Posted on October 11, 2026
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For those still recovering from the two-day, 36-article town meeting in May, this year’s fall town meeting should be a relatively light affair. Voters will convene at the Wellfleet Elementary School at 6 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 26 to consider 14 articles — and this time, none of them involves a budget override, Community Preservation Act funding, or Maurice’s Campground.
Instead, the town will consider two charter changes to the budget process, spending $1.3 million for water tower repairs and $3.8 million for harbor dredging, restrictions on outdoor lighting, and two petitions to ban automatic license plate reading devices such as Flock cameras in Wellfleet.
The town is also asking for a $359,500 general budget supplement, with the largest item being $150,000 in fuel costs, and a $25,000 school budget supplement.
A Dredging Request
The largest funding request on the warrant is in Article 3, to allow spending of up to $3.8 million on preventive maintenance dredging of Area 1 in Wellfleet Harbor, including through borrowing. That area includes the waterways immediately surrounding both sides of the town pier and harbormaster’s office and provides channel access for slip holders to reach the broader harbor.
That area does not include the broader mooring field known as Area 2, which chair Joe Aberdale of the dredging task force estimated could hold 350 boats. Area 2 has not been dredged since 1957.
The inner harbor area, meanwhile, has not been dredged since 2021, said Aberdale, who added that this funding would allow dredging to begin as early as October 2027. He presented the $3.8-million article to the select board at its Sept. 15 meeting, citing a “dire” need to dredge the inner marina and harbor.
“There are 10,000 cubic yards of silt, otherwise known as black mayonnaise, flowing into the harbor annually,” said Aberdale, adding that the harbor is host to 150 commercial and recreational boats.
He said the lack of dredging could compromise the harbormaster’s ability to perform search-and-rescue missions, threaten a “die-off” of nearby shellfish beds from silt influx, and cause boaters to seek out other harbors if their access to the channel is limited.
Select board member and charter captain John Wolf said that part of the channel at low tide had fallen in depth from eight feet to less than two feet because of silt buildup. “Even my boat can’t get by there,” he said.
The town currently has about $2.9 million in its dredging account. Regular maintenance dredging should take place every four years and cost $4 million, Aberdale estimated; this proposed dredging will cost an estimated $6.7 million given the time that has elapsed since the last one, he said.
The dredging funds would first pay the town’s Foth Engineering contractors as they help prepare a dredging application that the Army Corps of Engineers must approve. Once federal approval is granted, the town will invites bids from other contractors, Aberdale said.
The select board unanimously endorsed the proposal on Sept. 15, though some members worried that the one-off funding would not support future dredging. “Either the marina has to be able to support that amount of funding, or we have to come up with some creative alternatives here, because we’re not going to be able to support that long-term,” said board member Ryan Curley.
Article 4 asks for $1.5 million to repair the town’s water tower on Long Pond Road, with a tank that DPW Director Jay Norton says “needs an exterior renovation” including repainting and sandblasting.
And that’s not all: the water tower’s standpipe recently sprang a leak and has only a temporary metal clamp holding it together, Norton said. The pipe needs a replacement, and “we want to lump all of that into one big project, so we only have to drain the tank once,” he said. The board also endorsed that article.
Three Petitions
The Oct. 26 warrant includes three citizens’ petitions: one for the dredging request, one to restrict outdoor lighting, and one to prohibit the town from installing automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras or signing a contract with a camera company.
Article 12 is the ALPR petition submitted by Constanza Leal; the select board submitted its own version as Article 6 on the warrant. The select board’s version also bans use of fixed ALPR cameras — but carves out an exemption for local law enforcement to use mobile ALPR cameras, which Curley said are used on police cruisers.
In a memo sent to the select board on Sept. 22, however, Police Chief Kevin LaRocco said that the Police Dept. “does not currently own, operate or maintain” any ALPR cameras and “has no current intention” of purchasing them, mobile or otherwise.
In addition, LaRocco said he issued a new department policy on Sept. 10 that “establishes significant limitations” on all Wellfleet police personnel’s access to ALPR data collected by a separate or allied law enforcement agency, limiting that access to “life-safety concerns” only.
Article 10, the outdoor lighting petition, was submitted as a proposed bylaw by Town Moderator Dan Silverman. It would limit residential output to 20,000 lumens per acre and create the position of lighting enforcement officer to enforce new rules on illumination, shielding, and dark hours on individual properties.
The proposed bylaw includes a four-year window for homeowners to bring existing lights into compliance or face fines of up to $300. Silverman told the select board on Sept. 22 that the bylaw was intended to address property owners who are “lighting their house in such a way that it bothers their neighbors” or “blinds drivers.”
Select board chair Josh Yeston said on Sept. 15 he could not support the lighting bylaw if it would “impose a financial burden on homeowners to potentially have to retrofit exterior lighting on their homes.” He was not present at the Sept. 22 meeting when three members voted to endorse it.
The select board voted not to recommend the harbor dredging petition in Article 11, instead recommending its own Article 3.
Finally, the select board and finance committee each recommended two charter changes to clarify their roles in the budget process as Articles 7 and 8 — following a budget process last fiscal year that was “delayed well beyond our expectations,” according to finance committee chair Fran Conroy. Article 7 clarifies how the town administration will submit drafts to the finance committee, and Article 8 proposes an annual deadline of Jan. 15 to do so.
