CAPE COD deserves BETTER

Cape Cod Deserves Better — and Here’s Why I’m Running

After more than two decades in Cape Cod civic life, recent decisions made it clear this moment couldn’t be ignored.

I’ve been active in Cape Cod civic life for more than twenty years. In all that time, I can count on one hand the number of residents who have told me, “County government is really working well for us.”

Much more often, I hear frustration — especially about decisions coming out of the Cape Cod Commission and how they affect housing, water protections, and what our own towns are allowed to decide for themselves.

Now we’re seeing proposals for a new tax on home sales — the so-called “luxury transfer fee” — that would affect longtime Cape families just as much as anyone else.

I can say with certainty there is very little support for expanding County government. Not one person I’ve spoken with recently supports putting the County in the housing business. What people do want is for the Cape Cod Commission to do its job and protect the environment — without overreach.

Cape Codders do not want unnecessary taxes or unchecked government growth.

We are not asking for bigger regional government. We are asking for accountability. We are asking for practical solutions. Most of all, we are asking for decisions to be made closer to home — by the communities that live with the consequences.

Who is Eric Schwaab?

“For a long time I thought maybe public engagement alone would be enough,” he says. “But eventually you realize that if you want accountability and change, you have to step forward yourself.”

There’s a particular kind of person who shows up to every meeting, reads every proposal, and knows the name of every administrator who signed every document that shaped the place they love. They’re not famous. They don’t get thanked. They just keep showing up, year after year, because someone has to.

Eric Schwaab has been that person on Cape Cod for more than twenty years.

Now he’s done watching from the room. He’s running for Barnstable County Commissioner — and the reasons why tell you everything about what’s gone wrong, and what could still be saved.

The Man Behind the Candidacy

Eric lives near Craigville Beach in Barnstable with his wife Eleanora, a software developer and researcher he describes, with obvious affection, as “the brains in the family.” He holds a degree from Reed College and an MBA from the University of Massachusetts Boston, and spent more than three decades working in software design and strategic planning before turning his full attention to the civic work that had always run alongside it.

That civic work is substantial. He serves on the Barnstable Housing Authority, where he has advocated for housing that fits the scale and infrastructure of local communities. He’s the part-time director of Better Barnstable, Inc. — a group dedicated to historic preservation, wetlands protection, and the cultural history of Hyannis. He founded Act Local Now, a grassroots effort built around the conviction that local communities work best when residents stay informed and involved. And for years he has administered Barnstable Unofficial, the online forum where tens of thousands of Cape residents follow the decisions that shape their towns — often before those decisions make the evening news.

He is not a politician. He has never wanted to be. What he is, is someone who understands how this place works — and who has watched, with growing alarm, as the institutions meant to protect it have moved steadily away from the people they serve.

What’s Actually Happening

To understand why Eric is running, you have to look at what Barnstable County has become.

The county has elected commissioners, a legislative branch called the Assembly of Delegates, and a collection of regional services. Most significantly, it oversees the Cape Cod Commission — the regional planning body that reviews major developments and shapes land use policy across all fifteen Cape towns. On paper, it’s a structure designed to coordinate and protect. In practice, Eric argues, it has become something else entirely.

Over the years, he says, he has heard the same concern again and again from residents across the Cape: too many important decisions feel distant from the communities most affected by them.

“People want to be heard,” he says. “Especially on issues involving growth, water quality, housing, and neighborhood character. They want decisions made closer to home.”

The frustration he describes isn’t ideological. It’s practical. Residents across the Cape are watching proposals advance that they didn’t ask for and in many cases actively oppose — a proposed regional land bank funded by a new tax on home sales; model zoning bylaws drafted by consultants that would allow multi-family development by right in single-family neighborhoods; plans to rezone and redevelop historic village centers under a label the Commission calls “Community Activity Centers.”

“People aren’t against change,” Eric says. “They’re against being ignored.”

A Different Vision

Eric’s platform isn’t built on opposition. It’s built on a clear-eyed assessment of what county government should actually be doing — and what it should stop doing.

The core conviction: county government must do fewer things, but do them better.

He believes the county should operate more as a cooperative partner to the towns than a growing layer of bureaucracy — an opt-in model where towns access shared technical resources and specialized services on their own terms, paying for what they use. He supports greater transparency, clearer public engagement, and a close review of county spending and long-term priorities.

On wastewater — the slow emergency that threatens the aquifer and the estuaries that define this place — he wants to transform the regional Septic Test Center into a real innovation hub, accelerating the development and permitting of nitrogen-reducing systems that actually work in the field.

He has called for reforms to the Cape Cod Commission, including earlier communication with neighborhoods, clearer guidance for applicants and residents, and stronger independent environmental review for large-scale projects before construction begins.

On housing, Eric supports practical solutions that help working families and seniors remain on Cape Cod — while respecting the character and infrastructure limits of existing neighborhoods.

“People understand the housing challenge,” he says. “But they also want thoughtful planning, functioning infrastructure, and a real voice in the process.”

None of this is radical. It’s competent. Which, after years of the alternative, may be the most compelling thing he can offer.

The Weight of Twenty Years

There is a moment in every long civic career when a person has to decide: keep working within the system, or change the system itself.

For Eric, that moment arrived gradually, then all at once.

He watched proposals move forward over community objections. He watched the Commission meet with officials instead of residents, produce plans instead of conversations, and expand its ambitions while the people paying for it felt increasingly invisible.

“For a long time I thought maybe public engagement alone would be enough,” he says. “But eventually you realize that if you want accountability and change, you have to step forward yourself.”

Why It Still Matters

You feel it the moment you cross the bridge. Things slow down. The scale changes. What seemed urgent somewhere else becomes, suddenly, less so — and what matters here comes into focus.

That quality — the particular character of this place, the pace of it, the relationship between land and water and community that took generations to become what it is — doesn’t sustain itself. It requires stewardship. It requires people paying attention, pushing back when necessary, and making decisions with the long view in mind.

Eric Schwaab has been doing that work for two decades from the outside. He’s decided it’s time to do it from the inside.

The Democratic primary is September 1st. He’s on the ballot.

Decisions about Cape Cod’s future deserve clarity.

See exactly where Eric stands — and how his opponents compare.