Background: 

We are an organization dedicated to supporting the needs of Brewster part-time residents, who now comprise half of Brewster's residential property owners. We were founded following a citizen's meeting at the Stony Brook School on August 7, 2002. In September 2002 we led the opposition to a discriminatory act that added additional property taxes for second home owners. With support from a great majority of our year-round neighbors, the Selectmen rescinded the law after they recognized that the majority of all residents opposed such a tax as being unfair, divisive, and an inefficient and non-productive means of providing tax support for the town's needy residents.

The recision of that law left a small but important group of residents still in need of help with their taxes. We recommended, and in June 2003 the Selectmen approved, a "Brewster Economic Support Task Force" (BEST) of concerned citizens to develop recommendations to meet the needs of these residents. We participated in that task force, and when it's final recommendations included a need to publicize the state, county and town abatments and exemptions already available, we developed printed and distributed to all Brewster residents a flyer describing the available financial assistance.

In the Summer of 2004 we worked with the Selectmen to develop the first Information Forum, an official town function in which all residents (full-time and part-time) can get answers from Selectmen and other town officials about issues of importance to the town. The meeting was conducted by the Town Moderator. Questions posed by the residents included taxes, budgets, conservation, capital expenditures, police/fire, zoning/planning and other issues. Because the event met virtually all of our mission criteria, and was not something the Town was required to do, we offered to "sponsor" it by providing all planning and publicity and to defray the associated costs. The event was an instant success and is expected to be a yearly Town function which we will continue to sponsor.

We have adopted the theme for our organization "Working Together for Brewster".

Our Association is managed by a team of five Officers and twelve Directors who serve for two-year terms. Officers and Directors are elected at our Annual Meetings.

Officers:	Terms expire 2011
President	Edward Goldman
Vice President	Stephen Berkowitz
Treasurer	Greg Jones
Secretary	Mary Anne Lozano
Administrator	Brenda Locke
Directors:	Term expires
James Carrabetta	2011
Louise Choulian	2011
David Ferguson	2011
Tom Ferris	2011
Imogene Harsip	2011
Greg Jones	Data Base Manager
Lou Lozano	2011
Doug Mance	2011
Howard McCullough	2011
Jack Piela	2011
Michael Stevens	Web Master
Ann Wise	2011
Phil Wise	2011

Communications:

E-mail is our preferred communication medium, permitting us to give you instant alerts of upcoming legislation and events. To get maximum benefit from your membership, therefore, it is important that we have an up-to-date e-mail address for you. If you don’t have access to a computer or your own email address, please give us the address of a friend or relative who can receive and pass messages on to you. In addition to email, we send out by USPS mail Quarterly Summary Reports of email communications to members who do not have email. Of course, Email also makes it easy for you  to advise us of  your ideas and opinions.

Please send all communications to Brenda Lock, Administrator as follows:

Administrator: Brenda Locke administrator@bapr.org

(Changes in Address Information , comments,  feedback on published reports and all other issues)

Within this site you will also find useful Links to other websites which contain a wealth of useful information. Of particular interest will be Town of Brewster, The Cape Codder and the Cape Cod Times.

 

The beautiful Brewster scenes were painted by Karen North Wells, Underground Art Gallery, Brewster. We are grateful to her for allowing us to share them with you.