Due to the pandemic, most meetings are held remotely. Go to provincetown-ma.gov and click on the meeting you want to watch. This week, however, there is one exception. The Provincetown Town Meeting will be in person.
Thursday, April 29
- Select Board and Board of Health joint meeting, 4 p.m.
- Personnel Board, 4:30 p.m.
Saturday, May 1
- Town Meeting, St. Peter the Apostle Church parking lot, 10 a.m.
Tuesday, May 4
- Conservation Commission, 6 p.m.
Wednesday, May 5
- Historic District Commission. 4 p.m.
Thursday, May 6
- Zoning Board of Appeals, 6 p.m.
Conversation Starters
Town Meeting Saturday
Provincetown’s annual town meeting will be begin on Saturday, May 1 at 10 a.m. in the parking lot of St. Peter the Apostle Church at 11 Prince St. The rain date is Saturday, May 8 at 10 a.m. There are 39 articles on the warrant, which can be found at the town website: provincetown-ma.gov.
Relaxing Rules for Summer
Members of the board of health and the select board will meet Thursday, April 29 at 4 p.m. to discuss what everyone is waiting to hear: will local restrictions on business operations, masks, and gatherings be altered or even lifted this summer?
The meeting is a follow-up to the last discussion by both boards on March 4, at which time everyone agreed that it was too soon to relax rules designed to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 virus. That included changes to the town’s order against allowing indoor live entertainment, although Gov. Charlie Baker gave the green light for indoor entertainment to resume on March 22 at 50 percent capacity. But Provincetown officials vowed to wait until April 29 to make any changes. They wanted to see how the vaccination rate is going both statewide and nationally.
On March 4, Dr. Susan Troyan, vice chair of the board of health, said vaccine-induced herd immunity is expected to be achieved when 60 to 90 percent of the U.S. population had been vaccinated.
As of Monday, April 26, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Data Tracker reported that 42 percent of Americans had had one vaccination and 29 percent were fully vaccinated.
According to the CDC, where the preferred term is “community immunity,” so-called herd immunity happens when a large enough portion of the community becomes immune (through vaccines or prior infection) to a disease to make its spread from person to person unlikely. At that point, even unvaccinated individuals gain some protection because the disease has little opportunity to spread within the community. —K.C. Myers
