Editor:

I am writing as a Harwich resident who has attended recent planning and zoning hearings and has grown increasingly concerned about the imbalance built into our development review process.

When a project comes before the planning board or zoning board, the applicant is almost always represented by an experienced land-use attorney or professional consultant. They understand every procedural rule, every evidentiary standard, and precisely how to frame arguments within the narrow criteria boards are required to apply.

On the other side of the room sit volunteers — taxpayers and neighbors — who care deeply about their community but typically have no formal legal or planning training. They speak from lived experience and legitimate concern, yet they are navigating a highly technical process without professional support. While no one is suggesting bad intent, the structural imbalance is clear: those who can afford professional representation have a procedural advantage.

Citizen petitions have now been formally submitted for town meeting that seek to restore balance by placing funding decisions for certain projects back into the hands of voters. This effort reflects a growing belief that taxpayers should have a more direct voice — not only in commenting on projects, but in determining whether public funds are committed to support them.

Town meeting is the purest form of local democracy we have in Harwich. If development decisions are shaping our community for decades to come, then meaningful voter oversight of public funding is not obstruction — it is accountability.

This is not about being for or against development. It is about fairness, transparency and ensuring that residents have a real and effective role in decisions that affect the character, infrastructure and financial future of our town.

Pete Switchenko
Harwich

Editor:

We are so grateful for the 60-plus local merchants who generously supported our Hospital Auxiliary – Chatham/Harwich Branch Game Day Fundraiser on Feb. 10. Over 110 attendees enjoyed an afternoon of gaming, a delicious Italian luncheon and gift card raffles and prizes that allowed us to raise over $5,000 for Cape Cod Hospital's Family Birthplace. A big "Thank You" to our merchants, game players and our branch members for making the afternoon a huge success! 

Beth Jacobs
Ilene Bendas
Co-chairs, Chatham/Harwich Hospital Auxiliary

Editor:

Somewhere between historic preservation and property rights lies the zone I call the WUS zone: Wake Up Stupid. Brilliant towns are not generic, they are crafted. In Rome someone along the way had to say no, you can’t demolish the Colosseum, and no, you can’t demolish that ancient building but you can add onto the side. It is done constantly and is a juxtaposition that resonates and is beautiful. 

In Beaufort, S.C. a brilliant seaside town, someone had to say no, we’re not going to demolish. We are going to keep strict codes to preserve the outside but the building’s inside are converted. And they said no to demolishing what was a run-down wooden building. It was the first Gullah school. On the outskirts a soaring brick church stands open to the elements ever since it was partially destroyed during the Civil War. It stands untouched near the cemetery and it is a most hauntingly beautiful, inspirational historic site. 

It is said that with historic character and sites, tourists will spend an extra three days. But someone had to have a vision and someone had to say no to destruction of our collective culture.

In Harwich, the developers of the Wychmere resort intend demolition of the historic Snow Inn. They plan expansion and a new building that looks like any Hilton resort, but they added a turret they call a witch’s hat. That’s what we get of our historic past? Are you seeing the difference now? People in Harwich overall are upset and do not want this. But hey, wake up, stupid. When developers destroy every last inch of our history, our village charm that drives the tourism dollars, they form their own destruction.

Sally Urbano
West Harwich

Editor:

Well, this has been a week! Thank God for snowblowers and the wonderful emergency responders who kept us safe! While we were fortunate to have a whole-house generator, the calls for “warming stations” and folks having to return to cold, powerless homes because there is a paucity of overnight accommodations for our citizens is most concerning.

It strikes me as odd that with an extremely delicate power grid our highly compensated management team has yet to address how to truly protect our most vulnerable residents. I was amazed to learn that we only have one “circuit” serving the entire Cape! 

After a five-day power drought with the tornados, we decided to purchase our generator since we are year-rounders. The peace of mind that it brings in winter with fear of lost food and burst pipes more than offsets the cost.

I cannot help but wonder that in this time where empathy and community health is low in national priorities, we need to start looking for solutions locally for our most vulnerable taxpayers.

I am hoping that a dialog can begin to focus upon how secondary power systems can be made available to all our year-round residents, especially seniors. Various areas to explore for further discussion: RFPs for bulk purchases from the likes of Tesla, Generac and Kohler, grants, low-interest loans and other creative solutions to foster affordability, would go a long way to addressing this glaring problem. We should not have to wait for unnecessary health problems to arise before we seek to remedy this situation. 

Richard Pleffner
West Chatham

Editor:

There’s a warrant article asking for $500,000 for the Harwich Affordable Housing Trust without a specific project or purpose beyond “affordable housing.” While lump-sum allocations are allowed, voters have no idea which developments will actually receive the money. At this scale, transparency matters.

Harwich’s CPA funds come from a 3 percent property tax surcharge and state matching funds. State matching funds have been steadily declining, making it even more important that local allocations be clear, specific and accountable to taxpayers.

By law, at least 10 percent each year is reserved for open space, historic preservation, and affordable housing. Any remaining “unrestricted” funds are flexible — the only source for recreation projects, which have no required reserve.

Open space and historic preservation projects require individual voter approval. Affordable housing often does not. Sometimes a lump sum is approved without knowing which projects will benefit. The five-member affordable housing trust can then spend millions by majority vote, without direct voter oversight.

Reserves for true, time-sensitive opportunities make sense. But planned or unspecified allocations should be clear to taxpayers. If voters demand project-level approval for other CPA categories, shouldn’t the same standard apply here?

At town meeting, residents should ask for specifics: how exactly will this $500,000 be spent? Transparency and accountability are not optional when public funds are involved.

Lou Urbano
Harwich

Editor:

When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably tyranny evinces a design to reduce the people under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to vote down such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these states; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter the former actions of their government. The history of the present president is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states.

To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislatures. For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these states.

Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A president, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the president of a free people.

George Myers
Venice, Fla.

Editor:

As we mark the anniversary of Aaron Bushnell’s death, many of us are holding both grief and difficult questions.

Aaron was born at the Community of Jesus. He spent his entire childhood and adolescence there, leaving only when he entered the military. The place that formed him — spiritually, socially, emotionally — was not an abstract institution. It was his home. It was my home, too, in the 1980s.

Recent reporting about the Community of Jesus describes patterns that former residents have spoken about for decades — humiliation as discipline, forced labor as education, family separation as the key to properly loving God, and physical punishment spiritualized as “light”. We remember the early-morning drills and the middle-of-the-night light sessions. We know the defeat of being told we were "out of the spirit". We can sometimes still feel the fear that hung over a whole day, an entire week, across a lifetime. We absorbed the message that we weren't loved. We learned that the only way to belong was to comply.

These were their tools of control. When children like Aaron, like me, like so many others, are formed inside systems where obedience is survival and questioning brings punishment, the impact does not end at 18. It follows them into adulthood — into their relationships, their mental health and their sense of worth. Many former residents describe PTSD, fractured families, chronic anxiety and a deep mistrust of their own perceptions. And sadly, for some, the weight of unaddressed trauma becomes too much to bear. 

Aaron once spoke about wanting his life to matter. That longing — to matter, to be seen, to have your voice count — is something many of us recognize. It is one reason Rock Harbor Truth exists, created out of the conviction that stories told in the light can interrupt cycles of harm.

As more former residents step forward, we need to ask ourselves and our town leaders whether patterns described across multiple decades deserve serious examination rather than dismissal.

Protecting children and telling the truth about coercive systems is not anti-faith. It is not an attack on a town. It is an act of conscience.

On this anniversary, may we remember Aaron not only in grief, but in our shared responsibility to ensure that no child grows up believing they have no worth. And when survivors step into life beyond high-control systems, may we surround them with trauma-informed care and community — so that no one feels their own self has been erased beyond repair.

Light does not destroy what is good. It reveals what needs healing.

Bonnie Zampino
Harpers Ferry, W.V.

Editor:

In the Feb. 19 issue of The Chronicle, Ralph W. Smith wrote an outstanding letter identifying many of the shortfalls of national political leaders in the executive branch of our government. In this letter, I would like to address an equally serious complementary issue, namely the failures of the U.S. Congress to perform its duties in accordance with its role as one of three branches of our federal government.

First, it should be noted that each of the secretaries and director identified by Mr. Smith was confirmed by the U.S. Senate, primarily for political reasons and loyalty to the president, rather than for competence. The result has been a remarkably inept and dysfunctional administration and needs to be fixed. Secondly, the Congress appears to sit idly by while these individuals make horrible errors and act in belligerent and destructive ways. The theatrics and contemptuous attacks shown by Ms. Bondi in a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing illustrates the point. Why doesn’t the Congress, with all of its law-making authority, hold Ms. Bondi in contempt? Why aren’t penalties imposed on witnesses who are found guilty of contempt of Congress? In short, why does the Congress sit on its hands and simply hold yet more unproductive hearings?

The needs for Congressional reform are vast. First and foremost, the Congress needs members with spines, ones who will risk their miserable jobs to stand up to the president and speaker to do the right things for their constituents and country. Secondly, the processes and law-making abilities of the Congress need serious upgrading. Witnesses must not be allowed to lie and evade questions posed in hearings. The Congress must have real teeth in controlling excesses of the administration like the imposition of tariffs and going to war. It’s time to get going and restore our wonderful nation to the concepts and processes envisioned by our founding fathers!

Erich Bender
Chatham

Editor:

According to the Chatham town registry there are about 1,000 short-term rentals in town. The state registry states the figure is over 1,500. Either number seems excessive for a town this size. For a town that's screaming for more year-round housing, the answer seems clear. Pass an ordinance that limits the amount of short-term housing that can exist to a more reasonable number, the goal being to return the overflow back to year round inventory.

Tim Martin
Chatham

Editor:

I have begun to compare Trump to Caligula, one of history’s nastier tyrants, who declared himself a god, and frequently quoted his favorite poet, Accius, who’d written: “Let them hate, so long as they fear.”

Too many Democrats are missing the big picture by individually criticizing Trump’s policies, pronouncements and peculiarities. They are missing the bigger, scarier diagnosis of the most powerful man in the world: Trump is insane!

You don’t need to be a mental health professional to come to this conclusion. You simply need to step back for a moment and add up all the obscene rantings, pronouncements and policies coming from this unhinged lunatic’s damaged brain. Quit the “Emperor’s New Clothes” mentality and state the obvious: Trump is dangerously nuts!

Republican senators, cabinet members, congressmen, business moguls, and everyday citizens of our great country must stop and look at the big picture: Our president is out of control; he is certifiably crazy! And he has access to nuclear weapons that could destroy the planet!

Wake up America! Trump must be removed from office before it’s too late!

Peter A. Schaible
Brewster

Editor:

The things I love about Harwich are changing. Not better or worse — just changing. The break from summer crowds now stretches into the shoulder seasons, giving those of us who love the quiet, rural character a chance to notice how things used to be. I remember when this town felt slower, simpler, and more connected, something newer residents may see as just the way it is.

People used to move here for the quaint community. Now it’s often for business opportunities, the beaches, the joy of people strolling, clean air and sunshine. Seasonal rentals and second homes are everywhere. Over time, these changes become the new normal, and long-time residents are left remembering how it once was.

What frustrates me most lately is the number of housing developments aimed at rentals instead of ownership. The town created a housing trust to make development easier, but this has led to money going to developers without voters having a say. These projects also drive up costs for those who can least afford it, creating an affordability crisis for residents on fixed incomes and lower-earning households.

Town meeting this year gives taxpayers a chance to say no. We don’t want our money going to developers without a vote. If a 40B project bypasses local wishes, fine — but not with our tax dollars. They’re called “unfriendly” for a reason — they push through what people oppose. I want the right to say, “Yes, you can, but not with my money.”

Harwich is changing, quietly but surely. It’s not all bad, but long-time residents deserve a voice, and we shouldn’t be forced to pay more than we can afford for the changes others welcome.

Anne Stewart
Pleasant Lake