Cloverleaf Apprehensions
To the editor:
In Kevin Grunwald’s op-ed column in your Nov. 12 edition [“Where Cloverleaf Stands After a Year of Review,” page 3], referring to the potential impacts to drinking water of nitrates, he states that “we can put that issue to bed now.”
Mr. Grunwald, the chair of the Truro Housing Authority, has worked long and hard and well to bring affordable housing to Truro. It is a mystery to me why he and others seem willing to not take into account the apprehensions of a large part of Truro, Pond Village, rather than work toward solutions.
Truro is fortunate to be home to many energetic, wealthy, brilliant people who, if we all join together, can find a way to have both clean water and affordable housing.
Mary Ann Larkin
North Truro
‘Stop the Sniping’
To the editor:
Thank you for your Nov. 12 article “Select Board Is Ready for a Conduct Code” [page 1]. I hope that the board takes this code of conduct seriously, with enforcement provisions. As anyone who listens to its meetings knows, the select board’s behavior is discourteous at best and malicious at worst.
One member regularly and repeatedly attacks Ms. King, but has recently shifted his vitriol toward Ms. Venden, accusing her of calling him a “misogynist” when no such comment was ever made by her. (I checked the transcript.) This same member has also said that he would vote to appoint a person to a town committee without even interviewing the person. So much for fair process.
The news media have a responsibility to report such behavior; it’s important information for voters. If this is the way the select board behaves, why should we as a town do better?
I am also grateful that you mentioned the finance committee. Its chair has repeatedly insulted various town residents and elected officials on social media. Since he’s been in hiding, it seems that his FinCom wingman has taken on the social media disparagement. Despite pleas from the community, the town moderator, who appoints the FinCom, has refused to act, hiding behind the First Amendment.
I filed a formal complaint with the select board about the FinCom chair’s social media behavior after being a victim of his Facebook vitriol. The select board did not want to consider it. They claimed it would be divisive and stepping on another elected official’s prerogative.
Provincetown is better than this. We need each other now more than ever. I hope an enforceable code of conduct can help our town change course. Let us all stop the sniping at each other and make this place really “unlike any other.”
Laura Logue Rood
Boston and Provincetown
‘Tails on the Line’
To the editor:
I’ve been a subscriber from the beginning, mostly because I wanted to support the courage it took to start, from the ground up, a new independent newspaper. I was impressed from the get-go. Seasoned reporters covering news vital to the Outer Cape, and many times affecting all of Cape Cod and beyond.
The Nov. 12 Independent is a good example, the front-page article “For Indigenous People, a Different Kind of Mayflower Story” spotlighting the efforts of the Wampanoag historian Paula Peters (and many others) to finally have the truth told of the “first encounter” between the Europeans and indigenous people and the subsequent colonization of Massachusetts.
This issue also included an article on Cape Cod ponds’ water quality. I live on one of those ponds, so the report literally hit home.
The local reporting of the Independent has been consistently insightful and thorough, well written and enjoyable. Thank you for putting your collective tails on the line for what the Outer Cape needed: an independent voice.
Ross McDonald
Eastham
