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HomeMy WebLinkAboutPublic Comment from Fitzgerald 1 Public Comment Zoning Board of Appeals June 2026 460 West Main Street, Hyannis - Dover Amendment Religious Use Appeal My name is Sandra Jones Fitzgerald. I am a Barnstable resident. I started looking closely at a $3 million federal ARPA grant for homeless services that Barnstable County awarded to Housing Assistance Corporation (HAC). What caught my attention was not the amount, though it was significant. It was how the vote happened. The Commissioners approved $3 million in public funds without asking a single question at the meeting, and without one page of independent analysis in its meeting package. That government body asked not one question – not even about why there was only one bidder in what was supposed to be a competitive bid process despite all the homeless service providers on the Cape, or whether using $3 million, or any part of it, to fund more urgently needed homeless beds was even explored. That government body sat down, voted to approve a public grant that was effectively sole sourced, and then asked to hear from the grant applicant. That is what sent me into the documents. Since then, I have read thousands of pages. This included grant applications, grant agreements, registry records, financial audits, IRS filings, building permits, and correspondence between HAC and the government bodies that fund it and regulate it. I want to share with you something I found consistently across all of it, because it is directly relevant to what you as ZBA members are being asked to decide. Records show that HAC says different things to different government bodies on the same topic, depending on the forum and the outcome it is seeking. I am not asking you to take my word for that. I have attached an Exhibit that documents it. Each entry is sourced to a specific public document. There are twelve representative illustrations in that exhibit. I want to walk you through the one most relevant to this appeal. I ask you to review the rest later on. HAC has described its shelter operations consistently, across years of public filings, as secular social services work. Its IRS Form 990 filings, its website, its state filings all describe shelter work in secular terms. That is the baseline. Here is what happened as HAC sought public money and zoning protection for 460 West Main. HAC knew from the outset that Catholic Charities was the planned shelter operator. That was not a late development. It was part of the plan when HAC first applied for public funds. To Barnstable County - when seeking $3 million in federal ARPA funds to acquire 460 West Main - HAC identified the Dover Amendment basis for the property as educational use. Not religious. Educational. That is in the HAC application, on HAC letterhead, in writing. HAC attested to its accuracy. The County awarded the grant. To MassDevelopment - when seeking a $354,000 state grant for the same property - HAC referenced Dover protection. The word religious does not appear once in that application. Not once. HAC attested to its accuracy. MassDevelopment awarded the grant. 2 To the Town of Barnstable's Affordable Housing Trust - in June 2023, HAC applied for $500,000 in CPC housing funds for this same shelter project at another location, 55 Falmouth Road (formerly WB Mason Warehouse). Catholic Charities was already named as the planned operator. That application ran 132 pages. The word religious appears once in all of it - in a footnote to a financial statement noting that HAC receives clothing donations from, among others, religious organizations. Not one mention of religious use. Not one mention of a Corporal Work of Mercy. This was HAC, to this town, with Catholic Charities already in the picture. To the Town of Barnstable - in April 2025, after the County and MassDevelopment money had been received - HAC filed a Dover application jointly with Catholic Charities arguing for the first time that the shelter constitutes a religious use: specifically, a Corporal Work of Mercy under Catholic doctrine. Barnstable’s Town Attorney did not agree, yet the Building Commissioner issued an affirmative finding. That finding is what brings us here today. To Cape Cod towns - in HAC’s CPC applications to Brewster and Sandwich, submitted after the April 2025 religious use filing was already on record with the Town of Barnstable, HAC described the project as community housing. Religious use was not mentioned. So the timeline is this: • To the IRS and state regulators, consistently over years: secular. • To the County, seeking $3 million: Dover protection based on educational use. • To the Town of Barnstable Affordable Housing Trust, in a 2023 application for CPC housing funds for the same shelter project with Catholic Charities already named as operator - 132 pages, the word religious appears once, in a footnote referencing clothing donations from religious organizations. Not one mention of religious use. Not one mention of a Corporal Work of Mercy. This was HAC, to this town, with Catholic Charities already in the picture. • To MassDevelopment, seeking $354,000: Dover referenced, religious use not mentioned. • To the Town of Barnstable, seeking a zoning exemption: religious use - for the first time. • To the Town of Brewster and Sandwich, seeking CPC funds, religious use not mentioned. The religious characterization appeared when HAC needed it for zoning. It did not appear when HAC sought public money from government bodies that had no zoning interest in the outcome. Your job is to gather and assess facts and law independently. I am asking you to do that - genuinely and rigorously - and not to simply accept what HAC presents to you today at face value. The reason I started pulling documents was that a government body sitting at a bench like you are approved $3 million without asking a single question, without a single page of independent analysis in its meeting package. To emphasize the point – public documents show HAC told the County different things about its use of $400,000 of a homeless services grant that could not conceivably both be true, and yet, the County government accepted it and filed with the federal government. This is documented. I am asking ZBA members to do better than that. The question of whether a use is genuinely religious in character - dominant and primary, as Massachusetts law requires - is a serious factual and legal question. It deserves serious scrutiny and independent fact-finding, especially given the documented pattern of how this characterization has evolved depending on the audience HAC appears before. 3 Please review Exhibit A. Every entry is sourced. Every source is a public document. None of it is opinion or views or inferences. Draw your own conclusions. Reading public documents is not anti-HAC. It is not anti-shelter. It is not anti-homeless. Government bodies that award public funds and make zoning decisions depend on accurate and consistent representations from applicants. When the record shows those representations shift depending on who is asking and what outcome is needed, every government body asked to rely on them - including the ZBA - has to examine the facts independently. That is all I am asking you to do. Thank you. 4 EXHIBIT A Documented Inconsistencies in HAC's Representations Across Government Bodies Submitted by: Sandra Jones Fitzgerald | June 2026 | Re: 460 West Main Street, Hyannis - Part A shows representations HAC made to different government bodies on the same subject that are inconsistent with each other. Part B shows public claims HAC made that are unsupported by, or contradicted by, records in the relevant agency's files, HAC's audited financials, or the Barnstable Registry of Deeds. Every entry is sourced to a specific public document. These are not interpretations. They are what the documents say. Subject What HAC said and to whom What HAC said to a different body on the same subject - or what the public record shows Source Documents PART A. HAC made inconsistent representations to different government bodies on the same subject. Each entry is from documents HAC submitted or was bound by. Dover Amendment basis for 460 West Main Street To Barnstable County - in its application for $3M in federal ARPA funds to acquire 460 West Main - HAC identified the Dover Amendment basis as educational use. Not religious. To the Town of Barnstable - in its April 2025 Dover filing, submitted after receiving both County and MassDevelopment funds - HAC argued for the first time that the use is religious: a Corporal Work of Mercy under Catholic doctrine. County ARPA application; HAC/Catholic Charities Dover filing to Town of Barnstable Religious use in the MaDevelopment application? HAC's certified application to MaDevelopment for a $354,000 state grant for 460 West Main referenced Dover Amendment By the time HAC submitted this application (certified June 4, 2025), it had already been working with Catholic Charities on the shelter plan. Catholic Charities' HAC UPP Application (certified June 4, 2025 by CEO Alisa Magnotta) 5 Subject What HAC said and to whom What HAC said to a different body on the same subject - or what the public record shows Source Documents protection. The word religious does not appear in that application - not once. role as operator was the stated basis of the later religious use claim to the Town of Barnstable. Religious use - in HAC’s 2023 application to the Town of Barnstable’s Affordable Housing Trust? In 2023, HAC applied to the Town of Barnstable’s Affordable Housing Trust for CPC housing funds for the same shelter project. Catholic Charities was already named as the planned operator. The application ran 132 pages. The word religious appears once - in a footnote to a financial statement noting that HAC receives clothing donations from, among others, religious organizations. Not one mention of religious use. Not one mention of a Corporal Work of Mercy. Two years later, HAC filed a Dover application to the same Town of Barnstable - with the same Catholic Charities as operator - arguing for the first time that the shelter is a religious use. Same town. Same applicant. Same operator. A 132- page application to the town’s Trust Fund contained no religious use argument. The religious characterization appeared only when zoning relief was needed. HAC application to Town of Barnstable Affordable Housing Trust (2023); HAC/Catholic Charities Dover filing to Town of Barnstable (April 2025) Religious use - in the CPC HAC submitted CPC These CPC applications were HAC CPC applications to 6 Subject What HAC said and to whom What HAC said to a different body on the same subject - or what the public record shows Source Documents applications to Cape towns? applications to Brewster, Sandwich (and other Cape Cod towns) seeking $100,000 each for the 460 West Main renovation. Those applications described the project as community housing. Religious use was not mentioned. submitted after HAC had already filed its religious use claim with the Town of Barnstable in April 2025. HAC knew the religious use argument was on record when it described the same project as community housing to CPC committees. Brewster, Sandwich, and other Cape towns (2025-2026) Whether operating a shelter is secular or religious work HAC's IRS Form 990 filings, website, and state filings consistently describe shelter operations in secular terms across multiple years. No filing characterizes shelter work as religious activity. HAC's April 2025 Dover filing to the Town of Barnstable characterizes the same shelter operations as a religious use - a Corporal Work of Mercy - for the first time, in the context of seeking a zoning exemption. HAC IRS Form 990 (multiple years); HAC website and state filings; HAC/Catholic Charities Dover filing (April 2025) When the ARC shelter project originated HAC's CEO stated publicly that the project "has been five years in the making" and that the Asclepius reorganization negotiations began in 2018 - HAC's CPC application to Cape Cod towns stated the project's "beginnings were rooted in the spring of 2021 with COVID-19 still a pandemic" - placing the origin in 2021, HAC CEO public statements; County ARPA application and closing documents (2024); HAC CPC application to Cape towns (2025-2026) 7 Subject What HAC said and to whom What HAC said to a different body on the same subject - or what the public record shows Source Documents before COVID- 19 existed. The County ARPA program required a specific COVID- 19 harm as an eligibility condition. which connected the project to COVID. This is a different date from what appears in the County ARPA record. Whether $400,000 in ARPA funds had been spent On June 10 and June 16-19, 2025, HAC represented to Barnstable County that the $400,000 renovation budget had not yet been spent and provided a forward-looking expenditure plan. On June 27, 2025 - 8 days later - HAC represented to the same County body that the identical $400,000 had already been fully spent during Q4 2024 on completed renovations at 255 Independence Drive. Both cannot be true. Barnstable County ARPA monitoring correspondence (June 10, 16-19, and 27, 2025) What the $3M ARPA grant was for HAC's CEO signed a sworn statement (April 24, 2024): "The $3,000,000 in ARPA funding will be used to gain site control of the property located at 460 West Main Street." $400,000 of that same grant was subsequently attributed to renovations at 255 Independence Drive - a different property entirely, and HAC's own administrative headquarters. HAC CEO sworn statement (April 24, 2024); Subrecipient Monitoring Report (August 29, 2025) Municipal support letter - MaDevelopment UPP application In its application to MaDevelopment, HAC labeled an The letter was written by a single Town Councilor, Matthew Levesque HAC UPP Application attachment index 8 Subject What HAC said and to whom What HAC said to a different body on the same subject - or what the public record shows Source Documents attachment as "Letter of Support — Town of Barnstable," presenting it as a letter of municipal support from the Town. (Precinct 10), in his individual capacity. The Barnstable Town Council took no vote, passed no resolution, and gave no institutional authorization. Levesque also said the property was vacant when it was not - HAC filed it. (2025); Councilor Levesque letter How that same letter was described to Brewster's CPC In its CPC application to the Town of Brewster, HAC wrote: "There is also a letter of support attached from the Barnstable Town Council, as the building is located in Barnstable." It was the same individual councilor's letter — no council vote, no resolution, no authorization. In the Brewster application, HAC described it in narrative text as a letter from the full Town Council. HAC CPC application to Town of Brewster (2025-2026) How long tenants had the right to remain at 460 West Main HAC's UPP application narrative stated the tenants at 460 West Main held leases through the end of 2025. The Barnstable County ARPA grant agreement - executed November 2024 and attached as an exhibit - gave the Asclepius co- owners occupancy rights extending to late 2026. The document contradicted the lease representation. HAC UPP Application (certified June 4, 2025); Barnstable County ARPA Grant Agreement (November 2024) 9 Subject What HAC said and to whom What HAC said to a different body on the same subject - or what the public record shows Source Documents PART B — HAC made public claims that are unsupported by - or contradicted by - records in the relevant agency's files, HAC's own audited financials, or the Barnstable Registry of Deeds. MaDevelopment grant claimed for 255 Independence Drive renovations HAC's November 2024 press release stated that a MaDevelopment grant supported renovations at its new headquarters at 255 Independence Drive. No such grant appears in MassDevelopment's public award records, or in HAC's FY2025 audited financial statements. HAC press release (November 2024); MassDevelopment One Stop award records (FY23- FY26); HAC FY2025 audit); When the $400,000 renovation at 255 Independence Drive took place HAC represented to Barnstable County that the $400,000 was spent renovating 255 Independence Drive during Q4 2024 (October through December 2024) - after the ARPA grant was awarded. Barnstable building permit records show the relevant permits - office alteration, sprinkler installation, kitchen installation - were pulled in September 2024, before the ARPA grant was even awarded on November 26, 2024. No permits were pulled at that address during Q4 2024. County ARPA monitoring correspondence (June 27, 2025); Town of Barnstable online building permit portal All source documents are public records available from Barnstable County, the Barnstable Registry of Deeds, MassDevelopment, the Town of Barnstable, and HAC's IRS filings. Copies available upon request.