Choose Granite Countertops in Gosnold, MA for Elegance and Durability

The smallest town in Massachusetts is looking for someone to take on a big role.

Gosnold, the small chain of Islands just north of the Vineyard, is searching for a town administrator. If hired, the new person would be the second to hold the position in the town, which has a year-round population of about a dozen people.

Select board member Stewart Young this week said the town hired Mike Milanoski a couple years ago to oversee the town’s municipal business. Mr. Milanoski helped shepherd several large projects in that time, including the installation of a new fuel farm on the island of Cuttyhunk, but he is now planning to step away.

Part of Dukes County, Gosnold is largely run by its three-member select board. The main island in the town is Cuttyhunk, which is accessible by a ferry from New Bedford. The community is popular with boaters, and the population can swell to more than 400 people in the summer.

The town decided it needed a town administrator when it was faced with the fuel farm, updates to its water system and to better handle the everyday tasks of government, including human resources and finances.

The idea is to take some of the load off the board, a volunteer body.

“We don’t have a public works department. The select board does that . . . We’re the board of health, the planning board,” Mr. Young said. “We could really use some additional expertise.”

The board met Friday to talk about honing the job description and the town will likely advertise the position in the coming weeks.

Finding the right person could be a challenge.

The job is part-time and likely won’t pay as well as any Vineyard or mainland town. Mr. Milanoski worked less than half-time, Mr. Young said.

According to the 2022 town report, Mr. Milanoski had a salary of $20,800, and also had about $12,000 in expenses. For comparison, the Aquinnah town administrator position was budgeted at $109,000 in 2021.

The Gosnold board envisions the job being filled by a retired administrator open to a few hours a week, or someone who is looking to slow down. Mr. Milanoski did some remote work, and sometimes rented a home on the island. He also had his own boat, which he could live aboard.

The job oversees about seven staff members, including a fire chief, treasurer and a clerk, the last of which is the only full-time municipal position.

“It’s got to be someone who is not looking for a full-time, full-paid town administrator,” Mr. Young said. “There’s a certain person who likes the challenge, the unusual nature of the job.”

If the town can find someone to fill the role, they will likely take on several climate change and sea level rise projects, as well as the installation of new public toilets.

Mr. Young said the town is planning to have another meeting later this month to talk about the position and the potential budget for the job.

GOSNOLD — As residents across the state deal with the coronavirus outbreak, they are getting used to a new routine, where it can be hard to get groceries, access to health care or a hot meal from a restaurant.

For those on the Elizabeth Islands, a chain in Buzzards Bay that makes up the state’s smallest town of Gosnold, this way of life is nothing new, but officials are still grappling with social distancing, how to run town government and what to do when the area becomes a summer hot spot.

“We’re taking the social distancing very seriously,” Selectman Stewart Young said.

Cuttyhunk is the southernmost and main island in Gosnold. It has the town hall, the one-room schoolhouse, the library, and is the only island the public can get to by ferry from New Bedford.

There is no medical facility on the island. The closest grocery story is on the mainland, and at this time of year the island’s small market is closed, as are the two inns and the handful of food stands along the water.

Like other islands in the Northeast, Cuttyhunk is grappling with what to do about the influx of visitors that come every summer.

Nantucket has asked ferries to limit the amount of people who come on the boats, and Nantucket Cottage Hospital has requested that people who have a choice of being on the island or on the mainland stay on the mainland. North Haven, a small island in Maine, had closed to all but full-time residents. The town later rescinded that order.

Gosnold does not seem to want to go that far, although officials do want to know who might be coming to Cuttyhunk.

“I don’t think we can stop people, but I think we have to send out a bulletin ... that we expect them to adhere to the state requirements and to use their heads,” said Sarah Berry, chairwoman of the Board of Selectmen.

Cuttyhunk’s population in the winter is minuscule; only three people were on-island last week, Young said. Now four families have come to the island as the coronavirus has spread, raising the population to 34 people. There are also some workers on the island doing home maintenance and construction.

That has raised concerns about the amount of fuel on the island, as the town is not used to this many people at this point in the year.

The MV Cuttyhunk, the main ferry to the island, is out of service for an engine replacement, but a water taxi has been bringing people back and forth. Both boats are not that big, making social distancing tough, especially if boats start to fill up with passengers.

Berry suggested that people stay put wherever they are, whether that be on Cuttyhunk or on the mainland.

Town officials are also exploring the possibility of postponing town meeting, or perhaps holding it remotely or outside. In the meantime, all board meetings are to be held virtually, and people are encouraged to be at Town Hall only if they have to be.

“This isn’t the time to come to Town Hall and hang out,” Town Clerk Lisa Wright said.

Like the Cape, Gosnold is also looking to what would happen should the coronavirus outbreak continue into the summer, when the town generates basically all of its revenue to support the budget.

“It’s the economic survival of the town,” Young said. “It depends on summer.”

The board plans to revisit the issue at every meeting and will reach out to residents and businesses to see what they think should be done.

“There’s a lot of complicated issues — being an island — to deal with,” Young said.

Follow Ethan Genter on Twitter: @EthanGenterCCT.

Where can a 16-year-old with an addiction get help on Cape Cod?

Unfortunately, they would have to travel off-Cape, said Richard Curcuru, CEO and president of Gosnold Behavioral Health, a healthcare company that treats addiction and mental health issues.

“It's unfortunate that we don’t have more child/adolescent services on Cape Cod,” he said.

However, this will change soon. Gosnold is currently renovating a Cataumet site from a crisis stabilization center for addictions into a facility that will treat co-occurring mental health and addictions, for patients 16 and older.

Ideally, Gosnold would like to treat even younger patients, but treating patients 16 and older is a start, Curcuru said.

More:5 foods you won't want to miss on Cape Cod this summer and where to get them

The Cataumet site, which closed in June of last year, had 40 beds for clinical stabilization services. However, transitioning to a facility that would treat co-occurring mental health and addictions was Curcuru’s plan since he started working at Gosnold six years ago, he said.

Working in the psychiatric field has shown him the connection between mental illness and addiction, Curcuru said. In fact, 80% of patients that Gosnold treats for substance abuse also have a co-occurring mental disorder.

More:Board OKs Gosnold facility conversion to co-occurring disorders

“We know that the most effective way to treat these patients is to treat their illnesses simultaneously, and we don’t have the facilities to do that,” said Curcuru.

Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused an increase in anxiety and depression in patients, and awakened mental health disorders in patients who may have previously only had to deal with substance abuse, said Curcuru.

Gosnold Behavioral Health Center, the new name for the Cataumet site, will have 33 beds for patients. The facility plans to open in December. It is currently undergoing renovations to make it “hospital-ready,” meaning that patients will be unable to harm themselves. Patients will stay for around 10 days, and then most likely go home with an after-care plan that usually involves therapy.

Patients who were previously being treated at the Cataumet site for sole substance use disorders will instead be treated at Emerson House, which has 37 beds but is aiming to eventually maintain 40.

The Miller House, which has 23 beds, will be closed and sold to make renovations to the Cataument site financially possible, Curcuru said. The reimbursement through Medicaid was not enough for Gosnold to continue operating the Miller House, he said. However, both Emerson House and the Gosnold Behavioral Health Center will continue to accept Medicaid.

More:Gosnold transforming to include treatment for co-occurring disorders

Although the Miller House has served the community well for many years, it cannot be sustained, said Curcuru. All staff from Miller House will be relocated to other facilities.

Treating addictions includes medical detoxification and then rehabilitation where patients learn about things such as triggers that lead to their addiction. Treating mental health disorders includes prescribing appropriate medication and maintaining safety.

All these practices come together in the co-occurring treatment unit, said Curcuru.

It can be difficult to say whether patients develop addictions because they are trying to self-medicate their mental health disorder, or develop mental health disorders because of their additions, said Curcuru. Part of what Gosnold attempts to do is figure that out.

“It’s a comprehensive evaluation to determine what is the primary illness for these patients, and how do we most effectively treat their illness?” said Curcuru.

Contact Asad June at ajung@capecodonline.com. Follow him on Twitter: @AsadJungcct.

It rained the day before high school graduation a few weeks ago. Real rain, good rain, the kind of rain that makes you understand why they call it a “rain shower,” the water pooling on our dirt driveway the way it does on bathroom tile.

I was home to watch my brother Jake walk across the stage at the Tabernacle. Early that morning, my dad nursed a cup of coffee at the kitchen counter. He didn’t notice my grandparents hurrying into the house from the car, coats pulled over their heads.

“We needed this rain,” he said simply, with a note of contentment and pride, as if he had sent the rain itself.

No doubt his mind was on the fields at Grey Barn Farm that, after the first June haying, would crisp in the dry dirt without rain. Rainfall is make-or-break in the business of baling hay, which is exactly my father’s business this time of year. But it’s not my business, not yet anyway, and to me June rain is like the flash of lighting before the thunderous green of Island summers.

After real rain, the late-leafing oaks, the soft little milkweed starts, the knee-high pasture grasses, remember their own richness and put it on display. This is exactly how things should be. Rainfall reawakens the plants, nature feeds nature.

About a thousand miles away, in Chicago, where I now spend most of the year as a student, there’s a similar lushness. On the University of Chicago’s central quadrangle, oak, maple, birch and cherry have traded in their springtime blossoms for summer leaves. Ivy patterns the limestone of century-old halls and laboratories. Students and faculty spending the summer on campus spread out picnic blankets across a carpet of grass, perfectly mown, so deeply green that you can lift yourself up and leave with grass stains on your palms.

It becomes easy to forget, on a midwestern summer day, that a month or two prior the administration rolled out the grounds crew. Over their shoulders, in the backs of their pick-up trucks and ATVs, were rolls of sod — rolls and rolls of sod, so many rolls that you wondered where they got it from and how much it all cost.

The sod arrived in time for Alumni Day and Commencement. Any muddy patch, any dying bush or failing tree, was dug up by the grounds crew and in its place rolls of sod were pounded into the ground with garden stanchions.

What is the point of nature when we must work against it to reap its benefits? Summer rain on the Island is a premonition of chicory and milkweed and Queen Anne’s lace. In Chicago it is a headache for the grounds crew, who prefer the neatly-timed cycles of their irrigation lines.

The Island has no monopoly on a verdant summer. But it does offer us the chance to walk in nature, real nature, and let us smile with the knowledge that rain is a blessing, that we are not in the company of artifice but what Wendell Berry called “the peace of wild things,” whose beauty is a great and blissful accident.

Noah Glasgow lives in Chilmark and Chicago. He was a summer intern at the Gazette in 2022.