After more than a year of unexplained delays, the National Park Service is allowing the Cape Cod National Seashore Advisory Commission to meet next week. On the agenda: defining the very essence of Cape Cod.
The local advisors represent the six towns with land inside the park, plus Barnstable County and the state. They have not met since September of last year.
Members have requested meetings, but the National Park Service never published a notice in the Federal Register.
Commission Chair Richard Delaney said the reasons are not totally clear.
“There was a new administration in place, or coming into place, new appointees,” he said. “I believe that advisory council meetings like ours is not the top priority for the new administration. So I think it just took some time for us to finally get through the process.”
But now, he said, "that's all sorted out," and members are very pleased to be returning to their role.
Up for discussion at Monday’s meeting is how to define the term “Cape Cod character,” as the Seashore seeks to preserve it. Federal regulations for the Seashore say structures in the park should retain their Cape Cod character, but the term is not defined.
Development and tourism have changed the Cape in the six-and-a-half decades since the National Seashore was created, Delaney said.
“The actual physical environment that was here back in 1959 and the early '60s is obviously quite different from the development boom that we've seen in the last few decades here in the Cape,” he said. “So, we have to sort of recalibrate what that character means.”
The National Seashore did not respond to questions for this story.
Seashore Superintendent Jennifer Flynn recently returned to the park after several months as acting director in the northeast regional office in Philadelphia.
The Advisory Commission will meet at 1 p.m. Nov. 2 at the Salt Pond Visitor Center in Eastham.
The Cape Cod National Seashore was established in 1961 with a law signed by President John F. Kennedy.
“This act makes it possible for the people of the United States through their government to acquire and preserve the natural and historic values of a portion of Cape Cod for the inspiration and enjoyment of people all over the United States,” Kennedy said at the signing, according to remarks released in writing by the White House press secretary and archived at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
