Opinion/Stead: Newspaper's legal ads answer questions you didn't know to ask

So, is your street on the list that the DPW won't plow this winter, which was published on Monday (page 12B)?

Dennis had 156 in all. Of course, this is a gross number. Streets that haven’t been plowed for decades, such as the one behind my house, are announced annually as a public notice. What can be important is if you are a new addition to the list or the owner of a new house who may not be aware they are on the no-plow list.

Every day in the newspaper, there are legal notices. They are for divorces, custody, wills, and storage locker content sales when the tenant defaults. But there are other notices as well. Bids are solicited for public projects that you may not have known were happening. The Barnstable County Assembly may have outlined a bill it is considering involving a sizable amount of funds for a large project, and the public is invited to comment.

People who bemoan not having known about something, or how local town or county officials could dare do something like this or that without asking for public comment, are wrong — these paid publications were your invitation to weigh in or make comments. It isn’t their fault if you didn’t read them. The notice requirement was met.

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Legal notices are exactly that. They are the required notice to the public that a program is being considered, a town will be setting a new policy, and so on. They are published in the newspaper of record, which in Barnstable County is the Cape Cod Times.

People whine that they want the notices provided electronically, and question why they aren’t digital. It is because they are intended to reach everybody without them having to pay for a phone or a computer. Legal notices are the equivalent of the old town crier, who walked about making announcements. If you have a computer or smartphone, you can likely find just about all of them electronically. But did you already know there was a no-plow list released and published?

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I admit to being a newspaper addict. I have been reading two or three newspapers every day since I was old enough to read — my hometown had two daily papers, and my dad would sometimes bring home one of the Boston papers too. I realize newspapers are regarded as a dated frill by many who can learn from web feeds, online news subscriptions, social media and other electronic information streams.

Although you may not consider just who is curating this information for you. How many influencers are keeping an eye on your hometown? There are legal actions, programs, and transactions that the law insists must be offered to the general public for comment and information before they can take place or be voted on. That is what legal notices are.

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One of the greatest flaws of electronic communication is that you already have to know what you are looking for. If there is a new effort afoot to spend American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money on county projects and you hadn’t known when the debate in the County Assembly was scheduled it would be something that just happens rather than something you could learn about or question … or stop. That is why they are called legal notices — they are the legal posting for public comment and consideration of things that government, corporations, towns, and individuals are proposing to do that will have a public impact.

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Sure, a lot of these notices are pro forma, and not especially interesting because you knew it was already going to happen. But you never know what you don’t know. Next to the published Dennis no-plow list was a new affordable housing lottery notice for three new units in Centerville, which will become available in a couple of months, along with the information on how to apply, deadline dates, etc.  But who would be interested in something like that?

Cynthia Stead is a columnist for the Cape Cod Times and can be contacted at cestead@gmail.com. 

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Cape Cod Times legal ads inform locals of municipal projects, programs