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Wellfleet

    TOWN MEETING PREVIEW

    Wellfleet STM Will Take Up 10 Bylaw Changes

    $2.7 million in overrides sought for wastewater and for a town planner

    By

    WELLFLEET — Many changes will be afoot at the Sept. 18 special town meeting, not all of them due to what is on the warrant.

    After complaints that last spring’s town meeting was inaccessible to working people and young families, this session will be held on a Monday night, and child care will be provided for ages three and up. The quorum requirement has also been lowered to 150 voters.

    Town meeting is set for September 18 at 6 p.m. in the gymnasium of Wellfleet Elementary School.

    The following week, on Sept. 27, voters will head to the ballot box to elect a new member of the select board to finish out Kathleen Bacon’s term. Bacon announced her resignation in July. According to Town Clerk Jennifer Congel, the only person to take out nomination papers for the seat was Timothy Sayre, who lost to Bacon last year when she ran as a write-in.

    Along with 10 bylaw amendments, voters will be asked to approve $2.7 million in Proposition 2½ overrides to fund a town planner position and a wastewater treatment facility at the Lawrence Hill housing development.

    According to Article 2 on the warrant, the town plans to install a cluster wastewater treatment system to serve the new housing as well as the Wellfleet Elementary School, the police station, and the fire station. Surrounding properties will also be hooked up to the system as part of the town’s Targeted Watershed Management Plan to cut nitrogen loading in Wellfleet’s embayments.

    The estimated cost of the project is $4.6 million, according to Town Administrator Rich Waldo; $3.5 million will cover planning and construction of the facility, and the remaining $1.1 million will pay for connecting properties to the system.

    Voters already approved $1.93 million at the 2021 town meeting to build the facility. Additional authorization from voters will allow the town to seek borrowing from the Clean Water Trust, a revolving fund that awards grants of up to 25 percent of the total project cost from the Cape and Islands Water Protection Fund.

    That’s a just-in-case scenario, though. If the town succeeds in getting a grant to fund the construction of the facility through the MassWorks Infrastructure Program, the town will not need to borrow. The town expects to receive notice of a grant award by November, according to the warrant.

    An override of $145,000 would fund a town planner’s job at town hall. Wellfleet is currently one of the only Cape Cod communities without one. Article 4 says the town planner would support the building commissioner and zoning board of appeals in enforcing zoning regulations as well as assisting in developing bylaws.

    Planning is currently assigned to the assistant town administrator, a position that is “overburdened,” the warrant says. “The lack of a dedicated town planner results in the burnout of staff.”

    The assistant town administrator job is currently being filled by David Colton as an interim, after Rebecca Roughly resigned at the end of June.

    Select board member Ryan Curley told the Maurice’s Campground committee on July 26 that the town planner would help perform the duties that would have been assigned to the housing coordinator, a new position defeated at the annual town election by 17 votes.

    Both the town planner position and the Lawrence Hill wastewater treatment funding will require a two-thirds majority at town meeting and a majority vote at the special town election on Sept. 27.

    Article 3 on the warrant would amend an existing borrowing article from the 2021 annual town meeting to fund an Innovative/Alternative septic system subsidy program. The article would allow borrowing from the Clean Water Trust.

    Ten bylaw amendment proposals will also come before voters on Sept. 18, eight of which were requested by the select board.

    An inclusionary zoning proposal, Article 5, would require developers to reserve a percentage of units in new developments to be rented or sold affordably or to pay a fee to the Wellfleet Affordable Housing Trust.

    Article 7 is an amendment pertaining to the intensity of use of multi-family dwellings and would eliminate the requirement to have 8,000 square feet of additional land for every added dwelling unit in any given development in the commercial district.

    Three tree-related bylaws, Articles 8, 9, and 10, would add exemptions to the prohibition of cutting timber in the National Seashore as well as the cutting of notable trees, defined as native trees with a girth of 120 or more inches.

    Article 12 would ban the sale of nips, or miniature single-serve liquor bottles made of plastic or glass. According to the warrant article, nips are a pervasive littering problem; a study conducted in Falmouth in 2021 found that nips accounted for 32 percent of roadside garbage. Nips are banned in Falmouth, Mashpee, Nantucket, and two Martha’s Vineyard towns.

    Two bylaw amendments in Articles 13 and 14 were requested by Animal Control Officer Jacob Berrick. They would require dog owners to register dogs within 30 days of adoption and would allow dogs to visit town cemeteries. They would also prohibit owners from leaving pets unattended in their vehicles and would prohibit dogs from lifeguarded portions of town beaches and ponds between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. during the summer.

    The Wellfleet Community Forum will host a Pre-Town Meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 12 at 7 p.m. at the Adult Community Center with Town Moderator Dan Silverman presiding.

    FOURTH OF JULY

    Wellfleet Shows Its Stripes and Stars

    Performers and pirates on parade

    By

    Skyler Cole, a performer with Payomet’s Cirque by the Sea troupe, wheels down Wellfleet’s Main Street during Monday’s 4th of July parade. Read more for more Wellfleet Independence Day photographs. Photos by Marnie Crawford Samuelson. 

    INDEPENDENCE DAY

    July 4th Events on the Outer Cape

    Parades and fireworks

    By

    Provincetown

    Provincetown’s Fourth of July parade begins at 11 a.m. at the Harbor Hotel in the East End and proceeds down Commercial Street to Franklin Street. Floats will be judged in the categories of Most Patriotic, Best in Parade, Best Musical, Children’s, and Adult.

    Fireworks over Provincetown Harbor will happen at dusk and can be viewed from most bayside beaches and the waterfront.

    Wellfleet

    Wellfleet’s Fourth of July events begins with the traditional classic car procession at 9:30 a.m. and the parade of floats starting at 10 a.m. The route begins at the town pier, proceeds up Holbrook Avenue, turns right on Main Street through the center of town, then turns right onto East Commercial Street and returns to the starting point at the town pier. The judges’ stand will be on the town hall green. This year’s theme is “Celebrating Wellfleet Workers.”

     

    CIVICS

    Bacon Wins Election in Wellfleet

    Voters approve $1.59M in overrides and $2.2M for school sprinklers

    By

    WELLFLEET — Voters at the June 21 special town election passed all five ballot questions and elected write-in candidate Kathleen Bacon to the select board.

    Bacon, a house painter and town resident for 30 years, will serve out the remaining two years of Helen Miranda Wilson’s term on the board. Wilson retired one year into her fourth term.

    Bacon received 418 votes, besting Timothy Sayre, who got 225 votes, and Jude Ahern, who received 111 votes.

    Kathleen Bacon wins as a write-in candidate for Wellfleet Select Board. (Photo by Nancy Bloom)

    “I look forward to what I hope will be a very positive turnaround for the town,” Bacon said on Tuesday evening.

    She has served one term before, from 2017 to 2020, during which, she said, she “felt completely unsupported by the former town administrator, Dan Hoort.”

    Bacon recalled that Hoort wanted to use town land near the elementary school for a town hall annex. Bacon, a renter who described her housing situation as “unstable,” said she wanted that land to be used for affordable housing. Plans to construct 46 units of affordable housing at 95 Lawrence Road are now underway.

    So are efforts to correct years of accounting errors. Town officials have said the books will soon be ready for review by the state Dept. of Revenue. In other words, Wellfleet appears headed into a positive chapter with a new town administrator, Rich Waldo, Bacon said.

    Bacon said she is pleased to be “back at it again.”

    The 784 voters — 25 percent of those registered — who turned out on June 21 also passed four overrides and a debt exclusion, which will raise town spending by $1.59 million. The overrides will permanently add $546 to the tax bill of a median-valued home.

    The debt exclusion authorizes the town to borrow $2.2 million to install a long-overdue fire suppression system at the Wellfleet Elementary School. The vote was 642 to 135.

    The four overrides will permanently raise the tax levy, while the debt exclusion raises town spending only for the life of the loan.

    Question one, to appropriate $518,820 to fund school and town operating budgets, passed 574 to 209.

    Question two, to increase the budget by $672,700 to replace and repair town equipment and buildings, fund special projects, and pay post-employment benefits for retired employees, passed 502 to 276.

    Question three, to assess $186,759 more in property taxes to increase the police force by hiring two new officers, passed 486 to 291.

    Question four, to bring in an additional $206,964 in taxes to expand the fire department by hiring two more firefighter/EMT/paramedics, passed 541 to 238.

    LAND COURT

    Sextons Claim Ownership of Fred Bell Property in Wellfleet

    Litigious family tries to take possession of 12 affordable units

    By

    WELLFLEET — Chellise Sexton of Eastham and her son, Kevin Sexton of Wellfleet, claim that they own the property off Old King’s Highway, now called Fred Bell Way, where the town built 12 units of affordable housing about 18 years ago.

    Wellfleet’s affordable housing complex on Fred Bell Way is the subject of a lawsuit filed by Chellise and Kevin Sexton. (Photo by Teresa Parker)

    The Sextons filed a complaint against the town and a long list of others in state Land Court in 2017. They asked the court to order the town off the property, invalidate a handful of utility easements, and award damages for rents and profits connected to use of the land as well as title to the property to them.

    At issue are 8.6 acres at 324 Old King’s Highway. The town took the land for taxes owed — a grand total of $96.54 — from Ralph Whitcher in 1967. In 1993, town meeting voters turned ownership over to the Wellfleet Housing Authority to build affordable housing there.

    The plan marched forward slowly. In 2001, the housing authority leased the property for 60 years to the Lower Cape Community Development Corp., now called the Community Development Partnership (CDP) — the Eastham-based nonprofit that built the 12 units of housing on the site and continues to manage the project.

    The Sextons have sued the town, the Wellfleet Housing Authority, the CDP, and various others, including utility companies, the state (because of the involvement of the Dept. of Housing and Community Development), and even the United States of America, probably in connection to federal subsidies, affordable housing restrictions, and mortgages.

    A long list of attorneys hired by those entities are involved in the case.

    In the complaint, filed by the Sextons’ lawyer, Albert Schulz of Osterville, the plaintiffs trace the deed they claim gives them ownership to 324 Old King’s Highway back to 1829. The town’s title examiner and the Sextons’ experts disagree on the ownership trail starting in 1922. The Sextons say the property passed through the ownership of several Cooks and ultimately to Chellise Cook Cardinal.

    It was conveyed to her daughter, Chellise Sexton, in 1985, according to the complaint. And in 2009, it was recorded on the deed as belonging to Chellise and Kevin Sexton as tenants in common.

    The Sextons claim the property the town took from Ralph Whitcher for unpaid taxes in 1967 is not the property on which the town built affordable housing. That property is the one they own, they claim, based on their deeds. Those deeds describe the land in terms of the abutting property owners or boundaries, such as railroad tracks. Sometimes those boundaries are no longer very clear.

    The Sextons say the land owned by the town is another piece of property and its current listed owner is the Cape Cod National Seashore.

    Boston attorney Zachary Berk was hired by the title insurance company to represent the CDP and other entities connected to the mortgages held on the property. He explained that the court has divided the case into two phases. The first will establish whether the Sextons have good claim to 324 Old King’s Highway, Berk said.

    “If they don’t have good title, they can’t challenge the town’s title,” said Berk. “If the plaintiffs lose in the first phase, the case is over.”

    After several Covid-related delays, phase one of the trial was held in March. The Sextons submitted testimony from two experts who said their claim to the land is valid. The town submitted its own expert’s analysis of its deeds, although it wasn’t necessary to do so.

    “In our case, the town has a record title in the registry of deeds,” Berk said. “If you have a record title, you don’t have to prove anything.”

    Final post-trial arguments were due at the end of this month, and a hearing has been set for July 6, but Berk said attorneys on both sides are discussing pushing those dates further into the future. Berk said he expects a decision on phase one in three to six months.

    According to a joint filing in March, both sides agreed that if the Sextons prevail in phase one “they will have record title superior to the defendants and sufficient to proceed to Phase II in order to pursue writ of entry,” which means possession of the property.

    If that happens, the town and the Wellfleet Housing Authority, represented by Justin Perrotta of KP Law, the CDP, represented by Berk, and the various other entities will mount their own offense against the Sextons.

    “There’s a statute in Massachusetts law that arguably provides that if a party improves a parcel and the other party doesn’t say anything for six years, then you are entitled to the value of the improvements,” Berk said.

    The Sextons didn’t assert their claim to the property until 2017, 15 years after the Lower Cape CDC had built its complex. That organization and the Wellfleet Housing Authority are claiming they should be paid a minimum of $1.5 million for the housing that was built there — if the Sextons claim ownership of the property.

    Some Land Court cases are settled by claims of adverse possession, which under state law is the conspicuous and active use of a property without permission for an uninterrupted minimum of 20 years. One of the attorneys cited it as a possible claim in this case. The town, however, was not actively using the property until 2001, when it moved forward with the housing project, and the Sextons filed their case in 2017, 16 years later.

    Attorney Schulz declined to comment on the case. Chellise Sexton, who is 75, was approached by a reporter at her home with questions about the suit. She responded, “I know nothing about it,” and walked away.

    Kevin Sexton, 47, did not respond to a message left at his home on Lecount Hollow Road.

    The Sexton family owns Cooks by the Ocean, a 24.6-acre compound of rental cottages at 420 Lecount Hollow Road, along with various other properties in Wellfleet. They have also sued many other private landowners, claiming to hold the true titles to their property.

    In 2003, Chellise Sexton filed a complaint in Barnstable Superior Court against the heirs of Woodbury W. Smith and others, and against Alfred Pickard, who had purchased the Smith property, claiming she was the rightful title holder to 521 Old King’s Highway. In 2006, the court denied her claim.

    Kevin Sexton has another pending lawsuit against Wellfleet appealing a cease-and-desist order issued after his family clearcut a large swath of woods on their property next to Lecount Hollow Beach last June. Former Building Inspector Paul Fowler had determined that the Sextons violated zoning laws governing the National Seashore District, in which their property is located. Fowler issued the cease-and-desist order, which the Sextons then asked the zoning board of appeals to overturn.

    When the zoning board upheld Fowler’s order, Kevin Sexton filed the lawsuit against the ZBA in state Land Court.

    TOWN MEETING

    Wellfleet Adopts $24.9M Budget, OKs All Overrides

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

    By

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

    ELECTION

    Three Questions for Three Wellfleet Candidates

    Their views on the overrides, residential tax breaks, and Maurice’s Campground

    By

    WELLFLEET — Voters in Wellfleet will have three candidates to choose from at the special election on Tuesday, June 21 to fill the select board seat of Helen Miranda Wilson, who retired one year into her fourth term on the board.

    The Independent asked candidates Jude Ahern, Kathleen Bacon, and Tim Sayre for their positions on three issues: the Proposition 2½ overrides and debt exclusion that are also on the ballot; the proposed town purchase of Maurice’s Campground; and the increase in the residential tax exemption from 20 to 25 percent, which, according to select board chair Ryan Curley, shifts much of the cost of the override away from year-round residents.

    At town meeting on June 11, voters approved four overrides totaling $1.59 million, which will permanently add $546 a year to the tax bill on a property of median assessed value, according to Curley.

    Timothy Sayre. (Photo by Michaela Chesin)

    Bacon and Sayre said they favored the overrides, while Ahern’s opinion is summed up by her campaign sign: “Vote No on Everything.”

    She said she voted no on the budget at town meeting and added, “I’m going to vote no at the ballot. I think we need oversight, and we need to make sure that what caused us to be in that situation does not happen again.”

    “That situation” is the financial mismanagement that has kept two interim accountants busy for more than a year and still unable to close the books for fiscal 2020 and 2021. Ahern said she wonders if others will express their skepticism at the ballot box. The overrides need both town meeting approval and a simple majority at the election.

    Bacon, who is running as a write-in candidate, is the only one who has served on the board before — from 2017 to 2020. She said the overrides are necessary to fund government operations.

    “The damage is done, and the community has come out of it stronger,” Bacon said. “We are much more aware about the intricacies of running the town. I am fully confident when the accountants finish up they will give us a blueprint of what we need to do for the next five years.”

    In Bacon’s view, the accounting problems illustrate how threadbare Wellfleet’s budget has been.

    Sayre agreed. “They should have done this a long time ago,” he said. “They were robbing Peter to pay Paul. As much as I don’t want to pay more taxes, it needed to happen. This town has zero dollars.”

    When the state finally does certify the town’s free cash account, which has not happened since 2019, the money should be put in reserve to maintain the town’s AAA bond rating, Sayre said.

    Maurice’s Campground

    Sayre, 66, said the town should use revenue from the short-term rental tax to pay for Maurice’s Campground. The town will vote in the fall on buying the 21.25-acre property in South Wellfleet for $6.5 million. The $855,000 in annual rental tax revenue would pay off the purchase price, with interest, in 10 years without costing taxpayers anything, Sayre said.

    Kathleen Bacon. (Photo by Nancy Bloom)

    Bacon said using the campground to provide workforce and affordable housing “is a game changer.” But, she added, “I would like to co-buy it with the town of Eastham. We should be approaching the housing thing on a much more regional basis. The housing issue is hurting the Lower Cape in general, and we need to be collaborative with the towns on either side of us.”

    Ahern said, “I am open-minded, but it is a lot of money. I have confidence that there are a lot of smart people looking into it, but we have to be careful, because Wellfleet has not shown that we are capable of managing anything.”

    Residential Tax Exemption

    The select board voted last fall to raise the residential tax exemption from 20 to 25 percent for the next fiscal year. Bacon said those domiciled in Wellfleet deserve a break, and it makes sense to shift the burden of a tax increase to second-home owners. She said she was an early proponent of the residential tax exemption.

    Jude Ahern at her “headquarters” across from town hall. (Photo courtesy Jude Ahern)

    Ahern favors the tax exemption concept but opposed the select board’s move to raise it from 20 to 25 percent. The extra 5 percent, she said, “is just a way to push through these tax increases.” She added, however, that the second-home owners she has talked to from the window she has turned into her “headquarters” in the old Newsdealer building on Main Street do not seem to object to it.

    Sayre, who moved to a family house in Wellfleet from Florida two years ago, said he would not mind the tax exemption rising to 30 percent. Towns may go as high as 35 percent under state law.

    Sayre said shifting the tax burden makes sense: “It was the right thing to do.”

    DEJA VU

    GFM Still Defies ZBA Orders at Old Wharf Yard

    Attorney Zehnder adds another round to his Land Court case

    By

    WELLFLEET — Neighbors of a controversial contractor’s yard operating at the corner of Route 6 and Old Wharf Road are frustrated with the apparent inability of the town to enforce a stop-work order.

    On May 12, the zoning board of appeals once again upheld a cease-and-desist order that was appealed by property owners Donna and Steve DiGiovanni of Truro. Attorney Ben Zehnder has said he will add this case to others he has brought to state Land Court on the dispute.

    Neighborhood residents and zoning board members wondered at the ZBA meeting why the town hasn’t stepped in.

    The battle has been going on since January 2021, when the DiGiovannis, principals of Great White Realty Group, bought the parcel and on the following day cut down three-quarters of the trees, removed topsoil, and began grading. They had not secured any permits.

    A cease-and-desist order was issued by then-Building Inspector Paul Fowler. Great White appealed, but the order was upheld by the zoning board.

    The ZBA also denied special permits that would have allowed the DiGiovannis’ tenants, GFM Enterprises of South Dennis, to operate a contractor’s yard.

    After Fowler resigned, interim Building Inspector Victor Staley, filling the gap while the town searched for a new inspector, authorized the operation of the contractor’s yard in late November.

    A GFM Enterprises sign went up, and supplies and heavy equipment began to arrive.

    In January, the ZBA reversed Staley’s authorization of the contractor’s yard, but the company continued operating.

    The town’s new building inspector, James Badera, issued a further cease-and-desist order in March. Again, the action had no effect.

    “I don’t understand why the cease and desist is being ignored with impunity,” said ZBA member Mick Lynch. “It makes a laughingstock of this board.”

    Lewis Wise, a land use attorney who lives nearby, said, “Great White will continue to operate with impunity because, we are told, the town has decided not to enforce the cease and desist.”

    ZBA member Jan Morrissey asked why the town had not sought an injunction. No one had an answer. Chair Sharon Inger said she would not comment.

    Wise said he thought Great White would continue to drag out the process while neighbors are forced to endure the noise and dust.

    “This is about 100 households,” Wise said. “It’s caused many of us to lose faith in town government.”

    Zehnder argued that a contractor’s yard is one of the uses that is allowed by right in the commercial zone. “No permissions are required,” Zehnder said. “If the select board seeks an injunction, we’ll contest it.”

    Chair Ryan Curley said Monday that the select board doesn’t make decisions on injunctions. “The administration typically authorizes that sort of action,” he said.

    The town is currently between administrators. Charlie Sumner has been interim administrator for the past year, focusing his time on Wellfleet’s troubled finances.

    On Monday evening, Assistant Town Administrator Rebecca Roughley responded to a request for comment, writing, “We anticipate that motions for summary judgment will be filed and heard in early summer, with the court’s ruling to follow thereafter. Therefore, the town will await further guidance from the Land Court regarding the scope of permissible activity on the property. The building commissioner will be inspecting and documenting activities that occur on the site. If anyone wishes to submit photographs or any written observations regarding this property, please feel free to send those to the building commissioner by email.”

    Rich Waldo, the town’s new administrator, is set to begin work on May 31.

    At the May 12 ZBA meeting, Zehnder, who said he represents both Great White Realty and GFM in the matter, told the zoning board he expected his clients’ appeal to fail.

    If that happens, he said, he will take the appeal to state Land Court, where it would be merged with two existing cases Great White has filed against the ZBA over its previous denials.

    When the zoning board voted to uphold the order, as expected, Zehnder confirmed his intentions.

    The lawyer told the members of the board not to take the situation personally.

    “I don’t think you’re here to get angry or emotional or anything else about this,” Zehnder said. He suggested that the growing case in Land Court should not take long and would be resolved “in months, not years.”

    Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article, published in print on May 26, reported incorrectly that Rebecca Roughley, the assistant town administrator, had not responded to a request for comment. She did respond on Monday evening with the comment quoted in the corrected version.

     

    ARCHITECTURE

    Marcel Breuer’s Wellfleet World

    The Hungarian emigré and his friends were driven to make something beautiful

    By

    WELLFLEET — Marcel Lajos Breuer — Lajkó to most people — was born in Pécs, Hungary into a cultured, middle-class family during the glory days of the Austro Hungarian Empire in 1902. His mother, the more influential parent, emphasized to the young Lajkó that education, travel, sports, and an appreciation of beauty were key foundations of a meaningful life. Into painting and math, Breuer enrolled at the Viennese Academy of Fine Art, but he was turned off by the rigid and overly theoretical air and soon dropped out.

    Breuer was in his twenties when he designed the Wassily chair, one of his masterpieces. (Photo courtesy Heritage Images/Getty Images)

    At a friend’s suggestion, he instead joined in 1920 the avant-garde Bauhaus art school recently launched in Weimar, Germany. Breuer was immediately inspired by the free-spirited atmosphere — in a letter to his parents he mentions the grand time he had at a cross-dress party — and enjoyed the hands-on experience with different materials. Gifted and ambitious, Breuer quickly established himself as a star student and Bauhaus director Walter Gropius’s favorite.

    Breuer became the youngest teacher of the Bauhaus’s prestigious faculty in 1924, after Gropius persuaded him to lead the carpentry and furniture workshop. Soon came a pivotal moment in design history: the 23-year-old Breuer was the first person to make furniture using bent metal. His revolutionary tubular steel chairs are celebrated classics of modern furniture today. There are various origin stories, but one inspiration was his bicycle’s sturdy handlebar after a fall, which led him to wonder if furniture could be made from bent metal.

    Breuer’s Wellfleet cottage, designed in 1949, embodies his love of nature and craftsmanship. (Photo by Tas Tóbiás)

    In 1937, Breuer moved to Massachusetts to spread the gospel of modernism to a group of students who would later shape American architecture, including Philip Johnson, I.M. Pei, and Paul Rudolph. Easygoing, funny, and brilliant, Breuer was idolized by his students. On the side, he and Gropius set up a practice together. Breuer’s residential houses softened the austere forms of the Bauhaus with long cantilevers and natural materials such as fieldstone walls, flagstone floors, and cypress siding. Using the New England vernacular as inspiration, he made an American suburban version of modernism that was original and beautiful.

    The American public first heard of Marcel Breuer in 1949 when the Museum of Modern Art asked him to create a model house inside the museum’s garden. The exhibit’s mission was to show suburban middle-class Americans the modern way of domestic life. The elongated house with large horizontal windows was enlivened by a butterfly-shaped roof and a beautiful contrast of materials. The free-flowing space was meant to help a mother keep an eye on the children’s area, which was on the separate end from the parents’ bedroom. The light-filled rooms were fitted with Breuer’s own furniture and those of his famous contemporaries, including Eero Saarinen’s Womb chair and Charles and Ray Eames’s plywood side chairs.

    With more than 80,000 visitors, the exhibit was a major success and shaped the way Americans viewed the modern home. It also inundated Breuer with new commissions.

    Marcel and Connie Breuer in Wellfleet in an undated photo.

    Together with fellow European emigré friends and their families, Marcel and Connie Breuer spent the summers deep in the woods of Wellfleet. They formed a secluded, free-spirited community infused with alcohol and spirited debates about art. Heavy on Hungarians, the Wellfleet crowd included György Kepes, the influential artist and M.I.T. professor; Serge Chermayeff, the Russian-born Yale professor of architecture; Walter and Ise Gropius; and Saul Steinberg, the Romanian-native cartoonist of the New Yorker magazine.

    “You could do whatever you wanted here,” says architect Peter McMahon, head of the Cape Cod Modern House Trust. “Wellfleet was depopulated back then. Swim naked in the ocean, the bay, or the ponds. It was very cheap to buy land and the landscape reminded many of them of places in their past.”

    Breuer’s Wellfleet cottage, which he designed in 1949, overlooks Williams and Higgins ponds and embodies his love of nature and craftsmanship: the delicate, wood-framed rectangular building is gently elevated in the air; from it juts an overhanging porch where he liked to serve his beloved goulash and chicken paprikash. Later, Breuer added two wings to provide more privacy and a darkroom for his photographer son. They fit perfectly but aren’t identical to the main building.

    “Breuer was a genius,” says McMahon. “He doesn’t want to impress you with his architecture; it’s a conversation he is having with himself.” Breuer’s son Tamás is currently in the process of selling the house, which is in need of serious renovation. “We’d love to buy and restore it and then turn it into three artists’ residences, but the price he wants is way out of our range,” McMahon says.

    “Hungarian culture came through the whole group. It was one of the things that held them together,” says Guy Wolff, Connie Breuer’s nephew, of his childhood memories of Wellfleet during the Cold War years, when this left-leaning bunch, some of them with past connections to the Hungarian Communist party, had to be vigilant.

    Breuer’s 1949 model house designed for the Museum of Modern Art, later purchased by John D. Rockefeller Jr. for his Pocantico estate. (Photo by Tas Tóbiás)

    “There was a lot of paranoia,” says Juliet Stone, György Kepes’s daughter. “We had to hide certain books in the basement — a history of the Spanish Civil War and leftist magazines. My father was very worried when I wore all black during a July 4th celebration. He wanted me to put on American colors, but I was a beatnik teenager.”

    “The whole group was driven by this search for making something beautiful,” says Wolff. “If Lajkó was looking at the lake, he was seeing shapes. Their house had this quiet beauty about it.”

    It’s ironic that Breuer is far better known today for his chairs than his buildings because he was emphatic about how he viewed himself. “I wanted people to forget my furniture and get to know me as the architect I am,” he said in a 1937 interview with a Hungarian newspaper. “I didn’t want to spend my whole life furnishing interiors.”

     

    This article is adapted with permission from “Marcel Breuer’s World,” published on April 20, 2022 in OffbeatBudapest.com, of which Tas Tóbiás is the editor.

    TOWN FINANCE

    Wellfleet’s Bond Rating at Risk in Accounting Quagmire

    Free cash certification now depends on town’s same-old auditors

    By

    WELLFLEET — As April town meeting approaches, time is running out for the town to sort through its financial disarray.

    The Mass. Dept. of Revenue (DOR) has informed the town that it will not certify Wellfleet’s free cash account until the town’s fiscal 2021 audit is done, interim Town Administrator Charles Sumner told the select board on Feb. 8. At the same time, interim accountants Mary McIsaac and Lisa Souve are still working to close the cash books for both fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2021, which also must happen before free cash is certified. They now say that could happen by the second week of March, after which the auditors could start their work.

    Cash Wants to Be Free

    Free cash is the total of unspent, unrestricted funds from the previous fiscal year. The money is not available for use until the account is certified by the DOR. Wellfleet’s free cash account has not been certified since June 30, 2019, according to DOR spokeswoman Naysa Woomer.

    If free cash isn’t certified by town meeting, now scheduled for April 25, the stabilization fund won’t be replenished, which could affect the town’s AAA bond rating. A lower bond rating would mean higher interest rates on borrowing.

    Last month, Sumner told the select board that the stabilization fund had been drained of $639,000 since June and that it was important to replenish the fund to maintain the AAA rating.

    Sumner said this week that his financial plan had been put in jeopardy by the DOR’s message but that it was still possible to get the accounting work done by town meeting. He also suggested that the April 25 date might be postponed.

    The town’s books have been audited for the past 25 years by the same firm, Powers & Sullivan of Wakefield. Sumner told the select board last week that he lacked confidence in the last audit “for obvious reasons.”

    In the fiscal 2020 audit, Powers & Sullivan found an unexplained variance of $765,000, which Sumner described as “significant, particularly for a community the size of Wellfleet.”

    The firm’s previous audit, for fiscal 2019, did not include a management letter — an unusual omission, given the magnitude of the accounting deficiencies that now are obvious. The auditors have consistently refused to answer questions from the Independent about the reasons for this omission, why other material weaknesses in the town’s accounting practices (such as the lack of balance sheets and a general ledger) were not flagged sooner, and how the upcoming audit will be approached.

    Powers & Sullivan is in the last year of a three-year contract with the town that was negotiated by former Town Administrator Dan Hoort. The fiscal 2021 audit will cost $22,900 under that contract.

    McIsaac and Souve have been working since last August to close the cash books, “peeling away layers of the onion and identifying problems,” Sumner said. “There’s still some variance and outstanding questions. The best way to provide clarity is for the next audit cycle to wash through the system. While it’s disappointing, it’s not terribly surprising.”

    Other than replenishing the stabilization fund, Sumner did not name any other planned uses for free cash at the upcoming town meeting.

    Untangling the Accounts

    Progress on the books has been slower than expected because of vacancies at town hall.

    Assistant Town Accountant Jane Tesson took a leave of absence Oct.1, and former Town Treasurer Miriam Spencer resigned Nov. 30. “We had to backfill on duties we consider to be mandatory and just try to keep the wheels turning,” McIsaac told the Select Board.

    The plan now is to close the records and provide the DOR with system-generated documents, finalize a punch list, and get the auditors in, McIsaac said.

    The work McIsaac and Souve have been doing for seven months includes inspecting all the records the town has (audit work papers, source documents, and department materials) and then determining beginning account balances. Once those are determined, they make sure that town meeting votes were recorded properly across all the funds.

    “We’re looking at receipts and disbursements as much as possible,” said McIsaac. “We came up with an ending balance first for FY ’20 and then carried that into FY ’21 to be able to close both years consecutively and smoothly, produce the records that the DOR would like to see, and also produce the records that are required for our auditors,” McIsaac said.

    Souve said each town fund was a project. She gave the community preservation fund as an example.

    “I have resigned myself to the fact that I have to rebuild it from fiscal ’20 forward,” Souve said. “Nine hours just the other night on CPC. It’s not done yet.”

    Depending on what CPC funds are available at the end of her search, town meeting articles may be affected, she said. At the same time, McIsaac will be working on untangling the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

    Most town funds are now closed or on the verge of closing, the accountants reported. The largest is the general fund.

    “We’ve done the lion’s share of work on those balance sheet items to be able to close the years on that,” McIsaac said.

    McIsaac said she expects the auditors will complete a satisfactory audit of the town’s records for fiscal 2021 “and render a good opinion accompanied by a constructive management letter.” The management letter should note fixes of items from the previous management letter plus additional items that hadn’t been addressed before, she said.

    Last year, the DOR’s Division of Local Services came to Wellfleet and interviewed town staff for a comprehensive report yet to be completed, Sumner said. “We’re anxiously waiting,” he said. “The state department is swamped, but we should be seeing it in the next several weeks.”

    The Search Goes On

    Sumner’s choice for the position of town treasurer, Cameron Reiss Scott, was to be presented to the select board on Tuesday, Feb.15.

    The Town Administrator Search Committee will begin to discuss candidates in executive session, and preliminary interviews have begun for the town accountant positions. During the Feb. 8 select board meeting, Sumner’s contract was extended until May 15, but if someone is hired as town administrator he will leave sooner.

    When the books finally close, “Wellfleet can move on, and we can be in a reasonably good place to get a treasurer and town accountant on board with as good-as-we-can-get records,” Souve said.

    WELLFLEET WOES

    Tracking the Tangled Web of Town Finances

    Looking back on Wellfleet’s fiscal annus horribilis

    By

    WELLFLEET — The town’s interim administrator and accountants like to refer to the journals and records they are working to make sense of as a “ball of yarn” that is continually unraveling.

    “You follow it,” wrote accountant Mary McIsaac in an August report to the select board. “There are journal problems that send you in one direction, and then you get there and you find more problems that send you in more directions.”

    Deciphering the story of how the town’s accounts got to be in such terrible shape — which clearly took a number of years — while the select board, finance committee, and other town officials were apparently completely unaware of the problems requires another kind of detective work.

    At the start of 2021, Maria Broadbent was just a few months into her three-year contract as town administrator. She had already fired former Town Accountant Gene Ferrari without explanation and hired a new accountant, Heather Michaud, on Dec. 14, 2020.

    There were a few other indications of trouble. The fall tax bills had gone into the mail almost two months late. But Town Treasurer Miriam Spencer predicted that “things will be better going forward.”

    Instead, the town budget process quickly came apart, as Broadbent made massive cuts in department budgets without telling the heads of those departments, and then denied that she had done so.

    Meanwhile, Michaud had identified alarming discrepancies in the town’s books.

    The previous audit of the town’s accounts, for fiscal 2019, did not include a management letter, which normally identifies problems that need to be addressed.

    “Heather came in and said, ‘We want a management letter that’s going to spell out everything we need to fix,’ ” Spencer said following her resignation on Nov. 23.

    The auditors from Powers & Sullivan responded to Michaud’s demand with a management letter that Spencer described as “scathing.” It detailed material weaknesses in cash management and internal controls, a $765,000 “unknown variance” that remains unresolved, and 14 other serious deficiencies.

    “Everything from the chart of accounts being insufficient, to supports the town needs from a financial perspective, to the actual system that runs them, and then of course the policies and procedures that govern the finances spent, and people paid — they all require some review or overhaul,” Michaud told the select board on April 13. The problems would take two to three years to fix, she added.

    On April 23, Broadbent and Michaud both resigned. No explanations were given by town officials for either resignation. The select board announced that the annual town meeting would be delayed by three weeks.

    Powers & Sullivan has conducted the town’s annual audits for 25 years. The audit team was scheduled to discuss the findings of the 2020 management letter with the select board on May 25, but the auditors failed to show up. They later blamed the failure on technology problems.

    At the next select board meeting, on June 8, audit manager Mike Nelligan attributed the town’s accounting deficiencies to high turnover and a new accounting system. When asked why there had been no 2019 management letter, Nelligan said the audit was already late and he thought the town should have another year to get its new accounting software system up and running. The $765,000 unknown variance in the accounts, he said, was probably in “the agency fund,” which was “totally out of balance.” Agency funds are accounts that collect funds destined to go elsewhere, like meals tax revenues. There are, in fact, nine different agency funds on Wellfleet’s books. Nelligan has consistently refused to answer questions from the Independent.

    The only one of the five select board members to express alarm about the auditors’ performance was Ryan Curley.

    “I am concerned the communication was bad,” Curley said. “There was no forewarning of the seriousness of the issues, even though it’s pretty obvious the auditors knew there were issues in the accounting department and they should have issued a management letter. Not doing so was remiss and did not serve the town well.”

    Select board member Mike DeVasto blamed the town administrator.

    “Typically, the town administrator should be reporting to us what was going on in the accounting department,” he said. “That wasn’t happening.”

    And board member Justina Carlson offered Powers & Sullivan a bouquet: “I think our auditors have done a wonderful job,” she said, “and I appreciate that Mike [Nelligan] is here tonight and all the work the firm has done for the town since 1996.”

    In the following weeks, town leaders cobbled together a budget and warrant. Fire Chief Richard Pauley had served as acting town administrator until interim Town Administrator Charles Sumner, the longtime town administrator of Brewster, came on in June. While the auditors suggested writing off the unknown variance, Sumner and his two interim accountants, Mary McIsaac and Lisa Souve, decided to trace the errors in the books to find out what actually happened.

    The fiscal 2022 budget, adopted at the annual town meeting at the end of June, turned out to be rife with errors. Sumner hoped to convene a special town meeting in December to correct the errors, but that plan had to be abandoned when the state Dept. of Revenue would not certify the town’s free cash account.

    With help from the Dept of Revenue, the town managed to set its tax rate for the year by using several one-time transfers to balance accounts.

    The timeline for closing the town’s books continued to be derailed, as Assistant Town Accountant Jane Tesson took a leave of absence and Spencer resigned. Sumner brought in another temporary accountant, Judy Sprague, and continues to look for someone to become the town’s permanent accountant.

    More than 1,000 errors have been corrected in the town’s books for fiscal year 2020, Sumner announced to the select board at its Dec. 14 meeting. Free cash will likely be certified by the state in January, he said.

    “When we get it done, it will give the community confidence that we have thoroughly looked at these valid concerns these people have and dug deep,” Sumner said. As the town prepares for the next annual town meeting, Sumner suspects a Proposition 2½ override will be needed to cover the town’s budget shortfalls.

    In May, former Town Administrator Dan Hoort attributed the mess to “bad hires” he had made, but he has since refused to comment, saying the Independent is biased against him. Sumner and crew continue to try to untangle Wellfleet’s ball of yarn, though the source of the biggest knots and the unknown variance remain hidden somewhere in the mess.

     Free Senior Workshops From Castle Hill 

    By

    The spring session of Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill’s “60+” program begins this week. The free virtual workshops are open to residents of Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, Eastham, Orleans, Chatham, Harwich, and Brewster who are 60 years of age or older.

    Vicky Tomayko teaches “Relief Printmaking in the Home Studio” on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10 a.m. to noon, from April 13th to 29th. Students will learn how to make woodcuts, linocuts, and collagraphs. If cooking is more your thing, Katherine Alford, former vice president of Food Network’s test kitchen, teaches a workshop on Thursdays, 3 to 5 p.m., from April 22nd to May 20th, skipping May 6.

    Sign up for the lottery at castlehill.org, or by calling 508-349-7511. Participants will be notified of admittance on Friday, April 9th.

     

    Covid Relief Fund Recipients Announced

    By

    The Mass. Cultural Council has announced the recipients of the Covid-19 Relief Fund. It awarded grants of $1,500 to 781 artists, humanists, and scientists, $1,171,500 in total.

    Twenty were from the Outer Cape. In Provincetown: visual artists Ramón S. Alcoléa, Karen Cappotto, Anastasia Egeli, Akiko Jackson, Chet Jones, and Gaston Lacombe; comedian Kristen Becker; multidisciplinary artist Andrew Fitzpatrick; filmmakers James Kubesch and Fermin Rojas; and, for theater, Robert DiVincenzo, Christopher Kosiavelon, and Michael Sottile.

    In Truro: visual artist Donna Mahan and, for multidisciplinary arts, Stephanie Rein and Vanessa Vartabedian.

    In Wellfleet: visual artists Megan Hinton and Julia Salinger.

    And, finally, in Eastham: musician Billy Hardy. Congratulations to all.

     

     Elena Ruehr Honors ‘A Great Diva’

    By

    Elena Ruehr, a composer who lives part of the year in Wellfleet, has created a new piece titled Notorious RBG, which will be performed virtually by members of the Boston-based Cantata Singers on Saturday, February 6th at 8 p.m. Also on the program are Arnold Schoenberg’s De Profundis and Peter Child’s The Year of the Rat. Watch it at cantatasingers.org.

    Notorious RBG, which uses the words of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as its libretto, consists of four solos by four different singers: Majie Zeller, mezzo-soprano; Kumi Donaghue, soprano; Nancy Kurtz, soprano; and Epp Sonin, soprano.

    “It’s very hard to write for solo voices without accompaniment,” says Ruehr, “because accompaniment gives the backdrop, the harmony, the sense of mood. The only example I know of music that is commonly sung without accompaniment is lullabies. Or you think of songs like ‘Amazing Grace.’ ”

    Ruehr thought about how these songs function, and then pushed the boundaries to make her composition “a little more modern and expressive.” What it comes down to, she says, are “melodic fragments that are understandable” and as short as three notes, which can be strung together like pearls in a necklace.

    Ruehr chose the Ginsburg quotes for their brevity and pithiness. The justice was a huge opera fan, and even appeared in the speaking role of the Duchess of Krakenthorp in Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment, performed by the Washington National Opera. This is alluded to in a line in the last movement: “If I had any talent in the world, any talent that God could give me, I would be a great diva.”

    While the other movements suggest a blues or folk element, this last movement is full of trills, almost “as though Mozart has landed in the room,” says Ruehr.

    —Saskia Maxwell Keller

     

    ENVIRONMENT

    Wellfleet Harbor’s ‘Black Custard’

    It’s all-natural, but you wouldn’t want to eat it

    By

    WELLFLEET — Agnes Mittermayr, a marine ecologist at the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) in Provincetown, has coined a new term to describe the dark, sludgy material that fills Wellfleet Harbor: “black custard.”

    “Initially, everyone called it ‘mayo,’ ” she said.

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