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This article was updated on Jan. 30, 2025.
WELLFLEET — With young families finding the Outer Cape increasingly unaffordable, elementary school enrollment has plunged by about 30 percent since the 2021-2022 school year in both Wellfleet and Truro, state Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education data show. Over the same period, Eastham has seen a decline of 8 percent, while Provincetown’s enrollment has grown by 8 percent.
WELLFLEET — A few things have changed at Wellfleet Elementary School since Principal Mary Beth Rodman retired last year and Adam O’Shea took the helm. For one, the signs look different: a drawing of three women in a clamshell that had served as the school’s logo for some 20 years has been replaced by one featuring waves.
Art teacher Sharon Hughes helped teachers develop the Wellfleet waves logo.Like the tide, we rise together, we fall together,” O’Shea said on a tour of the school with a reporter for the Independent. The new mascot is intended as a model of inclusiveness, something especially important in a school of only 91 students, O’Shea said.
“We have to make sure the kids are learning a lot from each other,” he said. “Preparing them to be successful in the future relies on building a social network.”
For O’Shea, this means amplifying the students’ voices. Every morning, students help O’Shea write the morning announcements. “If it’s Black History Month, or Women’s History Month, we want to make sure that is part of the messaging we have on the daily and expand on it through activities in the classroom — what does it look like as a lived idea?” he said.
Another example: To mark the 100th day of school, which happened to fall on Valentine’s Day, students read aloud from their own writing, O’Shea said. In kindergarten, the question was “What is love?” The responses? “Love is hugging Mama when she comes home,” and “Love is playing with my sister Jocelyn,” O’Shea wrote in his weekly newsletter to parents on Feb. 15.
O’Shea’s first 100 days at Wellfleet Elementary followed a steep learning curve, he said. Previously the principal of Monomoy Middle School, “I went from being with 13- and 14-year-olds trying to revolt against everything to having five- and six-year-olds looking up at me adoringly,” said O’Shea.
The staff he oversees here is much smaller than it was at Monomoy, where O’Shea said he managed 87 people. Here, he works with a staff of 20, with one teacher per grade.
“I love the tight-knit community here,” O’Shea said. “Based on the design, the students are so close with one another. They all stay with each other as they get older. They learn to make it work — like siblings would.”
O’Shea grew up in Homer, N.Y. in a family of educators. His mother was a fourth-grade teacher, his sister is a high school chemistry teacher, his brother is a college professor, and eight of his nine cousins also work in schools.
Before becoming an administrator at Monomoy, O’Shea had been an educator for 18 years, 11 of them on Cape Cod. He has also worked in upstate New York and Fairfax, Va. as a kindergarten, third-, and fourth-grade teacher.
O’Shea, who lives in Eastham, sees a lot of similarities between Wellfleet and his hometown of Homer, a farming community. “They are quite similar in the type of person it takes to tend the crop, which here is shellfish. It reminds me of my childhood,” O’Shea said, “though you won’t find me out on the flats.”
Being in a small school has helped O’Shea become more hands-on academically. “I am able to have more in-depth discussions about curriculum and instruction and assisting teachers to help them feel more supported,” he said.
O’Shea said he is working to expand after-school enrichment programming. Using rural education grant money, he has been able to add choices for students and make child care available for all families with students at the school. O’Shea said that close to half of the students stay after school.
“It’s important that we are thinking about the families,” O’Shea said. Which means “making a reasonable effort so families can work to afford to live out here.”
For the first time, students are meeting twice a week after school to put on a play, with help from the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater. After April break, 23 students will perform in Jungle Book Jr. at WHAT, with full costuming and sets spearheaded by the school’s art teacher and an assist on set design and lighting from WHAT. “It’s the real deal,” O’Shea said. The team, he said, is “the best of the best.”
This year, fifth-graders will participate in the National Environmental Education Development (NEED) Academy, also known as the Seashore Program, O’Shea said. Based at the former Coast Guard Station in Truro, the program is run by the Dennis-Yarmouth, Monomoy, and Falmouth school districts in partnership with the National Seashore. O’Shea learned about the program when he was at Monomoy. This will be the Wellfleet Public School’s first time taking students on the five-day overnight, which takes Earth science and history lessons outdoors and immerses students in both nature and culture, according to the NEED website.
O’Shea hopes participation in the NEED Academy will become a rite of passage for fifth-graders before they transition to Nauset Regional Middle School, which is over five times the size of the Wellfleet school.
At the end of the tour, O’Shea brought a reporter to the after-school podcasting club, which O’Shea runs with music teacher and technology specialist Andrew Staker. “It’s kind of misnamed,” O’Shea said. “We don’t make podcasts; we do newscasts.”
The January and February newscasts included an update on the school’s boiler situation: “Wellfleet Elementary School has a problem,” one newscaster said to the camera.
“The problem is that we have two boilers in our school, and they are getting old,” her counterpart added.
After showing off their news update, students got an opportunity to turn the tables on a reporter and grill him on hard-hitting questions, like whether journalists can get rich from writing.
“No comment,” came the reply.
EASTHAM — Enrollment numbers for the Outer Cape’s public schools have finally arrived, and they show that existing trends here are getting worse. This year’s total enrollment in the Truro and Wellfleet elementary schools declined about 10 percent compared to the 2021-2022 school year. Nauset Regional High School in Eastham lost 6 percent of its student count, falling from 833 in the previous school year to 780 this year.
On a five-year time horizon, though, the situation at Nauset High looks more serious. In 2018 there were 937 students at the high school, and the numbers have declined by an average of 39 students every year since then, for a total loss of about 17 percent of the 2018 student count.
The Truro and Wellfleet elementary schools have had both ups and downs over the last five years, for a net loss of only about 7 percent of enrollment since 2018.
Eastham Elementary has had ups and downs as well; it has six fewer students this year compared to last. Over five years, however, it has come out ahead, going from 171 students in 2018 to 186 this year.
The Provincetown Schools, which include prekindergarten through eighth grade, are the outlier, having gained students every year since 2018.
The Nauset Regional High School renovation project was designed for an enrollment of no more than 905 students, based on a 2017 analysis conducted by the Mass. School Building Authority that projected a 2022 enrollment of 887 students.
That is 107 more students than actually enrolled this year. Even the projected number would have been well below Nauset’s 2010 enrollment of 972 students.
Nauset Regional Middle School has a student population of 533 this year, down about 6 percent from its 2021 enrollment.
Regional school committee Chair Chris Easley pinpointed several reasons for the decline. According to Easley, the ongoing construction at the high school’s campus, along with the modular structures that house temporary classrooms for students, are a deterrent for many families.
“Getting people to send their children to a school that is going to be under construction is a negative,” Easley said.
He also said the newly renovated Cape Cod Regional Technical High School in Harwich and the new Cape Cod Christian Academy in Brewster, which opened in 2020, contributed to the drop in Nauset High and Middle School numbers.
“We have a Christian school that is bursting at the seams and a new tech school that has impacted enrollment,” Easley said. “We are just coming out of Covid, so we know there are also a bunch of kids that went into homeschooling.”
“We’re kind of in a perfect storm as far as numbers,” Easley added.
Easley said that, despite the decline, Nauset cannot automatically fill its empty seats with school-choice students. These students come from towns outside the four-town school district, like Truro and Provincetown, which have agreements with the Nauset district to allow their grade 7 to 12 students to attend Nauset schools for a tuition fee of about $18,500 per student.
These agreements allow Truro and Provincetown to maintain direct control of their elementary schools, while Wellfleet and Eastham elementary schools are part of the Nauset District.
“School choice numbers are set in the spring for the following year,” Easley said. “It’s an established number.”
The school enrollment numbers across the Outer Cape portend a difficult path ahead, Easley said.
“The Cape is going to really have to address its school populations,” he said. “It’s going to take a long time for education to recover from Covid.”
WELLFLEET — Three years ago, Fire Chief Richard Pauley raised an alarm about the nonexistent sprinkler system at the Wellfleet Elementary School — a violation of the state building code.
Now town meeting voters will be asked to pay the price of an ill-advised decision made 32 years ago: a $2.2-million debt exclusion to pay for installing the fire suppression system. A debt exclusion temporarily increases taxes during the life of a project’s loan.
Continued operation of the school without a sprinkler system could cause the state to deem the building unusable, Pauley told the Independent.
If sprinklers aren’t installed, “at some point the fire marshal will order it to be done,” Pauley said. “The worst-case scenario is, if it’s still not done, an order will come down from the state to have the building evacuated.” The town would have to “come up with another school or another way for kids to go to school,” he said.
Mass. Dept. of Fire Services spokesperson Jake Wark said that, if there are violations of the building code, the local building commissioner would first take action. Under Mass. General Laws, “the fire chief should notify the building official of any building code violations he observes,” Wark stated.
The project is the largest capital expenditure on this year’s draft annual town meeting warrant, which includes at least another $900,000 worth of debt exclusions for new police and fire staff and a new fire engine.
In addition, voters at the April 25 town meeting will be asked to approve a $1.3-million Proposition 2½ override, which Charlie Sumner, the interim town administrator, said is needed to fund last year’s budget shortfalls, maintain town services at their current levels, and fund routine capital projects like repairs and truck replacements. An override permanently raises the town’s property tax levy — that is, the total amount the town may collect.
Both debt exclusions and the override must be approved by two-thirds votes at town meeting and by majority votes at the annual town election on May 2.
“It has to be fixed, but it’s a lot of money and it comes at a bad time,” Pauley said. “It needs to be done, first of all, to protect the occupants of the building — the 150 or so students, the faculty, and staff, but also to protect the investment the town has in this building.”
If the sprinkler system had been installed when the school was renovated in 1990, it would have cost about $300,000.
“Now that you have to retrofit the sprinkler system into an existing building built at two time periods, the cost has increased five or six times,” Pauley said.
Town officials pulled an article to fund the new sprinkler system from last year’s town meeting warrant to reduce expenses while they were grappling with chaotic financial records.
Even if it passes at town meeting April 25, construction cannot begin until the summer of 2023, said Jim Nowak, assistant director of finance and operations for the Nauset Schools. That is because construction can be done only when school is not in session, and there is not enough time to get bids lined up for the summer of 2022.
Long Time Coming
Pauley discovered that the school had no sprinklers during a routine inspection in November 2018.
He told the school committee on Nov. 13, 2018, according to the meeting minutes.
School committee chair Martha Gordon was new to the five-person committee at the time. “It was really discouraging,” she told the Independent.
In 2020, town meeting voters agreed to spend $110,000 to have the engineering firm Habib and Associates design a sprinkler system for the school.
When the original building was built in the 1950s, sprinkler systems were not required under state law. “But when the building was expanded in 1990, building codes required not only that the addition have sprinklers but that also the old portion of the building be retrofitted for sprinklers,” Pauley said.
But the school building committee and town administrator at the time, Julia Enroth, approved the renovation without a sprinkler system, violating the law. According to George Malloy, the acting fire chief in 1990, the sprinklers were cut as a cost-saving measure. He strongly opposed it, he said, but was overruled by Enroth.
The building code has evolved since the 1990s. Automatic sprinkler systems for any building of more than 7,500 square feet have been required since 2009.
Between 2016 and 2020, there were 640 fires in Massachusetts schools that caused $7.8 million in property damage, according to the state’s division of fire safety. Fires at the Rollins School in Lawrence in 2017 and at Palmer High School in 2019 each exceeded $2 million in damage. The Rollins School had sprinklers “which helped keep that fire in check,” but Palmer High School did not, Wark said.
Wellfleet Elementary School is basically all wood, Pauley said. “If you have an automatic fire suppression system that’s fully maintained and up to date, between 95 and 98 percent of the time, if there’s a fire in that building, the fire is contained to one room,” he said. “That’s an important concept compared to potentially losing the whole building to fire.”
All meetings in Wellfleet are remote only and can be watched online. Go to wellfleet-ma.gov and click on the meeting you want to watch, then follow the instructions on the agenda.
Thursday, Dec. 9
Saturday, Dec. 11
Monday, Dec. 13
Tuesday, Dec. 14
Wednesday, Dec. 15
Thursday, Dec. 16
Conversation Starters
School Playground Update
A new playground at Wellfleet Elementary School will likely be built by the summer of 2022, Principal Mary Beth Rodman told the select board on Dec. 7. The school has been without a playground for more than a year.
Rodman presented a plan for a playground and estimated it would cost $385,000, including new equipment, installation, and inspection certification.
The new playground design includes rubber ground cover, spinning equipment, a play structure, swings, and a zip line, Rodman said. The project designs presented at the meeting were rendered by playground equipment supplier O’Brien & Sons.
Rodman said she is seeking grant funding to cover some costs and added that the PTA anticipates it will successfully raise another $5,000 to $7,000, in addition to the $20,000 it has already raised.
“My main interest is to get the playground installed as soon as possible,” select board chair Ryan Curley said. Board member Helen Miranda Wilson raised concerns over the rubber, suggesting sand instead. But Rodman said neither sand nor wood chips will meet safety codes.
Staffing Changes
Mary McIsaac, who has served as an interim town accountant since last May, was appointed interim treasurer by the select board on Dec. 7. McIsaac replaces Miriam Spencer, who resigned as of Dec. 1. The town has again pushed back closing the books for 2020 and 2021, interim Town Administrator Charles Sumner said. He is looking for another professional to assist with town finances, and the town is advertising for a permanent treasurer with a deadline of Dec. 13. —Michaela Chesin
WELLFLEET — The number of new cases of Covid-19 was down slightly this week, according to the town’s health agent, Hillary Greenberg-Lemos, following the emergence of a cluster of cases that worried officials and led to the reinstatement of town-wide mask rules at an emergency meeting of the board of health on Oct. 7.
That good news was tempered, however, by the fact that a Covid-related death — the second in Wellfleet since the pandemic began — was reported on Oct. 17.
As of Tuesday, Oct. 26, there were 13 reported cases of Covid infection in Wellfleet, down from 31 active cases two weeks earlier, according to the health agent.
While Wellfleet requires that masks be worn indoors everywhere in town, Greenberg-Lemos said, the town has not yet deployed any vaccine-focused strategies such as the voluntary “Stop the Spread” certificate program instituted in Provincetown after a July outbreak there. In Provincetown, businesses can opt into the program and receive certification from the town’s board of health verifying that the managers require all staff to be vaccinated, or require proof of vaccination to enter, or both.
Employers in Massachusetts may require their employees to be vaccinated, but calls to several businesses in town suggested that it is not common practice here.
The Wellfleet Marketplace, Box Lunch Wellfleet, and the Wellfleet Cinemas all confirmed that they are not asking employees to be vaccinated.
The cinemas “did invest $10,000 in a better filtration system,” said John Vincent, president of Wellfleet Theaters.
The Blue Willow Cafe was the only business reached in town that had an employee vaccination policy in place. Other establishments said such a policy wasn’t needed.
JB’s Pizza and Bar manager Ylli Sadiku said he didn’t require it, but his staff is fully vaccinated. “We requested them to get vaccinated because we are a pizza place and a lot of people are in and out,” he said. “We have a very nice staff and they all complied easily.”
“Unfortunately or fortunately, we had a Covid scare back in April and that took care of any staff reticence towards the vaccine,” wrote Eliza Fitts and Ken Kozack, owners of the Wicked Oyster, in an email to the Independent. “Now our whole staff is vaccinated, so we haven’t had to put a mandate in place. Going forward, we would want and expect potential new hires to be vaccinated.”
Several other establishments, including CShore and the Bookstore & Restaurant, did not respond to inquiries from a reporter by press time.
The Bomb Shelter Pub, in the basement of the Bookstore & Restaurant, closed a few days after the death on Oct. 17 of owner Caroline Parlante from sepsis related to Covid-19 pneumonia, according to her death certificate. On the door of the bar was a notice about a celebration of life in her honor, and a sign stating the business was closed. (See obituary on page A14.)
In the Schools
Wellfleet Elementary School nurse Claudia Cope-Crosen reported two active Covid-19 cases this week, marking 12 cases in total so far this school year. Several of those students live in the same household, she said. She added that she is contact-tracing several more potential cases, yet to be confirmed.
“This is way different than what happened last year,” said Cope-Crosen. “I was completely prepared for this last year. We had all of the safety protocols in place.”
The school had a total of four Covid cases in the last school year. Cope-Crosen attributed the uptick two months into the school year to students being present in person all day every day, with no option of remote learning, and to the increased contagiousness of the Delta variant.
So far, the nurse said, the students’ cases have been mild, with many showing cold-like symptoms for a few days. She noted that many cases don’t seem linked. “I’m not seeing a common thread, like a super-spreader event,” she said.
The school has adopted the state’s “Test and Stay” program for students in “close contact.” The state Dept. of Education defines “close contact” as being within six feet of a Covid-19 positive person while indoors for at least 15 minutes during a 24-hour period.
The “Test and Stay” program, initiated on Oct. 5 after a positive case was identified in the fifth grade, involves collecting nasal swab samples from students using the BinaxNOW rapid antigen test, Cope-Crosen said. One case has been identified through the program, and two students were identified as close contacts who shortly after become symptomatic, she added.
Tests are administered daily from the first day of exposure for at least five days. The program applies only to close contacts identified at school, not if the student was exposed outside the school, Cope-Crosen said.
In case of a positive case in school, the nurse sends a notice to families saying whether their children were identified as close contacts or not. “The schools tend to know much more quickly in the contact-tracing world than the state,” she said, “typically because parents contact the nurse directly.
“It’s important for parents to not send their kids to school if they’re feeling sick, and it’s really important for parents to not underestimate and say, ‘It’s just allergies,’ ” she added.
Outside the Test and Stay program, Outer Cape Health Services provides free testing weekly in both Provincetown and Wellfleet.
WELLFLEET — The Wellfleet Elementary School (WES) has not had a functioning playground since March 2020, first because the old playground was placed off-limits by Covid-19 precautions, and then, in August 2020, because the aging structure was condemned by the fire dept. and removed after a child was injured while playing on it.
Now, more than a year later, school officials are beginning to look for funding for a new playground, with potential support from the community preservation committee. Construction would begin next summer, at the earliest. And the students have been imagining the playground they would most like to have.
Built more than 30 years ago, the old wooden WES playground suffered wear and tear over the decades. In recent years, playground inspectors flagged needed repairs during annual checks, and WES has been dismantling components one by one.
“Kids were getting splinters all the time,” said Erika Meads, a WES parent and playground committee member. “Everyone knew it needed to be upgraded.”
Playground renovations were penciled into the school’s capital improvement plan for fiscal 2021, but those plans moved to the back burner when the installation of a fire suppression system took priority. The playground renovation was postponed once more after a wall of the school required repairs due to weathering and rot. And when Covid-19 hit, the playground became a budgetary “non-topic,” according to Lisa Holmes, who taught at WES for 12 years until last year.
In the early months of the pandemic, when fear of surface transmission of the virus was rampant, WES, like most other schools, closed its playground. In spite of the closure, a child was playing on the main structure in August when her foot went through a wooden plank, Principal Mary Beth Rodman told the Independent. The girl fell and cut her lip, prompting her father to call 911 for first aid.
Rodman said the child was not transported to the hospital by ambulance. But, after inspection, fire officials condemned the structure.
Rodman said she was shocked when she saw its condition herself. “It was quite remarkable,” she said. “Despite regular repairs, replacements, and inspections, the deterioration was rapid.” Soon afterward, the entire playground was torn down, leaving a mostly bare spot in its place.
Wellfleet Fire Chief Rich Pauley did not respond to repeated calls for comment.
Coronavirus transmission research has now shown that the risk of contracting the virus from contaminated surfaces is low, according to the Centers for Disease Control, and playgrounds have reopened. But WES students remain limited to a “field of wood chips,” as Holmes calls it, that once supported a climbing structure, swings, and a seesaw.
On the Wood Chips
Wila Parkington, a WES first grader, has figured out how to have fun on the wood chips. Her secret: “Shovels and buckets!” When that gets boring, she switches to bouncy balls and jump ropes. On the walkway, school staff have painted areas for four square and hopscotch. Meanwhile, Erika Meads’s children have “complained every single day,” she told the Independent. “They were bored at recess.”
Experts in child development emphasize the importance of recess in the school day. “Kids accomplish a great deal of cognitive, emotional, and social development through free play and physical activity,” said Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor of early childhood education at Lesley University. A good playground, she said, facilitates this growth. “It’s a staple, really,” she added.
It may be at least two more years before the playground is replaced. The next opportunity for WES to make use of the town’s capital expense budget for a new playground would be the summer of 2023 — unless something more pressing pushes the project off yet again.
“Something really needed to be done,” Holmes said, so she joined the school’s playground committee and spotlighted the issue in a Facebook post, where it caught the attention of Rhonda Fowler, a member of the Wellfleet Community Preservation Committee (CPC). Fowler encouraged Holmes to submit an application. But to be considered for funding this year, the playground committee had to get its application in by Aug. 9.
“At that point, we didn’t have anything,” said Rodman. She and the playground committee scrambled to scrape together some preliminary details, and at the Aug. 18 CPC meeting, Holmes presented an estimate of $383,000 for building and maintenance costs. CPC members were sympathetic but asked to see a design and detailed budget before bringing the playground proposal to the select board.
In the best case, said Rodman, the playground would be “up and ready to go by the middle of next summer.” The timing depends on the playground committee pulling together documentation for the CPC and setting up a bidding process for vendors. Rodman said she is working with the director of finance of the Nauset Public Schools, hoping to contact four playground vendors already vetted by the state. If she can, the committee can skip the step of submitting a request for quote, speeding up the process. The playground committee aims to iron out these details in time for the April 2022 annual town meeting. If CPC funding is approved then, construction could begin next summer.
Rodman has also consulted WES’s smallest stakeholders. Using a survey called “My Perfect Playground,” students from kindergarten to second grade sketched their recommendations. Swings were a common request; a castle-themed playhouse was another recurring pitch. But opinions diverged when it came to the finer details. Entry to the castle should be via a ladder, one respondent proposed, while another student pushed for a drawbridge. More recommendations: a “firetruck to play in,” a “twisty fire pole” paired with a “twisty slide,” and a zipline. One stakeholder showed little interest in a traditional playground and just wanted a golf course.
Students in the third through fifth grades completed a more “grown-up” survey, Rodman said. A climbing structure, a block of 44 voters deemed, was the highest priority, followed by tunnels and swings. These results nearly mirrored those from a survey sent to staff and parents. (The adults favored slides over tunnels.)
WES considered a community build effort like the one that produced Puma Park in Truro and the Orleans Elementary School playground. “Those playgrounds have so much character,” Holmes said. “Puma Park really just screams ‘Truro,’ having that nautical, Cape Cod-y theme.”
But after speaking with an organizer of the Orleans project, Holmes was discouraged by logistical hurdles, she said, like creating a nonprofit organization. “We need something for these kids to climb on as soon as possible,” she said.
Even if the CPC and select board approve the project, grants may not cover the cost in full. To fund the remainder, the WES PTA plans to seek donations. “The PTA generally donates about $10,000 a year to the school,” Holmes said. “Our president had said that she’d be more than happy to pledge to make that happen.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article, published in print on Oct. 7, inaccurately described a wall of the Wellfleet Elementary School as “crumbling.” The required repairs were caused by weathering, reports Principal Mary Beth Rodman.
WELLFLEET — At the Sept. 12 annual town meeting voters agreed to spend $110,000 to design a sprinkler system for the Wellfleet Elementary School, because, the fire chief said, one was not installed in a $4.5-million 1990 renovation.
WELLFLEET — Standing on the pitcher’s mound at the Wellfleet Elementary School ballfield, Moderator Dan Silverman pitched a no-hitter on Sept. 12, with voters approving all the articles that came before them at the town’s pandemic-inspired outdoor annual town meeting.
The crisp and sunny weather may have helped bring out 200 voters, double the reduced-because-of-Covid-19 quorum of 100. Many voters looked like they were in a witness protection program, with hats, sunglasses, and masks. But they sat far apart and got the business of town government done in just under four hours.
The sound system worked well, and voters were able to stay in their seats to ask questions by beckoning “microphone wranglers,” posted throughout the outfield with microphones on selfie sticks.
All the articles on the warrant were adopted, with the exception of those that were indefinitely postponed for various reasons, including the fact that four did not survive a Proposition 2½ override ballot on Sept. 8. Those were: a new police cruiser for $50,000; a fire command vehicle for $55,000; a public works backhoe for $168,000; and a new transfer station guard shack and canopy for $55,000.
Six budget overrides were approved both at the ballot and at town meeting. The most costly was for borrowing up to $3.8 million to replace a water main for the town’s secondary public water source. Jim Hood, chair of the water commissioners, said the town hopes to receive “a substantial portion” of the cost in grants.
The water main upgrade is to fulfill the state requirement for a secondary or backup system should the first fail. Wellfleet’s primary water source, the Boy Scout Camp wellfield near the Council on Aging, pumps more than enough water for the town’s current peak use: 100,000 gallons daily. Current peak daily use is just over 63,000 gallons. But the secondary water source on Gristmill Way uses a four-inch main that can handle only 40,000 gallons a day.
By replacing that with an eight-inch pipe, the neighborhoods of Old Hay Road, part of Route 6, and Briar Lane would also get access to town water. This could add 80 customers in all to the municipal system, including some on Briar Lane that do have water quality problems, Hood said. And since the water system is funded by user fees, additional hookups help spread the cost.
Lastly, an additional 9,000 gallons a day will be needed if the town is able to construct a proposed 46-unit affordable housing complex on Lawrence Road. Though this is within the capacity of the primary system, it would further tax the secondary system.
Select board member Helen Miranda Wilson said she didn’t like that proponents were unnecessarily tying the affordable housing project to the water main or that they were “recruiting” users to help pay for the water system.
“Hooking up people who don’t need water is environmentally a very bad idea,” Wilson said. “Groundwater is our most precious resource.”
Kathleen Bacon, a former select board member, said town meeting voters were actually sitting on top of the proposed affordable housing complex’s septic system. Tying the water to the housing project is a way to secure a state grant for the water expansion, she added. The necessary override for the project passed at the Sept. 8 election, 501 to 239.
Town meeting voters also agreed to hire two new firefighter-paramedics, which will allow the fire dept. to have three people on each shift for 24-hour coverage, said Fire Chief Richard Pauley. The $148,000 for salary and benefits is a permanent tax increase and will cost the owner of a $538,524 home $35.12 a year. It passed at the ballot, 460 to 280.
Voters also approved $110,000 to engineer a sprinkler system at the Wellfleet Elementary School. Somehow, Pauley explained, sprinklers were not included in a major school renovation in the early 1990s, although legally required. “Someone waived that requirement and it should not have been done,” Pauley said.
There was some debate about two petitioned articles, one a ban on the sale of single-use plastic water bottles, and the other a nonbinding referendum to change the state seal, which features a Native American image topped by a colonial swordsman’s disembodied arm.
Justina Carlson and Mike DeVasto, both select board members, said the ban on water bottles, which will go into effect on Sept. 1, 2021, encourages the use of carbonated beverages and Gatorade. People with jobs outside or on the water need to stay hydrated and may not be prepared for this ban.
“I think behavior shouldn’t be legislated,” said Carlson.
Carlson also argued against a petition to change the state seal. Though her own great-great-grandmother was “a full-blooded Cherokee Indian,” she said, she was not in favor of the “erasure of history.”
Meetings Ahead
From wellfleet-ma.gov, hover your mouse over a date on the calendar on the right of the screen, and click on the meeting you’re interested in to open its agenda. That document will provide information about how to view and take part remotely.
Thursday, Aug. 13
Friday, Aug. 14
Monday, Aug. 17
Tuesday, Aug. 18
Wednesday, Aug. 19
Conversation Starters
Covid-19 Update
As of Aug. 9, Wellfleet had four active cases, seven cleared cases, and one death as a result of the coronavirus.
Beach Crowd Control
The select board extended the required date for beach stickers to Sept. 27 in a unanimous vote on Tuesday. “The intent is primarily to help control potential crowds,” said board member Ryan Curley, who first pitched the idea of extending the date at the Aug. 4 emergency management team meeting. Hurley said the rental agency We Need a Vacation told him they are seeing a 25-percent increase in fall rentals compared to last year. He added, “We know that September is one of the busiest months in terms of shark safety; in terms of public safety, it’s really beneficial to have lifeguards on beaches in the month of September.” Beach Administrator Suzanne Grout Thomas supported the idea, saying the extension is worth it just to keep lifeguards on the beach. She added that the move is unlikely to yield the town any additional revenue.
New Committee in Town
The Rights to Public Access Committee is Wellfleet’s newest regulatory committee. The select board voted unanimously to establish the group at Tuesday’s meeting. The task of the committee will be to maintain, establish, and improve public access to town landings. The group’s primary focus will be on re-opening access to shellfish tidelands, according to select board member Ryan Curley, who proposed the committee’s formation to the board. “We just need a dedicated body to take on this responsibility,” he said.
Chair Mike DeVasto supported the idea, explaining that shellfishing is allowed on private tidal flats, but some can be accessed only by trespassing on private property. Former member Kathleen Bacon opposed the new committee. “We have committees in place to deal with these issues,” she said. “They may need more help or more members, but I’m kind of against forming another committee.” Shellfish Constable Nancy Civetta disagreed, saying, “A lot of committees work on this, but we need one committee working on this so it’s all in one place. My department cannot do it; we do not have the resources,” Civetta added.
Play Structure Dismantled
The wooden structure at the Wellfleet Elementary School playground has been deemed unsafe after a child was recently injured on it, according to select board member Ryan Curley. The Dept. of Public Works is in the process of dismantling the structure. Curley added that the cleared space will be used for outdoor learning when classes start again on Sept. 16.
A Major Land Gift
The Wellfleet Conservation Trust (WCT) received a gift on Aug. 5 of 18.5 acres overlooking the Herring River on the east side of Chequessett Neck Road. The land is the major portion of a 20-acre parcel purchased by the donor, Jacqualyn Fouse, from the Chequessett Yacht and Country Club Trust last week for $6.7 million.
“We really love the land, and we are grateful to get it,” said Dennis O’Connell, president of the trust. It is the largest gift of land the WCT has ever received.
The property had been part of the club’s plans to renovate its golf course, according to a statement from the trust. Most of the land could have been built on, said O’Connell.
“WCT will keep the area in its natural state, preserving the habitat and natural functions of the land,” said the trust’s statement. “The Trust will create limited walking trails to scenic views across the Herring River valley.”
Fouse owns a house adjacent to the new conservation land. She also donated 30,000 square feet of undeveloped land on Chequessett Neck Road, worth about $40,000, to the trust in 2015. She has been the CEO of Agios Pharmaceuticals, a Cambridge-based developer of anti-cancer drug therapies, since February 2019. —Devin Sean Martin
WELLFLEET — Plans for the 2020 annual town meeting are at last set.
Almost five months after the meeting was originally to have taken place, it will be convened at the Wellfleet Elementary School ball field on Saturday, Sept. 12 at 10 a.m.
The select board initially postponed the annual meeting to Oct. 5 because of the coronavirus outbreak. At the time, many people were predicting that the pandemic would be brought under control by the fall.
The select board moved the date forward to September following a 4-1 vote in favor of the new plan at its July 14 meeting.
Town meeting will look very different than in years past and will employ a number of safety adjustments agreed upon by the town meeting task force, which Moderator Dan Silverman assembled in late June.
The task force included Fire Chief Rich Pauley, Police Chief Mike Hurley, DPW Director Mark Vincent, Community Services Director Suzanne Grout Thomas, Executive Assistant Courtney Butler, Media Operations Director Mia Baumgarten, Health Agent Hillary Greenberg-Lemos, Town Clerk Jennifer Congel, current Town Administrator Dan Hoort, and incoming Town Administrator Maria Broadbent.
“In the first meeting, we asked, ‘How are we going to make this happen?’ and we did,” Silverman said.
To make it happen, Silverman’s team quickly decided that an outdoor meeting was the only option, as virus transmission is far less likely outside than inside. Therefore, they moved up the date to September for a better chance of good weather.
They then decided to place chairs in pairs, with each pair six feet apart from the next pair, across the entire ball field, as most people come to the meeting in couples, Silverman said.
North Andover Town Moderator Mark DiSalvo designed a “town meeting calculator,” which Silverman used to calculate how much space the town needs to safely accommodate 350 people in pairs at six feet apart in every direction.
Based on that calculation, the task force decided that the ball field was the ideal place.
Masks will be required for everyone attending, but there will be a separate section of the field cordoned off for those who are unable to wear masks for medical reasons. Silverman admitted that the town can’t do much other than take people’s word on whether they are medically able to wear a mask.
There will also be a tent set up for elderly participants in case the weather is hot that day.
The voting process will also look different, as there will be no voice votes due to the likelihood of spreading the virus through respiratory droplets.
Each local citizen participating in the meeting will be given a large, brightly colored sheet of paper, which they will hold up to signal a vote.
As in voice voting, the moderator will first look for an obvious consensus by eyeballing the colored-sheet votes, and will then turn to a manual tally when needed.
The town will also rent an outdoor sound system from Audio Associates, the company that supplied Orleans with reportedly crystal-clear audio for its outdoor town meeting on June 20, according to Baumgarten.
Other members of Silverman’s task force were Assistant DPW Director Jay Norton, Police Lt. Kevin LaRocco, Capt. Joe Capello of the fire dept., and Assistant Town Administrator Mike Trovato.
The select board responded to Silverman’s plan positively, for the most part, with only a few concerns.
The most significant objection came from Justina Carlson, who was the only member of the board to vote against the plan.
“I wouldn’t go to a party with 100 people in a field,” Carlson said, “so I’m not sure I’m going to be able to attend.”
Fire Chief Pauley replied, “While I understand and am empathetic to the concerns, with all due respect to the board, we have got to get the business of the town done.”
Silverman, a former Wellfleet fire chief himself, also reassured the board that the precautions his task force came up with will make the meeting as safe as possible.
Board member Helen Miranda Wilson brought up her concern about bug spray at the gathering.
“As we know, in September, we can have a lot of mosquitoes,” she said. “Given the health concerns, [I ask we] prohibit the use of aerosol insecticide anywhere near the field, because I would not show up for that.”
Silverman said he had not thought about the bug spray issue and would consider adding such a restriction to the plan.
The moderator is still waiting on a select board vote to reduce the town meeting quorum to 100 people.
The state adopted special legislation in the spring because of the pandemic that allows town boards to vote on lowering the quorum.
Silverman hopes the select board will vote on the issue at its next meeting on July 28.
Lowering the quorum is prudent, he said, even though he expects a large turnout.
“I would not be surprised if we get 200-something people,” he said. “We planned for 350.”
He added that many Massachusetts towns have seen record-high attendance for town meetings this year, as folks are eager to get out of the house.
Editor’s note: This article was updated with additional information on July 27.
Meetings Ahead
All meetings are held remotely. To watch or participate in meetings live, go to the town website, wellfleet-ma.gov, and click on the link to the meeting in the calendar. To watch older meetings held remotely click on the red bar on the top of the website stating “Covid-19 Information Page,” click again on a second link to “Covid-19 information page” and then look on the left and scroll down to “Board/Committee Meetings Recorded Virtual During Covid-19.”
Friday, April 17
Tuesday, April 21
Conversation Starters
Coronavirus Update
As of April 13, Wellfleet had two active cases, two cleared cases of Covid-19, and one death as a result of Covid-19.
Birthday Caravans in Wellfleet
Wellfleet Recreation will be holding birthday caravans for all Wellfleet Elementary School birthdays. The first one is Thursday, April 16, for a second-grader at the school. If you are interested in participating, private message the recreation committee’s Facebook page or email [email protected].
Public Call-in About Covid-19
The public is invited to the first bimonthly Zoom call to ask questions of health, safety, and town officials about the coronavirus on Friday, April 17 at 10 a.m. Community members may call in and talk to people from Outer Cape Health Services and the Lower Cape Outreach Council, and others involved with food and mental health delivery. This is a Zoom remote meeting. The link is on the town’s website.
Do You Need a Mask?
If you need a mask to comply with health and safety recommendations to protect yourself when out in public, Wellfleet Health and Conservation Agent Hillary Greenberg-Lemos is working to obtain them for members of the public. Contact her at [email protected].
A Mail-In Meeting Idea
Town Administrator Dan Hoort says town meeting is June 1, and he’s recommending the town election be scheduled for June 18. Hoort is pursuing the possibility of allowing town meeting participants to vote by mail. [See separate story on page 1.] He said he needs to ask state government for special legislation to make it possible. It would involve a “live forum” where people can discuss the warrant articles together before the vote. —K.C. Myers
