TRURO — Last weekend’s town meeting marathon saw overwhelming support for multi-pronged efforts to build affordable housing. But when it came to plans to upgrade a dept. of public works facility, voters wanted almost none of it.
town meeting
WELLFLEET TOWN MEETING PREVIEW
For Once, a Town Meeting With No Override Votes
An abundance of free cash helped smooth out this year’s town budget
WELLFLEET — Voters whose thumbs are sore from opening their wallets will find relief at this year’s annual town meeting, scheduled for May 20 at 6 p.m. at the Wellfleet Elementary School.
The 35-article warrant contains no Proposition 2½ overrides or debt exclusion votes — a major departure from recent town meetings, which have relied on property tax increases to fund the budget after accounting problems left the town without any certified free cash from 2019 to 2023.
For the second year in a row, free cash was certified at $4.5 million, according to interim Town Administrator Tom Guerino. (Guerino is currently in discussions with the select board to finalize a three-year contract to become the town’s permanent administrator.)
Two large financial requests — a $4.5-million debt exclusion to pay for a dredging permit and an override to fund a finance director position — were also removed from the warrant after the town meeting was delayed by a month because of the departure of key town staff in February. The delay meant the override requests would have appeared on the ballot at the annual election on April 29 before they could be presented on town meeting floor, a sequence that the select board did not find advantageous.
But the hiatus in override votes is not likely to last long. At its April 26 meeting, the select board voted to schedule a special town meeting on June 17 and an election the next day to see if the town will authorize the purchase of the Gestalt International Study Center for municipal offices (see story on page A8).
As for the other two overrides, select board chair Barbara Carboni told the Independent that “there has been no discussion” about putting either the dredging permit fee or the finance director articles on the upcoming special town meeting warrant.
Financial Articles
Article 1 on the May 20 warrant funds the operating budget for fiscal 2025. This year, town hall relied on the help of Eastham Finance Director Rich Bienvenue (at a contracted rate of $150 per hour) to help develop the budget.
The $31.3-million budget is up 7 percent from last year. Roughly half of the $2.6-million capital budget will be funded through this year’s free cash.
Big ticket items include $350,000 for an HVAC upgrade at the fire dept., $250,000 for beach restoration planning, and $250,000 for wastewater planning.
Voters will also be asked to sign off on $55,000 to fund the town’s part of an expansion of Wi-Fi service to Cahoon Hollow, White Crest, and Lecount Hollow beaches — a public safety measure for beaches with sharks and no cell phone service, according to proponents.
The town’s capital stabilization fund will receive a $442,500 infusion of free cash, and another $400,000 will go to the general stabilization fund, which was drained at 2021 town meeting to fund that year’s operating budget. Another $500,000 of free cash will go to the Affordable Housing Trust.
A further $1.66 million in free cash will roll over into next year’s free cash tally. (Last year, the town left $2.6 million in free cash unspent, which contributed to this year’s $4.5 million total, Guerino confirmed.)
Article 9 would increase the maximum property tax reduction allowed under the town’s senior workoff abatement program from $750 per qualifying recipient to $2,000.
Article 10 would establish a spending limit of $76,000 for the shellfish revolving fund, which was set up to fund shellfish dept. propagation efforts, including the seeding of quahogs and oysters. The fund is replenished with shellfish grant revenues and permit fees.
Article 11 would establish a sewer enterprise fund for fiscal 2025, which according to the warrant article would allow the town to be competitive in grant applications as it moves forward with its wastewater plans.
Community Preservation Act
There are eleven Community Preservation Act (CPA) articles on this year’s consent agenda, totaling $1.5 million to be used for affordable housing, outdoor recreation, open space, and historic preservation.
Four housing-related articles include $750,000 for the Wellfleet Affordable Housing Trust, $175,000 to aid in the construction of four Habitat for Humanity homes on Old King’s Highway (to “defray unforeseen costs” after the project was steeped in a decade of lawsuits), and $7,500 for the Community Development Partnership’s Lower Cape Housing Institute, which offers education and technical assistance to town officials.
Article 18 would allot $20,000 toward a 45-unit affordable housing complex in Brewster being developed by Preservation of Affordable Housing and the Housing Assistance Corporation.
Two conservation projects include the establishment of a land conservation fund intended for the purchase of open space, maintenance projects, and creation of trails. The conservation commission requested $150,000 in CPA money to establish the new fund.
Another $25,000 would fund the removal of a dilapidated structure at 360 Blue Heron Road. The property is in a sensitive lowland marsh and was donated to the town for conservation, but the structure must be removed first, according to the explanation of Article 19.
Article 22 would allocate $200,000 to help the Cape Cod Modern House Trust purchase and restore the home of renowned Bauhaus architect and artist Marcel Breuer. The house would be the first property the trust owns outright — other architecturally significant houses in Wellfleet are leased from the National Park Service.
Petitioned Articles
Article 27 would establish a scholarship program to help eligible Nauset High School graduates from Wellfleet with the cost of college. Financial need would be assessed through a standardized federal financial aid form, and the scholarship could be renewed annually if the student maintained good grades.
The article requests $100,000 but does not specify a funding source. The select board voted unanimously not to recommend the article.
Carboni told the Independent that “there are a number of local private organizations that offer scholarships for which Wellfleet students would be eligible. Given the many budget demands on Wellfleet taxpayers, it does not seem appropriate or the right time to ask them to fund this.”
Petitioned Article 28 calls for “an enduring ceasefire” in Gaza. According to its proponents, similar resolutions have been voted in Somerville, Cambridge, Medford, Northampton, Amherst, Melrose, Greenfield, and Easthampton.
A copy of the petition, if approved, will be sent to members of Wellfleet’s Congressional delegation and to President Joe Biden. The select board voted to endorse the measure, with chair Carboni voting to abstain.
Petitioned Article 29 supports a state bill, “Medicare for All in Massachusetts,” which would create a single-payer health care system for Mass. residents. According to the warrant article, Wellfleet spends 13 percent of its payroll on employee and retiree health insurance, so passage of the legislation would save the town over $500,000 annually.
The bill is currently in the hands of the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, which last held a hearing on it in November 2023.
Finally, Article 30 is a home-rule petition asking the state legislature to let the town regulate the use of toxic pesticides on public and private property. It would not limit the sale of pesticides but would allow the town to levy fines for the use of pesticides not on the town’s allowed materials list. Eastham adopted a similar petition at its town meeting on May 4.
EASTHAM TOWN MEETING
Voters OK 2 Overrides, Short-Term Rental Rules
Hiring 2 new police officers and specialized energy code are approved
EASTHAM — Town meeting voters overwhelmingly approved a $44.2-million fiscal 2025 operating budget with a $1-million Proposition 2½ override on Saturday, May 4. By an even larger margin, they endorsed a second override for $300,000 to hire two additional police officers. The budget was adopted on a 235 to 56 vote; the added police positions passed by a vote of 277 to 25.
The two overrides will also have to be approved in ballot questions at the annual town election on Tuesday, May 21.
All the articles on the warrant won approval with no particularly close votes. The longest discussions were about adopting a specialized energy code for new construction, which was approved with 68 percent in favor; imposing limits on short-term rentals, which won approval by 85 percent of those voting; and allocating $447,200 in community preservation funds for reconstruction of the Old Schoolhouse Museum, on which 75 percent voted yes.
All 27 warrant articles were dispensed with in about three and a half hours. At 1:25 p.m., as voters were punching their clickers in the final vote of the day, Town Moderator Scott Kerry quipped, “In Truro right now they’re serving lunch.” (Eastham is the only Outer Cape town that uses an electronic voting system at town meeting.)
Budget Questions
Not everyone was happy with the operating budget, which is up 14 percent over last year. “We have a lot of elderly living in this town,” said Brian Voke. “This budget does not work for people on fixed incomes. It’s going to drive them to leave town.”
Ian Drake took exception to a statement in the report of the finance committee, which wrote, “Although the overall tax burden for the median valued home is estimated to increase by $701 to $5,642, this still maintains Eastham taxpayers’ position among the lowest on Cape Cod and well within the bottom half in Massachusetts.”
“Saying we’re in the bottom half in Massachusetts is like saying we’re the skinniest pig in the butcher’s pen,” said Drake. “We’re all getting slaughtered.”
Gayle Ashton questioned the finance committee’s attribution of some of the budget increase to rising interest rates on long-term debt. “I thought big debts have fixed rates,” she said.
“Will we see the same kind of increase next year?” asked Mike Smith. “It seems like bait and switch.”
Finance Director Rich Bienvenue said that long-term bonds are not issued at the beginning of a project but only as the expense is incurred. “These aren’t new projects,” he said of the newly incurred debt, “but previously approved ones that we’re seeing the effect of now. We weren’t going to ask for the money before it was needed. Our debt is fixed and scheduled out over the next 30 years. This year and next are the peak. We do expect it to drop off after that.”
Nancy Benben noted that a breakdown in communication with Nauset Regional School District officials had been cited as a reason for a budget gap that wasn’t discovered until late in the process. “How is lack of communication with the school administration being addressed?” she asked.
Bienvenue acknowledged that there had been a problem, as reported in the Independent, and said, “We have spoken with the superintendent and feel we will have good communication going forward.” Members of the town’s finance committee have started attending school budget hearings, he added.
Ellen Sicinski asked how much of the cost of the schools was related to educating children from outside the four Nauset district towns. “Why are we not pushing for Truro and Provincetown to be forced into the Nauset regional system?” she asked.
“There’s no way to force other towns to participate,” Bienvenue replied. “We negotiate tuition agreements with Provincetown and Truro that pay substantial amounts for each student.” As for students who come from other towns outside the district under the school choice program, he said that factor does not have an effect on the town’s operating budget.
Police Staffing
Select board member Jamie Demetri said that adding two positions would enable the police dept. to add an officer to each shift and be able to respond to two emergencies simultaneously. “There has been no increase in staffing for 30 years,” she said. “You know how much our little town has changed.”
Brian Voke again objected. “In another year, it probably would be entirely appropriate,” he said. “This should be postponed.”
“Part of the reason it’s on this year is my fault,” said Town Manager Jacqui Beebe. “The chief has been asking for this for five years. Every year I have said, ‘Not this year.’ This is not an extra. If we continue to put this off, it will put our officers and residents at risk.”
Several residents came to the microphones to support the article.
“We have one of the most respectful, hard-working police departments I’ve seen,” said Jennifer Cusack. “We’ve all seen the increase in traffic coming through our town and the number of accidents the officers have had to respond to.”
“Eastham is a remarkably civil community,” said David Sutherland. “But in general, society is getting more divisive and polarized. We are hearing more public figures advocating violence. We can’t count on Eastham staying as a bubble. And we have increasing threats from climate change. The police would play a critical role in responding to them.”
Moderator Kerry’s announcement of the lopsided vote on the police article was greeted with applause.
Short-Term Rental Rules
Voters adopted a bylaw limiting short-term rental certificates to two per property owner, modeled on similar bylaws voted in by Provincetown and Tisbury and approved by the state attorney general. Current holders of more than two certificates would not be affected until their properties are transferred or the certificates are not renewed. Cottage colonies would not be affected, said the select board’s Demetri.
“This will reduce the conversion of year-round housing to short-term rentals,” she said. “We need residents who live here, work here, and have families here.”
Karl Hartmann asked, “What is the experience of other towns that have enacted this type of law?” He also questioned why partnerships were not listed among the types of entities covered by the bylaw. “Post-registration distribution can change. If I have an LLC, I can bring in more people later. I’m a law professor,” he added.
“I’m sure attorneys can find ways to work around any regulation we adopt,” said Beebe. “What we’re trying to do is reduce the proliferation of residential units for business use. We don’t know the effect. It’s too early.” She added that there was no particular reason why partnerships were left out of the wording.
Carol St. Aubin said that she owns cottage colonies that were built by her parents. “I have told my children, ‘Someday this will all be yours.’ You’re telling me that I can’t do that.”
“We’re not trying to hurt anyone who is currently renting,” Beebe responded. “We’re just trying to prevent the purchase of property in the future for rental purposes. Cottage colonies are exempt. There’s nothing to prohibit anyone from inheriting property. I’m sure the law professor can help you out.”
“Is this really going to make a difference?” asked Ellen Sicinski. “Do you have statistics on corporate ownership?”
“We have a handful now,” said Beebe. “If we don’t pass this, we will become like Nantucket. This is one arrow in our quiver. We are desperate, trying to use every tool we have to fight the crisis. If you go on Airbnb, you will see this happening. Year-round rental units in Eastham went from 400 to less than 100. That’s the problem.”
“If I owned five houses, I would be very upset by this,” Sicinski said. “This is Big Brother overreach.”
Mary Nee, chair of the Eastham Zoning Task Force, came to the microphone. “The task force recognizes the long tradition of ownership of seasonal properties to generate income,” she said. “Over the past decade we have experienced a dramatic rise in part-time residences, now approaching 60 percent of the total. Of even greater concern is the emergence of investment firms targeting tourist-area real estate and bundling these properties into financial instruments.
“Great Barrington has had this almost identical bylaw for several years,” Nee added, “and they believe it has been effective.”
“In the 63 years I’ve lived in Eastham, I’ve watched entire neighborhoods be gutted,” said Sarah Burrill. “This isn’t perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction. Otherwise, we’ll end up with a ghetto for workers and the rest for the very rich people they serve.”
Specialized Energy Code
The adoption of the specialized energy code as part of the town’s building code was supported by the town’s climate action committee, whose members argued that the best way to reduce greenhouse gases was to manage emissions from buildings. Roberta Longley said that 32 towns have done so, including Truro and Wellfleet. It would not apply to existing homes and businesses, she said, only to new buildings.
Select board member Demetri said she opposed the article, arguing that it would increase the cost of construction and “work against Eastham’s attainable housing efforts.”
“This is one of the few things Jamie and I disagree on,” said select board member Aimee Eckman. “I do not think it will increase building costs either upfront or long-term.” The code would not require solar panels, she said, but would encourage their use in new construction.
“This is a choice, not a requirement,” said Olav Hegland of the climate action committee. “All we’re asking is that you offset fossil fuels with solar or other renewables.”
Laurence Perry was not convinced. “I’m fully in support of energy savings and helping the planet,” he said, “but this smacks of Big Brother. I don’t need anyone telling me what to put on my roof. I’m opposed to government keeping an eye on what we do.”
“There’s no mandate here,” said Roberta Longley. “Nobody is stopping you from using fossil fuels.”
The vote on the energy code was 187 in favor and 89 opposed.
Community Preservation Funds
All of the recommendations of the community preservation committee for allocation of funds were adopted, but not without a kerfuffle over a request for $447,200 for reconstruction of the north wing of the Old Schoolhouse Museum.
“The museum is open one day a week, with very limited hours,” said Jonathan Howard. “I don’t understand allocating this amount of money. It’s a great museum, but it’s not open.”
Joanna Buffington of the preservation committee said that the museum has “a lot of stuff stored that they can’t show. There’s hope that it will be open more often. They had a $100,000 anonymous donor. They’re doing more fundraising for this, and this amount is likely to go down.”
“As far as our being open, that’s entirely dependent on volunteers,” said Eileen Seaboldt. “We are open two days in the summer. Please feel free to volunteer.”
An amendment seeking to reduce the amount of the allocation by $246,753 was defeated.
“When we get a good project, we should support it,” said Mike Hager. And the voters ultimately did, on a vote of 137 to 45.
Voters also approved a home-rule petition in Article 6, submitted by Laura Kelley, asking the state legislature to allow Eastham to establish its own rules for regulating pesticides. The vote was 167 to 57.
TOWN MEETING PREVIEW
Truro Leaders Reach 11th-Hour DPW Compromise
Ad hoc committee’s plan trims 9,000 square feet and $6.7 million from project
TRURO — This weekend’s double town meeting is widely expected to break Outer Cape records. About 1,000 chairs will be set up under a heated tent on the Truro Central School’s ballfield for the special town meeting and annual town meeting to follow on Saturday, May 4.
By coincidence, May the Fourth is also an informal holiday, “Star Wars Day,” honoring the benediction “May the Force be with you.”
With 57 articles on the agenda — and a series of expected amendments — voters may need all the strength they can muster.
The 15 articles on the special town meeting warrant, carried over from last October, had been expected to be the most contentious. Four articles concerning a new dept. of public works building in particular have stirred passionate debate.
But those articles will now be amended on town meeting floor with a proposal from the town’s new ad hoc building committee, supported by the select board and finance committee.
The amended plan calls for a 20,150-square-foot facility — more than 9,000 square feet smaller than the one on the warrant — that will cost $28.3 million. That is almost $7 million less than the $35 million project in the original version of special town meeting Article 3.
“All of you have been very, very, very hard at work,” said select board chair Kristen Reed to the members of the building committee at their presentation on April 25.
“The amount of work that you’ve accomplished has been really amazing,” said select board member Sue Areson.
The other major items on the special town meeting warrant are Article 5, a group of recommendations for the phased development of the 70-acre Walsh property, and Article 6, which establishes an Ad Hoc Walsh Property Advisory Committee. Article 7 would adopt the town’s draft Local Comprehensive Plan.
Annual Town Meeting
After the special town meeting concludes, the annual town meeting will convene to consider another 42 articles, including the town’s budget for fiscal 2025.
Article 1 is an omnibus budget appropriation totaling $26,465,353. Article 2 amends the current year’s budget and includes a transfer of $58,000 from free cash to fund the heated tent, chairs, and audiovisuals for the May 4 town meetings.
Article 11, unanimously recommended by the finance committee and select board, seeks to acquire the Truro Motor Inn for housing by eminent domain. The money would come from existing funds. At its April 25 meeting, the select board voted to use up to $1.6 million from the town’s Dennis Family Gift Fund if Article 11 passes.
The current balance in that fund is $1.79 million, according to Town Manager Darrin Tangeman. The town can also deduct $51,331.34 in unpaid taxes that owners David and Carolyn Delgizzi owe on the property. Article 11 requires a two-thirds vote to pass.
At a pre-town meeting forum, voter Michael Forgione said the finance committee had been skeptical of the measure but then later supported it unanimously. “What changed?” Forgione asked.
Finance committee member Michael Fee said that once the use of $1.6 million of the Dennis Fund was proposed, “We voted in favor. All members of the finance committee are in favor of taking this action.”
Article 12 is a debt exclusion for $1.54 million to upgrade the HVAC systems at Truro Central School. It replaces the similar Article 1 on the special town meeting warrant — which had been for $1.4 million — after that cost estimate was deemed no longer valid due to the six-month delay.
The DPW Project
Article 13 on the annual town meeting warrant addresses the new DPW building. So do Articles 2, 3, 4 and 14 on the special town meeting warrant. This means there are numerous possible permutations of passed and failed DPW-related articles — especially since the voter rolls for the two town meetings are slightly different.
Because of a later registration deadline and a series of voter registration challenges, there are 41 more people on the annual town meeting voter list than the special town meeting list.
Because of the last-minute compromise on the DPW, Articles 3 and 4 on the special town meeting warrant and Article 13 on the annual town meeting warrant will all be amended.
The ad hoc committee was appointed on March 4, first met on April 1, and met nine times that month, eventually agreeing on a new plan for the facility. Its meetings included input from consultants and town officials. The “value-engineered” proposal is estimated to cost between $24.3 and $28.3 million, depending on the materials used.
The amended articles would authorize the borrowing of $28.31 million — or about $6.7 million less than the original version of Article 3. The square footage reduction will also create more distance between the new facility and nearby homes.
“The select board appointed you, maybe too late, but that is what it is,” said Areson at the April 25 presentation by the ad hoc committee. “You’ve done a really, really great job.”
More Decisions for Voters
Article 14 would authorize $1.5 million in borrowing to engineer and build a replacement culvert at Mill Pond Road to restore tidal flow inhibited by the existing damaged culvert. It requires a two-thirds vote.
Article 15, a budget override for a human resources coordinator, seeks $113,158 to add a full-time staff member to town government and also requires a two-thirds vote. Articles 14 and 15 both have unanimous select board and finance committee support.
Article 16 would fund the purchase of a property owned by the Noons family at 2 Sand Pit Road using a budget override of just over $6 million. It was unanimously supported by the finance committee, but at the select board, three members were in favor, one against, and one abstained.
Articles 22 to 30, a series of Community Preservation Act votes, would help fund projects in historical preservation, community housing, open space, and recreation. The community preservation committee seeks to allocate funds to the Lower Cape Housing Institute, the Truro Conservation Trust, and the Truro Central School for a revamped playground.
Article 31 would allow future town meetings to be held outside Truro in any town from Provincetown to Orleans if the select board deems it necessary because of high anticipated voter turnout. That possibility could have changed the course of special town meeting last fall, which was postponed from November to May because there wasn’t a large enough indoor meeting space in town.
Articles 32 and 33 would limit how many short-term rentals any one owner could operate in Truro and require companies operating short-term rentals to name their human owners. Article 34 would ban “fractional ownership” of residential properties.
Article 37, a zoning bylaw amendment, would allow “attainable housing” — defined as housing for those earning at or below the county’s area median income — to be built on undersized lots.
Article 39 would establish a town seal committee to design a new emblem for the town. According to the article’s explanation, “The Select Board acknowledges that the existing imagery on the Town Seal is not culturally or historically appropriate.” According to past reporting in the Independent, it is also inaccurate.
Article 40, a citizen’s petition, seeks to establish a climate resiliency and infrastructure stabilization fund. The article has full select board support and partial finance committee support, with two in favor and three abstentions.
Article 41 would establish a “Senior Perks Pilot Program” for people age 65 and up. A similar petitioned article appears on the special town meeting warrant as Article 15 and would be open to people age 60 and up.
Finally, petitioned Article 42 calls on the ad hoc building committee to synthesize the designs proposed by the town’s consulting company Weston and Sampson and by the self-appointed DPW Study Group. Like the other DPW articles, it is likely to draw significantly less discussion now that the building committee, select board, and finance committee have all endorsed a compromise plan.
BUDGET CRUNCH
Eastham Faces $1M in Unexpected School Costs
Officials attribute need for budget override to faulty communication
EASTHAM — Voters at the May 4 annual town meeting will be asked to approve two Proposition 2½ overrides totaling $1.32 million to fund the town’s fiscal 2025 budget — including more than $1 million in increased education spending that caught town officials by surprise.
A second override request asks for $300,000 to hire two additional police officers. Approval of both overrides requires a two-thirds majority vote at town meeting and a majority vote at the May 21 town election. If both are adopted, next year’s property tax bill on a house of median value will increase by about $195.
The total town budget for 2025 in Article 2A on the warrant comes to $44,180,055 — a 14-percent increase over last year, which the finance committee in its message to voters attributes largely to debt service on the renovation of Nauset Regional High School and on wastewater planning projects.
But a significant portion of the increase is in the school budgets, whose details did not arrive in financial planners’ hands until very late in the process.
“In early January, there was a balanced budget,” said Town Manager Jacqui Beebe. “It was pretty conservative, but there were some unknowns, including the school budget. We knew that there was going to be increased enrollment at the school. But then we started to get the school budgets in, and we realized we had a problem.”
The problem was multi-faceted.
Increased enrollment of Eastham students at both Nauset High and Cape Cod Regional Technical High School resulted in an unexpected increase of $592,000 in the town’s share of the two regional school budgets. The number of Eastham students at Nauset went from 224 to 239, at an increased cost of $475,000. At the Tech, the increase was from 22 to 28 students, costing an additional $117,000. Beebe said town officials knew the enrollment numbers but did not know how much they would cost the town.
A second financial hit in the school budget came from what the finance committee called “a dramatic spike” in special education costs. Out-of-district placements for three students at Eastham Elementary School — which the town is required to pay for — will cost an extra $335,544 this year.
Another $85,000 of increases in general school operating costs brought the total shortfall to just over $1 million.
According to finance committee vice chair Tom McNamara, the surprising gap in the school budget forecast was a result of poor communication from the schools’ central office and the regional schools budget subcommittee. Nauset Regional Schools Supt. Brooke Clenchy said that the process was no different this year than in other years, and that Eastham simply had more students enrolled in the two high schools than before and had to pay for it.
But McNamara told the select board on March 25 that the regional school budget subcommittee “continued to develop a budget in isolation, not giving us drafts until very late. We made overtures. We invited them no less than four times to come to one of our meetings just once and explain where they were, and they always found a reason to cancel at the last minute.”
Clenchy said that the budget was developed on the normal timeline, with the first draft becoming available to the budget subcommittee in January. “Even though we are putting the budgets out to our school committees, they’re not finding their way to the finance committees,” she said.
Clenchy added that she was hoping to improve the process next year and get the budgets to the town finance committees earlier.
Town meeting voters do not have the option of not funding the regional school budget.
“It’s important for voters to understand that if this override does not pass, it will still fall on the shoulders of the taxpayer,” said select board member Jamie Demetri. “It just means it’s going to come about in a different way.”
If the school override is rejected, the town will have to cut its municipal budget by $1.02 million to cover the school expenses. A contingency budget prepared for that eventuality would kick in.
“In some sense, we’re victims of our success,” said Beebe. “We’re trying to get more families and children, and if all goes well, then the school numbers go up.”
Fight Over Funding Formula
Another point of contention between the select board and the schools was the Nauset Regional School District funding formula, which determines how much each town in the district contributes. Since 2002, the schools have used an “alternative formula” based largely on student populations, according to Regional School Committee chair Chris Easley.
This year, the school committee voted to use a “statutory formula” that Easley said is “more equitable,” with the amount contributed by each town proportional to the wealth of the town.
That choice resulted in $51,000 in additional costs for Eastham.
“The school committee decided to change the formula this year without talking to any other town,” said Beebe. “It threw everything off, and it was a last-minute surprise. The school committee seemed totally unaware that it would impact us.”
Article 2B on the warrant offers voters a chance to put the alternative formula back in place. Select board member Gerry Cerasale said that the article would “be a signal to the Regional School Committee that we didn’t agree, and we might not agree in the future if we don’t have some cooperative discussions and decision-making.”
Staffing the Police Dept.
The second budget override requests $300,000 for two new police officers. Chief Adam Bohannon initially requested $600,000 for four officers, but Beebe and Finance Director Rich Bienvenue said that the budget was too constrained this year for that large an increase.
“This is something that we’ve been talking about for a few years now, trying to find the right time to do it and there never seems to be a right time,” said Bohannon.
He said that there has not been an additional patrol officer in the department since 1995 except the school resource officer. The department currently has 17 officers.
Bohannon said that the department has seen an increase in the amount of time it takes to deal with calls, from stricter demands on documentation of incidents to an increase in mental health calls.
Beebe said that the select board is committed to funding for four new officers even if it can’t happen in one year.
“The last thing we want is tired, exhausted, grumpy police officers,” she said. “If they can’t take vacation days, if they can’t take sick days, if they have forced overtime, that becomes a quality-of-life issue for the officer and then they will move on to other towns.”
The select board unanimously voted for Article 2D, the police override, which would raise yearly taxes for the median-value home by $44.
TOWN MEETING
Voters OK Motta Field, Retain Fire Engineers
$11.7-million plan to rebuild field advances to May 14 ballot
PROVINCETOWN — At a four-hour town meeting on April 1, voters approved almost every article on the warrant, rejecting only two: Article 19, which would have shifted authority for hiring the fire chief from the board of fire engineers to the town manager, and Article 33, which would have allowed seasonal occupancy of recreational vehicles on driveways in the town’s single-family zone.
VIEW FROM THE BALCONY
Fast Talking and Fast Voting at Town Meeting
The pace was quick, and then it wasn’t, but the meeting wrapped in one day
PROVINCETOWN — At the midway break for refreshments, longtime voters and first-time observers all seemed to agree: Provincetown’s annual town meeting was going remarkably smoothly.
Right from the beginning, town officials seated at tables with tastefully flamboyant silver skirts kept a brisk pace.
Town Manager Alex Morse started the night with an April Fool’s Day joke — “I do hope folks cleared their schedule for the entire week, as we expect this to go a few nights” — which got a good laugh from the voters. “That’s the only April Fool’s joke allowed tonight,” Morse added.
It was time for business, and Morse appeared comfortable at the podium sporting a bold green tie, ready for any inquiry.
Town Moderator Mary-Jo Avellar kept an eagle eye on matters of decorum and procedure, shutting down out-of-order comments and silencing any mention of a previous speaker’s proper name before the transgressive syllables could even be fully voiced.
The first seven articles were introduced, voted on, and approved quickly and unanimously.
When Article 8, a nearly $12-million proposal to revamp town-owned Motta Field, was introduced, the audience began to rustle and whisper in anticipation.
A pair of heartfelt speeches from Provincetown Schools Supt. Gerry Goyette and Athletic Director Chelsea Roderick softened the audience, however, and resistance from the budget hawks in the room started to melt.
Voter Dennis Minsky told the meeting that, according to his back-of-the-envelope calculations, he would pay about $3,000 in taxes as his contribution to the project over the next few years.
For that reason, “I am resolved to use the damn thing,” Minsky said, to laughs. “I just hope there are enough benches.”
Voter Laura Ludwig came to the microphone, collected her thoughts, and said everyone might be better served by spending time in Provincetown’s natural wonders rather than at an engineered park.
Artcle 8 passed, however, as did the next 10 measures, after which the moderator called for the refreshments break.
While in line downstairs — where the options included sandwiches from Far Land Provisions, homemade cookies and pastries, sodas, and the all-important coffee — voter Ron Plant told the Independent that he was happy to see the Motta Field project pass and was pleased with the “tight ship” the town moderator was running.
Voters Chris Spaulding and Chris Hartley agreed that the meeting was moving along nicely — and wondered how many people in town might have wagered on the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team, which was playing for a spot in the NCAA Final Four with a 9:20 p.m. tipoff.
After the break, it was evident that some sports betters and fair-weather voters had indeed made an exit, leaving a room of hardened veterans more willing to slow the meeting’s brisk pace.
Voter Peter Cook rose twice to denounce the “fast talking and fast voting” that had taken place earlier in the meeting. “Let’s slow this down,” he said, as the town took up two articles on the fire dept.
Sure enough, the meeting slowed down — although, confusingly, the pace of votes didn’t. Motions to amend, to call the question, and to reconsider the previous question all required votes of their own, and eventually voters near the back of the room said they no longer understood exactly what they had voted for.
An amendment to Article 20 had failed, the article itself had passed, but confusion among voters persisted. After 10 voters submitted a motion to reconsider Article 20, a loud groan reverberated through the meeting.
In the balcony where nonvoters were sitting — along with some voters who appeared not to mind that their votes weren’t being counted — eyes began to glaze over. The “yawns per minute” rate on the floor was reaching a peak. An observer in the balcony quietly declared a new contest — bald men versus hat-wearers — and tallied 25 of the former, 26 of the latter.
Around 9:30 p.m., voter Ngina Lythcott offered a motion to adjourn the meeting so that everyone could take time to properly study the remaining articles. Avellar called a vote, but only one other citizen besides Lythcott wanted to go home and start again the next evening.
The following articles went quickly, however — “open space” was popular, and only a few spoke on zoning — and finally salvation arrived in the form of the consent agenda, which bundled Articles 35 to 43 into one vote.
The vote to approve the consent agenda and the vote to adjourn were performed in rapid succession, and the meeting had suddenly ended, at just under four hours. A cheer rang out, and voters chattered their way toward the exits.
PROVINCETOWN TOWN MEETING
Petitioned Article Aims to Block Hotel Consolidation
Limiting licenses hasn’t been tried on Cape but has precedents elsewhere
PROVINCETOWN — Two town residents have put forward a petitioned article that aims to prevent further consolidation of the town’s hotel industry.
Article 24 on the warrant for Provincetown’s April 1 town meeting would amend the town’s general bylaws to limit the number of lodging licenses any one person or entity could have to three. Businesses that already have more than three licenses would be “grandfathered in” and allowed to keep them.
The petitioners, Elias Duncan and Brent Daly, said that they submitted their petition in response to out-of-town real estate enterprises buying up more hotels in Provincetown in recent years. (Duncan is a freelance contributor to and former staff reporter for the Independent.)
“I don’t think any community wants a business that isn’t based here and where the shareholders don’t live here to be operating the biggest businesses here,” Duncan said. “There’s a level of accountability when the owner of a property or a hotel lives in the community.”
According to data from Provincetown’s licensing and tourism offices, 40 percent of the town’s 1,380 licensed hotel rooms are now owned by three companies: Linchris Hotel Corp., Sawyer Realty Partners, and the Lexvest Group. All three are based in Massachusetts, but none is headquartered on Cape Cod.
Linchris Hotel Corp. is the largest hotel operator in Provincetown and owns 31 percent of the town’s hotel rooms. The company bought the Surfside Hotel in 2000, the Harbor Hotel in 2018, the Brass Key Guesthouse and Crowne Pointe Inn in 2021, and the Provincetown Inn and Foxberry Inn in December 2023.
The company paid $24 million for the 102-room Provincetown Inn and $3 million for the 12-room Foxberry Inn, which it plans to repurpose for staff housing, the Independent reported in January.
Sawyer Realty Partners bought the Waterford Inn, the Ellery Hotel, and the Mercury Hotel in 2022. The Lexvest Group bought the Cape Colony Inn in 2012 and the Breakwater Hotel in 2018.
Linchris Hotel Corp. and Sawyer Realty Partners did not respond to multiple requests for comment, while a spokesperson for the Lexvest Group declined to comment.
Duncan and Daly told the select board on March 11 that their proposal was intended to resist corporate control of the town’s identity. They pointed out that Linchris had recently announced a plan to turn its Cape Codder Resort in Hyannis into a “Margaritaville Resort.”
“How much does one person or corporation get to own of paradise?” Daly asked.
The select board thanked Duncan and Daly for bringing attention to the issue but ultimately voted to reserve its recommendation on their proposal.
Board member Erik Borg commented, “I just want to say that encouraging competition is great, but this also seems like a safeguard against cultural homogenization” of the town.
The town would be “going up against people with lots and lots of money for lawyers,” said board member Austin Miller. “I think there’s a process we need to go through to fully vet these things.”
A Novel Approach
Limiting lodging licenses could be a new way of fending off consolidation in the tourism industry. Paul Niedzwiecki, the CEO of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, told the Independent that he is not aware of any other proposal to limit lodging licenses elsewhere on the Cape.
Duncan said that Article 24 was inspired by the town’s adoption last fall of general bylaw restrictions on the number of short-term rental certificates one person or business is allowed to hold.
Provincetown’s formula business bylaw, which governs the aesthetics and location of franchise or chain stores, relies on the town’s zoning powers rather than its licensing authority.
Though the license limitation does not have a direct precedent on Cape Cod, some states have used similar restrictions for decades to prevent conglomerates from dominating certain business sectors.
Pennsylvania has a longstanding law that requires funeral homes to be owned by licensed funeral home directors and prohibits any one director from owning more than two establishments. That law was challenged in federal court in 2008, but the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately upheld the restrictions.
In North Dakota, a 1963 law that requires every pharmacy to have a licensed pharmacist as its majority owner has kept big box stores and national drugstore chains from opening pharmacies there. The law has faced multiple challenges, including one that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld it in 1973.
In 2014, Walmart spent several million dollars backing a ballot initiative that would have repealed the North Dakota law. It was soundly defeated, however, with nearly 60 percent of voters choosing to keep the law in place.
“I don’t see any reason that a community like Provincetown couldn’t use the same approach to prevent consolidation,” said Kennedy Smith, a senior researcher at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for locally controlled economies.
The select board’s Miller told the Independent that the measure to limit lodging licenses in town was a “really great way to start a conversation,” but that he was worried about litigation.
“Whenever we’re creating new regulations that have a high probability of being challenged, particularly by folks with deep pockets, it’s really important that we fully understand the legal aspect of it,” said Miller.
Duncan told the Independent that he had also worried about litigation and was relieved when Provincetown’s town counsel agreed to help draft Article 24.
Enforcement Questions
If Article 24 is adopted on April 1, town officials may have to consider a new way of tracking licenses so that no one person or entity receives a fourth lodging license. Corporations commonly create a new limited liability company for each property they acquire, both to simplify accounting and to protect the parent company from liability.
On the Provincetown Inn’s lodging license, for example, the name “Linchris Hotel Corp.” does not appear, even though Linchris owns the property and lists it on its website. The current lodging license form requires only a “Doing Business As” name, which in this case is just “Provincetown Inn.”
“Linchris” also does not appear on the licenses for the Harbor Hotel, the Brass Key Guesthouse, or the Crowne Pointe Inn.
Niedzwiecki said that adding corporate ownership disclosure requirements could be “burdensome” and that big businesses often find a way to skirt regulations through subsidiaries and shell companies.
Provincetown’s bylaw amendment to restrict how many short-term rental certificates one person may hold requires that applicants disclose the names of the “natural persons” who own LLCs, S corporations, and trusts rather than just a company name.
That bylaw has still not been approved by the state attorney general’s office, however, according to Assistant Town Manager Dan Riviello.
If Article 24 is approved, the town may need to decide what information it will require of license holders to prevent shell companies from doing an end run around the measure.
HOUSING
Truro and Eastham May Limit Short-Term Rentals
‘Fractional ownership’ arrangements could also be banned by voters
Truro and Eastham are each considering town meeting articles that would limit how many short-term rental properties one person or corporation could legally own and that would ban “fractional ownership” of residential property outright.
At a public forum on March 4, Truro officials gave an overview of that town’s articles and answered questions.
The first article, which does not yet have a number because it has not been inserted in Truro’s town meeting warrant, would prohibit corporations from holding short-term rental certificates and would allow LLCs, S corporations, and trusts to hold them only if they disclose all of their human owners at town hall.
A second draft article would limit the number of short-term rental certificates any one owner could have to two. Current owners of three short-term rentals would be “grandfathered in” and allowed to continue operating, but owners of four or more would be allowed only to continue with three.
A third draft bylaw would prohibit fractional ownership arrangements of residential property in which the ownership shares are sold to strangers on the open market, as facilitated by companies such as Pacaso and Lifestyle Asset Group.
Short-term rentals are defined (and taxed) under state law as offering stays of fewer than 30 days.
The Lexvest Group, which is based in Maynard, currently offers three single-family homes and three cottages on Shore Road as short-term rentals on the website VRBO.
The company also owns the Prince of Whales cottage colony, which has 17 units, and the Truro Beach Cottages, which has 11. Those rentals are booked through their own websites.
Truro had 459 registered short-term rentals last season, Town Manager Darrin Tangeman told the Independent. The municipal services company Avenu, which offers software that can “scrape” a variety of short-term rental listing sites to find unregistered listings, told Tangeman there were another 27 properties that were not registered with the town.
The draft articles say that their “purpose and intent” is to “protect the time-honored tradition of home rentals in Truro” while also limiting “the conversion of residential units to short-term rentals,” which it says has had a “deleterious effect” on the year-round rental stock.
According to Truro’s draft Housing Needs Assessment and Production Plan, only 15 percent of the town’s occupied housing stock are rental units, which makes the town a “rental desert.”
Considering Truro’s total housing inventory instead of just the occupied units, only 5 percent of the units are occupied by renters, according to the Cape Cod Commission. Twenty-five percent of Truro’s housing units are occupied by their owners, and the remaining 70 percent are either used seasonally or are entirely vacant.
The percentage of Truro’s housing that is fully occupied is lower than in any other town on Cape Cod, according to the commission, and the median sale price for a single-family home is $1.4 million, among the highest on the Cape.
The affordable housing development at Sally’s Way has 16 year-round rentals — and more than 200 families on a waiting list.
Select board chair Kristen Reed said that the number of registered short-term rentals one owner could hold has not been finalized. “The number two could change if that was the will of the people,” Reed said at the March 4 forum. “It could be three. It could be more.”
Forum attendees had questions about the fractional ownership article and how it might affect longtime friends who own property together. Lee Swislow referred to “chosen family” to describe those relationships and said the bylaw’s language about “unrelated persons” might exclude people.
Tollie Miller made a similar point. “For about 25 years, I’ve owned a house in Truro with three of my closest friends, two of whom are married to each other,” Miller said. “I don’t want to discover that because we’ve done this for all these years together — because we could never afford to have a place to share otherwise — that it’s going to get us into trouble.”
Anne Greenbaum, vice chair of the planning board, was moderating the forum; she said that the issue deserved attention. “First of all, you all would be ‘grandparented in,’ but second of all, we need to figure out how to integrate that issue of chosen family,” Greenbaum said.
A ‘Proactive’ Ban
Eastham’s Task Force on Zoning and Regulation recommended both a ban on fractional ownership and a per-owner cap on short-term rentals to the select board. Though the town reports that it currently has no homes under fractional ownership, task force chair Mary Nee said the ban is “a proactive response” to the possibility of single-family homes being bought up in investment schemes.
“This is the first year we’ve looked at fractional ownership as a task force,” said Nee. The select board had asked the task force to examine the subject after Provincetown and Tisbury passed their bans last year.
Eastham’s year-round rental vacancy rate is “virtually zero,” the task force found. Provincetown’s assistant town manager Dan Riviello and community development director Tim Famulare discussed Provincetown’s new bylaws with the task force on Dec. 5.
Nee said that Eastham is especially vulnerable to investors buying up the housing stock because property values are lower than those in nearby towns. Eastham’s median single-family home price was $779,500 in 2023, according to the Cape Cod and Islands Association of Realtors, whereas Wellfleet’s was $965,000, and the median in Orleans was $1,222,500.
“In terms of investment opportunities, we as a community are very attractive,” Nee said.
Select board member Gerry Cerasale raised concerns that groups of friends would not be able to share homes or that the ban would complicate divorce proceedings. Nee assured him that the ban would apply only to corporate entities.
Eastham’s proposed short-term rental bylaw would require corporations to name their human owners, as in Truro’s proposal and Provincetown’s bylaw, and would cap the number of short-term rentals any one person could own or operate at two.
The current draft of the bylaw does not include a “grandfather” clause for people who own more than two, however. Instead, a person who currently owns or operates three short-term rentals would need to choose two that would continue to operate.
The proposed bylaws will be discussed at a public hearing of the planning board on March 20, after which the select board will make an “ultimate determination” on the final draft of the article before the warrant is finalized in early April.
Town Manager Jacqui Beebe will then hold a public meeting on all of the warrant articles ahead of town meeting on May 6.
BACK-TO-BACK
Truro Select Board Plans Two Separate Town Meetings
Special town meeting is set for May 4, with annual meeting likely on the next day
TRURO — The warrant for last fall’s special town meeting, which was repeatedly postponed amid a series of voter registration challenges and then moved from November to May when a huge turnout exceeded the capacity of Truro Central School, will be voted on on Saturday, May 4 and will look almost exactly as it did last fall.
The special town meeting warrant will be kept separate from articles for the regular spring town meeting, and the meetings will probably be held on separate days. At a work session on Feb. 8, the select board rejected the idea of holding both meetings on one day.
“Nine hours back-to-back” would be too much, said board member Stephanie Rein. “I don’t want anyone to feel like they have to leave because it’s more than they can physically handle.”
“The likelihood of our getting through two meetings in one day — I don’t think that’s high,” agreed board member Sue Areson.
Back-to-back meetings would also be complicated by the fact that the voter rolls for the meetings would be different.
The deadline to register for the special town meeting was Oct. 11; a slew of challenged and withdrawn registrations caused the first of several postponements of that meeting. Because the May 4 warrant will be the same as the one scheduled for Oct. 21 — technically, it is the same meeting, continued multiple times — the voter registration deadline for that meeting is still in effect.
The annual town meeting, which will likely be on May 5, will have a voter registration deadline around April 30. That means there will be people who can vote at one meeting but not the other.
Town officials raised the possibility of giving out voter cards of different colors to distinguish between voters who could vote at both meetings and voters who could vote only at annual town meeting.
Rein said that was too loose a system to be reliable.
“As a person who has worked in a nightclub, you’ve got to clear the house,” Rein said. She didn’t think voters would exchange voter cards with each other but said that “even if that opportunity is there, it puts a cloud over the voting experience.”
Board chair Kristen Reed said she was more “comfortable with taking the criticism of a two-day meeting than the criticism of uncontrollable chaos on the same day, and people passing each other cards of different colors, and people’s patience being stressed.”
Two Warrants
One article on the special town meeting warrant will have to be indefinitely postponed because costs have gone up since October. Article 1, a $1.4-million debt exclusion to finance a new roof and HVAC system at Truro Central School, is no longer sufficient to cover the cost of that project.
Dept. of Public Works Director Jarrod Cabral told the select board that consultants had advised him to plan for a 10-percent increase, requiring a $1.54-million allocation.
A new debt exclusion in that amount will be added to the annual town meeting warrant, and Areson, the select board’s liaison to the school committee, will move indefinite postponement of Article 1 on May 4.
The biggest-ticket item on the special town meeting warrant is the DPW facility upgrade, whose cost estimates have not changed, Cabral told the select board.
The original warrant from last fall had included four different articles connected to that project.
The select board had sponsored Article 3, a $35-million appropriation to fund the entire project, and Article 4, a $3.5-million appropriation that would finance only the engineering and design work. The select board’s Article 2 would authorize the use of a town-owned parcel at 340 Route 6 for the new DPW building, while a petitioned article, numbered Article 14, would require the DPW to remain at its current location and direct the town to pursue the design concept of a self-appointed “DPW Study Group.”
Areson, the only board member who did not endorse the $35-million article last fall, told the board on Feb. 8 that she no longer supports the $3.5-million engineering-only measure.
“We’re at a point now where we don’t want to be doing just a piece of it,” she said.
Areson said she was still worried about the big-ticket article. “I would love nothing better than to give the DPW a $35-million facility,” she said. “My reading of the public and who showed up at town meeting is that I just don’t think it’s going to pass, and I don’t think we should wait until May and have it rejected.”
She said the board should “establish a plan B” by May.
“There was sticker shock with the community center,” Reed said, but after scaling that project back, “now we don’t have a community center that can hold the community.”
Reed said that, while she wanted to find common ground, “I am not in support of not supporting this.” The $35-million proposal “was arrived at thoughtfully, over years of process,” she said.
Board member John Dundas said the DPW “does things and we take it for granted. One of the things that we owe them is a really great place to work, a safe place to work.”
Rein and member Bob Weinstein both said that they would rather do away with the engineering-only article. Keeping it “seems to be a foolish thing because those engineering studies are based on the building that the town has advocated for,” Weinstein said.
The board agreed to work together to conduct outreach and explain their support for the $35-million appropriation in the coming months, in addition to convening a DPW ad hoc committee.
Capacity Issues
“The select board may need to make a decision on whether nonvoters can actually participate in this town meeting based on capacity,” Town Manager Darrin Tangeman said at the work session. He said that between voters and nonvoters, more than 1,000 people could turn out for the two town meetings.
Reed argued for full participation, saying the “huge, ever-growing trust issue in the town” required that everyone be able to attend the meeting.
“I’m not comfortable excluding nonresident taxpayers from the meeting,” Rein said on Feb. 8, citing a much-discussed feeling of disenfranchisement. Nonresidents should be able to have their voices heard, she said.
“There has to be participation,” said Reed. “I’m very uncomfortable with excluding people.”
Both town meetings are set to be held outdoors at the Truro Central School, but parking for that many cars is a problem.
“Location will inform process,” said Tangeman. “There’s a lot that we’re still working through.”
DEMOCRACY
35 Challenged Voters Are Now Off Truro Rolls
With two appeals pending, town meeting is put off to Nov. 28
TRURO — After four straight days of hearings last week, 35 of the 66 people whose voter registrations were challenged by Raphael Richter before the special town meeting deadline are no longer on the Truro rolls.
Twenty-one of the 35 switched their voter registrations out of Truro voluntarily. The other 14 were removed from the rolls by the board of registrars following public hearings at the Truro Community Center.
The town issued a press release on Monday announcing that the special town meeting originally scheduled for Oct. 21 would be postponed a third time. “Pursuant to GL.c.39, §10 and, consistent with the opinion of Town Counsel, KP Law, and at the request of the Town Clerk,” the press release states, “the Special Town Meeting will be continued to November 28, 2023 at 5:30 p.m. at the Truro Central School.”
The meeting was first continued by Town Moderator Paul Wisotzky to Nov. 2 and then to Nov. 16. The press release also says, “We anticipate that this will be the final continuance.”
This latest delay of the meeting will allow the registrars to hear two administrative appeals from voters who have been struck from the rolls.
Of the 14 voters removed by the registrars, 10 did not show up for a hearing or have a family member present in their stead. An 11th registrant who was removed, Rosemary Boyle, was represented by Brian Boyle, her ex-husband.
According to Town Manager Darrin Tangeman, Boyle is one of the two voters who have appealed the registrars’ decision. She “was allowed an appeal because she wasn’t physically present during her hearing,” Tangeman said. Rosemary Boyle did not respond to a call requesting comment.
The process for appealing the registrars’ decisions looks different for those who showed up to be heard than it does for those who didn’t. According to the state manual on residence for voting purposes, after a hearing, “The losing party may appeal the registrars’ decision to superior court in a civil action against the registrars.”
But the rules are more lenient if a challenged party didn’t show up. “If a voter fails to appear at the hearing and the complainant produces enough evidence to show the registrars that the voter should not be registered, the voter’s name shall be removed from the list of voters; however, the hearing must be reopened if the voter appears before the registrars prior to the next election or town meeting and makes an acceptable explanation of why she or he did not appear,” the manual states.
Rose Bayani is the other registrant who was removed from the voter rolls and has decided to appeal her case. Like Boyle, Bayani claims a residential tax exemption (RTE) at her home in Boston. According to the complaint filed against her by Raphael Richter, Bayani also is not on the Truro street listing, does not pay vehicle excise tax in town, and does pay personal property tax (which is assessed only on nonresidents).
Bayani arrived in town on Thursday, Nov. 9 and discovered the constable’s summons on her deck, she said. It was too late for her to attend her hearing, which the registrars had completed on Tuesday. Bayani decided to do some research, she said, which did not sway her conviction that she is a legitimate Truro voter.
“I’m more informed because I just didn’t know what was happening,” Bayani said, “so I kind of caught myself up.”
Bayani told the Independent on Monday that she sent an email on Friday requesting that her case be reopened. She added that she had joined a group of registrants represented by lawyer Donna Brewer “because I feel that I should have a right to vote.”
Gonzalo Castro was among the challenged registrants represented by Brewer, of the Wellesley firm Harrington Heep. Castro, whose name was struck from the rolls after he appeared for an in-person hearing on Nov. 6, said he will not be appealing the registrars’ decision.
“I have better things to do with my time,” he told the Independent on Monday, although he did not think the proceedings were fair. “I think that the decision was made before they even talked to me,” Castro said.
Brewer and her colleague, Andrew Bettinelli, objected frequently during the hearings to questions about whether their clients were members of the Truro Part-Time Resident Taxpayers Association (TPRTA) and about the location and nature of their jobs.
On Nov. 8, the third evening of hearings, the registrars took up a challenge to Brewer’s client Thomas Engellenner.
When Richter asked Engellenner where he files his taxes, Brewer objected. “I’m not going to allow him to answer that,” she said. “We have specific challenges with specific reasons, and you are going far afield of that with that question. That is wholly, wholly intrusive.”
“Overruled,” board of registrars chair Elisabeth Verde said. “He has the opportunity to speak if he wants to.”
When Verde asked about Engellenner’s associations with boards and committees in Newton, where he was registered to vote until early October, Brewer objected again. “We’re looking at the ties to Truro,” she said. “If you start, as a government, asking about all his other associations, then you’re interfering with his right to freedom of association. You’re not permitted to ask about those.”
“So noted,” Verde said. “I don’t agree, and I’d also like to give him an opportunity to answer if he chooses to.” Engellenner responded that he is no longer on any boards in Newton, though he’s on the board of the ALS Therapy Development Institute, a nonprofit in Cambridge. The registrars allowed him to remain on the Truro rolls.
During other hearings, Bettinelli objected to questions about TPRTA membership because he said the question dealt with political affiliation, which is not relevant to people’s right to vote.
According to David Sullivan, an expert on voting rights who drafted the state’s manual on residence for voting, “the purpose of an objection is to ask the tribunal, which in this case is the board of registrars, to exclude irrelevant information.” When a reporter listed the questions that prompted objections from the Harrington Heep attorneys, Sullivan said, “I certainly think the kinds of questions that you mentioned are relevant.”
According to an Oct. 10 memo from town counsel, no single piece of evidence is decisive in determining a person’s domicile. Relevant facts include where income taxes are filed and the location of bank accounts and “religious, social and political affiliations, such as clubs, board positions, membership in associations, involvement in municipal activities.”
Engellenner voted in a Newton election in March of this year. “It is everybody’s right to transition, but I’m not sure you should be able to transition such that you’re voting in two communities in Massachusetts in the exact same calendar year,” Richter said.
Dyanne Klein, also represented by Brewer, voted in a Boston election one day before switching her registration to Truro. She claims the RTE on her residence in Boston. Asked by Richter what changed in that one day, Klein responded that she had voted absentee, so the period was actually a couple of weeks long.
“From whenever I did the absentee ballot, I realized that this is where I am all the time,” Klein said. Klein declined to answer Richter’s questions about whether she is part of the TPRTA and where she files her taxes. The registrars upheld her Truro registration.
Hearings to Come
Tangeman said Tuesday that the town intends to hear Bayani’s and Boyle’s appeals on either Friday, Nov. 17 or Monday, Nov. 20.
As of that day, he said, those two were still the only appeals. The town had not gotten word of any appeals filed in superior court.
An additional four voters were challenged by Monica Kraft and Jon Slater; all four challenges will result in hearings. Because those challenges were filed after Oct. 17, town meeting will not have to wait for those decisions, Tangeman said, based on town counsel’s advice. Still, the town plans to hold them “as soon as possible.”
WHAT’S SPECIAL
Short-Term Rentals, Secret Swigs, and Side Eye
Provincetown voters turn out to cheer procedural (and soccer) superiority
PROVINCETOWN — Town meeting is, of course, the hottest event of the season. Special town meeting — well, it may not be the blockbuster of the year, but on the evening of Oct. 23, there was a turnout to rival the audience at the Joan Baez documentary at Waters Edge during Women’s Week.
Before it began, town personalities ambled down the aisles, greeting friends and figuring out where their foes were sitting, perhaps so they could see how they would vote on the pièce de resistance of the evening, a proposal to purchase $2 million worth of property for affordable housing.
Town Moderator Mary-Jo Avellar called the meeting to order, telling the crowd that the Provincetown schoolchildren who were meant to be present to recite the pledge of allegiance were stuck on a school bus. “At least they beat Nauset,” she said to applause. (The school’s co-ed Fishermen won 5-4 against the Nauset Middle School soccer squad.)
In her role as town Mom-erator, Avellar warned that if “anyone swears or is disruptive in any way, I will ask the town officers to remove them.” Some members of the audience gasped dramatically.
A preponderance of flannel shirts among the nearly 500 voters at town hall suggested a local fashion trend. Two people, sitting side by side, wore marigold baseball caps. Everybody in the crowd made two small holes in their shirts thanks to the chic pin-on pink voter and purple nonvoter badges. As for other accessories, one person who asked not to be named admitted, “I snuck a High Noon in, just like I sneak one into Tea.”
A feeling of civic superiority reverberated through the evening at the expense of some neighbors a few miles up Cape. “Thank you all for becoming registered voters and doing it the right way,” Avellar said, a sly reference to allegations of voter fraud in Truro.
And yet this sense of being the procedurally correct town didn’t stop residents from jeering at comments they disagreed with. When David Abell asked if short-term rentals have been detrimental to the town, dozens shouted “Yes!” When he asked the question a second time, the yeses grew cacophonous.
Amid the chaos, Avellar showed her mettle with a lucid flashback to another time. In a discussion of fractional ownership of homes, Christopher Snow, a local attorney, referred to an incident with a man named Maurice Goldman from a 1985 lawsuit in Brewster. Goldman v. Giroux, he said, dealt with condominium ownership. Avellar was sent back 40 years in a flash. “Aha!” she exclaimed. “Nobody remembers him except me.”
All in all, the meeting moved along agreeably, and spirits were high. After all, it’s not every day that you get to see your friends, enemies, and frenemies all in one place.
CIVICS
In a Parking Lot, Bylaw Committee Ponders Town Meeting Articles
The group votes not to recommend inclusionary zoning or new tree-cutting rules
WELLFLEET — On a cloudy August morning, the three members of the town’s bylaw committee gathered in the far corner of the back parking lot of the Adult Community Center to discuss the 10 proposed bylaws on the warrant for a Sept. 18 special town meeting.
Though their odd meeting spot seemed designed to locate the discussion out of public view, that’s not why they gathered there, according to committee member Dawn Rickman. The group’s parking lot meetings started during the pandemic, she said, adding, “I refuse to meet on Zoom.” Now they’re a tradition.
The committee, established in 1982, is tasked with making recommendations to town meeting on proposed bylaw changes. The current members, Rickman, Liz Stansell, and Sam Pickard, are determined not to let ambiguities or sloppy grammar slip past them.
Not that voters always heed their advice. “The past few years, they go to town meeting with these articles, we’ve voted no, and then when it gets to the floor, the voters say ‘yes,’ ” Rickman said.
Seated in beach chairs in a circle on the asphalt on Aug. 7, the group swiftly decided not to recommend four of the 10 proposals.
Meaning, Process, Grammar
“My opinion is all of these should be indefinitely postponed,” Rickman said after introducing Article 7, on inclusionary zoning. “I’m not even sure what it is.”
Inclusionary zoning requires developers to reserve some units in new developments to be rented or sold affordably. Provincetown and Eastham have adopted such bylaws. Wellfleet’s would apply to developments that result in three or more units on a property, including new construction, change in use, or alteration of existing structures. One-sixth of all new units would need to be deed-restricted affordable units.
The bylaw would allow developers to opt out of the requirement by donating money or land to the Wellfleet Affordable Housing Trust.
The bylaw committee’s main qualm was that it had not gone to the planning board for review before the warrant closed on Aug. 15. That review was scheduled for Aug. 23.
Since the committee’s meeting was before the planning board’s, the group voted not to recommend the bylaw. “One of the things that drives us is ‘Did it get appropriate review?’ ” Stansell said.
Clarity was an issue: “There should be a user-friendly explanation of what the heck this is,” said Stansell. She also questioned the proposal’s origin: “It totally smacks of being picked up out of somebody else’s legislation.”
The committee also voted not to recommend Article 8, which would change the definition of a cottage colony, lowering the minimum unit size from 550 to 300 square feet and increasing the maximum from 768 to 800. According to the warrant, the changes would bring pre-existing cottage colonies into compliance. At Brownies Cabins, for example, 9 of 13 cottages are under 550 square feet, according to the warrant.
Rickman questioned the proposed minimum: “What could be in that? A bed? Is there a toilet?” She also questioned the maximum: “What if you have 805 square feet, what is it called? A house?”
The committee rejected two of three tree-related bylaws. These would add further exemptions to the prohibition on cutting timber in the National Seashore, for the removal of invasive plants and as part of a Community Wildfire Protection Plan.
Another amendment would prohibit, except with a special permit, the cutting or trimming of notable trees, defined as native trees with a girth of 120 or more inches or trees listed as endangered, threatened, or of special concern by Mass Wildlife’s Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program.
Both amendments, the committee found, were filled with grammatical errors. “This was not well looked through,” Rickman said.
Six Go-Aheads
Article 9, to amend the intensity of use of multi-family dwellings, won the committee’s endorsement. It would eliminate the requirement to have 8,000 square feet of additional land for every dwelling unit added after the first in a given development. It would apply only to housing in the commercial district. The intent “is to provide a greater opportunity for diversity in Wellfleet’s housing stock.”
A proposal banning the sale of “nips” proved more divisive. Rickman and Stansell voted to recommend it, while Pickard voted no. He said he wanted to see a limit on anti-plastic rules: “I’m putting my foot down,” adding, “I’m not saying nips are a good thing.”
The committee also voted to recommend two animal control bylaw amendments, including one that would require dog owners to register dogs within 30 days of adoption and would allow dogs in town cemeteries. It would also prohibit owners from leaving their pets unattended in vehicles. Another amendment would prohibit dogs from lifeguarded portions of town-owned beaches and freshwater ponds between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. during the summer.
A zoning enforcement penalty amendment also got committee support. It would increase the fee for infractions from $50 to $300 per day. According to the warrant article, $300 is the maximum allowed under state law: “Enforcing zoning is expensive, and this provides both a means to recapture some of the costs based on the level of the infraction as well as providing the commissioner with additional leverage to address zoning infractions.”
Wellfleet’s special town meeting is set for Monday, Sept. 18 at 6 p.m. at the Wellfleet Elementary School. Care for children under three will be provided onsite; to sign up for it, use the form posted on the town website.
TOWN MEETING PREVIEW
A Long Warrant Offers Much to Debate in Truro
Budget overrides, citizen petitions, and ‘adopted’ and withdrawn articles
TRURO — Town meeting is less than a week away, and there are 42 articles on this year’s warrant. With four budget overrides, 10 Community Preservation Act articles, six citizen petitions, and at least one withdrawn article from the planning board, there is plenty to keep voters on their toes on Tuesday night, April 25 at Truro Central School.
Articles 11 through 14 are Proposition 2½ overrides totaling just over $1.5 million in new spending. They affect the town’s fire and police departments, child-care programs, and housing efforts.
Article 11 would add $601,122 to the fire & rescue dept. budget to bring on more full-time emergency medical staff. Currently, Truro and Provincetown contract for supplemental ambulance support from the nonprofit Lower Cape Ambulance Association, an arrangement that was at one point supposed to end in July. The LCAA contract has now been extended for three years, but the override to fund the transition to a fully-staffed EMS department still received unanimous support from the select board and finance committee.
“This isn’t a system where you just stop one day and start the next,” said Truro Fire Chief Tim Collins at a pre-town meeting forum on April 13. “You need a transition.”
Provincetown’s voters passed a similar $1,058,000 override earlier this month to hire more EMS employees and extend the town’s LCAA contract. Truro’s override would fund four more full-time firefighter-paramedics and a full-time fire and EMS administrator.
Article 12 would appropriate $703,050 to fund three community sustainability efforts: a child-care voucher program for kids up to four years old, a preschool program at Truro Central School, and a program that would provide child care outside of school hours and during vacations.
The article is based on two petitioned articles from Raphael Richter that appear on the warrant as Articles 38 and 39. The select board chose to “adopt” those articles, provide them with a specific funding source, and place them on the warrant separately, a move that the finance committee supported.
Richter’s initial articles are still on the warrant. According to Town Moderator Monica Kraft, they are “still there because it was too late to withdraw.”
Conceivably, town meeting attendees could vote against the override and later in favor of Richter’s very similar article without a funding source — but Kraft told the Independent “that’s very, very unlikely.”
The third override, in Article 13, would appropriate $120,150 to the Planning Dept. budget for the establishment of a full-time housing coordinator. This proposal was an element of Richter’s Article 39, which asks for $82,500 for the position.
“What this position does,” said Kevin Grunwald, the housing authority chair, “is give us somebody within town administration whose primary responsibility is to provide oversight and to really take our housing initiatives and goals to the next level.”
Ten of the 15 towns on Cape Cod have a similar position, Grunwald said. Wellfleet’s town meeting will consider adding a housing coordinator this year, which the select board and finance committee have both voted to support.
Article 14, the final override, would allocate $107,017 to the police dept. budget for the hiring of a full-time “school resource officer” (SRO), requested earlier this year by Police Chief Jamie Calise. “It’s really a position that’s shown a lot of benefit over time,” Calise said at the April 13 forum, citing school safety.
A report by the Mass. nonprofit Citizens for Juvenile Justice offers the opposing view, however, with evidence that police in schools disproportionately harm students of color.
School resource officers “can convey to some people the idea that they’re making places safer,” Citizens for Juvenile Justice Executive Director Leon Smith told the Independent, “but when you look at research there’s really nothing to support that. The school is better off investing money in restorative justice practices and de-escalation.”
Calise also said that an SRO would come with “some ancillary benefits. With an extra staff member during the summer months, there would be a utilization for road work.” The select board narrowly supported Article 14, while the finance committee voted against it.
Articles 16 through 25 propose 10 Community Preservation Act grants, all of which received unanimous support from the finance committee and the community preservation committee. An appropriation of $100,000 for the affordable housing project at 3 Jerome Smith Road in Provincetown also received unanimous support from the select board.
The select board opposed Articles 23 and 24, however, both of which were requested by Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill and which ask for just under $50,000 for two historic structures.
Deeper into the warrant, it appears that the planning board will be withdrawing Article 35, which would amend the town’s zoning bylaw to allow duplex structures by right in certain circumstances.
At a public hearing on March 29, confusion about the duplex article led to a discussion about amending it on town meeting floor or withdrawing it for revisions.
The planning board considered voting in favor of its article and amending it later, but Town Planner Barbara Carboni said, “You can’t really have a player to be named later in your vote.”
“Members of the public brought up a few very good points,” planning board chair Anne Greenbaum told the Independent, “and we will have it ready for special town meeting in the fall.”
In addition to Richter’s two petitioned articles, there are four others, including a zoning bylaw meant to limit the size of houses.
Article 37, submitted by Darrell Shedd, would eliminate a special permit provision that allows houses to exceed the total gross floor area limit by 1,000 square feet. Planning board members had initially praised the article, but at the March 29 public hearing it became clear that it could backfire by making it possible to request special permits for even larger areas.
After a discussion with Shedd, the board decided to revise the measure for fall town meeting — and vote against it for now.
For weeks, it has appeared that Article 40 might be the most hotly contested measure at town meeting. The petitioned article would require dogs be leashed or otherwise restrained at all times, and it would authorize a person being approached by an unrestrained dog to “use any means necessary to stop the dog.”
The select board voted unanimously against Article 40. Kraft said that, according to the town counsel, the article is improperly drafted.
“It’s not in proper form for a bylaw, and at town meeting town counsel will explain that to the body,” Kraft said.
Article 41 is a nonbinding resolution regarding a potential closure of Mill Pond Road, but it is no longer relevant following the select board’s March 28 decision to install a culvert rather than breach the roadway.
Finally, Article 42 is a petitioned article that would amend the town charter so that the library trustees must be consulted in the hiring of a new library director, which is currently at the town manager’s discretion.
In a comment published in the warrant, Town Manager Darrin Tangeman wrote that the article “could lead to unfounded assertions of authority and a mistaken outsized role for the Library Trustees in the appointment process in the future.”
The charter review committee did not issue a recommendation regarding the article, and the select board had four abstentions and one vote against it.
Truro’s town meeting will begin at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, April 25 at Truro Central School. Transportation, child care, and assistive listening devices are available, although voters are requested to call town hall by Thursday, April 20 to secure those services.
CIVICS
A Tense Town Meeting Left Lingering Questions
In the end, the town moderator’s discretion is the controlling factor
PROVINCETOWN — In the aftermath of the April 3 town meeting’s 90-minute dustup over Articles 18, 19, and 20 on short-term rental regulation, some of the 582 registered Provincetown voters in attendance questioned how all three articles could be indefinitely postponed before hardly any discussion on the main motions transpired.
Ultimately, the answer lies in the hazy scope of the town moderator’s discretionary powers.
By all accounts, the moderator has broad but somewhat unclear authority over town meeting. State law says “the moderator shall preside and regulate the proceedings, decide all questions of order, and make public declaration of all votes.”
The General Laws “give the moderator fairly broad discretion and authority over the conduct of the meeting,” said Debra O’Malley, communications director for the secretary of the Commonwealth. “If someone is dissatisfied with the rulings of the moderator, the recourse is generally to elect a new moderator or to challenge those specific rulings in court.”
The town moderator’s main responsibility is “being a facilitator of the conversation as opposed to a decider of the question,” Truro resident and lawyer Mike Fee said. Fee was Sudbury’s town moderator from 2014 to 2017. “In my experience, that takes somebody that’s been around the block a bit,” he added.
Town Meeting Time, a handbook of parliamentary law, is something like the moderator’s Bible: at once categorical and yet open to interpretation, Fee said. It’s not a definitive rule book, he said, “because the types of things that happen at town meeting defy a neat and simple explanation.”
At the Provincetown town meeting, after petitioners Michael Gaucher and Paul Benson (who is a reporter for the Independent) introduced the three short-term rental articles together at the behest of town staff, Moderator Mary-Jo Avellar called on Nate Mayo, who spoke in favor of new regulations on short-term rentals. Applause followed, and Avellar said, “No demonstrations until everybody gets a chance to speak.”
She then recognized Rob Tosner, who moved indefinite postponement. His motion ultimately passed, 270-170.
Faced with a motion to indefinitely postpone early in debate, former Wellfleet Moderator Harry Terkanian said he might have asked the speaker to wait. “I try to encourage town meetings to debate a little before they do that, but if a motion’s made and seconded, we act on it,” he added.
Truro Moderator Monica Kraft agreed. “It can be frustrating, but for a lawfully made motion, it’s not at the discretion of the moderator to simply throw it out and say we haven’t had enough discussion,” she said.
Fee offered a slightly different opinion. While he agreed that moderators cannot just reject a parliamentarily correct motion, “absolutely they can delay it,” he said. “It’s up to the moderator to determine whether or not there’s been sufficient discussion of any given matter before you entertain a dispositive motion.”
Avellar adamantly disagreed. She said that delaying a motion that’s in order would be “absolutely inappropriate. I don’t think it’s the moderator’s job to tell people when they can or cannot make their motions.”
According to Town Meeting Time, a motion to divide the postponement question might not have been in order because such a move “may be applied only to main motions, amendments and instructions to a committee.” A motion to indefinitely postpone is a subsidiary motion and cannot be amended, according to the handbook. But the book also suggests that, had a motion to amend been introduced, interrupting the postponement motion to discuss the amendment would have been in order. In the hierarchy of motions, amendment ranks above indefinite postponement.
“Arguing that the motion to indefinitely postpone should be defeated because there were legitimate questions the town meeting should consider” would be the best strategy in such a case, said Terkanian.
It may be within the moderator’s discretion to hear subsidiary motions out of order or to encourage further debate when postponement comes up early on, but it is not required. Moderators have considerable discretion with regard to the limits of their own discretion.
“Every town meeting is unique,” said Fee. “Whether the town meeting runs smoothly is almost always dependent on the credibility of the moderator.”
“A lot of this is very subjective,” said Terkanian. “What works well in one town can be a catastrophe in another town.”
Avellar said she was unhappy with the use of profanity by some speakers at the meeting. “I understand those articles were very emotional, but it’s supposed to be civil discourse,” she said. “I was very disappointed with the way people conducted themselves.”
