WELLFLEET — In his “State of the Town” talk on March 6, Town Administrator Tom Guerino said that efforts to right the town’s finances, begun three years before he arrived in 2024, were now producing results.
Now, Guerino said, “the town is in very stable shape.” He paused to emphasize each word.
Guerino is Wellfleet’s sixth town administrator since 2020. During those turbulent years, the town had to rely on borrowing and Proposition 2½ overrides to balance the budget. Wellfleet’s bond rating was downgraded in 2023 to AA+. Until that year, the state had not certified the town’s “free cash” — unspent funds from the previous fiscal year — since 2018. A scathing 2023 report from the state Dept. of Revenue criticized the town’s inaccurate and inconsistent bookkeeping.
Guerino told the audience that recovery from those woes would take another three or four years and that he has “a plan of attack on the big issues that are facing the town.”
His presentation, made at an event organized by the nonprofit Wellfleet Community Forum, took place at the Adult Community Center and drew about 50 people in person and 70 more online. It was Guerino’s first “State of the Town”; he was hired as interim administrator in February 2024 and offered a three-year contract in April.
Guerino presented an operating budget of $32,451,871 for fiscal 2026 — a 3.42-percent increase over last year, with an 11-percent decrease in the town’s debt payments. “The budget is fully funded,” Guerino said, meaning that an operating override would not be needed this year.
As of March 10, Guerino projected the total capital budget at $3,115,250, notwithstanding additional transfers from free cash and reserved funds. The town’s stabilization fund — its “rainy day” emergency fund — would increase to $1,223,796.
At last week’s presentation, Guerino thought a debt exclusion or override would be needed for the capital budget. On Monday, however, at a finance committee public hearing, he said the town “might be able to get through the whole shebang without any override.” That will depend on the state’s certification of free cash as well as a final comb-through of individual line items and department budgets, which he said would take place by the end of the week.
One reason for Guerino’s positive outlook was the town staff, who he said was working together very well, despite the fact that most department heads, including fire, health, marina, and planning, are new to Wellfleet. The administration office is still short one staffer, and the building inspector’s position has not yet been filled. With the new budget, the town clerk’s office would add three extra hours to the collective staff schedule, he said.
Guerino was upbeat about the town’s progress on affordable housing at Maurice’s Campground and 95 Lawrence Road. “Finances at the marina are being sorted,” he said. “Ice dispenser, we’re working on. The WiFi project on the beach is 75 percent complete,” he said, referring to a 2024 plan to wire fiber-optic cables to Wellfleet’s public beaches. Three of the town’s four ocean beaches now have WiFi, he said.
At a March 3 workshop, the select board removed some larger items from the town’s capital budget, including $360,000 in subsidies to homeowners installing septic upgrades to comply with the board of health’s updated regulations and $250,000 in dredging fees. The dredging fees were moved to the following year’s budget, and the septic upgrade item was moved to a separate warrant article to qualify for loan subsidies from the Cape Cod and Islands Water Protection Fund.
Among the expenses remaining in the capital budget are a replacement ambulance, two police cruisers, and $225,000 for developing Maurice’s Campground.
After Guerino’s talk, more than a dozen residents spoke in a spirited question-and-answer session. Applause followed several pointed questions about the select board’s delay in submitting a targeted watershed management plan to the state.
“The downtown is dying nine months of the year,” said John Cumbler — and a central reason was that “it’s not sewered.” Cumbler, a member of the conservation commission, said he has been active in watershed and wastewater planning for two decades. “I’m concerned that ‘getting it right’ becomes a cliché for getting it later,” he said.
Guerino said he and other municipal leaders were following developments in Washington and Boston regarding federal and state funding. Other factors, like tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico, could affect the town as well, he said. He said a 25-percent tariff would mean the town could build only three new lifeguard stands rather than the planned four because aluminum for the stands comes from Canada.
“There are some issues confronting us that are going to be difficult,” Guerino said. “Maybe some raised voices as we go through the process of making the sausage. But overall, we’re going to come out of this on the other side.”
