The Provincetown Independent

The Provincetown Independent is the sole locally owned newspaper on Outer Cape Cod, making it the most popular publication in the area. We are committed to delivering top-notch local news that helps connect you with your neighbors and fosters a sense of community in this unique region.

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New Plans for Housing at Seasonal Communities Meeting

3 days ago | provincetownindependent.org | Paul Benson

PROVINCETOWN — On an unseasonably hot Friday in May, local leaders from Cape Cod, the Islands, and the Berkshires gathered at town hall to discuss the state’s newest response to the worsening housing crisis: the “seasonal communities designation” created by last year’s Affordable Homes Act. The designation provides policy tools to towns that face a burgeoning market for vacation homes that has made it difficult for many year-round residents to secure housing.
Provincetown Oyster Farmers Want to Grow Sea Urchins, Too

3 days ago | provincetownindependent.org | Christine Legere

PROVINCETOWN — Michael and Kalliope Chute, who have operated the Mermaid Menu oyster farm on the flats in Provincetown Harbor for several years, hope to expand their business this summer to include green sea urchins. The echinoderm — the sea urchin belongs to a phylum that also includes starfish and sand dollars — is native to the area, but its numbers have been dramatically diminished because of overfishing in the 1990s.
Amid Turmoil, J-1 Students Are Welcomed Here

3 days ago | provincetownindependent.org | Paul Benson

PROVINCETOWN — The hundreds of international students who come to the Outer Cape through the U.S. State Dept.’s Summer Work Travel program will still be here this year, despite a recent disruption to the scheduling of interviews for the J-1 visas that allow them to travel.
London Owner Wants to Demolish 1805 House and Build a Larger One

3 days ago | provincetownindependent.org | Christine Legere

TRURO — A 220-year-old house peeks out from behind a wall of foliage on land wedged between Castle and Truro Center roads. The house at 3 Castle Road is a piece of the town’s history: a one-and-a-half-story Federal-style Cape built in 1805. The side ell on it served as the post office for Truro Center in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
ICE Targets Contractor Vans on Vineyard, Nantucket

3 days ago | provincetownindependent.org | Paul Benson

This article, by Paul Benson, includes excerpts from published reports in the Vineyard Gazette, the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, and the Falmouth Enterprise, reprinted with permission. A series of immigration operations in Massachusetts — including simultaneous mass arrests on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard on the morning of May 27 that removed 40 people from the islands — have set Cape Cod’s already anxious immigrant communities even more on edge.
Prep Work for Redeveloping the Truro Motor Inn Has Begun

1 week ago | provincetownindependent.org | Christine Legere

TRURO — Progress on the dilapidated Truro Motor Inn is happening slowly, with the work in view now focused on preparing the site for redevelopment. The property was taken from its delinquent owners, the Delgizzi family of Weston, by eminent domain last October. Public works Director Jarrod Cabral said the town has hired HRP Associates, a national environmental consulting firm with offices in Plymouth, to do a visual inspection of the building and grounds for contaminants.
Schools Turn to Choice to Fight Dwindling Enrollment

1 week ago | provincetownindependent.org | Sam Pollak

WELLFLEET — As housing costs have made the Outer Cape increasingly unaffordable for young families, local schools are recruiting students from other towns to combat dwindling enrollment. The Wellfleet Elementary School Committee voted on April 8 to offer places in its kindergarten to third-grade classrooms in the upcoming school year to students from across the Cape through the state’s school choice program.
Condemned Wellfleet House Gets a Reprieve

1 week ago | provincetownindependent.org | Christine Legere

WELLFLEET — Helen Miranda Wilson says she has been staring at the house at 177 Peace Valley Road her whole life. And what she’s seen there has not always been pretty. The house, which abuts her own, was condemned by the town’s health dept. in 2018 for health and safety violations. And despite the town’s pursuit of help from the state attorney general’s office to get absentee owner Robert Bonds to take steps to save it, the place continued on a path to ruin. Until last week.
Hepatitis Case at Restaurant Provokes Wide Alert

1 week ago | provincetownindependent.org | Paul Benson

PROVINCETOWN — On the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, the traditional kickoff of summer on Cape Cod, an alert went out from the Dept. of Public Health to news media across the state: a food-service worker at the Red Inn in Provincetown had contracted the hepatitis A virus, and people who dined at the restaurant between April 30 and May 15 could have been exposed.
Economics 101 - The Provincetown Independent

1 week ago | provincetownindependent.org | Edward Miller

When we were researching the idea of launching the Independent, one big question was whether the Outer Cape economy was strong enough to support a newspaper. We had looked across the country for examples and learned that in communities where Main Street was deserted and storefronts were empty, formerly thriving newspapers were among the casualties. Where towns were humming, however, and the local paper did its job, there was reason for optimism. Our local economy is admittedly weird.