At the end of a topsy-turvy race for Mattapoisett’s open selectman’s seat, Tyler Macallister could not quite overcome having vacated the seat he had held for eight and a half years to seek the town administrator’s job that he did not get. And popular community member John N. DeCosta Jr. then won a close race, 603-520 unofficially, to take that seat.
The selectmen’s race was the only contest in Tuesday’s town election and it allows DeCosta at age 57 to follow in his father Jack’s 21 years of footsteps as the newest Mattapoisett selectman.
“Proud is the best feeling. Happy’s good, but I think my dad’s looking down pretty proud right now,” DeCosta said outside Old Hammondtown School. “At some point, I knew I would consider doing this, and I’ve considered it for several years. You’ve got to get to that point in your life where you’re secure in your job, your family’s grown up… and you’ve got the time.”
No incumbent in the Mattapoisett election was challenged on the ballot, but Frances Kearns received 84 write-in votes to Trey Whalley’s 42 in the open race for a new Mattapoisett representative for a three-year term on the Old Rochester Regional District School Committee.
DeCosta said he decided to enter the race upon Macallister’s resignation, so when the former selectman re-entered the fray, it changed everything. Then the coronavirus pandemic swept the region, and DeCosta found himself challenged at levels he could not have forecasted.
“You couldn’t get a rhythm. Places (where) I was supposed to speak to groups got canceled… we did what we could do,” he said. “We did a mailing, we tried to do more Facebook stuff, ads in The Wanderer and tried to reach out that way to people.”
The groundswell of support across town became more evident over the last two weekends, as several people drove up North Street and asked DeCosta for signs to place in their yards.
Election day had its own sense of ups and downs.
“Honestly, one hour I thought I was winning, another hour I thought I was losing,” said DeCosta. “You can kind of tell, and we knew it was going to be close. We always thought it was going to be close. We always thought that.”
DeCosta planned on getting sworn into his new role the next morning and then meeting with Town Administrator Mike Lorenco.
He agreed with the town’s decision to postpone the town meeting that had been rescheduled for June 22 but will now happen in August.
“Obviously, the COVID thing’s the big thing, trying to get the town financially through this,” he said. “I applaud the two selectmen (Jordan Collyer and Paul Silva) that have been there. They pushed town meeting to August, trying to wait for more info from the state on where our budget’s going to be. Everything’s going to revolve around that. Then we can start worrying about priorities and projects. We’ve got to settle on a budget right now.
“I work for the state and sometimes (a one-twelfth budget is) what we have to do so I don’t think pushing off (town meeting) to August was a terrible idea. The more facts you can have going into the meeting, the better the decisions that you can make.”
DeCosta runs Scusset Beach State Reservation along Cape Cod Canal for the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR).
Macallister has no plans to go away from the town he’s invested his entire adult life into.
“Continue to support the town as I have been, absolutely,” he said. “Just because I’m not going to be selectman doesn’t mean I can’t help out in other ways. It doesn’t change anything about the way I feel about the town.
“As things open up, we’ll see what kind of help Mike (Lorenco) needs, the new town administrator, and take it from there.”
Macallister, 52, works primarily in commodities analysis and is a commodities broker and in season a commercial fisherman. He also started a solar energy company and built a large solar array on Cape Cod, and started two telecom companies. Having grown up in Barnstable, he fell in love with Mattapoisett while attending college at SMU/UMass Dartmouth and has been involved in some way with the town through his adult life.
He explained earlier in the day that he only sought the town administrator’s job because the selection committee (of which DeCosta was a member) was dissatisfied with the first pool of approximately 25 candidates. The only one among them considered to be qualified took a job in Dedham.
“We worked really hard over the course of nine years to take the town from a AA bond rating to a AAA bond rating, the highest you can attain. That’s a lot of effort, a lot of work. I didn’t want to see us go backward,” said Macallister, who was motivated to approach (now former) Town Administrator Mike Gagne and ask him, “Do you think I can do what you do?” Gagne answered in the affirmative according to Macallister, who threw his hat into the ring.
A much-improved second pool of 45 people applied and, while Macallister made the final seven, he did not make the final three. “Mike Lorenco, he fit the job well, and that’s great,” said Macallister, who then decided to try and win back his selectman’s seat. He fell short but is not done trying to find ways to help out Mattapoisett.
“I don’t rule out anything at this point,” he said after the decision. “Again, I’ve always been a person that’s gotten involved to do things and make them better. I will probably continue to do so.”
DeCosta said he and Macallister spoke after the results came in.
“(Macallister) congratulated me, and I asked him, I said, ‘Please make sure that you continue – I thanked him for his service – and said I hope you continue to serve the town. He said he would,” said DeCosta. “It would have been the same way had he won. I would continue to serve the town, too, because it’s just what we do. It was good.”
Town Clerk Catherine Heuberger, who organized the election and presided at the polls, was among several incumbents who went unchallenged for their seats on the ballot. None of those incumbents was unseated. Below are the unofficial results.
Town Clerk (vote for one; three-year term): Heuberger 995, 11 write-ins, 131 blanks
Selectman (vote for one; three-year term): John N. DeCosta Jr. 603, R. Tyler Macallister 520, 0 write-ins, 14 blanks
Assessors (vote for one; three-year term): Raymond H. Andrews 946, 2 write-ins, 189 blanks
Mattapoisett School Committee (vote for one; three-year term): Carly E. Lavin 853, 50 write-ins, 234 blanks
ORR District School Committee (vote for one; three-year term): Frances Kearns 84 write-ins, Trey Whalley 42, others 85, 926 blanks.
Trustee Public Library (vote for two; three-year term): Ruth Oliver Jolliffe 843, Jennifer E. Russell 892, 3 write-in’s, 536 blanks
Moderator (vote for one; one-year term): Jack A. Eklund 946, 2 write-ins, 189 blanks
Water/Sewer Commissioner (vote for one; three-year term): Daniel W. Chase 944, 1 write-in, 192 blanks
Board of Health (vote for one; three-year term): Carmelo Nicolosi 946, 6 write-ins, 185 blanks
Planning Board (vote for one; five-year term): Nathan C. Ketchel 930, 0 write-ins, 207 blanks
Community Preservation Committee (vote for two, two-year term): James A. Pierson 819, Susan F. Wilbur 938, 2 write-ins, 515 blanks
Mattapoisett Town Election
By Mick Colageo