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Photo Emily Sussman
Because of a number of close votes, residents at Monday’s Special Town Meeting sat through numerous rounds of section-by-section hand counts. |
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Photo Emily Sussman
Dennis O’Connell of the Planning Board was an outspoken critic Monday of the town’s plan to sell an easement to Cape Cod Five Bank. |
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Wellfleet TM voters reject bank easement
New fire station future unclear
By Emily Sussman
Banner Staff
WELLFLEET — After more than three hours of passionate debate — and no small amount of confusion—over the Special Town Meeting warrant’s four intertwined articles on Monday night, two sentiments rang out loud and clear from residents. Though they agreed the town badly needs a new fire station, they didn’t want to make a “Faustian bargain” with a corporation in order to get it.
The warrant had presented voters with a means to an end: sell Cape Cod Five Bank an easement for a drive-through teller on the town-owned former Catholic Church at 335 Main Street (Article 2) and pay to demolish the rectory at 335 Main to make room for the easement (Article 4), and the bank would then have an incentive to sell the town its “Gutsy Benders” property on Route 6 for an attractive price (Article 3). With the Gutsy Bender property in hand, the town could then proceed with its plans to design a new fire station on the site (Article 5).
But voters decided on the individual matters at hand rather than the package as a whole. Apparently shattering the warrant’s “house of cards,” as one resident called it Monday night, the first article voted upon — whether to sell Cape Cod Five the easement for $130,000 — failed to pass its required two-thirds majority by just 17 votes.
The remainder of the warrant didn’t quite collapse from there, however. Residents still voted to authorize the town to purchase the Gutsy Benders property for $625,000, even though the offer may no longer be on the table, since the bank may choose to use that property for itself to build a new branch with a drive-through.
As for whether to demolish the rectory for a cost of $200,000 and appropriate $300,000 for the design of a new fire station, Articles 4 and 5 were indefinitely postponed by majority voice votes.
In spite of the fact that the Board of Selectmen and the Finance Committee had unanimously endorsed, with one abstention, the four sequential warrant articles, Monday night’s debate was rife with accusations from voters that the town was, in effect, allowing itself to be bullied by the bank.
Resident Dennis Cunningham said the spirit of the warrant made him “uncomfortable,” adding that he was “disturbed by the fact that the entire project here is linked to a bank.”
And explaining why the Planning Board had voted against recommending the warrant’s sequence of articles, chair Dennis O’Connell said that selling the easement to the bank was “not the only way to go about this.” Making a deal with the bank in order to secure a site for a new fire station, he explained, “seemed to us to be inappropriate.”
“This is the deal that was put together,” Town Administrator Tim Smith said in response. “We were presented with a problem, and then presented with an opportunity.” He added that it was the town that had approached the bank, not the other way around, after various town committees and officials had brainstormed for the past two years about how to accomplish two simultaneous goals: keep the bank’s year-round business in town while enticing it to sell its “Gutsy Benders” land on Route 6.
“This is not a malicious plan,” agreed Selectman Ira Wood. “Many things aligned at the same time … this is [the town’s] way of trying to be proactive.”
Because voters were encouraged to discuss the articles in the context of one another, however, the three-and-a-half-hour, rambling debate never seemed to find a clear focus or consensus. While some speakers made emotional pleas to do whatever it took to get the construction of a new fire station underway (the current station, built in 1983, is suffering from structural decay and overcrowding), others warned of the potentially negative impacts to Main Street of putting another curb cut, in the form of the easement, downtown. And while the image of a “Faustian bargain” was presented by one voter, several selectmen spoke of the necessity of keeping the bank downtown in order to make its 335 Main Street property more attractive to private developers in the future.
The future of a new fire station still remains unclear after Monday’s meeting. Moderator Ben Zehnder said the town’s request to appropriate funding for the fire station design and the rectory demolition could come back at next spring’s Annual Town Meeting, since they were indefinitely postponed Monday. However, a lawyer for Cape Cod Five, Harry Terkanian, said Monday that he could not immediately confirm or deny whether the bank would be moving to its Gutsy Benders property on Route 6 as a result of the town’s refusal to grant an easement.
esussman@provincetownbanner.com
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Dec 1st, 2005