A lifelong Cape Cod lobsterman is fighting for his livelihood as a local zoning board looks to put an end to his family’s business that has operated out of his home for nearly 70 years, a battle that residents say further jeopardizes the town’s identity.

Jon Tolley has only ever known a life of catching lobsters out of Sesuit Harbor in Dennis and then selling the fresh crustaceans from his home in West Yarmouth. The 66-year-old helped his father run the business on the same Iroquois Boulevard property as a youngster before he took over operations in 1975.

Selling the lobsters to residents and tourists proved to be smooth sailing over the decades until late last August. That’s when Tolley received a violation notice that he said came as a shock: Retail sales in a residential district are not allowed under Yarmouth’s zoning regulations.

The Zoning Board of Appeals shot down Tolley’s request for a variance last October that would have allowed him to continue to sell the locally harvested lobster at his property where business has boomed since his father opened shop in 1957.

As residents learned about Tolley’s fight, they became outraged. Despite an outpouring of community support since last fall, the Zoning Board of Appeals is remaining firm with its stance that the lobsterman can no longer sell his beloved product from his property.

The board rejected Tolley’s second appeal on Thursday as he and an attorney, whom he didn’t have in his initial challenge, looked to argue that the retail sale of lobster is protected as a pre-existing and permissible accessory use at the residence.

Board Chairman Sean Igoe, zooming into the meeting, blocked Tolley’s attorney, Jonathan Polloni, from arguing their case and the dozens of residents in support, who flocked to Town Hall, from expressing how the business is not a detriment to the community.

Igoe told Tolley and Polloni that he believed their application was defective and repetitive from the one they submitted last fall. He told them to take their complaint to Superior Court and seek a remand which he said would allow the board to hear the arguments again instead of waiting two years.

Residents shouted out their sharp disappointment: “Read the room!” “Dictatorship!” “Generations are leaving Cape Cod!” “You will only have millionaires living here!”

Igoe confronted the tension remotely, saying: “The board has suspended discussion on this. Do we have any police in the room? How about you send somebody down. We’re going to clear the room.”

In an interview with the Herald on Friday, Tolley called Thursday’s meeting a “(expletive)show.”

“This is what you’re up against,” he said.

The town’s position doesn’t make sense to Tolley, Polloni and the lobsterman’s supporters, they have asserted. The fight started after an unnamed West Yarmouth resident complained about a business sign Tolley put out on Route 28, the main road in town, officials have said.

Last fall, Yarmouth’s building department determined that Tolley is allowed to store lobster traps on his property because it is “grandfathered” despite retail sales of fish not being allowed in residential districts.

Polloni told the Herald that fishing is also allowed in every district in Yarmouth, and under zoning bylaw, accessory uses are permissible, meaning Tolley should have no issue selling his lobsters. The attorney called his client a “dying breed” in the Cape Cod fishing industry.

“What is an aspect of frigging fishing? Selling the damn fish, ain’t it?” Tolley told the Herald. “I mean, come on now. I am the last and lonely lobsterman in town.”

Tolley received a second violation notice last month, from Deputy Building Commissioner Tim Sears who wrote that it came to the town’s “attention that lobsters are still being offered for sale at this address,” threatening to press daily fines up to $300 if operations aren’t ceased.

Sales don’t start until the middle of June when Tolley opens up his two driveways for patrons to stop by and grab their lobsters between 4 and 6:30 p.m. seven days a week. The lobsterman has a permit from the state Division of Marine Fisheries to sell to the public and restaurants, averaging 3,000 pounds sold a season, which ends in late October.

Resident Cheryl Ball, founder of advocacy group “Cape Cod Concerned Citizens,” told the Herald on Friday that the town is “ready to explode.” She highlighted how the middle-Cape community, of roughly 25,000 people, is also fighting to preserve an iconic cranberry bog and farmstand.

In that battle, Select Board member Joyce Flynn issued a public apology after getting caught on a hot mic saying “God, I’m sick of these people” during a non-binding vote on whether residents supported relocating a small pumping station away from the bog.

“It’s not the will of the people anymore,” Ball said. “It’s what people sitting on a board decide. What the public wants, what the people who pay the taxes … they’re just not allowed to have a voice.”

In a Facebook post on Friday, Tolley said he and Ball will spearhead a petition for a special town meeting with cranberry bog operator Chris Wilson and fellow resident Jerry O’Connell.

The Institute for Justice, a national public interest law firm, has also joined in on the fight, demanding the ZBA to provide evidence that Tolley’s “home-based lobster sales were problematic or disruptive.”

The institute stated in a letter to the board a potential shutdown of the business is “contrary to both state law and the town’s own ordinances” and “likely violates the state and federal constitutional protections for substantive due process and equal protection.”

It also highlighted how Tolley’s grandfather began the multi-generational business in the 1930s when he sold lobster from another residence in West Yarmouth.

O’Connell, a lifelong Yarmouth resident, recounted how his school bus used to drive past Tolley’s home, and he would see lobster pots in the yard which remain today and a staple in the community.

“People come here for tourism, they come here to see fishermen … They come here to experience certain things,” O’Connell told the Herald on Friday. “If we give things up, we’d be just like any other town off the Cape.”

Yarmouth lobsterman Jon Tolley has been selling live lobsters from his home for over 50 years and a recent anonymous complaint to regulators in town threaten to shut down his business. Tolley was issued a violation notice to cease his operations or face daily fines. (Mark Stockwell/Boston Herald)
Yarmouth lobsterman Jon Tolley has been selling live lobsters from his home for over 50 years and a recent anonymous complaint to regulators in town threaten to shut down his business. Tolley was issued a violation notice to cease his operations or face daily fines. (Mark Stockwell/Boston Herald)