurants in Boston and on the Cape for over 16 years. Her first job was at the Wicked Oyster in Wellfleet. Now, she serves as the general manager for Local 186 restaurant and Enzo Guest House, which are in the same building on Commercial Street.

    “Where do I even begin?” Conklin said when asked about her ideas on affordable housing. “It is really hard to put roots down here and get involved in community when your housing situation is not secure and you’re constantly moving between temporary summer and winter places.” More people, she believes, are coming to recognize that this is “absolutely a crisis.”

    Conklin has some ideas about remedies, though. “As long as people in town support it,” she said, “I would propose that we build a two- or three-story parking garage in the back of Grace Hall. If we do that, we can use some of the rest of that land to build housing. It’s already developed. We’re not taking any unused space.”

    Another move that could improve the housing crisis, Conklin said, would be the expansion of the town’s wastewater treatment system.

    Housing isn’t the only issue Conklin is interested in. Lack of equitable internet access is, in her view, another factor preventing Provincetown from being an accessible, viable year-round community.

    “Internet access is a human right,” she said. “We should have municipally-owned internet access.” Town-wide internet access would, Conklin said, help level the playing field and also make Provincetown a more attractive year-round location for people working remote jobs, a phenomenon that she believes is likely to continue even after the pandemic.

    Conklin is also concerned about the Outer Cape’s fragile environment. “The coastline has changed so much just since I was growing up,” she said. Two and a half years on Provincetown’s conservation commission has given her insights, she said, into the work of flood prevention and dune restoration.

    Conklin wants to see a new police station built. “But we need to build consensus on what that plan is going to be,” she said, as she rolled up her sleeves.

    When we do have that new police station, Conklin thinks that Provincetown can work to change its policing practices. “We have a chance here to really redesign what we want to see out of our police department,” she said.

    The goal, she said, should be to make policing more about fostering healthy and helpful relationships with community members. “There should be a mental health clinician on site at the station,” she said. “There are so many calls to the station, and you don’t need a police officer for all of them. It’s a waste of resources. Anything aimed at crisis de-escalation, I am 100 percent for.”

    As for the Provincetown Fire Dept., Conklin stated that she is against regionalization: “We need firefighters to be able to be at an emergency at the drop of a hat.” She said that, while Provincetown has one of the best departments she knows, its reputation is threatened by the numbers of people who are forced to move out of town due to increasingly unaffordable rents.

    “I hate to repeat myself,” Conklin said, “but it really is housing first.”

    “We need to incentivize people to stay in town,” she said. “Our friends and neighbors are moving out. When that keeps happening, what you have is a crisis of community.”

    Candidate Conklin’s campaign website is orianaconklin.com.

    THE SELECT BOARD RACE

    Leslie Sandberg Wants to Start a New Chapter

    ‘I can get it done’

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Leslie Sandberg has ideas to address the town’s housing crisis: dedicate to housing a portion of the short-term rental tax that currently goes into the general fund and possibly some of the marijuana dispensary fees as well.

    She has an idea for how get voters to approve a new police station: scrap the old plan, go back to the original amount the town approved, $8.6 million, and see if a station can be practically built at that price. Trying to get approval for the same $12.5-million design that failed by nine votes in 2019 is not going to work, she said.

    “Voters said it was too large,” she said. “I don’t think it’s good government to push something down people’s throats.”

    She named the housing crisis, climate change, and post-pandemic recovery as important focuses for the select board.

    Leslie Sandberg.

    Sandberg, 58, a native of Minnesota, said her two opponents have similar priorities.

    “I think the difference is, I can get it done,” she said. “I’m not doing this because I think it’s going to be easy. It’s going to be hard. But I care.”

    Sandberg, a full-time Provincetown resident since 2015, got a bachelor’s degree from Tufts University in 1985 and a master’s in public policy and broadcasting from American University in Washington D.C. in 1991. She had stage-four non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 23.

    She worked for NBC News and then as a media affairs coordinator with a company called Wireless Data Systems, which helped Bill Clinton deliver paid air-time messages to the major networks.

    When her sister became severely ill, she returned to Minnesota to help the family and there began work as press secretary for that state’s Attorney General Hubert Horatio “Skip” Humphrey III. She then worked for his successor, Mike Hatch, spending 10 years in the A.G.’s office. During that time, she came out in Minneapolis’s Lavender Magazine.

    Upon the death of her father, Sandberg took over his real estate company in St. Paul, which ran a mixed-use warehouse on the Mississippi River and parking lots.

    Sandberg is married to Kathleen “Kass” Goodwin, who serves on the Provincetown Finance Committee. When her mother and Goodwin’s mother both died within three months of each other, the pair decided to sell their homes, trade up a 670-square-foot condominium Sandberg owned in Provincetown, and move here full-time.

    Sandberg was communications strategist for the campaign of Truro Democrat Julian Cyr, a young and long-shot candidate for state senate. When he won in 2016, she became his senior adviser for three years. Most recently, she founded a strategic communications firm, Rose, Sandberg & Associates, with Sally Rose, a former editor of the Provincetown Banner.

    They have three clients currently, the town of Eastham, where they are helping with public engagement on possible uses of the former T-Time driving range on Route 6; they’re helping the Housing Assistance Corp. write a strategic plan, and they’re consulting to the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod. Sandberg handled communications for Provincetown’s Public Pier Corp. for a few months, until July 2020. From July 2020 to March 31, 2021, her company provided public relations for the Provincetown Board of Health, earning $50 an hour for about 20 to 40 hours a month. She gave up that assignment to run for the select board.

    “My main priority is to start a new chapter,” said Sandberg. “We have a new town manager. He deserves to have a board that gets along, works collaboratively, and is mission-driven.”

    In this time, she said, it’s not so much picking priorities but executing them. Which, she said, takes an experienced consensus builder and communicator.

    “My strategy would be ‘How do we get to yes, guys?’ ”

    The housing battle must be fought regionally, she said. Year-round economic viability could be improved by “broadband, broadband, broadband,” she said. The Outer Cape should fight for some of that $41 million just granted to Barnstable County from the federal rescue package to build internet access.

    “I am not a Pollyanna by any means,” she said. “I’ve seen the hard fights. I’m battle tested. You just have to keep the perspective of why we’re there. Remember — it’s about the town.”

    Candidate Sandberg’s campaign website is lesliesandberg.com.

    THE SELECT BOARD RACE

    Lise King: ‘I Love Doing the Work’

    The incumbent says she’s just hitting her stride

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — In the three-way race for a single seat on Provincetown’s select board, Lise King, 56, is the incumbent. Her argument for a second term is that she loves the work, she’s dedicated to it, and she’s increasingly effective in the position.

    “It’s a big job to do well,” said King. “My commitment, and the time I’m spending on it — it’s like falling in love. The more I do it, the more I want to do it, the more committed I am to it, and the more I enjoy it.”

    King lived a peripatetic life before finally settling in Provincetown. As a child, her time was divided between divorced parents. King went to school where her father lived, in Florida. Her mother is the Provincetown artist Bunny Pearlman, former owner of the East End Gallery. King spent her childhood summers here and worked jobs at Café Blasé and Franco’s restaurant. She earned a degree in history from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley.

    Lise King.

    After spending time in New York working on documentary films, King moved to the Rosebud Lakota reservation in South Dakota, where she married, had two children, and co-founded the Native Voice newspaper.

    “I didn’t realize how privileged I was until I lived on the reservation,” said King. “Historic oppression, systemic racism, institutional bias — it’s where I realized how I wanted to spend my precious life, to use Mary Oliver’s words: making things better for the people who need it most.”

    After a painful divorce, King returned to Provincetown with her children. She earned a master’s in public administration from Harvard, stayed for three years of fellowships in the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, and lived through a variety of housing arrangements before finding housing at the Stable Path development.

    When it comes to town policy, King wants to both move quickly and engage a wider circle of citizens.

    There is a natural tension between public engagement and efficiency, King noted. If you go too far for the sake of efficiency, she said, “by the time the project gets to us, it’s like it’s prepackaged, which is what happened with the police station.” Then, she added, “On the other hand, you can get bogged down in so much discourse, you get sidetracked.”

    King supports going forward with a new station on the selected site on Jerome Smith Road, partly because there is already $8.6 million appropriated for that site, and construction costs are rising rapidly. She is also “100 percent for the VFW housing project.”

    King noted the importance of discussing unresolved issues there, however. “For the people who gathered at that building for many years, it was an emotional space,” she said. Losing that is a cultural loss for part of the community, she said. “We’re looking at this like a gameboard, police here, housing there, moving pieces around,” she said. “I think we have to negotiate this.”

    King looks forward to the results of the needs assessment for the fire dept., which may point to a professional, rather than volunteer, department in the future. “If we’re going to need to have new hires,” she said, “maybe housing at the VFW is a place they could live.”

    Last June, King proposed an economic stabilization and sustainability committee to look at both near-term Covid recovery and larger issues facing the town. It was established last fall as an advisory subcommittee to the select board, and King pointed to its work as a model.

    “With the support of my colleagues on the board, we’ve created this mini-think tank to come up with a lot of creative ideas, and dig into the meat and potatoes of how to get them done,” she said. “If you had people renting out basements for housing that were nonconforming, for instance, could they need help bringing those places up to code? We’ve talked about a Provincetown development corporation that could take on bigger housing projects.”

    King said she has floated the idea of housing along the future bike path between Shank Painter Road and Herring Cove. “We’re pulling out the map and looking at where we can reclaim space,” she said.

    “I’m getting more work done now than I ever have in my life,” said King. “I believe in a collaborative process, and it’s really great to be part of a team.”

    Candidate King’s campaign website is liseking.com.

    This Week In Provincetown

    Meetings Ahead

    By

    Meetings are held remotely. Go to provincetown-ma.gov and click on the meeting you want to watch.

    Thursday, April 8

    • Bicycle Committee, 2 p.m.
    • Public Pier Corp., 2 p.m.
    • Finance Committee, 5 p.m.
    • Planning Board, 6 p.m.

    Monday, April 12

    • Historical Commission, 3 p.m.
    • Select Board, 7 p.m.

    Tuesday, April 13

    • Charter Compliance Commission, 12 p.m.
    • Licensing Board, 5:15 p.m.

    Wednesday, April 14

    • Local Comprehensive Plan Committee, 1 p.m.

    Thursday, April 15

    • Finance Committee, 2 p.m.
    • Board of Health, 4 p.m.
    • Open Space, 4:30 p.m.
    • Zoning Board of Appeals, 6 p.m.

    Conversation Starters

    Candidates Night on April 21

    There is only one contested race on the ballot at the May 11 annual town election. Voters will have a chance to meet the candidates and ask questions at a virtual candidates night at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 21.

    Three people are running for one spot on the select board. Incumbent Lise King, 56, is running for re-election. Her challengers are Leslie Sandberg, 58, and Oriana Conklin, 30.

    The candidates night will be moderated by Florence Seldin of the League of Women Voters of the Cape Cod Area.

    PTV, the local public access channel, is collaborating with the Provincetown Independent, the Provincetown Banner, and WOMR-FM radio station to bring you this forum.

    Reporters will write questions, and the public is also invited to submit questions for the candidates. Check back here next week to find the meeting link for the event and a way to submit questions.

    Sandberg is on the PTV Board of Directors and King is a volunteer on WOMR, so those two organizations will not take part in gathering or developing questions from journalists or the public. —K.C. Myers

    PROVINCETOWN ELECTION

    3 Vie for 1 Spot on P’town Select Board

    Sandberg and Conklin Will Challenge King

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Select board member Lise King, 56, will have two challengers in the May 11 annual town election. Leslie Sandberg, 58, a partner in the communications firm Rose, Sandberg & Associates, and Oriana Conklin, 30, a manager at Local 186 restaurant and Enzo guesthouse, are also on the ballot. Nomination petitions were due by Tuesday, March 23.

    Lise King

    In most years there are two seats up for election on the five-member select board, but in every third year there is only one on the ballot. King was first elected to that seat in 2018 and is now seeking her second three-year term.

    Leslie Sandberg

    Sandberg has worked as a communications director or publicist for the Minnesota Attorney General’s office, for state Sen. Julian Cyr, for the Provincetown Public Pier Corp., and currently has a contract to do communications work for the Provincetown Health Dept. and for the town of Eastham.

    Conklin serves on the Provincetown Conservation Commission and has worked in Provincetown restaurants since she was 14. She graduated from Emmanuel College in Boston.

    Oriana Conklin

    King’s career includes founding and running the Native Voice newspaper in South Dakota, documentary filmmaking in New England, and earning a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard. On the select board, she spearheaded the creation of an economic stabilization and sustainability committee.

    The three women have seven weeks to campaign for votes.

    No challengers filed for the other races on this year’s town ballot. Mary Jo Avellar is running for re-election as town moderator, Ann Wood is running for re-election to the housing authority, and both Eva Enos and Ngina Lythcott are running for re-election to the school committee. Julia Perry is running for an open seat on the charter compliance commission. —Paul Benson

    This Week In Provincetown

    Meetings Ahead

    By

    Meetings are held remotely. Go to provincetown-ma.gov and click on the meeting you want to watch.

    Thursday, Feb. 18

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

    Monday, Feb. 22

    • Community Preservation Committee, 1 p.m.

    Tuesday, Feb. 23

    • Licensing Board, 5:15 p.m.

    Thursday, Feb. 25

    • Planning Board, 6 p.m.

    Conversation Starters

    Nomination Papers Await Candidates

    If you want to make changes in your community, now is the time to take out nomination papers to run for office in the May 11 town election.

    As of Feb. 16, no one had taken out papers, although they have been available since Feb. 8, said Emmett Catanese, the town clerk.

    Lise King’s term will be up this May, so one select board seat will be on the ballot.

    Moderator Mary-Jo Avellar’s three-year term also expires this year.

    Both Ngina Lythcott and Eva Enos, the chair, have expiring terms on the school committee.

    Two positions, held by Stephen Borkowski and Laurel Guadazno, are open on the board of library trustees. And one position on the housing authority, Ann Woods’s, is up for election.

    Finally, there will be seats up for grabs on the charter compliance commission, one seat that is vacant now and Julia Perry’s, whose term ends this May.

    It’s unknown which incumbents are planning to run again.

    The last day to take out nomination papers is March 19, by noon, and they must be returned to the town clerk by 5 p.m. on April 6.

    Due to the pandemic, candidates have to call Catanese at 508-487-7013 to arrange to meet a staff member outside town hall to pick up the papers in person, since legally they cannot be sent electronically, Catanese said.

    Fixing Court St. Flooding

    One of the capital projects proposed in next year’s town budget is a fix of the decades-old flooding problem on Court Street.

    Storms in the last three years have left puddles up to a foot deep in the low-lying area in front of 45 Court Street, according to a report by Environmental Partners that was presented to the select board on Feb. 8.

    The fix would involve building pump stations to remove the water from the area to a large wetland area around Duck Pond, across from Shank Painter Road and Route 6, said Rich Waldo, the DPW director.

    This could correct a longstanding issue. But would the taxpayers be willing to pay the $3 million estimated cost? Select Board Chair David Abramson said residents he has spoken with don’t think it’s a priority now.

    “Yes, but this is something that has plagued the town for a while,” Waldo said. “We get a lot of complaints about it.”

    —K.C. Myers

    This Week In Provincetown

    Meetings Ahead

    By

    Meetings are held remotely. Go to provincetown-ma.gov and click on the meeting you want to watch.

    Thursday, Feb. 11

    • Other Post-Employment Benefits meeting, 2:30 p.m.
    • Planning Board, 6 p.m.
    • Public Pier Corp., 3 p.m.

    Tuesday, Feb. 16

    • Finance Committee, 5 p.m.

    Wednesday, Feb. 17

    • Historic District Commission, 4 p.m.

    Thursday, Feb. 18

    • Zoning Board of Appeals, 6 p.m.

    Conversation Starters 

    Covid-19 Update

    As of Feb. 8, there were two active cases of Covid-19 in Provincetown, which has recorded 79 total cases and one death from the virus, according to the town.

    Police Station Redux

    Provincetown still needs a new police station, and the select board found out on Feb. 8 that the new price tag is $14.4 million. That’s up from the $12.5 million plan that lost by nine votes at a 2019 town meeting, said Interim Town Manager Charlie Sumner.

    The select board members who support construction of a new station strategized on how to sell the project to the public. Sumner recommended that they stick with the 2019 plan and location, at 16 Jerome Smith Road across from the former VFW building.

    Chair David Abramson said the board needs to campaign for the project. Member Louise Venden said it would be worth hiring a public relations firm to help.

    Sumner recommended hiring an architect to bring design and construction documents up to date. Fransburgh, the architects of the current design, could do it for $103,800 in four phases, but Sumner recommended the town hire them for one phase at a time, in the event momentum stalls.

    A Complaint

    Everyone on a board or committee appointed by the select board or town manager will soon receive a copy of a draft code of conduct for review.

    The code spells out how to behave generally as a board member and particularly on social media. It has been vetted by the town’s attorney. It instructs all committee members to avoid “rude or unprofessional commentary, whether in person, in a public setting, or online.”

    The code won’t necessarily end the battle between Lise King, Louise Venden, and finance committee member Mark Hatch. Hatch is accused of rude behavior on Facebook. But the finance committee is appointed by the moderator and thus not subject to the code of conduct.

    In a related matter, Mark Del Franco, who recently resigned from the finance committee, has filed an Open Meeting Law complaint against the select board, which they discussed in executive session on Feb. 8. Del Franco, who did not return calls seeking comment, was publicly accused of muttering a vulgarity while defending Hatch at a select board meeting. It turned out to be John Golden of the select board, who said he was swearing in reaction to a technology glitch.

    Horror Story Filming Delay

    The 20th Century Fox film crew and cast of American Horror Story is not yet haunting the streets of Provincetown due to “internal” delays, said Interim Town Manager Charlie Sumner.

    The town is still finalizing a location agreement with the studio. Filming was supposed to begin in February and end in March. While that timeline has been pushed back, the producers and the town are close to setting firm dates and details. The project is still on, Sumner said.

    —K.C. Myers

    New Interim Directors

    The board of the Fine Arts Work Center announced on Feb. 5 that Margaret Murphy had been appointed interim executive director, effective March 1. The current executive director, Richard MacMillan, had announced last August that he would step down by June 2021, after a tenure marked by charges of systemic racism and cancelations of programs and fellowships due to the pandemic.

    Meanwhile, a search committee, which has hired Arts Consulting Group of Boston, is hoping that a permanent executive director will be in place by May 1. MacMillan has volunteered to stay on as an adviser to “sustain fundraising momentum,” the board’s announcement stated.

    Murphy served as executive director of FAWC from 2007 to 2012 and as president of the board from 2017 to 2019.

    The changes at FAWC come less than two weeks after Blythe Frank, a film producer, announced that she had joined the Provincetown Film Society as interim executive director. The position had been vacant since last spring, after the organization’s staff, including then-CEO Rachael Brister, had been let go by the board due to the Covid lockdown and financial strains.

    Since then, staff members have returned, though the Waters Edge Cinema, owned and operated by the film society, has not re-opened and has been offering films virtually. The film society’s other divisions, the Provincetown International Film Festival (set for June 16-25, 2021) and the Gabrielle A. Hanna Provincetown Film Institute (with its Women’s Media Summit expected in late March), have gone virtual as well.

    —Howard Karren

    This Week In Provincetown

    Meetings Ahead

    By

    Meetings are held remotely. Go to provincetown-ma.gov and click on the meeting you want to watch.

    Thursday, Dec. 17

    • Public Pier Corp., 4 p.m.
    • Zoning Board of Appeals, 6 p.m.

    Conversation Starters 

    Covid-19 Update

    As of Dec. 15, Provincetown had three active cases of Covid-19, 39 cases considered recovered, and one death.

    Vouchers for Babysitting

    The select board on Dec. 14 agreed to spend $50,000 on vouchers to reimburse parents for child care expenses. The parents must be eligible for the Provincetown Schools early education toddler program, which has been closed due to Covid-19 since March.

    Parents will have to show proof of payment to be reimbursed. But unlike earlier versions of the voucher plan, the money may be used to reimburse parents for any child care, not simply for payments to licensed child-care facilities.

    Acting Town Manager Charlie Sumner said the voucher program was originally conceived at the beginning of the pandemic as a way to help parents when care centers were shuttered. Now, he said, some centers are open, but many with reduced capacity, so expanding the program to babysitters honors the original concept.

    The school has identified 14 children between 18 months and three years who are eligible for the vouchers. Though most of Provincetown’s birth-to-kindergarten early education program is operating, toddlers are not allowed back because they are said to be unable to reliably wear masks or stay socially distanced.

    The vouchers are available regardless of family income. Since it is a small community, schools administrators will reach out directly to the eligible families, Sumner said.

    Long Road to ‘Kinder and Gentler’

    It didn’t seem to matter much that vice chair John Golden of the select board admitted to cursing at the board’s meeting on Nov. 23. Though he apologized for uttering the F-word under his breath in frustration over an alarm going off on his phone, eight speakers (seven women and one man) still dominated the public comment period on Dec. 14, complaining of a culture in Provincetown where women are “shut out” and told to “shut up,” as one woman identifying herself as Michelle said.

    Many people erroneously thought that finance committee member Mark Del Franco had used two curse words (one a vulgar term used against women). Select board member Lise King said it really was Golden, and she thanked him for his apology. But “a case of mistaken identity” is not surprising because the finance committee has a history of distasteful behavior, she said.

    The board’s Louise Venden and Golden both acknowledged that there is a problem that must be addressed.

    “I agree with Louise,” said Golden. “We really need to work together as a whole to make this a kinder and gentler place and it’s going to take some work. We have a long road ahead of us.”

    The board stopped short of attempting to censure or do anything else about the alleged bad behavior by the finance committee chair, Mark Hatch. Hatch has said he has stopped posting on social media, though he reserves his right as a private citizen to do so.

    —K.C. Myers

     

    This Week In Provincetown

    Meetings Ahead

    By

    Meetings are held remotely. Go to provincetown-ma.gov and click on the meeting you want to watch.

    Thursday, Dec. 3

    • Public Pier Corp., 2 p.m.
    • Zoning Board of Appeals, 6 p.m.

    Tuesday, Dec. 8

    • Licensing Board, 5:15 p.m.

    Thursday, Dec. 10

    • OPEB (Other Post-Employment Benefits) Meeting, 10:30 a.m.

    Conversation Starters

    Covid-19 Update

    As of Dec. 1, Provincetown had zero active cases of Covid-19, 37 cases considered recovered, and one death.

    Looking for Mr. or Ms. Right

    There are already 65 applications for the job of town manager and the search committee hopes to rope in that special someone in January.

    This time around — having had the previous town manager, Robin Craver, stay for only six months — the search committee is looking for “nontraditional” candidates, said Rick Murray, the committee chair.

    There may be someone who has a skill set that will work in Provincetown, and those talents may be found in people who haven’t spent decades leading other municipal governments.

    Murray said Provincetown is a small but sophisticated community with a heavy tourism economy and that is not exactly typical of many other places.

    On Dec. 14, the search committee will bring a list of prepared questions to the select board for a review.

    “We’re trying to formulate questions that will allow us to see if it’s a proper fit,” Murray said. “We want to be specific to get rid of throwaway questions. We need questions that get to know their personality and skill set.”

    ‘Only the F-Bomb’

    Select board member John Golden issued a written apology on Dec. 1 for cursing during a select board meeting on Nov. 23.

    The apology was sent out to rebut accusations on social media that blamed Mark Del Franco, a member of the finance committee, for calling previous speakers a vulgarity directed against women.

    Golden said he swore “under his breath” in frustration because he was having trouble turning off his alarm, which he had set to limit speakers’ time. Golden was the acting chair at the meeting in the absence of Dave Abramson.

    Del Franco had just finished defending finance committee chair Mark Hatch against critics Laura Rood and Patricia Miller. They said Hatch is a cyber bully and a liability threat to the town. Then Golden’s timer went off.

    Golden’s utterance caused some people to hear two nasty words. Social media blew up with the accusation that Del Franco had insulted the women.

    “What is factual is that I uttered the F-bomb and only the F-bomb during the meeting,” Golden wrote to the press and on social media. “I hope that my apology will set the record straight.”

    —K.C. Myers

    © 2024 The Provincetown Independent, all rights reserved.

    terms of service