Split Swampscott Select Board Vote Spreads Out $2.1M ARPA Funding

SWAMPSCOTT, MA — The Swampscott Select Board voted to allocate the town's $2.1 million in remaining American Recovery Plan Act funding on 10 projects ranging from park improvements to resiliency and economic development to public housing and health programs in a split vote Wednesday night over dedicating the vast majority of those to Fisherman's Beach sewage source elimination.

Board members MaryEllen Fletcher and Katie Phelan advocated spending about $1.8 on the town's ARPA money on sewer infrastructure in a vote that failed by a 3-2 margin, with Board member Doug Thompson putting forth the motion to back the diversified funding for the ARPA money and instead spend $1.7 million on Fisherman's Beach through a state revolving sewer enterprise fund from a projected rise in water and sewer rates.

"We are in an incredibly blessed position here," Thompson said. "We actually have an opportunity to do right by King's Beach, do right by Fisherman's, and do right by all these other interests that are represented by these projects all at the same time.

"We should be jumping for joy right now. We can actually make our beaches better, make our streets safer, make our parks better, preserve our historic resources, deal with climate change, make our public housing better, improve the economic development of our town, improve public health, everything.

"This is an amazing moment where we should be, like, 'Hallelujah!' We can do it all."

But Fletcher disagreed, saying that some of the myriad projects put forth by Town Administer Sean Fitzgerald can be funded through other means if they are deemed a priority while asserting that sewer infrastructure should be the main priority for the one-time funding source in addition to any future funding that might necessitate raising rates.

"We have a crisis at Fisherman's," Fletcher said. "We listen to it week after week after week after week (in public comment). We have people who are concerned about running their recreational activities at the beaches. We have citizens who are very, very upset. We have not taken care of Fisherman's. We have the EPA on our backs."

"We are talking about taking care of Fisherman's," Thompson responded. "It's not a matter of taking care of Fisherman's. That's not the issue. All we're talking about is financing. I would say that people living in substandard housing, public housing, is just as important as a dirty beach."

Fitzgerald's proposal removed $400,000 for a mobile town hall that was included in the previous ARPA funding discussion and included $200,000 to help fix up Swampscott public housing units, $500,000 in pedestrian safety initiatives, $400,000 toward town parks, $100,000 in historic preservation, $100,000 for a climate action resiliency manager, $100,000 for a townwide economic development study, $50,000 toward Fisherman's Beach source contamination efforts, $200,000 toward resiliency projects, $121,555 toward public health programs dealing with long COVID and mental health, and money toward putting an ADA-compliant bathroom facility at Phillips Beach.

"I know it's frustrating to a lot of people," Fitzgerald said of the pace of sewer pipe remediation and beach cleanup. "Everybody wants to fix these problems. There's nobody who wants to wait longer than we should. But, frankly, for the better part of 100 years, we haven't really supported these responsibilities. Over the last few years, we've focused on school buildings, and we've focused on municipal finance, and we've focused on other needs. And, frankly, we haven't been able to balance all of these priorities effectively.

"We're starting to get there, though. And it's important that we do it in a way where it helps us balance all of these other priorities that we have too."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)