Editor:
The Animal Welfare Club of Monomoy Regional High School has two huge thank you’s to share with the community. First, thank you Amy Sanders and WildCare for visiting our club recently with beautiful little Nickerson, an eastern screech owl. Our members loved seeing Nickerson and learning about the great work WildCare does. Our second, but no less important, thank you goes to Tyanna and Keri at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History. These animal care workers not only gave us a special private tour of the museum but taught the AWC members how they care for the creatures they have and the work the museum does to help marine wildlife in the area. Thank you to these two great local organizations!

Lisa Forte-Doyle and Beth Howe
Co-Advisors, Animal Welfare Club
Monomoy Regional High School

Editor:
As a veteran attendee of Chatham’s First Night of several years, my children and I look forward to Buckey’s circus, games, face painting and kid activities at Monomoy Middle School. However, the biggest fumble this year was the middle school only had two all-gender bathrooms open for all attendees. With 800 people at the middle school during the two hours we were there, that isn’t sufficient. Especially in a building with hundreds of children and elderly. Also where they were serving food (food trucks, popcorn and cotton candy). The general rule of thumb is one bathroom for 250 people for an event such as First Night activities at Monomoy.
Therefore, I hope that the First Night Committee hears this concern for more bathrooms and hand-washing stations. Estimating that about 3,000 attendees filtered in/out of Monomoy that afternoon, someone “dropped the ball” this year and opening a few additional bathrooms or renting portable bathrooms might be advantageous next year.  

Dan Dembkowski
Brewster

Editor:
I am writing to express our disappointment to learn that the Sea Camps Long Pond parcel is again on a select board agenda in early January for a potential vote to proceed with the next stage of development for affordable housing. I think everyone can agree that we need more affordable housing in Brewster, but siting it in an area that can affect Brewster’s water quality is a mistake. Many voted in favor of buying the property to protect Brewster’s two biggest assets — water quality and open space for everyone to enjoy. Rushing forward in the dead of winter unnecessarily pits affordable housing groups vs. conservation/water quality groups and is a mistake. These issues should not be in opposition. 
Like many, we supported the Habitat For Humanity housing off Tubman Road and the Millstone housing near our home. Both have low impact on water quality and provide high upside for affordability.  
As long-time volunteers and donors to many causes in Brewster, we are sad that a scattershot approach has been taken — for years — to the central issue of wastewater planning. With proper wastewater planning, zones for development would be created and protective septic control bylaws could be enacted to prevent excessive growth. Affordable housing and water protection should not be competing issues. Proper planning would provide both precious water resource protections and housing for generations.
The current plans for the Long Pond parcel are an end-run, pure and simple. Building in a water protection zone near an already challenged pond makes no sense. If this project is approved, it will serve as the new model for future end-runs around existing common-sense bylaws.
Please — don’t let this happen.

Konrad Schultz
Deborah Norton
Brewster

Editor:
Do you believe as human beings we have the right and the need for brilliance — places of such extraordinary beauty and rarity that we would be less without them? Can we allow ourselves the thought that not everything must run along the mediocre path? If so, then we have a responsibility to protect and nurture these special places.
Cape Cod is a rare piece of land that juts out 65 miles into the Atlantic Ocean. It is a landscape of extraordinary natural beauty and profound historical significance. Formed by retreating glaciers around 20,000 years ago, this glacial legacy created a delicate mosaic of sandy beaches, towering dunes, kettle ponds, salt marshes and pine barrens. It is vulnerable to the motions of nature and to rapid growth that does not take Cape Cod’s unique situations into consideration. Currently, widespread large building projects are occurring in our towns and the established building rules should not be universally applied here, including those under Chapter 40.
I suggest a Capewide evaluation and push back against what insensitive development is doing to our brilliant, fragile world. We do have the Cape Cod National Seashore, a pioneering model, which incorporates private lands and requires town zoning to limit development. It safeguards much of the peninsula's most dramatic landscape, but even this is being encroached. We need more, and it will only be accomplished with pushback from our towns.
When developers bring us large projects that don’t consider our unique situations, that use 40B to override protections including some environmental, when funds from our own town, state and federal government are given freely to these projects without considering protection of Cape Cod, then we are complicit in its destruction and the creation of the mediocre. Join the conversations and the fight. Speak out loudly at town meeting, Cape Cod Commission meetings and regulatory boards. Protecting the extraordinary is crucially important and we have the right to do so.

Sally Urbano 
West Harwich

Editor:
One of the most important attributes of a community is the way it cares for its children. The Harwich Children’s Fund, a small all-volunteer nonprofit, has been helping Harwich youth with essential needs and resources for over a decade. We are so grateful to so many in our community whose support and generosity make our work possible.
Because of these angels, this year’s winter clothing and gift drive was a smashing success, providing quality warm winter clothing and toys to over 200 children. We would like to publicly acknowledge the following businesses and organizations for their time, kindness and energy.
Our 60-plus “elves” who shopped for us (the best!), the Harwich Fund of Cape Cod Foundation, Cape Cod United Way, Puritan Cape Cod, Allen Harbor Yacht Club, Cape Cod 5, Kara Mewhinney from The 204, the Town of Harwich, Carolyn Carey and Reagan Wilda, community center, Jodie Merrill, BTone Fitness.
Happy New Year and many thanks!

Angelina Chilaka, Sheila House, Toni London, Ann Marie Dooley, Jan McGrory, Val Cote and Chris Walkley
Harwich Children's Fund

Editor:
From towns all over the Cape we’re hearing voices outraged by massive housing developments that threaten the environment and safety, character and financial stability of their towns. The state’s 40B law has enabled developers to buy the least expensive land — most often because it's environmentally fragile — and then build on it with no restrictions from local zoning regulations, mostly all at the taxpayers’ expense.
A typical scenario is playing out in Harwich. The developers of Pine Oaks Village IV bought 38 acres of woodland/wetland for a song. But because it’s in the fragile Herring River watershed, they would need to build a wastewater treatment plant.
In order to build a wastewater plant, though, they're required to have a much larger development than what Harwich residents would need. For example, because the units are governed by 40B low-income rulings, they'd be unavailable to many of the very people Harwich most hopes to house — those providing essential services, like teachers and medical workers, police, and firefighters.
Still, the developers plan to build those 242 units, far more than what we need or want. We know that at first, 70 percent of the units may be offered to Harwich residents. But once a first-round Harwich renter leaves, the unit would then be available by lottery to residents from anywhere else in the state.
The Beacon Hill Board Game has simple rules. Each town is a square on the board, and the state manipulates them into financing dense, oversized developments that would all look and feel the same and would attract and spread the state’s population across the squares.
To Beacon Hill, it doesn’t matter if each town loses its character or its natural environment. It doesn’t matter if its infrastructure and public services are overwhelmed or if it becomes financially overburdened. The big winners in this game are the developers and the state. 

Paula Myles
North Harwich

Editor:
I recently returned from a sightseeing trip around the United States and felt compelled to compliment Donald Trump on his ambitious rebranding scheme. Trump, it seems, has decided that if you can’t change history, you can at least change the signage.
My journey began along the shores of what Trump now instructs us to call the Gulf of America, though the water doesn’t look, feel or taste any different. We locals still whisper “Gulf of Mexico” under our breath, like heretics afraid of being overheard by the Department of Defense, err, War, which is now defending us by extra judicial executions.
In Alaska, I climbed Mount McKinley, a peak that Trump apparently hadn’t noticed until recently was renamed Denali by Alaskans 50 years ago. Trump corrected the record by executive order because history works best when retroactively revised.
In Washington, I attended a supposedly sold-out performance at the newly named Trump-Kennedy Memorial Center but spent so long reading the name on the marquee, I barely made it to my seat before the Trump loyalty pledge by the few attendees.
I also visited several federal offices and was told of plans for a Trump $1 coin, Trump-class battleships, TrumpRx drugs, and Trump child savings accounts, all monikers that give a sense of a showman’s personal branding previously reserved for casinos, high rises and golf courses.
I look forward to my next American sightseeing trip, assuming I can find any sights of interest among all those Trump has rebranded.

George Myers
Venice, Fla.

Editor:
Two weeks ago DeeDee Holt of Friends of Trees asked about airport plans to clear-cut 60 acres of woodlands. Airport Commission Chairman Huntley Harrison responded saying it plans to “selectively" remove about 200 trees in only 6.99 acres. Well, I checked. The airport’s vegetative management plan calls for obstruction removal (trees) on 55.54 acres on airport lands and on private property. The plans to remove trees on the 6.99 acres is only the first of a multi-year effort. This is yet another example of how the commission deceives the public.
The chairman says trees will be “selectively" removed. If my math is correct, 200 trees in 6.99 acres is roughly one mature tree every 40 feet. Selective or not, that is effectively clear cutting. All that is left is shrubs.
There is a lot of opposition to the effective clear cutting of acres of lands in West Chatham because a) trees are good for our environment, and b) tree removal will encourage even more large charter aircraft into Chatham.
Finally, Harrison says it's all about safety. It’s not. The commission has ignored viable, safe alternatives to tree removal. They want to encourage those big charter planes because they see them as a lucrative revenue source. It’s all about the money.

David Bixby
West Chatham 

Editor:
First, I would like to thank the airport commission and in particular, Chairman Huntley Harrison, for the difficult work that they are doing to preserve and protect Chatham Airport. The commission is under relentless attack from a small group of airport neighbors who will do anything to block safety initiatives that are long overdue at the airport. They continually raise issues and concerns that have been addressed and answered over the last five years since the airport master plan was updated. Despite claiming that their concerns relate to safety at the airport, it is noteworthy that this group of airport critics have never been able to garner support from any aviation authorities and experts. On the other hand, there is unanimous support from the aviation community and the FAA to improve landing conditions and GPS guidance at Chatham, as has been done at thousands of large and small airports around the country. Trees which have grown into the flight paths into the airport must be removed to provide the safety margins that were there 20 years ago. We are not talking about clearcutting virgin forests here. Airport critics who try to block these initiatives are actually starving the airport and increasing the chances of a tragic accident. Among many other benefits, let us not forget that the airport also provides tremendous economic benefit through the thousands of visitors it brings into town and the resulting support for the tax base in town. Although the airport critics try to deny it, there can be no doubt that the airport contributes significantly to our very low tax rate in Chatham.

Rene Haas
North Chatham