TRURO — The transfer station’s usual seven-days-a-week summer schedule is the latest casualty of a waning local workforce. It will be closed on Wednesdays and Thursdays “until further notice.”
Four of the town’s dept. of public works’ 14 full-time staff positions remain unfilled, preventing the department from opening the transfer station every day, according to DPW Director Jarrod Cabral.
Transfer stations in Provincetown and Wellfleet are both fully staffed and open every day until Labor Day. The Eastham Transfer Station is also open five days each week. Eastham’s DPW did not respond to an inquiry about current staffing levels.
While the assistant transfer station attendant job description emphasizes serious physical demands and exposure to hazardous materials, hiring problems are not isolated to Truro or labor-intensive jobs. Cape Cod’s labor shortage, driven by a severe lack of affordable housing, affects jobs requiring physical exertion, desk jobs, and businesses and government alike.
The Living Wage Calculator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology puts the living wage for one adult living alone with no children in Barnstable County at $26.49 per hour — in the range of the transfer station’s advertised $25.12 to $30.00 per hour pay rate. Provincetown’s seasonal sanitation laborer position, although filled, pays $20.16 per hour.
Truro is in the process of restoring two houses for both seasonal and full-time town employees after it concluded that housing affordability and availability were making hiring more difficult. While the two town employee homes were slated for completion by the summer, the project has hit delays and is now likely to be finished by mid-February 2025, Town Manager Darrin Tangeman said last week.
Most residents who spoke with the Independent said the change in the schedule at the transfer station was understandable and did not affect their daily routines.
Ellen Riker, a summer resident, said she was surprised but not upset by the closure when she visited the station on Wednesday morning. “It’s not a big deal, not really in the grand scheme of the world,” Riker said.
Some said they understood that, as housing becomes more challenging to secure, employers — even the town itself — might have to cut back to accommodate.
Mike Moreau, who lives in Truro year-round, said the transfer station is much busier on weekends than weekdays to begin with, and Sharon Basco said she had assumed it was likely related to housing.
A few, however, said the town could do more.
“I’m pissed as hell,” Margot Kaplan-Sanoff said. She now plans her week around the shorter hours, she said, and complained that the station had become busier on Fridays.
“I pay a lot of taxes and I expect basic services,” said Kaplan-Sanoff.
Several people pointed out that the station needs to be open only a few days a week for people to dump their trash.
“I’m cool with it,” Truro resident Isabel Souza said about the reduced hours at the dump.