Select Board Candidates Discuss Priorities, Key Issues Ahead Of Election
Two of the three candidates for Falmouth Select Board were present for the program: incumbent Douglas C. Brown and Edwin P. (Scott) Zylinski. Dianna T. Mota did not attend.
As vice chairman of the zoning board of appeals, Mr. Zylinski said that his background as an operations manager for a private landowner in Massachusetts has given him a leg up, as he deals with contracts, labor issues, business meetings, and hands-on work.
Mr. Brown, a career contractor, gave a similar answer, recounting how he became involved in municipal government after he noticed things in town were not going quite right and he wanted to help. Between the planning board, building committee, and now select board, Mr. Brown said he has worked hard to pay attention and be a responsive chairman for the select board.
As for priorities, Mr. Brown said affordable housing is number one, with sewering and an outfall pipe as number two, followed by the opioid epidemic and coastal resiliency.
Mr. Zylinski said that his top priority is to engage more of the community.
“You go to all these meetings and you see the same people, the same group of people,” he said. “So what aren’t we doing right? In my opinion, what we’re not doing right is we’re not communicating our message because of other things that get in the way of real issues. Folks, the house that’s on first doesn’t care who you voted for. It’s just going to burn. So are you not going to accept somebody that you may not agree with on every issue, are you not going to accept a bucket of water to help put that fire out?”
The core issue, he said, is getting together, rather than just talking about it and aiming for it as a lofty goal. Common ground is possible and will help make solving the issues that plague the community much easier.
Ms. Todd asked the candidates what the select board could do to promote respectful exchanges at public meetings.
“I think that we just have to lead by example and continue to do the right thing ourselves and hope others can learn from that and take other points of view into consideration,” Mr. Brown said. “I think we have a great town, and Scott made a good point: we do see the same people over and over. It’s great to see them, but it would be great to see some younger folks.”
As far as maintaining decorum, Mr. Brown said that you can only do so much to control the speech of others in a public meeting. Mr. Zylinski, on the other hand, suggested that if public decorum is not on display, then it is hard to be taken seriously by constituents.
“All I have is one point of view, and I’ll be one-fifth of that point of view,” he said. “The more people that are involved, we can discern more information and get more of a public opinion on how to deal with these issues. I look at all of you, I know some of you; some of you I don’t… I may think I know something about you; you may think you know something about me. That’s fine, that’s okay. The bottom line is we’re up here to serve you and to communicate your opinions and your desires, and if we’re honest about it, we can do it.”
On the topic of protecting Falmouth’s water quality, Mr. Brown said that his 20-plus years with the water stewards have given him a good awareness of the issue. Looking into things like eco-toilets, he acknowledges that they are a possible solution, but people just do not seem to want to do it.
“Sewering is the answer,” he said. “It’s easier… we just have to keep moving forward with the plan that we have. The water quality management committee set the stage for success. We just need to keep moving east and stay within our budget… it’s difficult to be patient. We’re on the right track; it’s just taking longer than we’d like.”
Mr. Zylinski did not agree, saying that the unique thing about Cape Cod is that it is served by a sole-source aquifer, and therefore there is no time to wait for the plan to fall into place.
“We don’t have time to wait,” Mr. Zylinski said. “The people that have the knowledge about saving our water and cleaning up our ponds, we need to encompass those people in a venue where we can come up with alternative opportunities… you get out and you talk to your constituency, you find the experts, and then you come to a general consensus that may lead you into an alternative position on it that may not have occurred to us yet… it’s one of those issues that you can’t stand back and wait for it to develop. We have to be proactive and we have to seek out the brilliant minds that do this and take them seriously and spend our money there.”
On affordable housing, both candidates agreed that getting creative is a good solution to upping the affordable housing inventory in town. As a member of the zoning board of appeals, Mr. Zylinski said that he makes a point to ask builders if they would consider one- and two-bedroom units, something the town is in dire need of, but the answer is usually no, because the lure of money from more units is too attractive for developers to turn down.
“The questions are being asked but we’re not having any support,” he said. “In order to get real affordable housing in Falmouth, we have to engage our state Legislature to change things, so we get more of a benefit for the people that need to come in and get affordable housing.”
Mr. Brown said that incentives for affordable housing are huge. The town funded $4 million for affordable housing last year, he said, which might not be sustainable to do in the long term, but it is what needs to be done to reach the subsidized housing inventory goal. Focusing on rental units, he said, may be the best practice for building up Falmouth’s housing inventory, as well as building larger, simpler buildings with high density in appropriate areas of town that are affordable in nature.
Ms. Todd asked a question of her own relating to climate change, to which Mr. Zylinski said that building out higher density buildings can be a tradeoff with being environmentally friendly, as there is a point where a town can be too built-out to catch itself.
“We can’t trade off things that are more detrimental to the environment and use that as an excuse for saving the planet,” he said. “I’m going to go on record and say I’m not a big fan of the Mayflower [Wind] project because of what it will do to the environment. What is the long-term and short-term effect of doing something like that? It’s a moving target; climate change means different things to different people… but as long as we continue to overbuild, with using that as an excuse to save the planet, there’s got to be a dividing line at some point where are we doing too much, buildout wise, and we get to a point of critical mass where we can’t keep up with climate change. You get to a certain point where the scale tips one way or the other and there’s a point where you’ll be too big to catch it… How can we say in one breath that we’re for all of this and clearly be doing something that’s detrimental without doing that as well?”
Mr. Brown said that reducing building emissions and increasing their efficiency and insulation would be immediate solutions. He also said he would like to see more solar on buildings and schools, to carry the already built-up momentum Falmouth has forward.
In closing, Mr. Brown said he enjoys his job and knows there is more work to do.
“There are a lot of things I want to get done,” Mr. Brown said. “I think the most important thing is staying engaged with the public, and that’s something that had been missing many years past.”
Continuing to stay in touch with the community is something he looks forward to, Mr. Brown said.
For Mr. Zylinski, the motivation to run for select board was his 10-year-old granddaughter who lives in town.
“[She] doesn’t know that anything is wrong with the environment. She doesn’t know that we won’t have places to see farm animals pretty soon if we keep going the way that we are,” he said. “They only know what they see now, so if that’s not reason enough, then I’m not your guy.”
Town elections will take place on Tuesday, May 17. Polls are open from 7 AM to 8 PM. FCTV will be rebroadcasting the candidate program on FCTV Channel 13 in the weeks leading up to the election and is available on FCTV’s website and YouTube channel.