|
|
Photo Emily Sussman
A Wellfleet resident holds his card aloft when it came time to vote on a new salaried position in Town Hall – a motion that failed by 40 votes. |
|
|
Firehouse funding flies at Wellfleet Town Meeting
Voters also approve $12.6 million budget, $110,000 for water study
By Emily Sussman
Banner Staff
WELLFLEET — Nary a whisper of dissent was heard as the town’s $12.6 million budget for 2008 was unanimously passed at Annual Town Meeting on Monday night. Voters further authorized spending for an additional $77,000 in design fees for a new fire station, as well as $110,000 to fund a study of Wellfleet Harbor’s wastewater contamination. But just as quickly, purse strings snapped shut as residents turned down a new salaried computer technician position in Town Hall and indefinitely postponed a $100,000 request for a new generator at the Senior Center.
And though the budget was passed with the ease of a hot knife slicing through butter, the 285 voters who turned out still hashed out their fair share of contentious issues at the meeting, which ran well over three hours. Among those was a proposed rental registration bylaw, which garnered meager support and a bevy of opposition, as well as an unpopular amendment to the Home Rule Charter that would have prevented town employees from serving on the board of selectmen.
At least one other question with the potential for controversy was approved with ease. Though half a dozen residents lobbied hard in support of a question that would allow the town to issue RFPs for a private developer or non-profit organization to develop the town-owned former Catholic church at 335 Main Street into a self-sustaining community center, it seemed they were pushing hard through a wide open door – the motion passed swiftly.
In the selectmen’s statement on the coming year’s operating and capital budgets, Ira Wood assured residents that the board was taking a “grace period” to assess its policies on replacing expensive town vehicles — a decision that had prompted it to remove a new police cruiser and a shellfish patrol truck from its wish list, at least until fall.
And though the town would not require an override of the state’s 2 _ percent cap on annual property tax increases this year, Wood insisted that “the larger picture is somewhat more troublesome,” given the rapidly rising costs of health insurance, utilities and infrastructure construction. “We’ll be looking at ways to cut those costs and raise revenues,” Wood said at the outset of Town Meeting.
But one such revenue-raising idea, a rental registration fee for non-resident property owners who rent out their homes for short-term stays, drew ire from voters, many of whom decried what they saw as already hefty taxes and fees levied on second-home owners, who are not permitted to participate in town elections. “You’re trying to kill the goose that lays the golden egg,” Chamber of Commerce member Eleanor Hazen told selectmen chair Dale Donovan, who had also proposed the ill-fated bylaw in 2003. (Non-resident taxpayers currently make up 70 percent of the tax base in Wellfleet.)
Voters did see the cost-savings implicit in potentially switching retired municipal employees over to Medicare, however. Despite lengthy debate at selectmen’s meetings in the past two years about whether the move might lessen retirees’ quality of care and breach the terms of their original benefit packages, voters unanimously agreed this week that the town should determine whether a retired employee is eligible for the federally-subsidized program.
The town will also save some bucks on a $100,000 proposed new generator for the Council on Aging, as COA board chair Dennis Cunningham moved to indefinitely postpone the article pending more research on the necessity of the purchase. Additionally, Wellfleet will be keeping $80,000 annually by not hiring a computer technician in Town Hall, though that vote was close enough to require an official count rather than a voice vote — 144 against the motion, 104 for it.
A number of non-substantive changes to the town’s Home Rule Charter passed with a minimum of debate, but one proposed amendment – which would have prohibited town employees from serving as selectmen – was vehemently opposed by residents and eventually failed. While some speakers saw it as a needless attack on current selectman and assistant harbormaster Michael May (though his space on the board would have been grandfathered in the amendment), others said it would be folly to reduce an already paltry field of candidates.
Finally, a petitioned article that requested $2,500 to help fund the Juice Bar — historically an occasion for griping from residents and the Finance Committee, who have said that the Orleans-based teen center should petition the Health and Human Services budget instead — passed with a minimum of debate, despite that the program is currently without a permanent facility. esussman@provincetownbanner.com
|
Builder gets the boot
Town cracks down on grease mismanagement
School lunch menus
For Your Information
Outer Cape Worship Services
|
|
|
|
|
Apr 26th, 2007