From the Falmouth Enterprise · June 30, 1981
At a special town meeting on June 29, 1981, Mashpee voters overwhelmingly approved changes to the agreement between the town and the state for a state taking of the 432-acre stretch of South Cape Beach. Attorney General Francis X. Bellotti had refused to approve the agreement signed the previous fall because it left too little under state control. He objected to a “reverter clause” that would return 26 town-owned acres of the beach to Mashpee if the state did not keep its side of the deal, and to tying the agreement to future town bylaws. The South Cape Beach advisory committee proposed dropping the clause and limiting the agreement to the bylaws in force when it was signed. Instead, the state law would let Mashpee go to court if the state broke the agreement. The New Seabury Corporation owned the rest of the beach.
More than 300 people packed a hot town hall auditorium. Committee chairman Morris Kirsner called it “a fully enforceable agreement” and said it allowed 400 cars at the beach, on the town land and the New Seabury land together. Some residents worried that a later legislature could undo the deal, or that the state could one day sell the land; the state’s lawyer, Gordon Graham, said the agreement gave Mashpee no first right to buy it back. A hand count approved the changes 204 to 60, and Rep. Jeremiah F. Cahir said he would amend the bill in the House Ways and Means Committee. The legislature passed the taking law in 1982, and the state took the land that December (the taking).
This is CPWB’s summary of a news article. The full article and its photos are published by the Falmouth Enterprise. The page is in the Falmouth Public Library’s digital archive of the Enterprise.
Drafted with AI assistance from the linked source.
