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The Enterprise Newspapers has announced the Dorothy G. Wayman Fellowship, a new full-time, paid fellowship dedicated to ...
09/10/2026

The Enterprise Newspapers has announced the Dorothy G. Wayman Fellowship, a new full-time, paid fellowship dedicated to watchdog coverage of development and overdevelopment across Cape Cod's Upper Cape towns.

The 12-month fellowship will place an early-career journalist on a dedicated beat covering development in the Cape Cod region, specifically Falmouth, Sandwich, Mashpee and Bourne, and its effects on traffic, water quality, open space and habitat preservation, drilling into the heart of issues reshaping the region faster than most local newsrooms currently have the capacity to cover.

“This fellowship will deliver something crucial that our readers asked us for directly throughout our recent community listening sessions: news on what’s being built in town, and deep dives into how it will impact residents, from water quality and sewer capacity to traffic and parking,” Director of Audience Development and Mashpee Enterprise editor Calli Remillard said. “Overdevelopment is a real problem on Cape Cod. There is only so much land here, and making sure that what is left is protected—our open space, preservation areas and watersheds—is a critical issue among residents, but the information isn’t always accessible or easy to understand. This role will bridge that gap.”

The fellowship is structured as a teaching-newsroom program, pairing full-time reporting with a defined curriculum in regulatory literacy, public-records proficiency, accountability reporting and environmental data analysis. The yearlong program is built around a defined, quarterly-benchmarked curriculum—clear reporting milestones, structured mentorship and regular progress reviews—designed to produce sustained, rigorous coverage rather than one-off stories.

The Dorothy G. Wayman Fellow will sit inside the rooms where these decisions get made—planning boards, conservation commissions, Cape Cod Commission hearings—tracking projects from initial filing through final approval, asking the questions those review processes are supposed to answer but often don't get asked or answered publicly. This work will dive deep, pulling engineering and environmental reports apart line by line to determine what a wastewater system is actually rated to handle, what a septic upgrade does or doesn't solve, and how much runoff a site can absorb before it becomes someone else's problem downstream. The fellow's job is to go deeper than the headlines a new development generates, talking directly to scientists, engineers, and environmental experts to understand what's really in the reports filed alongside every major project and following the slower-moving story underneath all of it: how continued building on already-strained land compounds with coastal erosion over time, turning today's approved project into tomorrow's harder-to-reverse damage. It's accountability journalism built to answer the "why" behind the problems residents already feel every year.

The position is in-person and full-time, with a weekly stipend. The fellowship includes funds earmarked for professional development and a dedicated reporting budget, and comes with an additional monthly stipend to support the fellow’s relocation to Cape Cod and mitigate high costs of securing local housing.

Applications open September 22, 2026, with the fellow beginning work June 1, 2027. Journalism organizations, educators, and networks are encouraged to share this opportunity with early-career reporters, recent journalism graduates, and members interested in environmental and accountability reporting.

Full details and the application will be available at https://www.capenews.net/site/fellowship.html over the coming days and weeks leading up to the opening of the application portal on September 22.

The Mashpee Zoning Board of Appeals reviewed architectural comments and revised plans for the proposed On Commons develo...
09/06/2026

The Mashpee Zoning Board of Appeals reviewed architectural comments and revised plans for the proposed On Commons development at Route 28 and Job’s Fishing Road at its meeting on August 26.

At the previous hearing earlier in August, board members further reviewed civil engineering and traffic mitigation and flow for the proposed project, which now consists of 61 rental units, including 16 affordable units, down from 65 and 17, respectively. The reduction was revealed at the most recent hearing and was based on peer review feedback, project architect Chris Mulhern said.

In addition to the four two-bedroom rental units, Mulhern said the revised plans result in the loss of five parking spaces to maintain the proposed structure’s parking ratio. One of the affordable rental units was removed to ensure that the building remains proportional, Mulhern said.

He continued that the revised plans introduce some outdoor public space, but not enough to support a properly fenced and secure play area for children. Zoning Board of Appeals members and Embarc architect and peer reviewer Daniel Riggs agreed that the “failure” of not incorporating an outdoor play space for children “remains challenging” and is a concern.

Read more → https://conta.cc/4Adaf9E

The Finance Committee took a moment to swear in several new members before diving into a lesson on the Bourne municipal ...
09/05/2026

The Finance Committee took a moment to swear in several new members before diving into a lesson on the Bourne municipal budget and the impending budget deficit during a meeting held on Monday, August 31.

Over the next few months, Town Administrator Marlene V. McCollem will be working closely with the Select Board, Finance Committee and the Bourne School Committee to come up with the best plan to tackle the budget deficit. The main options McCollem touched on were a revenue-neutral budget versus a level-service budget.

“I am anticipating that based on our tax levy, based on our state aid assumptions, based on our assumptions for local receipts,” McCollem listed, “that the revenue is not growing fast enough or large enough to keep up with how much our expenses are growing.”

Due to rising costs, she said that maintaining a level service budget would result in an operational override, permanently increasing property taxes over 2.5%. Meanwhile, a level-funded budget would keep property taxes from increasing past 2.5%, but cause layoffs and budget cuts to make up for the deficit.

“So the Select Board would have to determine which services to cut,” McCollem explained to the Finance Committee. “It’s not like everybody’s budget would be cut 5%; the reductions will be uneven. The Select Board, as the elected officials who set the policy, will have to determine these are the services that are going to be reduced, so it will build a level service budget.”

Read more → https://conta.cc/4gz1dvO

For much of his life, Michael D. Kasparian has carried with him the idea of becoming a priest.The dream began when he wa...
09/05/2026

For much of his life, Michael D. Kasparian has carried with him the idea of becoming a priest.

The dream began when he was young, serving as an acolyte in his Armenian church in Providence, Rhode Island. After high school, he entered seminary intending to pursue the priesthood.

But at 19, the path ahead seemed daunting.

The Armenian Church traces its roots to the early Christian era, and becoming a priest requires years of theological study, language training and liturgical education. At the time, Kasparian faced as many as eight to 10 years of preparation. By 21, he decided he was not ready.

Kasparian left the seminary, finished his education and began a career in management that would eventually take him from banking to nonprofit organization leadership and, ultimately, to president and chief executive officer of the Falmouth Chamber of Commerce.

Decades later, the desire remains strong. He is once again studying for the ministry. On August 1, Kasparian was ordained a deacon.

He has two semesters remaining in a three-year, late-vocation seminary program and is preparing to become the deacon in charge of the Armenian Church’s mission parish on Cape Cod.

Read the full article about Kasparian's journey → https://conta.cc/4gWkvKz

From Falmouth Academy student writer Sumaiya Noury's article, Booksellers Recommend Books To Help You Hold Onto Summer: ...
09/05/2026

From Falmouth Academy student writer Sumaiya Noury's article, Booksellers Recommend Books To Help You Hold Onto Summer:

August may be over, but that doesn't mean beach-read season is. Summer vacation may be winding down, but Cape Codders know that is when "local summer" really starts.

Matthew Timbers, manager and book buyer at Edgartown Books, confirmed that “Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage,” a nonfiction book by Bell Burden, is by far the store's "runaway" hit this summer. The book revisits and re-examines Burden’s marriage—and its abrupt end—looking for clues as to what went wrong, tracing the couple’s high life from their multimillion-dollar New York homes all the way to Martha’s Vineyard.

The perfect beach read for Timbers, he said, is “a book that pulls you out of your everyday cares and gives you a happy ending.” For those tastes, romance continues to be popular, especially with younger audiences.

Some of the store's other top-selling books this summer include “Theo of Golden” by Allen Levi and “Yesteryear” by Caro Claire Burke, which took the internet by storm for its visceral, time-traveling exploration of the “tradwife” trend taking social media by storm. Romance fans are also picking up books by popular authors like Elle Kennedy, Carly Fortune and Abby Jimenez.

Read the full article → https://conta.cc/4zYC3OI

At a deliberation meeting on Wednesday, September 2, the Board of Appeals overturned the issuance of a building permit f...
09/05/2026

At a deliberation meeting on Wednesday, September 2, the Board of Appeals overturned the issuance of a building permit for the newly constructed parking lot at 2 Coast Guard Road.

The ruling favored appellant Irene Davis, a Town Neck resident who submitted the original appeal against the building permit on July 21, citing an alleged violation of zoning bylaw. Davis was not present at the meeting, but her legal representative, Attorney Paul Revere III, attended via Zoom.

After a discussion about the difference between the term “parking area,” which is being used in reference to the 2 Coast Guard Road property, and “parking lot,” which is not, the board found that neither term had a definition within the town’s zoning bylaw and the distinction was immaterial.

Vice chairman James Killion presented the board’s findings, stating that the parking lot did not have a primary use, had previously been classified as an accessory use, did not contain any newly constructed structures, lay within the marine district and additionally lay within the floodplain. The board also found that the parking created at 2 Coast Guard Road did not respond to any non-compliance issues associated with Tree House, nor would the 150 spaces increase the brewery’s allowed occupancy—thus, Section 3110 of the town zoning bylaw would not apply to the case.

Read the full article here → https://conta.cc/46HU5aA

The Bourne Team SOS group met for the first time on Tuesday, September 1, to address ongoing conservation concerns acros...
09/04/2026

The Bourne Team SOS group met for the first time on Tuesday, September 1, to address ongoing conservation concerns across town. Team SOS is part of The Cape We Shape, an organization dedicated to protecting natural resources and powered by the Association to Preserve Cape Cod (APCC).

Advocacy Director for APCC Christy Johnson, joined by fellow APCC representative Haley O’Neill, spoke about the Camp Reshape The Cape campaign.

“What we are trying to do is to make sure that as Cape towns continue to make decisions about land use, that the importance of protecting this really important environmental area is highlighted in town decision-making and prioritized,” Johnson said. “So that’s the gist of the campaign.”

Members from the Pocasset Water Quality Coalition (PWQC) were in attendance, including President Keith Barber, Senior Vice President Francis “Frank” Gasson, Vice President Bob Dwyer and Treasurer Jerry Struzik.

Johnson cited statistics that report 86% of Cape Cod is either developed or protected. She says that only 14% is left undeveloped or protected, and about 80% of those lands are critically important.

Read more → https://conta.cc/4xD0NdP

Every Friday and Saturday from October 9 to October 31, Mashpee residents Ted Manikas and Sean Morrisey will open the do...
09/04/2026

Every Friday and Saturday from October 9 to October 31, Mashpee residents Ted Manikas and Sean Morrisey will open the doors to their Annual Haunted Hallows Immersive Halloween Experience, now entering its fifth year.

The Village Green at Mashpee Commons will be transformed into the Cape’s only immersive Halloween destination: a haunted walkthrough experience with scare actors and custom-built sets. The event took a pause after 2023; however, it is now back and bigger than ever due to popular demand.

What started as a “love for spooky things” grew over time into a beloved event at Morrisey’s home in town—called Morrisey Manor—which was hosted by his family, along with Manikas and his family.

“We’re trying to put on something special for Mashpee,” said Morrisey, who grew up in town and now has five children who attend Mashpee Public Schools. “I’m pretty creative; I like making and building things and sharing them with people.”

Morrisey and Manikas said that participation doubled every year, with lines eventually stretching down the street as around 1,500 visitors flocked to the attraction in just a single weekend.

This year, the event will be ticketed and hosted at the Village Green in the Mashpee Commons to accommodate its growing popularity with visitors. Ticket releases are limited, the Haunted Hallows website says, and Halloween is expected to sell out first. The haunted walkthrough experience is 30 minutes long and scares will be hands-free—there is no physical contact between scare actors and visitors.

Read more about the upcoming event and accompanying Halloweentown attraction here → https://conta.cc/4ycLYyC

The Sandwich Police Department is investigating the death of a man who was found deceased at the Cape Cod Canal on Thurs...
09/04/2026

The Sandwich Police Department is investigating the death of a man who was found deceased at the Cape Cod Canal on Thursday, September 3.

According to a press release from SPD, at around 9 AM the department received a call from a “concerned fisherman,” who reported that he had come across an abandoned bicycle near the on-Cape jetty at the east end the canal near First Beach. The fisherman also reported that he had found a tackle box, similarly unattended, further down the jetty.

A police unit responded to the call and performed a check of the area, eventually finding a man lodged “deep within the rocks” near the end of the jetty. The man was determined to be dead upon arrival. His body was located in a location that police said was very difficult to access.

Read more → https://conta.cc/3SGxd89

The Falmouth Police Department has no plans to install Flock cameras or similar automated license plate readers (ALPR), ...
09/04/2026

The Falmouth Police Department has no plans to install Flock cameras or similar automated license plate readers (ALPR), but concerns over privacy, civil liberties and data security have prompted the Select Board to consider a surveillance camera policy.

The issue was on the board’s agenda this week for consideration and discussion. No vote was taken.

While the discussion raised concerns about the cameras’ capabilities, their potential to violate civil liberties and data privacy and recent examples of misuse in other communities, Falmouth Police Chief Jeffrey Lourie’s assurance that the department has no plans to implement the technology helped the board put the policy discussion aside for now.

“Flock concerns me,” Lourie told the board. “Do I think it’s a valuable tool? Can be. It really can be, but I want to make sure…we have a policy that’s ironclad and making sure we’re doing these audits.”

Falmouth Police Lieutenant James Cummings explained that Flock cameras, one of many brands, use automated license plate recognition technology to capture license plates and information about where and when vehicles are observed. The technology differs from the conventional surveillance cameras the police department already uses at large-scale events.

The constitutional concerns arise, he said, when information from multiple cameras is combined to establish a pattern of someone’s life, describing what state courts have called the “mosaic theory.”

In New Bedford, it was recently reported that one officer was put on leave for allegedly using the technology to track an ex-partner. Last month, the city also suspended use of such cameras.

Read the full article here → https://conta.cc/4icEOWo

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