Feedback Forum

Mashpee Town Hall is considering a proposal to scale back its hours of operation, to a four-day-a-week schedule, in order to save money. Is this the best way for the town to tighten its belt in lean fiscal times? Is there a better way? Do you think cutting hours would seriously impact how town offices serve residents and summer visitors?

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Falmouth is currently looking for people to fill 23 vacancies on 14 town committees, and only 10 people have submitted applications of interest. Why do you think interest in serving on town boards is so low? What could improve this situation and get more people involved in town government?

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Does anyone else out there think it’s pretty petty for Major League Baseball to clamp down on the Cape Cod Baseball League with shared team names (Mets, Cardinals, Red Sox, etc) for failing to purchase uniforms and promotional items from MBL’s licensed vendors?  We all understand the value of names, and appreciate that there probably is language in agreements between MLB and the Cape League (and others) that speaks to this issue.  But give me a break.  Does MLB really think there’s a compelling infringement issue in play here?  Or is it just MLB’s licensed vendor that sees potential revenue being diverted to a competitor who offers better pricing?  Even worse, there was a report of a Little League somewhere in the country that finds itself as a similar target.  Cape League?  Maybe, because there is an affiliation with MLB.  But, Little League?  That’s a stretch.  The Cape League struggles enough with covering its overhead and maintenance.  Now they face having to enrich a designated uniform manufacturer?  The logic escapes me.

One last post on the Sagamore Flyover and we’ll let this thread go for a while.  When the design for the interchange replacing the infamous Sagamore Rotary was announced, strident objections were heard from several quarters.  One theme said that directing all traffic coming down Route 3 into a single lane would result in certain carnage, with frequent head-on collisions on the bridge.   In the year since the flyover was completed, however, total accidents on the bridge and its approaches are down sharply and there have been few serious collisions.  The Bourne Bridge, by comparison, continues to see frequent head-on, side-swipe and rollover accidents, although it carries less traffic than the Sagamore.  Why is this? It may be that funneling the highway traffic into one lane actually reduces accidents because it forces the NASCAR wannabes and other aggressive drivers to slow down to the pace of the slowest driver in line.  It also tends to reduce the speed of all drivers on the bridge, which was designed for a 40 mile per hour speed.  It further creates a situation that appears dangerous and thereby causes drivers to be more cautious. On the Bourne Bridge traffic tends to continue at highway speeds until it crests the top and is suddenly faced with back-ups from the rotary.  Forcing the highway traffic into one lane would not work here because most of the traffic comes down Route 25.  On the Sagamore, the southbound traffic is evenly divided between Routes 3 and 6 (Scenic Highway). Now that we have seen how removing the Sagamore Rotary improved traffic flow and reduced accidents, we need to do the same at the Bourne Bridge and replace the Bourne Rotary with a more conventional interchange.

My post on the Sagamore flyover yesterday did not get tagged. I’m still learning how to use this tool. Drivers leaving the Cape apparently did learn last year, though. The Cape Cod Times reported that off-Cape traffic became heavy early in the afternoon, peaked at 3:30 and cleared by nightfall, despite a day of gorgeous weather. The flyover worked as designed. Now it’s the bridges and highways that are unable to handle the peak traffic.

On Memorial Day last year, the Sagamore rotary replacement got its first big test. That afternoon traffic backed up 17 miles on the Mid-Cape Highway. It was not the so-called flyover that failed, though. It wasn’t the bridge either. It was the highway that couldn’t handle the traffic. Traffic came down Thursday evening, Friday evening and Saturday morning with no backups. The flyover obviously worked as designed. When all that traffic hit the Mid-Cape at the same time Monday afternoon, though, everything came to a halt.

A two-lane highway can handle about 10,000 cars per hour; three times that will not fit. The state highway department later put up temporary signs urging motorists to avoid the mid-afternoon hours when leaving the Cape and back-ups were less of a problem for the rest of the summer. Today we’ll see if that message is remembered.

If you read The Bourne Enterprise you may be familiar with my “Downtown Buzz” column, which covers efforts to revitalize Main Street in Buzzards Bay as Bourne’s downtown.  This blog will cover planning and community issues of greater interest to all of the upper Cape towns. With summer traffic back for the season starting today, we will address some of the chronic problems and suggest areas that need improvement.  We will also be watching the Cape Cod Commission as it struggles to evolve from a regulatory agency to a more useful community service organization.  When we see national or regional trends in planning and demographics that might affect our area, we will report and opine on them.   This blog will carry more personal opinion than my printed articles, which focus primarily on reporting the actions of others.  I am allowing comments, but you need to know that Enterprise staff monitor all comments and delete impertinent remarks. As background, I am a mostly-retired professional planner.  I have been a town planner, a regional planning director, a real estate developer and a planning and project manager for the Steamship Authority.  As a developer, I specialized in converting obsolete mills, factories and schools into housing for the elderly throughout southern New England. I have been a resident of Bourne full-time since 1991 and was a summer resident on Hen Cove for 50 years before that.  My family has lived on the Cape off and on since Henry Ewell showed up in 1635 and helped found the West Barnstable Parish, which included the area that is now Sandwich and Bourne. Thank you for joining this tour – it should be a fun ride.

Elizabeth Albert has been named the new director of the Barnstable County Department of Human Services. She is coming on at a time of change for the department, which will operate for the first half of Fiscal Year 2009 as a “pilot program” designed by the Barnstable County Board of County Commissioners. Instead of focusing on a wide range of issues, the department will focus on two or three priority areas at a time, those priorities determined by the county commissioners.

Do you agree with this approach? Is there a better way to deliver and coordinate human service programs on a regional basis? What do you think should be the department’s immediate focus areas?

State Rep. Jeff Perry (R - Sandwich) has proposed suspending the state’s 21 cents-per-gallon gasoline tax through July and August. The goal is to ease the cost of living burden on Massachusetts residents while trying to mitigate the possible negative impact of high gas prices on the upcoming tourist season, particularly on the Cape.

Is this a good idea? Do you think the potential benefits from a two-month gas tax holiday would outweigh the loss of revenue, which is used to fund transportation infrastructure maintenance and repair? Is there a better way to reduce gas costs?

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Mashpee school officials recently created the Mashpee Middle School for its seventh and eighth graders, who are still housed in the Mashpee High School building. As part of this restructuring, the Mashpee School Committee is exploring the feasibility of giving the Middle School its own, separate athletic and extracurricular programs.

The potential problem: if student interest is insufficient, Middle Schoolers may lose all opportunities to play sports, or participate in theater and music programs; or school officials would have to compromise its goal of creating a separate Middle School identity to allow students to “play up” and participate in high school-level programs.

Do you agree with this proposal? Why or why not? What sort of benefits or problems do you foresee? Is there a better way?

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