Instead, they’ll expand a Chapter 40-R zoning district that was enabled by a town meeting in 2021.
Meanwhile, there are five new towns that are now fighting the Communities Act. Representatives appeared in Plymouth Superior Court on Wednesday on behalf of Hanson, Holden, Marshfield, Middleton and Wrentham.
Bourne is the only Cape Cod town covered by the MBTA Communities Act. The Cape is served by the seasonal CapeFLYER. There are now two commuter rail lines that serve Southeast Massachusetts, after last month’s debut of the Fall River/New Bedford Line.
Jim McCabe is a native of (suburban) Philadelphia who has lived in New England and covered Cape Cod news since 2016. He is also the play-by-play announcer for the Cape-based Seahawks Hockey Club .
South Yarmouth nursing home clear of COVID-19 outbreak, owner says Rasheek Tabussam Mujib Cape Cod Times
Published March 24, 2023
Windsor Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in South Yarmouth has returned to normal operations after a COVID-19 outbreak that started on Feb. 21. As of Thursday, five resident deaths were reported during the outbreak, according to the state Department of Public Health.
A total of 72 residents and 21 staff members recovered from COVID-19, while three residents were discharged to go home.
"The nursing home is up and running again, thanks to the staff, administration and the rapid response team for keeping things stable," Lisa Gaudet, vice president of business development and marketing at Integritus Healthcare, said Thursday. "Their hard work and commitment got us through the difficult times. I also want to extend gratitude towards the Department of Public Health, surrounding towns and resident families for their support throughout."
The nursing home operates under Integritus Healthcare, a nonprofit Massachusetts-based company that provides senior housing and health care, memory care, hospice and palliative care.
State public health officials issued an admissions freeze notice to the facility on Feb. 28 in response to the outbreak. In addition, a state-supported rapid response team (RRT) was providing clinical support at the facility since February 28.
According to Gaudet, the rapid response team left the facility March 10, following the recovery of residents. The Department of Public Health lifted the admissions freeze at this facility on March 16.
"Once the admissions freeze was lifted, we were well positioned to receive admissions in terms of staffing," said Gaudet. "When the ban lifted we had 81 residents and since admitted three people. The center currently has 84 in- house residents."
The nursing and rehabilitation center is at 265 North Main St. The center is currently conducting an analysis of the outbreak event, according to Gaudet. "We are looking into what went right during this crisis and also into what we would need to improve in the future days to tackle future emergencies," she said.
The COVID-19 community risk level in Barnstable County on Thursday was low, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
One of Buckley’s campaign promises was to find a home for the boat and use the money spent on boat maintenance and operations to focus on the core mission of the sheriff’s office: corrections, rehabilitation and treatment.
Buckley said Wednesday evening that it made sense to keep the boat in service to Barnstable County by transferring the title to the council. She noted the longstanding relationship between the sheriff’s office and the council, in addition to the training the council provides to Cape Cod law enforcement agencies.
“That's the piece that benefits Barnstable County,” Buckley said. “That’s the piece that keeps us safe.”
The council’s member agencies, including all 15 Cape Cod police departments, train for significant events, natural disasters, major accidents and any exceptional events that could require the assistance of several departments. The council has been using the boat to train an assault team and a SWAT team. That training will continue, Buckley said.
Unable to respond: Adam Howe's death raises questions about prisoner, mental health facilities
Rasheek Tabassum Mujib
Cape Cod Times
Published Oct. 11, 2022
The death of Truro resident Adam Howe in a New Bedford jail cell as he faced a charge of murder raises questions about the safety net for individuals in the criminal justice system who have psychiatric needs — and what county officials could have done differently.
Howe, 34, was arrested in Truro after emergency workers responded to his mother's home around 9:30 p.m. on Sept. 30, according to the Cape and Islands District Attorney. The rescuers had been called to the property because of a request for a well-being check and a report of a fire.
At the property, the rescuers found Howe outside the house and something on fire on the lawn, which they determined was a human body. Howe was arrested and charged with murder. Evidence suggested the body was that of his 69-year-old mother, Susan Howe.
After his arrest, Adam Howe had difficulty breathing and was brought to Cape Cod Hospital, arriving around 12:30 a.m. on Oct. 1. He was examined and then shackled to a gurney and watched by hospital personnel "with eyes on him at all times," according to a statement from Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe in a statement.
After his release from the hospital, he was brought to Ash Street Jail in New Bedford, part of the Bristol County Jail and House of Correction system. Howe was found dead in his cell at 5:14 p.m. Oct. 2. In between officer rounds at the jail, Howe had clogged his airways with wet toilet paper and "suffered a medical emergency," a spokesperson for the Bristol County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.
The cause of Adam Howe's death is under investigation.
"There are big questions here, as to how the circumstances unfolded, and we need answers," state Sen. Julian Cyr, D-Truro, said. "This is a very tragic incident, and as a geographically isolated community, here at the Cape, we need to make sure that we can respond to all sorts of situations."
"It is clear that we were unable to respond this time," Cyr said.
On-call judge issues an order citing Section 12
Doctors at Cape Cod Hospital wanted Howe discharged as soon as a secure facility was identified to take him, according to O'Keefe.
After multiple efforts to locate an on-call judge, O'Keefe reached a judge at about 3 a.m. "I called at least four judges, and I finally got one who answered the phone," O'Keefe said in a phone interview.
The judge listened to O'Keefe and the doctor in charge of the Cape Cod HospitalEmergency Room, and ordered Howe to be involuntarily committed to Bridgewater State Hospital, a medium-security facility that provides psychiatric services operated by the state Department of Correction.
The order was issued citing Section 12, which relates to civil commitments, rather than Section 15, which allows defendants in criminal cases to be hospitalized at Bridgewater — for observation and evaluation — for up to 20 days.
A third option, or Section 18, covers those already detained in a correctional facility and in need of hospitalization for up to six months.
More:Body found on fire outside Truro home, and suspect arrested. What we know
"Only a jail superintendent can have someone committed under Section 18," O'Keefe said. "Since we were at a hospital, a doctor was able to provide the judge all of the criteria necessary for Section 12."
Under the circumstances, it was enough for the judge to issue a Section 12, which could have been changed into Section 15 after an arraignment or Section 18 after Howe was placed in jail, O'Keefe said.
"We transferred him to a jail so that a jail superintendent could move to have him committed (to Bridgewater) under Section 18," he said.
Bridgewater State Hospital refuses to take Howe
To place Howe in a jail or a secure psychiatric facility, O'Keefe briefed Bridgewater officials about the judge's order. But Bridgewater officials "refused to take Mr. Howe, saying they didn't take Section 12 commitments" and could only admit someone committed under Section 18, according to O'Keefe.
The Bridgewater facility provides clinical services by Wellpath LLC, a Tennessee-based company under contract with the state.
"We kept asking if they can just take him so he can get the mental health services he needs," O'Keefe said. "They needed just to take him for three days, and then he could have been arraigned to court so that we could file for Section 15."
A frustrated O'Keefe said, "they just wouldn't take him."
Cyr, who is co-chair of the Joint Committee on Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery, shared O'Keefe's dismay.
"We have a fine facility like Bridgewater State Hospital in Massachusetts, a secure psychiatric facility to essentially deal with very disturbed individuals involved in the criminal justice system," Cyr said. "The fact that they would rely on a technicality instead of finding a solution speaks to several issues that we have persistently seen at Bridgewater State Hospital."
Howe gets placed at Ash Street Jail in Bristol County
State police contacted several jails, including Barnstable County, but could not obtain admittance for Howe into any of them. Finally, Bristol County Sheriff's Department agreed to take him and place him in Ash Street Jail.
Both Howe's discharge summary from the hospital and the police report indicated "suicide ideation," according to O'Keefe's written account.
At the jail, Howe was placed on a security watch where a corrections officer "would visually check on him every 15 minutes." He was also clothed in a nylon rip-resistant smock, according to the Bristol County Sheriff's Office.
More:Barnstable County Sheriff's race: Buckley and Whelan face off in November general election
The observation level taken by the Bristol County Sheriff's Office at Ash Street on Howe was inadequate, said James Pingeon, litigation director for the prisoner advocacy group Prisoners' Legal Services of Massachusetts.
"They put him on a 15-minute watch instead of a constant observation; this was clearly a judgment call they made, and it was obviously the wrong judgment call," Pingeon said.
But Bristol County Sheriff's Office spokesperson Jonathan Darling said otherwise.
Howe was "cleared by medical professionals and in terms of protocol, he was not 'required to be on a watch,'" Darling said
More:Suicide following May shooting death of 20-year-old Falmouth woman now under investigation
More:Exclusive: Three people die in 8 weeks at Barnstable County jail. Here's what we know
"Due to the intensity of the charge he was facing, as it was a high profile case, our staff went out of their way to keep an eye on him," Darling said over the phone. "We didn't need to take any precautions at all, and yet we went above and beyond to place him on a 15-minutes watch."
In similar cases, Bristol County sends people to Bridgewater under Section 18 to get the inmate the proper mental health care services. In Howe's case, he should have been admitted to Bridgewater immediately after he got placed in the Ash Street jail, a delay which eventually cost him his life, Pingeon said.
Barnstable County Sheriff's Department's late response
The most logical choice for Howe, after Bridgewater refused to take him, would have been in jail under the Barnstable County Sheriff's department.
O'Keefe said they tried getting him into jail in Barnstable but "were unable to do so."
"I'm not sure if the state police got through to them, but we were all trying, and I didn't get an answer until 7:30 in the morning when we already found a jail that would take him," O'Keefe said.
Barnstable Sheriff James M. Cummings said over the phone he doesn't know why there was no response from the jail.
"I don't know what number they were calling, but there is always somebody at the correctional facility," he said. "Later, my superintendent spoke to somebody from the state police about six o'clock in the morning."
According to Cyr, who was briefed by the state police, the police did make contact with Barnstable, and they declined to take Howe, citing limited staffing.
Cummings noted that even if Barnstable did respond, his jail no longer operates a regional lockup facility, unlike Bristol County.
If they did, they wouldn't take somebody sick or suicidal because that causes "limited staffing issues," he said.
Barnstable operated the regional lockup facility before the COVID-19 pandemic. But since the sheriff's office moved into a new facility, they no longer provide the regional service, said Cummings who is not running for reelection after 24 years on the job.
"We've been trying for years to get the regional lockup running again," he said, "but we are unable to get the legislature officials to come up with the necessary funding."
Cyr said he never heard from the sheriff's office about the budgetary constraints.
"There has been a long-standing dispute between the Legislature and the sheriff about resources and money," Cyr said, "but to my knowledge, there has been no conversation about this problem."
"It's alarming that the sheriff's office did not convey to us that they have these resources constrained," he said. "After such a tragic incident, I have questions about why this 24-hour state facility failed to serve our community."
If you need help
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those looking to help someone else. To speak with a certified listener, call 988.
Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support. To speak with a trained listener, text HELLO to 741741. It is free, available 24/7, and confidential.
"The decision of the Sheriff's Office to allow its boat to be used as part of a 'star-studded' exclusive private wedding demonstrates a profound lapse in judgment and calls into the forefront the true role of the Sheriff," Donna Buckley, who is running for Barnstable County Sheriff, wrote in a letter to the Cape Cod Times. "The Sheriff's boat is owned by the taxpayers and operated with our tax dollars. It has no business being used for a private function."
The wedding party approached the department and asked for an escort for the bride's arrival on a small tugboat, Cummings said. They were concerned about boat traffic at the busy marina.
During the ceremony, Gov. Charlie Baker presided over the wedding of Boston public relations exec George Regan and Elizabeth Akeley. The wedding drew many from the world of politics, sports and entertainment.
The boat, manned by two officers, was on-duty from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. that day and the department agreed to the escort, which lasted only about 10 minutes, the sheriff said.
The escort took place at about 2 p.m., Cummings added, and the party was advised if they needed anything outside of working hours they would need to pay for a security detail.
Because the escort was within working hours, the wedding party did not pay the department for the boat's use.
If an emergency happened during the escort that required the use of the boat, Cummings said the wedding party was aware the two officers manning the vessel would have to leave.
Although rarely done, Cummings said the department might allow similar escorts on a case-by-case basis.
"It would depend on the circumstances and location," Cummings said. "If they were already on patrol or in the area we could do something similar. I would make it available, but it might get out of hand if we were just doing wedding escorts, we would have to stop."
For example, local yacht clubs have requested the presence of the boat in the past at events to help with security and boat traffic, although the boat was not at the wedding in any security capacity, Cummings said.
Why does a sheriff's department have a boat?
According to its mission statement, the Barnstable County Sheriff's Office, located at Joint Base Cape Cod in Bourne, operates the Barnstable County Correctional Facility, assists local agencies through specialized services and enforces the laws of Massachusetts and the United States.
Alongside the Barnstable County Correctional Facility, the sheriff's department operates a Bureau of Criminal Investigations, a Technical Division, an Emergency Communications Center and a Civil Process Division.
Cummings said the boat, harbored in Falmouth, is monitored by the Coast Guard in Woods Hole which can see its location at all times.
"If the Coast Guard gets a call about a boat in distress and we're the closest to it, we'll get dispatched there to handle that," he said.
The boat is also sometimes used at local events for general security, like an annual triathlon at Old Silver Beach in Falmouth.
Sheriff candidates weigh in
State Rep. Timothy Whelan, R-Brewster, who is running against Buckley for sheriff after Cummings' retirement this year, said while he didn't know much about the specific situation of the recent wedding escort, he said it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for a vessel like this to be used in certain circumstances for safety reasons.
Whelan, 1st Barnstable state representative since 2014 and previously a Massachusetts State Police sergeant, said when President Barack Obama visited Martha's Vineyard, he was a shift commander for his security detail, and local law enforcement boats were used to ensure the president's safety.
"One thing that a lot of people don't know is when the president was over on the Vineyard, 24 hours a day there was a Coast Guard cutter offshore, right near the president's rented residence for security," he said.
While Whelan said he hadn't talked to the sheriff about the recent wedding escort, the presence of Gov. Baker and other politicians including Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., might have increased the need for security.
"If that was the case then I don't have a problem at all," he said.
In her letter, Buckley called for decommissioning the sheriff's boat.
"The statutory responsibility of the Barnstable County Sheriff — and all sheriffs throughout the Commonwealth — is the care and custody of inmates. Although the Sheriff's office here on the Cape performs other important regional services, including operating a public safety answering point to answer 911 calls, the operation of a boat is not part of that core mission," she wrote. "One of my first actions as Barnstable County Sheriff will be to decommission the boat and immediately redirect the staff and resources to the sacred responsibility of the Sheriff — true public safety through correction, rehabilitation and treatment."
There were 10,250 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Massachusetts, increasing the total number of cases to 1,793,437 since the pandemic began, the state Department of Public Health reported on Thursday.
In their weekly report, state officials also reported 1,275 new probable cases of coronavirus for a statewide total of 162,407.
The DPH said as of July 19, there were 189 patients primarily hospitalized with COVID-19 related illness and 589 total patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
There were 52 patients in the intensive care units, or ICUs, and 20 patients were intubated.
In their daily report Thursday, DPH officials said Barnstable County posted 343 new coronavirus cases, for a total 41,439 since the pandemic started. There were 24 new coronavirus cases in Dukes County, for a total to date of 3,990. Nantucket County reported 21 new cases, for a total 3,639.
The state’s 14-day positivity rate was 7.94%. Barnstable County came in at 9.97%, and Dukes and Nantucket’s 14-day positivity rate was 11.93%, the highest in the state for the second week, the DPH report indicates.
Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis was treating 13 patients with coronavirus. There were no patients in intensive care. Falmouth Hospital reported eight patients, with one patient in intensive care. There were three patients with coronavirus in Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, but none in the ICU. Nantucket Cottage Hospital didn't have any patients with coronavirus.
DPH officials said Thursday there were 42 new fatalities among people with confirmed cases of COVID-19, increasing the total deaths to 19,860 since the pandemic began.
There were 17 deaths from probable cases of COVID-19. The number of fatalities from probable cases is 1,263 in Massachusetts.
Six deaths in Barnstable County
There were six new deaths in Barnstable County, the DPH said. The total probable and confirmed deaths from COVID-19 is 616 in Barnstable. There was one new death in Dukes and Nantucket counties combined, for a total fatality count of 20.
The two-week COVID-19 case count, total case count and 14-day testing positivity rate for Cape Cod towns follows:
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