Town meeting in Falmouth: Real estate tax, urine diversion, higher salaries and more

Proposals for updating town-owned buildings, implementing a real estate transfer fee for affordable housing and financing a pilot program to evaluate the effectiveness of an alternative form of wastewater treatment called urine diversion are just a few issues Falmouth voters will consider at Monday's annual town meeting.

Those items are among 37 articles on the warrant, several of which address town finances (Articles 5, 6 and 8 through 18) and funding for capital improvements and other projects, notably, (Articles 7, 19 and 20). Another article relates to a program to remodel or rebuild the aging east branch of the Falmouth Public Library (Article 37).

Among the most pressing articles up for a vote, according to Falmouth Town Manager Mike Renshaw, are those related to a study of administrative positions and salaries in town government, funding for capital improvements and other projects, implementing the real estate transfer fee, and the pilot program to study urine diversion.

Falmouth technical, administrative and management positions

Renshaw said Article 4, which seeks to amend the town’s position classification plan, aims to evaluate and adjust the salaries of director-level and above technical, administrative and management positions within town government.

“We wanted to be more competitive, we wanted to certainly retain the great employees that we have, but also when we have vacancies, with this reclassification study, to adjust our salary ranges,” Renshaw said. “It’s going to allow us to retain our good employees and then do a better job of recruiting when we have vacancies.”

The program will allow the town to raise the bottom of the salary range while also enhancing the top-end salaried positions, he said.

Falmouth capital improvement project funding

Articles 7 and 19 deal with funding capital improvement projects.

“We have a 10-year capital improvement plan here in the town of Falmouth,” Renshaw said. “We've just recently done a comprehensive look at it, and we've realized that we have about $520 million, so half a billion dollars worth of capital expenses over the next 10 years.”

The town seeks to move about $5.5 million of free cash into a Capital Stabilization Fund (Article 7) to help offset or reduce the impact of capital projects on property taxes. Renshaw said this would be done so Falmouth has additional cash on hand for large projects.

“Rather than having to look at considering raising property taxes to help pay for these larger projects, we will, every year, slowly put additional monies into this Capital Stabilization Fund to hedge against rising costs,” Renshaw said.

Article 19 deals directly with capital improvements to the town’s 80 aging buildings, such as town hall, schools and others. It would establish a comprehensive town-owned building evaluation study to assess the buildings in need of repair.

“So, we have about 80 structures or buildings that are in various stages of disrepair, quite honestly,” Renshaw said. “I don't think the town has done as good a job as we should have to periodically inventory and assess the condition of the buildings.”

Falmouth real estate transfer fee

Establishing a real estate transfer fee in Falmouth (Article 33), Renshaw said, could help bolster the availability of affordable housing by creating a revenue stream for the Affordable Housing Fund.

“All this would do is by approving article 33 at town meeting, we would authorize the Select Board to petition the state for the ability to implement this transfer fee,” Renshaw said. “The state has to give municipalities the authority to do that.”

Falmouth has $8.5 million in the Affordable Housing Fund, but Renshaw said some large housing projects could quickly drain the money. A transfer fee would be a tax on a graduated percentage of a property's selling price.

Renshaw said he expects low to moderate support for the article based on a community forum where a majority of attendees voiced opposition to the measure.

“Of the 20 or 25 people that were in attendance, residents that were in attendance, the majority were opposed to the imposition of it,” he said. “There were probably 10 people that were supportive.”

Falmouth pilot program for urine diversion

An article supporting a pilot program for an alternative form of wastewater treatment called urine diversion is again on the agenda for the town meeting. Another version of this article (Article 22) was voted down at the town meeting in November.

But Renshaw said the program “has a lot of merit.”

“It's not going to replace the traditional wastewater treatment, sewer treatment,” he said. “But we do see in some of those areas of the town where we're never planning on putting sewer, those areas that are not part of our sewer plant and never will be, we see that nitrogen or urine diversion has a lot of potential.”

The pilot program would include studying the effectiveness of the diversion — removing phosphorus and nitrogen and preventing those elements from entering the town’s water — on 75 houses over a three-year period. The article is requesting $1.9 million to finance the program.

What is a town meeting?

A town meeting is a gathering of a town’s eligible voters and the legislative body for towns in Massachusetts

Of the 15 Cape Cod towns, 13 have “open town meetings,” meaning all voters who live in that town may vote on all matters. Falmouth has a “representative town meeting,” where all voters elect town meeting members who then vote on all town meeting matters. The town of Barnstable is governed by an elected Town Council rather than by a town meeting.

When and where?

The Falmouth town meeting will be held at 7 p.m. April 8 in the Lawrence School Auditorium, 113 Lakeview Ave.

Where can I find Falmouth's town meeting warrant?

The warrant can be found on the town of Falmouth’s website, under Boards and Committees on the Town Meeting tab.

Walker Armstrong reports on all things Cape and Islands, primarily focusing on courts, transportation and the Joint Base Cape Cod military base. Contact him at WArmstrong@capecodonline.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jd__walker.

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Falmouth holds its town meeting Monday. Here's what to know.