Select Board Wrestles With Town Meeting Losses: A Case Of Poor Communications Or Airport Negativity?

CHATHAM – Did negativity about Chatham Airport carry over to other articles at the recent annual town meeting, or are town officials just not doing a good enough job communicating with the public?

A little of both, select board members said during a May 21 post mortem of the annual session.

“Are we getting our message out and are we articulating our positions well enough to get the vote out?” asked board member Jeff Dykens.

“I know people at the meeting weren’t happy, they were upset, they’re angry,” said chair Michael Schell. “I’m not in any way saying I’m not paying attention to that. But my answer is we’ve got to talk to one another and understand one another.”

Shareen Davis said she felt that there was a general assumption that officials are doing things in “an underhanded way. That’s simply not true.”

“I talked with somebody after the meeting who said town meeting isn’t fun anymore,” she added, “that there’s a tone that’s been set that doesn’t feel right.”

Select board member Dean Nicastro pointed out that the meeting wasn’t all negative. Only a handful of the 47 articles failed, and major spending measures, including the town’s operating, capital, water and school budgets, passed with no little or no comment.

“In large part it was a very productive meeting,” he said. He commended voters for making their positions heard. “That’s the democratic process.”

The airport seemed to hang like a pall over the session, board members agreed. Voters rejected two airport-related measures: adoption of a new approach zone map and $144,000 for electric vehicle charging stations at the George Ryder Road airfield.

“I felt there was so much misinformation flying around, so much mistrust,” Dykens said. Many conflated the approach zone map with the airport commission’s plan to trim trees that have grown up in the approach zone, but the town has had the authority to trim trees for decades, he said, “We just haven’t kept up with it.” The conservation and Cape Cod Commission would never allow the removal of 60 acres of trees as some asserted at the meeting, he added.

“I was screaming for some common sense on that issue, because what I heard was not common sense,” said Dykens, who added that he was frustrated at not being able to speak about the issue at the meeting. “I heard passion, I heard other interests. I heard folks worried about trees; I get it, we’re all worried about trees and want to be as protective as we possibly can.

“I also heard an awful lot of misinformation that I really thought got out of control…and really spilled over into other articles with negativity,” he said.

“There was a lot of hyperbole discussed at the meeting,” said Nicastro, “and I think the suggestion that the airport should be closed” — made to much applause by a 92-year-old resident — “is ridiculous. I will never support that.”

Cory Metters also said he would not support closing the airport, but said some people are concerned about growth of the facility in the future. “We need to get ahead of that and clarify what the future plan is for the airport,” he said.

The near loss of $750,000 for the affordable housing trust board sends a message “that there is considerable public angst and concern about how the issues of housing development and density are to be dealt with,” noted Nicastro. Concern about the direction the trust and select board are heading with affordable housing from people who have long supported those efforts is troubling, he added. “I think people should take notice.”

The two major spending articles that failed — $2.9 million to complete improvements at the transfer station and $11.4 million for waterfront infrastructure projects — lost not because they didn’t receive a majority but because the vote didn’t meet the two-third threshold. Nicastro said the message he got was that the proposals need more public vetting and that each should go before voters separately.

“And we should start with 90 Bridge St.,” he said, referring to the waterfront project that has fallen short of funding. Part of the waterfront infrastructure money would have gone toward completion of that project. But he said he would not support bringing the measures back to a fall special town meeting, even though borrowing for both was approved at the May 16 annual town election.

Davis indicated that the amount requested in the waterfront measure, although similar to another waterfront expenditure measure approved five years ago, was just too much.

“Once you get over $10 million, I think it shocks people,” she said.

“It’s a message issue, but it’s also an information issue,” said Schell.

Nicastro and other board members were disappointed by the loss of the transfer station funds, since a major part of that project is upgrading staff facilities to make them safer and to comply with labor regulations.

A lot of people are upset because they feel they’ve been shut out of the process, said resident Elaine Gibbs. Potential future expenses on water, sewers, school repairs, a new council on aging and affordable housing make people nervous about the impact to the tax rate, density and other issues, she said.

The select board wants consensus, but residents hear that as the board looking for a rubber stamp, she said, “that our vision should all be the same. And I have to tell you that is not the case.”

“My own attitude about where we go from here is that we work harder and better at communicating with one another,” Schell said. Not everyone will agree with every decision, he added “We have to compromise and then we have to go forward.”

That’s not easy given the tenor of political discussion today, Davis said.

“We’re in a world right now where people dig their heels in and they don’t look at compromise or consensus as a way to build toward a better community,” she said.