Tempers flared as Selectmen sparred on a variety of topics Tuesday night, at one point broadening the target of barbs to include the Planning Board, whose chairman was sitting in the audience.

It began with a report on streetlights, moved on to criticism of the town’s business permitting process and ended with an impassioned plea about priorities.

Town Administrator Derek Sullivan reported that the contractor hired to convert 100 nonfunctioning town streetlights to functioning LED streetlights would begin work on Monday, Nov. 16.

That came as welcome news to Selectmen Steve Holmes and Alan Slavin, who had warned earlier in the meeting that the town should not be taking on additional financial responsibilities when it can’t even muster the funds to fix broken streetlights.

While the 100 lights represent only a fraction of the lights that need fixing, that is the number that can be handled with the $50,000 voted by Town Meeting last month.

Minutes later, given an opportunity to report on their dealings with other town boards, Slavin and Holmes had separate but equally scathing assessments of the way businesses seeking permits are treated by the town.

“We do a lousy job. We don’t have a system in place . . . The system we have does not work,” Slavin said. He said an applicant is bounced from one volunteer board to another and from one office to another – with no central coordinating authority.

And he pointed to the treatment of the owners of the Bay Pointe Club in Onset who have been trying for months to get Planning Board approval for a 90-unit housing development. A hearing the previous night had ended, yet again, with no decision.

Picking up on the theme, long-time Bay Pointe advocate Holmes said, “This is an urgent matter. These are the people who are bringing the revenue into this town. . . That project would have brought this town over half a million dollars a year in revenue.”

When it came time for her report, Selectman Judith Whiteside was blunt: “We spend more time discussing streetlights than we do discussing the opioid epidemic or the houseless epidemic or . . . Guys, get a grip!”

She said there were more than 100 calls over the past weekend for emergency services, and “they aren’t all chimney fires. . . . Yeah, we have problems here. But a light bulb? As opposed to a life?”

With that, the meeting adjourned. And Planning Board Chair George Barrett jumped up to confront Holmes and Slavin. “What was that about?” he asked no one in particular while heading to the front of the room.