The Seashore Commission Six Towns Sit On Hasn't Met Since 2025

CIVIC · EASTHAM · CAPE COD NATIONAL SEASHORE

Its 318th meeting is Monday, Nov. 2, 1 to 4:30 p.m., at Salt Pond in Eastham, in person and online, with time for public comment.

6 min read · A Celebrate Lower Cape spotlight

Two agendas for the same federal commission, eight months apart, list the same four items for the superintendent's report. The first was drafted for a March 9 meeting, as CAI reported in July: planned 2026 construction, Eastham's Cable Road multimodal trail, adaptive retreat planning for coastal bluff erosion, and park projects for 2027 and beyond.

The second is the Federal Register notice published Oct. 22 for Monday, Nov. 2. Same four items, same order. The March meeting never happened, and neither did the ones on either side of it.

The Cape Cod National Seashore Advisory Commission has not met since Sept. 15, 2025. If it meets Nov. 2 as noticed, 413 days will separate its 317th and 318th sessions. So what happens to a body built only to advise when it can't sit down?

Polled, picked, and submitted

The last meeting is on paper. The minutes of Sept. 15, 2025 record Heather McElroy, the alternate chair, calling the 317th meeting to order at the Salt Pond Visitor Center, with some members in the room and some on video. Members had been polled on a date for the next one. They chose Nov. 17, and the Federal Register notice, the minutes say, had already been submitted.

They also agreed to put "Cape Cod Character" on every agenda from then on. The new notice ties the phrase to the 1961 law that created the Seashore and says it plainly: Cape Cod Character "is identified in the Act to establish the Seashore but not defined."

Public comment came at the end. The minutes count three letters, two of them on the Cable Road path. Near adjournment, McElroy floated Feb. 9 as a winter date.

No meeting followed. Delaney Dryfoos of the Provincetown Independent told CAI it "does appear" the Nov. 17 session may have been postponed because of the federal government shutdown. In an email Dryfoos obtained, McElroy wrote to members that Interior had not pre-approved the March 9 notice in time. A May date went the same way. Interior did not respond to the Independent's requests for comment.

Seven days, not fifteen

A federal advisory committee can't meet until notice runs in the Federal Register. For years the rules set that notice at 15 calendar days. The current rule says "at least 7 calendar days," a change dated December 2025. The Independent first reported that the Park Service made the change, then corrected its story to say the General Services Administration did.

The Independent's Oct. 21 story quotes an unsigned Seashore email from Oct. 19 confirming the shorter window: "We do have a few more days." The notice ran 11 days before the meeting.

The notice also says information on joining the teleconference will be on the Seashore's website "at least two weeks prior to the meeting." As of Oct. 28, the commission's page lists the date, a 1 p.m. start, and Salt Pond, with no link yet.

"One of our few avenues"

The commission advises; it doesn't decide. In the words of the Seashore's own page, it exists "to consult with the Secretary of the Interior or the Secretary's designee" on the Seashore's development, "including matters of acquisition by condemnation and zoning regulations." Its authority expired in 2018. Congress revived it in the 2023 appropriations act and set a new end date of Sept. 26, 2029.

Chatham, Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro, and Provincetown each recommend a member. The county recommends one member and the governor two; the Secretary designates one more and names the chair, listed on the roster as Richard Delaney.

Joanna Stevens, Eastham's alternate member, told the Independent in June that the commission is "one of our few avenues" to communicate with "a federal agency that is so influential in our lives." She told the paper in October she hopes to raise bluff erosion at Coast Guard Beach and a link between the Cable Road path and the Cape Cod Rail Trail.

The park kept moving in the meantime. Deputy Superintendent Leslie Reynolds reported visitors up 9.4 percent so far this year and 90 seasonal workers this summer against a target of 110 to 115, according to the Independent.

A mile of path, two letters

The Cable Road item is the most local line on the agenda. The Park Service's project page describes a path about a mile long and 6 to 10 feet wide, running from Nauset Road past Nauset Regional High School and the Three Sisters lighthouses to Nauset Light Beach. A June 2025 release gave its purpose as safe access to that beach, with comments taken June 26 to July 10, 2025.

The letters attached to the September minutes come from Cable Road abutters, and they point different ways. One, dated June 27, 2025, urged the Park Service to abandon the proposal and called the path "a solution in search of a problem." The other, dated July 7, backed the direct route along the road as "the least invasive to the habitat of the woodlands it passes through," and opposed a recreation trail deeper in the woods.

The Nov. 2 notice promises an update on the trail's "design and construction project." It doesn't say which design.

The fourth agenda item then asks members to report what their towns protect, and to recommend characteristics for the superintendent to protect. Public comment comes after that. If your town's member asked you what Cape Cod Character means on your stretch of the Seashore, what would you name first?

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The Seashore, one parcel at a time

Lighthouses, leases and the deals that made the park.