Town Ponders Next Steps For 90 Bridge St. After Town Meeting Fails To Pass Waterfront Bond

CHATHAM – When a waterfront bond authorization at the annual town meeting fell short of winning the two-thirds vote it needed, it left town officials looking for a way forward for a series of shorefront projects.

Chief among them is the development of 90 Bridge St. into a mixed-use facility combining docking space, a shellfish upweller and the historically preserved Coast Guard boathouse. The South Coastal Harbor Management Committee met last week to consider a path forward and voted to recommend that the select board pursue 90 Bridge St. as a stand-alone capital project that would need a simple majority vote for approval.

The Bridge Street project was one of several waterfront improvement projects to be at least partially funded by the bond, but Coastal Resources Director Ted Keon told the committee that town meeting voters were not in a spending mood.

“A lot of people were just in a very ‘no’ mode,” Keon said. The Bridge Street project is almost completely designed and has been refined several times; the town has also done dredging and site work in preparation for the job.

“I thought the explanation in the warrant was very lengthy and lacking in specifics, and was badly placed on the warrant, coming right after the transfer station, which was known to be controversial,” committee member Michael Westgate said. Additionally, no fishermen or shellfishermen spoke in favor of the waterfront bond, and one fisherman spoke against it.

“I think it’s up to this committee to line up people that are going to speak, and not just to say it’s a good idea, but to say, ‘Hey, my living depends on it,’” Westgate said. “There wasn’t a single person there that said that.”

With waterfront spending projects, “consistently, the constituency that benefits often doesn’t go, because they just aren’t typically those that go to town meeting,” Keon said. A similar situation happened with the parking lot proposed for Ryder’s Cove Landing, which won the support of various committees and nonprofit groups, but not a single person stood up to support it on town meeting floor, Keon said. “Guys, I can only carry the water so far,” he said. The waterfront bond also earned a simple majority in the annual town election, but failed to win a two-thirds vote at town meeting.

Committee member Ernie Eldredge also blamed “well-coordinated disinformation” for the failure of the bond. “A lot of people thought that pretty much the whole bond was going to the upweller,” he said. In fact, the bond would have funded a variety of projects, and its entire $11 million might not have been spent right away. Eldredge sounded frustrated by the outcome.

“If you need two-thirds to pass it, you should have to have two-thirds to oppose it,” he said.

Most of the waterfront projects in the queue are about making necessary repairs or safety improvements; they include work at Barn Hill and Ryder’s Cove landings and replacement of the dock at Little Mill Pond. Keon said sufficient funds are available to begin the design and permitting of some of those projects until a decision can be made about passing a new bond authorization. But committee Chair Tom King said it’s clear why the bond authorization failed.

“At the end of the day, Bridge Street loomed large,” he said. Some opponents were worried that the restored Coast Guard boathouse would be too tall for the area, and others felt that the project was too expensive. When it comes to finding a strategy for moving ahead, “I hate to say it, but maybe you take it slow on the Bridge Street property” and focus on other projects that need immediate attention, King said.

“What’s awkward is, there’s a boathouse sitting in Quincy right now,” Keon said. The owner of the historic Stage Harbor boathouse is willing to provide it to the town, but needs it off of his property. “I have an email from said owner who’s like, ‘What’s Plan B, because this is getting unsustainable,’” he said. “And I don’t have a Plan B for that.”

Westgate said the best Plan B is to seek the remaining funding for 90 Bridge St. as a stand-alone capital project that doesn’t require a two-thirds vote. Westgate made a motion that the committee make that recommendation to the select board, and the committee unanimously agreed.