The Target for Housing
To the editor:
In response to Kathleen E. Bacon’s statement that “Truro is woefully behind” in reaching the state’s mandated 10-percent subsidized housing target [Letter, Feb. 9, page A3]:
In fact, with the approval of Truro’s Cloverleaf project, Truro is now slated to be at 5.87 percent (according to the Truro Housing Authority’s documents). This is important to understand, since several sources, including the Independent, have not clarified this point for the public.
In other words, another 55 units would wholly satisfy the state’s target of 10 percent. If the Walsh Property Community Planning Committee were proposing such a number, there would be few complaints. Instead, the proposed 252 units at Walsh would bring Truro’s subsidized housing percentage to 26 percent, most of it in one location developed in a density that Truro has not yet seen.
The wisdom of this type of town planning and development and the long-term implications for the residents of such a development and for current year-round residents of the town are what is at issue.
Tatyana Knight
Truro and Clinton, N.Y.
Anti-Semitism Is Alive
To the editor:
I was saddened but not surprised to hear of anti-Semitic harassment against a student at Nauset High [“Nauset Officials Covered Up Bullying Incidents,” Feb. 9, front page]. Anti-Semitism is and has been alive and well on the Cape. I have experienced it myself in many forms.
Sadly, there are many complicit in this hatred here in many professions and walks of life, especially within the far-right political spectrum. They know who they are. Perhaps they can delve into their own humanity to overcome their evil.
Lee Roscoe
Brewster
Police in Schools
To the editor:
Each week I look forward to reading the letter from the editor — level-headed, insightful, and typically to the point on a wide range of issues. The Feb. 9 edition had me hoping that discussion of police resource officers in schools would end by identifying the salient point. Unfortunately, it never quite got there.
Cogent arguments can be made for and against having resource officers in the schools. But I have two concerns. The first is escalation. When I was a member of a local school committee several years ago, the police requested a locked box be installed in the school to hold a rifle for officers should the need arise. I recall wondering whether we have completely missed the point.
That point is my second concern. Doesn’t anybody see that there’s a deeper problem when we find ourselves putting armed officers in the schools? The vast majority of school shooters have used schools as the site of violence, but they’ve not been the source of that violence. The problem is not within the schools, but without. Anyone who witnessed the dreadful lack of decorum during the recent State of the Union address should be able to understand what I’m saying.
We have lost any sense of a cultural identity. In the quest to be all things to all people, we have lost “us.” I am not endorsing a particular cultural identity, but I am suggesting that if we don’t start thinking about who we are as a nation there won’t be enough resource officers in the world to overcome the cultural confusion that is passed on.
I would welcome the beginning of a discourse on our national identity right here in the Provincetown Independent. I’m certain that Mr. Miller could lead such a charge.
Edward S. Ebert
Wellfleet
