Posted on September 29, 2021
ORLEANS — During its warrant review for the Oct, 25 Special Town Meeting, the Orleans Select Board took steps to move forward with the town’s Nauset Beach retreat plan, along with several other big-ticket projects.
The town has obtained a $1 million grant from the state to help finance the Nauset Beach retreat plan, which is estimated to cost around $5 million. A multi-phase beach retreat has been in the works since a series of storms in 2018 decimated the beachfront with severe erosion and caused the demolition of Liam’s snack shack.
The first phase, building an artificial dune and adding a food court, was implemented a couple years ago and was successful enough that there wasn’t a rush into phase two, But the state grant funds must be spent by the end of 2022.
“So we need to do this now so we can get 25 percent of the cost paid for by the grant,” Town Administrator John Kelly told the board at its Sept. 22 meeting.
Phase two will cost $4.3 million and will be put out to bid. The request to voters at Town Meeting and the ballot box will be to borrow $3.3 million.
Phase two will create a 218-car parking lot on the Hubler property (the former Beachside Motel), which the town bought years ago. The old motel entrance will become the entrance to Nauset Beach. The new parking lot be connected to the main parking lot by a road and the existing entrance will become a one-way exit.
A new septic system leach field will be constructed on the Hubler property to accommodate a future move of the Administration Building and bathrooms.
The article will need a two thirds approval at Special Town Meeting and a majority vote for the debt exclusion override.
The board also supported an emergency $750,000 dredging article for Rock Harbor. The harbor entrance has a shoal that is causing problems. Ideally Eastham, which shares the harbor, would pay half the cost but that town has no town meeting scheduled this fall so the hope is Orleans will be partially reimbursed next year.
“Fourteen-hundred seventy cubic yards will be removed from the shoal,” Kelly said. “We can only dredge in early fall and late winter under an emergency permit. We’d like to do this now and [then] the full harbor by the fall of 2023. Now only one boat at a time can pass the shoal.”
Kelly said removing dredge would cost $580,000. This article will also require a debt exclusion vote at the ballot box.
The board added an article to fund $100,000 for a feasibility study for a new fire station. Money had already been allocated for a feasibility study last year but that was for a renovation and addition. In order to look into a new station at a different site the town needs a new article. There is $49,700 left over from the 2020 article but that can’t be spent on this study so it will be rescinded.
‘If this is approved we will create a building committee,” Kelly added.
The board has said it will approach the Nauset Regional School Committee about donating part of the middle school fields as a possible site for a new fire station, although that proposal appears fraught with obstacles, including the need to reshape all of the existing playing fields, opposition from nearby homeowners and the removal of a popular skateboard park.
The warrant also contains an article funding $75,000 to pay a consultant to conduct public outreach to help determine future uses of the Governor Prence property.
And, the board pulled an article that would have funded $1 million for the proposed 14-unit affordable housing project at 107 Main St. — the former Masonic Lodge. Last week the Community Preservation Committee declined by a 4-3 vote to provide a bond for the Main Street housing plan, so it’s been placed on hold. The Affordable Housing Trust owns the property and they’d proposed transferring it to the Housing Assistance Corporation along with an additional $1.9 million so that HAC could develop the units.
