Letters To The Editor: Dec. 18, 2025

December 17, 2025

by Cape Cod Chronicle Readers

Smart Growth Planning

Editor:

Planning for smart growth is essential for preserving Chatham's cherished historical attributes and scale as a typical New England village as noted in Chatham's comprehensive plan: "The desire to remain a small and close-knit community guides many of the aspects of life within the town...How to save the character of Chatham without trying to freeze the town into a museum is the biggest challenge that faces us today."

Controversy over Main Street and Meetinghouse Road affordable housing development plans today stems from an unnecessary conflict between those working to preserve Chatham's historic small-town scale and those working for more affordable housing. The trick is to work with planners and designers to accomplish both goals.

New structures must be carefully attuned to their location. Designers accomplish this not by token gestures to an existing neighborhood, but by respectful attention to the variables that make up a sense of place. New structures are specifically adapted to architectural surroundings and scaled to fit their surroundings. When Ella and I built an addition to our house we asked local architect Ned Collins to design a home that fits the neighborhood. We received a preservation award from the Chatham Historical Commission and the Chatham Historical Society.

Chatham's elected and appointed officials and volunteer board members could exercise heightened imagination and demonstrate greater leadership qualities in bringing together a divided community. Current affordable housing development plans for Main Street and Meetinghouse Road are based on an outdated state-mandated program that fails to meet Chatham's unique affordable housing needs and the community's desire to preserve Chatham's cherished historic character.

Rick Leavitt
West Chatham

Compost To Be Donated To School

Editor:

Thank you so much for the recent article on our Harwich Elementary School cafeteria composting program. The students are incredibly proud of being good earth stewards.

We'd like to clarify two points that were made in the piece. Black Earth Composting Co. will be donating several bags of their fabulous compost to the Harwich Elementary School Garden Club, not the Garden Club of Harwich (GCH). The student gardeners will be using it to grow veggies that might find their way into the cafeteria. And the circle will be complete by diverting food from the waste stream into growing healthy food to eat.

The other point to note is that the current co-chairs of the Garden Club of Harwich Conservation Committee are Susan Sajer and Susie Hughes. It is under their dynamic leadership that we continue to promote foodscrap collection in Harwich. I'll end by again inviting all Harwich organizations to join us in creating a sustainable Harwich through food scrap collection.

Diane DiGennaro, former GCH conservation chair
Harwich Port

Slow Down Before We Fill Up

Editor:

We're all a bit smarter, and I would say a greater number of us are a bit sadder, now that the Harwich Zoning Board of Appeals has given the green light to Mid Cape Church Homes to build 242 units up in the woods at the westerly end of Queen Anne Road. Given the project's removal from sewer and services, it will be logistically challenging for its occupants. It will be logistically challenging for the rest of us as well.

Taxpayers will be burdened by the costs of significant additional traffic on Queen Anne Road. Jimmy Marcelline's old salvage yard at the Route 6 exit will be developed. Pennrose will build a second complex at the corner of Queen Anne Road letting out onto Route 124. Pine Oaks Village IV will be getting established. Stop lights will sprout like daylilies. Congestion will be normalized. A smaller project might have been envisioned.

Welcome to the approaches at Myrtle Beach!

The ZBA did follow a fair hearing process; that cannot be argued. Local bylaws were necessarily bypassed and many permits were consolidated per 40B mandate. The ZBA became stuck and unable to fulfill its remit. Expected mandatory compliance requirements made the board just a tool of Boston. But our home rule was taken to the toilet by locals that did not adequately appreciate its value.

Admittedly, change is inevitable. Yet it can be molded to suit a vision, it can be paced. It need not be simply a crisis management reflex. The Harwich ZBA might consider pushing the select board and the planning board to keep the ZBA from reliving this recent experience. Word is there is another 40B gestating, waiting to be born on Queen Anne Road.

Additional service costs and disparate expectations should make it apparent that we need to slow down before we fill up this cul-de-sac we call Cape Cod. Metaphorically, all the advantages and disadvantages of living on a dead end are now in play. Yet, depending on where one became habituated, congestion is a greater or lesser issue.

Matt Sutphin
Harwich

Growth vs. Character In Harwich

Editor:

Harwich is changing fast, and not everyone is happy. Large rental complexes — both affordable and market rate — are popping up, reshaping our town and threatening the unique character of our seven villages.

Our boards face a tough balancing act: address the housing shortage while preserving the neighborhoods that make Harwich special. Housing committees focus on affordability, but building units alone isn’t enough. New developments must complement the scale, culture, and charm of each village, basically creating neighborhoods with village character as opposed to large complexes.

It’s alarming when citizens raise concerns — traffic, environmental impact, strain on services — that are heard but treated as secondary while developers receive tax breaks, fee waivers, and funding from the CPC and housing trust. Chapter 40B may limit local control, yet the town provides incentives that make these projects more appealing, sending a mixed message about whose interests really matter.

Harwich must decide how to grow while preserving the unique character and identity of its seven villages. Which aspects — architecture, scale, culture — should guide development? Housing should meet our needs and protect the character of our villages.

The select board and local leaders must guide this conversation. Smart zoning and development decisions can meet housing needs and protect our town’s character. The choice is ours. Let’s make it wisely before it’s too late, ensuring Harwich remains the community we love for generations to come.

Louis Urbano
West Harwich

Welcome Writers Speaking Out

Editor:

Bravo to Messrs. Myers and Phillips for their well-reasoned letters to the editor in the most recent issue of The Chronicle. While some readers may cavil at the inclusion of “political opinion” in the letters section, the depredations of the current administration should be of continuing concern to The Chronicle readership. Those of us who want to leave a better country to our children and grandchildren should speak out when danger is lurking. The letters were welcomed by this subscriber.

Martin Berliner
Greenwood Village, Colo.

Tree Cutting Answers Sought

Editor:

The Chatham Airport Commission plans to remove trees from 60 acres of woodlands surrounding the airport this January, a move that will destroy a significant portion of Chatham’s diminishing wildlife habitat. The Friends of Trees requested the select board members to discuss this issue at an upcoming meeting, which they have agreed to do. There are several pressing concerns that need to be addressed. Among our questions:

Will the 60 acres be clear-cut or will the trees be selectively removed/pruned?

How many trees are expected to be removed and from what parts of the acreage?

Will a survey be conducted to record the area’s birds and other wildlife sheltering in the woodland so proper measures can be taken?

How will the contractors be monitored to ensure no unintended removals occur?

What is the reason for the removal? Is it to promote air traffic safety or merely to add more hangars?

What alternatives have been considered, if any?

If this project moves forward without such questions being addressed, it will add to the sizable woodlands losses Chatham has experienced, with more to come. Many more acres are to be clear-cut for three housing developments now underway, for example.

I’m thankful that the select board has agreed to take up this issue, and I hope we have a full, complete and transparent examination of the tree-removal plans — before it’s too late.

DeeDee Holt
Chatham

Commission Referral Is Right Thing

Editor:

A big thank you to the Harwich Select Board. Last week they did the right thing by voting to refer Pine Oaks IV to the Cape Cod Commission for a discretionary review. That vote took courage and foresight. It said this has gone too far off the rails. Let’s take a closer look.

And it gives the Cape Cod Commission the opportunity to do its job.

That vote didn’t kill the project. It didn’t block affordable housing. What it did was interrupt a familiar Cape Cod pattern: this is too big, too fast, and too complicated — but we’ll pretend it isn’t.

Now the spotlight shifts from the Harwich ZBA to the Cape Cod Commission. This is their moment.

Pine Oaks IV is a Chapter 40B project, and yes, we’ve all heard the story that 40B overrides local control. But that talking point has become a convenient shield against harder questions — questions about wastewater, groundwater, traffic, cumulative growth and whether our regional systems can actually absorb what’s being proposed.

Those questions don’t disappear just because a project checks an affordability box.

The select board’s referral was a line in the sand. It said: this project may be legal under state law, but legality alone doesn’t make it sustainable — and sustainability is exactly what the Cape Cod Commission was created to protect.

The zoning board of appeals still holds the 40B permit. No hearings were undone. No approvals were revoked. What changed is that the project has now been formally flagged as potentially having regional impacts — and that matters.

Now it’s up to the commission to decide whether it will step up or step aside.

This is where the overlapping-jurisdiction debate comes in. Developers will argue that Chapter 40B preempts everything else. Regional planners will argue that their authority doesn’t come from zoning at all, but from separate legislation designed to protect shared resources. That tension isn’t new — but it’s rarely been tested this openly. And that’s exactly why this moment matters.

If the Cape Cod Commission declines to act, that decision will speak volumes. If it asserts jurisdiction, it will affirm that affordable housing does not get a free pass on environmental reality. Either way, the commission now owns the question.

For too long on Cape Cod, large developments have moved forward in silence — town by town, permit by permit — while cumulative impacts quietly stack up in our bays, aquifers and roads. The result is a slow erosion of the very qualities that make this place livable.

The Harwich Select Board’s referral disrupted that pattern. It said pause. Look beyond the parcel line. Consider who we are and how we live here. That’s not anti-housing. That’s pro-Cape.

Eric Schwaab
Barnstable