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Ryan Curley

    WELLFLEET TOWN ELECTION

    Curley Is Reelected to Select Board

    By

    WELLFLEET — Select board incumbent Ryan Curley defeated challenger Jeanne Maclaughlan at the May 1 town election. And on May 2 the board asked Curley to serve another year as its chair.

    “I’m honored,” Curley said, “and I look forward to serving the town for three more years.”

    According to unofficial results, 891 voters submitted ballots in this year’s election. Curley received 532 votes; Maclaughlan got 298.

    Curley said that he will continue working to address what he sees as the town’s two main challenges: housing and wastewater. And although he is disappointed with the defeat of a housing specialist position on this year’s ballot, the quest to create that role isn’t over, he said.

    “We are going to reassess and try to figure out how to do it differently,” Curley said. “Housing is extremely complicated. We need someone who is capable of advancing our efforts while supporting the programs we already have in place.”

    He noted that a wastewater superintendent position that voters approved this year at both town meeting and the ballot had failed in past years.

    Overall, Curley said, he is happy with the results of town meeting. “The voters put the town in a much better place in a lot of different areas, including housing,” he said.

    He pointed to the approval of an $850,000 debt exclusion that will fund the extension of a water main from Eastham to Maurice’s Campground, which the town purchased last fall to develop into an affordable housing site. “It would have cost the town a lot more money in the future if it had been delayed,” Curley said.

    Maclaughlan did not respond to a request for comment.

    In the only other contested race, Charles “Skip” Annett bested Richard Davis for a two-year term on the cemetery commission. Annett received 328 votes; Davis received 265.

    Dan Silverman will serve another one-year term as moderator. Laura Baghetti and Martha Gordon will stay on the elementary school committee for another three years. Andrew Freeman and Robin Robinson will serve again in three-year terms as library trustees. Nancy Vail will serve another three-year term on the cemetery commission, and Chris Easley will stay on the Nauset Regional School Committee for another three years.

    WELLFLEET ELECTION

    Select Board Incumbent Curley: ‘There’s More Work to Be Done’

    The 39-year-old chair says housing and finances are top priorities

    By

    WELLFLEET — Select board chair Ryan Curley wants to finish what he started. At the annual town election on May 1, Curley will face former Wellfleet Principal Clerk Jeanne Maclauchlan, a newcomer running for the one seat on the board to be filled this year.

    Wellfleet Select Board chair Ryan Curley is seeking another term this May. (Photo courtesy Ryan Curley)

    Curley has been on the board since 2020 and has served as chair for two of those three years. A native of Wellfleet, Curley comes from a long line of civic leaders: his grandmother, Cynthia Paine, was on the select board in the 1990s, and his grandfather, Bob Paine, served on various panels including the board of health.

    The challenges the town faces now are different from the ones his forebears took on, the 39-year-old incumbent told the Independent — the most important one, Curley said, being the Outer Cape’s housing crisis.

    “Housing is really undermining everything else we’ve been working on,” he said. With a total subsidized housing inventory of 2.58 percent, Wellfleet is far behind the 10 percent goal the state has established.

    Curley said he has worked hard to ameliorate the town’s housing crisis during his tenure on the board. He names zoning bylaws he proposed, including one to allow undersized lots to be used for affordable housing and another to allow cottage colonies to be occupied on a year-round basis as two steps forward.

    The town’s $6.5-million purchase of Maurice’s Campground last September, to be used for affordable housing, was, he said, “the biggest thing for me and what I’m most proud of.”

    But there’s more to do. “We need to continue to be aggressive on housing,” Curley said. “Programs we have in place now we struggle to monitor, and we need to preserve the housing stock we do have, or else the hole will keep getting bigger.”

    Curley worked to get several articles on this year’s warrant to tackle these issues. Article 17 would establish the new position of housing and Community Preservation Act specialist charged with overseeing housing programs and opportunities.

    One home rule petition on the warrant asks the legislature to allow the town to develop a voluntary year-round deed restriction program. That would enable the town to purchase deed restrictions from homeowners to permanently require the property to be occupied year-round. Another petition would expand the residential tax exemption to owners who rent out their properties year-round.

    Curley also worked to include a nonbinding article on the warrant that would raise the residential tax exemption from 25 to 30 percent for year-round residents. The vote on that article will be advisory, as the select board has final authority.

    Also on the warrant is a $635,000 Proposition 2½ override to fund the operating budget.

    “We had hoped that it would be a number of years before we would have to have another general override,” Curley said. But it was inevitable after the Nauset Regional School District came in with a budget increase of over 7 percent, he said. “Then we have collective bargaining agreements in place, insurance going up by 10 percent, and additional help needed in terms of accounting.”

    That accounting help, he said, is what Wellfleet needs to ensure financial mismanagement “doesn’t keep happening.”

    For Curley, the Dept. of Revenue’s recommendation to restructure staffing was the most important takeaway from the state’s financial management report. “For some departments, we should be looking at regionalizing to reduce the cost for the taxpayer and to increase resiliency,” Curley said.

    He said that his record on the town’s financial crisis “speaks for itself.” He has asked for increased oversight and helped write financial management policies for the town that included replacing the town’s auditor every three years, he said, adding, “We still have a long way to go.”

    Curley is currently enrolled at Suffolk University, working on a master’s in public administration. He’s grateful for all he learned from his family about civics.

    “I have a firm perspective on how things are done because, even from a young age, I was exposed to it,” he said.

    The annual town election will take place on Monday, May 1 from noon to 7 p.m. at the Adult Community Center, 715 Old King’s Highway.

    TOWN MEETING

    Wellfleet Adopts $24.9M Budget, OKs All Overrides

    Town service cuts are avoided, but spending must still pass at election

    By

    WELLFLEET — Town meeting voters approved nearly all of the 54 articles on the warrant on Saturday, including a $24.9-million operating budget, a $1.1-million capital budget, a $2.2-million sprinkler system for the elementary school, and $400,000 in Proposition 2½ overrides for two new police officers and two firefighters or EMTs.

    While the four overrides and one debt exclusion (for the sprinklers) passed by two-thirds majority votes at the meeting, they will need to be affirmed at a special election on Tuesday, June 21. If all are approved, property taxes on a house of median value ($619,000) would rise by $546, said former interim Town Administrator Charlie Sumner.

    At Saturday’s Wellfleet town meeting, left to right, former interim Town Administrator Charlie Sumner, Town Counsel Carolyn Murray, new Town Administrator Rich Waldo, and select board member John Wolf. (Photo by Michaela Chesin)

    Select board chair Ryan Curley asserted that an increase in the residential tax exemption from 20 to 25 percent would “offset most of the tax increase” for year-round residents, although his analysis appeared to be faulty. For the owner of a median-value house, the increased residential exemption would save about $240, not the $408 Curley mentioned.

    The meeting drew 266 voters to the ballfield across from the Wellfleet Elementary School.

    Select board members and town staff urged voters to pass the operating override to avoid cuts to various town services, including recreation, child-care vouchers, library staff and operating hours, and amnesty day at the transfer station.

    The 2.4-percent increase from the previous fiscal year will ensure that the budget is level-funded, Sumner said, without needing to depend on debt exclusions or using other one-time revenue streams, local receipts, and reserves, like draining the ambulance fund each year, as was done in the past. Sumner had already resumed his retirement, but attended the meeting with new Town Administrator Richard Waldo, who started on May 31.

    “The last time we had an operating override was over 15 years ago,” select board member Mike DeVasto said. Silverman confirmed that the last operating override was at the 2005 Annual Town Meeting, for $400,000.

    “I can’t express how excited I am to put that chapter in the rearview mirror,” said DeVasto of the town’s extended financial debacle. “I can confidently say that we are in a better place than we were prior to the accounting crisis.”

    Select board member John Wolf said that the town also faces “a credibility gap,” which must be addressed by the new town administrator and finance department staff.

    Wolf warned against taking a punitive stance toward “the outright incompetence that has taken place in the past.” But he questioned DeVasto’s rearview mirror metaphor, saying that “a good helmsman is aware of what’s going on in the back as well as what’s coming up ahead.”

    The biggest item on the warrant was the $2.2-million fire suppression system at Wellfleet Elementary School. Steven Kopits asked if the expensive system was “absolutely necessary.” Fire Chief Rich Pauley replied that the town was violating state law and that fire marshals could close the school building down.

    “Should there be a fire, the cost of sprinklers would be modest in comparison to the town’s liability,” Wolf commented.

    Supplemental funding of $334,500 for a fuel storage tank at the marina was approved. The new tank would be underground in the same location as the old tank, according to Harbormaster Will Sullivan.

    Police Chief Michael Hurley and Fire Chief Pauley urged voters to approve increases in their departments without further delay. The need has been present for several years, they said, but funding was put off due to the town’s financial disarray.

    Voters approved Article 46, placing a community impact fee of 3 percent on “professionally managed” short-term rentals. Article 47, also adopted, expands the provision to include owner-occupied properties.

    The money collected from the impact fees will be placed in two stabilization funds established by the town meeting: 35 percent of the funds will go into an affordable housing stabilization fund, aimed at providing housing for those earning less than 80 percent of area median income (AMI). The remaining 65 percent will go to a mixed-income housing stabilization fund, to benefit those who make more than 80 percent of AMI but still struggle to afford housing in town.

    Other articles approved at the meeting included authorization of an easement for the Herring River Restoration Project and a nonbinding resolution asking the select board to draft a tree preservation bylaw.

    The 54-article warrant was dispatched in just over four hours, a significant improvement over last year’s annual town meeting, which took six and a half hours.

     

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