This month, Truro voters made some big decisions about funding, both at town meeting and at the ballot box.
CAI's Gilda Geist spoke the Provincetown Independent's news editor Paul Benseon to learn more about what was most important to Truro voters this town meeting season.
Gilda Geist Town meeting voters weighed in on an article to borrow money for a new Department of Public Works building, a project that's been in the works for years. So, can you catch us up on the history of this project and why the DPW needs a new building?
Paul Benson Sure. Well, the building itself is extremely old parts of it are from the '50s part from the '70s. It has a lot of facilities issues. [DPW workers] said they could see the sky when the big storm came through on February 23. The wind was so strong the roof was practically lifting off. So, it is an old building. That said, where to put a new building was a big controversy in town. Town meeting in 2024 effectively shut down the possibility of putting it where the town had sort of been moving toward, which is near the police and fire department, by funding plans for design anywhere but there. So that did work, and they came up with a new location—rebuilding it on its existing spot, which has some issues. It's way up the hill, it's a pretty narrow road and it's got some PFAS, but that's what the voters wanted. And that, in the end, is what was approved at this town meeting that just happened.
GG What was the discussion like at town meeting? And voters also had to weigh in on what happened with the DPW building at the ballot box, right?
PB Yes, so it was an expensive project, so most of the discussion was about cost. It comes out to about $26 million and that's on top of the $2.8 million that was authorized for planning two years ago. So, there was a lot of discussion about that—have other communities done it cheaper. Did they really do it cheaper? How do you compare these projects that happen off Cape to the construction costs on Cape? And [voters discussed] the radical run-up in construction costs that's happened in the last few years. So, there was a pretty extensive debate on whether the town, essentially, was getting ripped off or not. At first [the article] didn't quite reach a two-thirds [majority]. It was like, 62 percent, and it needed two-thirds to pass. There was a motion to reconsider about a little less than a half hour later. And on the motion to consider again, [there were] a lot more speeches. And at the end of that, a relatively healthy 72 percent or so voted to approve the spending measure. And it then did pass at the ballot box by, again, something like 64 percent, when it only needed a [simple] majority, a few days later.
GG What are some of the other most important highlights from this recent town meeting?
PB It was an incredibly long meeting, almost nine hours. It went from about 10 AM to 7 PM. In those many, many articles, there were some important ones that were petitioned that would have had the effect, if not the intent, of both restricting and delaying what could be built on the Walsh property, which the voters bought in 2019. Those did not pass. A right to farm bylaw did pass, a fertilizer restriction, which has to go to the legislature, that did pass, and a series of other sort of parochial [questions like], should we vote electronically or not? Should the town seal be updated to remove teepees and an Indian figure in a Plains headdress? Yes, that passed, but it was a long discussion.
Read the full story by Lauren Hakimi in the Provincetown Independent.
