Cape Cod Commission Must Now Pay the Piper

THE TIME HAS FINALLY ARRIVED FOR THE CAPE COD COMMISSION TO PAY THE PIPER

If politics were baseball, the Cape Cod Commission would lead the league in strikeouts. After 24 years in existence, this "mega-regulatory" agency has done little to safeguard Cape Cod, preserve open space or stimulate a healthy economic environment.

It broke its promise to keep hands off single-family homes. It failed dismally to keep its staff size within limits as promised. Staffing and costs have risen disproportionately. Claims to the contrary are misleading and dishonest, if not downright lies to the public they are supposed to serve.

Today the Commission routinely intervenes in local matters involving single-family homes just as it did a number of years ago with an old Cape Cod family's homestead in Cotuit.

The house was rotting - too costly to repair and ready to be demolished with approvals from the town. The family was selling the property to satisfy heirs. Last-minute intervention by The Commission to "save a historic building" put a stop to that. The cost to the family in time, money, emotional stress was outlandish.

The biggest disasters engineered by this group of "problem solvers" have been loss of enterprise, annihilation of private property rights and a single-minded anti-business strategy that allows only the most affluent developers to proceed. Folks of conventional means don't even try to go through the long, costly process the Cape Cod Commission has devised to give itself meaning.

With the Dennis Lowes project only being their latest strikeout, along with the part they played in the Golden Triangle fiasco, one is similarly reminded of their indiscriminate decision to hold up phase 2 of the South Cape project in Mashpee, rendering the property virtually useless to investors. For seven years, the project inched through the burdensome Commission process. As appears to be so often the case, In phase 2, the Commission was not satisfied with the "traffic mitigation" plans by the developer.

And then of course there is the headaches they have caused over the years in the Town of Bourne. The setbacks they handed Len Cubellis in his quest to bring a major commercial-residential development to Bourne are nothing short of cruel. Commission staff members apparently made up their mind to kill the project at the outset and they found justification to stop it. It has cost Cubellis millions to respond to continuing demands by the Commission.

Cubellis cut his project back repeatedly, and eventually planned to load the site with Chapter 40B "affordable housing." He was asked to pony up hundreds of thousands of dollars more to satisfy the Commission's insatiable appetite for power and money.

As for Barnstable, the debacle surrounding the opening of BJ's in Hyannis revealed how petty the Commission can be, even to this day under its current crop of bureaucratic demagogues. Developers spent millions to meet onerous demands by the Commission. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were drained off for "mitigation" fees/exactions.

Because Commission staff members were at odds with the Town of Barnstable over off-site highway "improvements" opposed by local public safety officials, they delayed opening the new store, which threatened jobs of dozens of local workers. This latest bureaucratic snafu has led to renewed calls for Barnstable to withdraw from Commission.

Another strikeout came when the Commission jumped into the Cape Wind debate. Again, the Commission, it seems, reached its conclusions based on politics and is unable to work through exactly how to reasonable justify those conclusions.

The Commission costs Barnstable well over half a million dollars to duplicate what the town can do better on its own. We spend more than another half million in local tax revenues to support town planning and regulatory agencies. We don't need the Commission.

Some communities may want the Commission "nanny state" running their affairs. Barnstable,  Bourne, Sandwich, Mashpee, Dennis, Chatham, Brewster, Harwich and Orleans can get along without it. Regional needs can be met through well-crafted inter-municipal agreements.

Barnstable has better technology at its disposal than the Commission. It has professional staff capability to recognize and direct developments, which threaten damage to the community.

It's time to take another very close look at what was once a 100-pound gorilla on our backs. It has evolved into an 800-pound beast with an insatiable appetite for power and control.

The Barnstable Town Council and the respective Cape Boards of Selectmen need to truly reassess their relationships with the Cape Cod Commission, and if they deem it necessary, begin the long process of divorce from it.