The local schoolteacher who’s been a longtime tenant at Castine’s town-owned historic lighthouse will continue to live there along with her husband.
The Select Board approved a two-year lease with Tracy Lameyer and Mark Hurvitt at a Monday meeting after discussing concerns about a separate home that Hurvitt owns in Blue Hill. Hurvitt ultimately agreed to give up his permanent residence status in Blue Hill as a condition of the new lease in Castine.
Lameyer, a teacher at the town’s elementary school, has lived in the keeper’s house at the Dyce Head Lighthouse for 13 years. The property is owned by the town and rented out on multi-year lease terms.
When that lease has come up for renewal in recent years, some residents have suggested the town would make more money by using it as a short-term rental or other attraction. Others have questioned whether the current tenant uses the lighthouse as a primary residence.
Those questions are likely now slowed for another two years, and Lameyer will remain the ambassador for the site.
At the start of Monday’s discussion, Chair Roberta Boczkiewicz said the Select Board’s priority is having a tenant who will care for the lighthouse and keep an eye on its condition. In previous meetings, board members have said they also prioritize keeping it available as affordable, local workforce housing in a town that “desperately” needs it.
This version of the lease also requires tenants to submit documents proving that the lighthouse is their primary residence, such as voting locally, registering a car or changing the address on a driver’s license.
Discussion had arisen around Hurvitt owning property in Blue Hill and claiming a homestead tax exemption there, which state law only allows for a permanent residence.
Board members initially wanted to table the lease again, but the couple’s attorney, Andrew Hamilton, asked for a vote Monday. The Select Board first voted to begin negotiating the lease in mid-June.
“This thing has hung up in the air for long enough,” Hamilton said. “It needs to come down.”
Hurvitt said at the meeting that he hadn’t thought of his homestead exemption until this year and did not intend to appear deceptive.
Board member Amy Gutow said the situation rubbed her the wrong way because the lease includes a stipulation that the tenant not have a primary residence elsewhere. Removing Hurvitt from the lease, as the couple had at first proposed, would feel like skirting that important element of the agreement, she said. Another board member, Dan Leader, also said he felt he’d been misled about Hurvitt’s other home being rented out.
Leader said he felt the couple wanted it “both ways,” and noted the keeper’s house is a unique property with affordable rent in a town with limited housing options.
After some discussion, Hurvitt agreed to waive his right to the homestead exemption at his property in Blue Hill.
The board voted unanimously to sign the lease to both Lameyer and Hurvitt, conditional on the proof of Hurvitt changing his residence status.
