A lifelong Cape Cod lobsterman says he feels like he’s in an “endless circle with town politics” as his local government is blocking him from selling lobsters this summer at his home, where the family business has operated for nearly 70 years.

Yarmouth resident Jon Tolley has to settle on a compromise with town officials in having to find a business on Route 28, the town’s main corridor, that will let him sell on their property. Lobster season starts within the next three weeks, he said, putting the businessman in a time crunch.

“The town is screwing around with my heritage, the Tolley family name, the history of Yarmouth being a fishing village, and the grandfathered rights of a citizen of Yarmouth,” he told the Herald on Saturday.

Tolley, his lawyers and hordes of supporters have argued over the past month that it doesn’t have to be this way for the lobster business, a community staple.

The battle with the mid-Cape town, of roughly 25,000 people, began late last August when Tolley received a violation notice that he said has startled him ever since: Retail sales in a residential district are not allowed under Yarmouth’s zoning regulations.

An unnamed West Yarmouth resident complained about a business sign Tolley put out on Route 28, prompting the fight, according to town officials. Tolley has argued that the complaint came from a Yarmouth police officer.

The complaint is the only one that Tolley said he remembers from over the decades.

The 66-year-old has caught lobsters out of Sesuit Harbor in Dennis and sold the fresh crustaceans from his home in West Yarmouth nearly his entire life. As a youngster, he helped his father, Fred, run the business on the same property before he took over operations in 1975.

Up to 1982, Yarmouth allowed the retail sale of fish as a commercial use in the residential district by right and without further permission, Tolley’s attorney, Jonathan Polloni, has emphasized.

Tension escalated at a chaotic meeting in April when the Zoning Board of Appeals shot down Tolley’s second appeal for a variance that would have let him continue selling the locally harvested lobster from where his father opened up shop in 1957.

The ZBA didn’t allow Tolley and his attorney 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 said their application was defective and repetitive from one submitted in a failed bid last fall, when Tolley represented himself.

Town officials have since offered Tolley a compromise: The Planning Board will draft an amendment to the zoning bylaw over the coming months that residents will then vote on at a fall special town meeting, in October or November.

If all goes smoothly, Tolley will be allowed to operate his business again from his property in the 2026 season. But for this summer, he will have to find somewhere else to sell from.

Tolley told the Herald that he learned through Town Administrator Robert Whritenour that no board can override current zoning bylaws. Whritenour did not immediately respond to a Herald request for comment on Friday.

“This is putting a financial burden on me, and the town can’t do anything about it,” Tolley said Saturday. “We need to have a change in Yarmouth town government.”

In an email to the Planning Board last week, Town Planner Kathy Williams outlined provisions that the board can consider to mitigate a commercial use in a residential district: limited to those with a commercial fishing license and commercial fishing retail license, businesses can only sell what they catch, among others.

Planning Board Clerk Will Rubenstein told residents who attended last Wednesday’s meeting that he was “quite pleased” about “reasonable conversation” being held after the “bizarre” ZBA meeting last month.

In that meeting, the ZBA chairman, who participated remotely over Zoom, ordered police to clear the room due to the tension between the board and residents.

Rubenstein acknowledged that board members are not aware of every single bylaw in town, and that conversations with the community are important for education building.

“I am a little frustrated because as much as I support you, both in the long term and short term,” he told Tolley, “I am not sure that this board can give you the short-term relief that you are looking for.”

Sales start in the middle of June when Tolley typically 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.

Tolley said he follows his family motto: “Fishing, farming, family, friends, and freedom on Cape Cod forever.” His grandfather, Walter, began the multi-generational business in the 1930s when he sold lobster from another residence in West Yarmouth.

“I don’t understand how one person made such chaos out of a simple situation,” resident Sally Johnson said of the complaint that has jeopardized Tolley’s business. “He is doing nothing wrong. He has been doing it for decades. You are taking a livelihood away from someone. … We have lost our way.”