In the coming weeks, local communities will be holding town meetings and elections, the annual rites of spring when residents gather to conduct the business necessary to keep a town functioning. While there's been a lot of chatter about a lack of participation – Orleans is considering lowering its town meeting quorum so meetings don't have to be canceled due to low attendance – local residents are generally quite...

Dismayed That Path Blocked Editor: One sunny afternoon at low tide two friends and I set out on a shoreline walk from the end of Tonset Road in Orleans. We turned left following a lovely well-trodden path that I must have walked hundreds of times in my 40-odd years living in this town, but no more! In no time we came bang up to a barrier fence with its warning sign: Private Property – No Trespassing – Vi...

Police Successfully Solve Fraud Case Editor: My sister, Marcella, lives in Orleans. Last week she opened her monthly credit card bill and discovered $1,600 in fraudulent charges from liquor stores to car washes. Besides the credit card company, she also contacted the Orleans Police Department, where she met Officer Higgins. He reviewed the documentation and was able to identify the person involved, through ...

It's not often that someone comes along whose skills, interests and experience make them indispensable to the community. Florence Seldin was such a person, not just for Chatham, where she retired in 1994, but for the entire Cape. Dr. Seldin, who passed away April 6 at the age of 91, had a long and distinguished career as an educator before moving to Chatham with her husband Ira. She honored her dedication to v...

For the second year in a row, Chatham Town Meeting voters will be asked to approve a property tax exemption for year-round residential homeowners. State law allows the town to adopt an exemption of between 10 and 35 percent for residents who occupy their homes year-round, with the additional property tax burden shifted to non-resident homeowners, who in fact make up the majority of property owners in town. The ai...

Potential Gas Price Solution Editor: If Donald Trump was currently president, his solution to the record high gas prices nationwide would probably be to have officials look into the possibility of running vehicles on bleach, since Trump's suggestion of injecting bleach worked so well in eliminating COVID-19. Mike Rice South Wellfleet   Observations On Harding’s Beach Editor: I was intrigued b...

Just as certain political factions gain support by stoking the fear that their base is being replaced by “the other,” so too do critics seek to curtail operations at Chatham Municipal Airport by relying on the fear factor. The sponsors of two proposed bylaws – petitions that will appear on the May 14 annual town meeting warrant – hope to limit use of the airport by cutting back on the usable landing area of th...

Recover Drainage Correction Costs Editor: What had been a non-issue since the Riverbay neighborhood was built in the late '60s all changed this past month. Due to the disregard of the natural topography and respect for our environment, a local builder/land developer was allowed to take a piece of land in August 2020 and totally alter the landscape. It had been a natural swale landform which allowed rainwate...

The Story Of Nauset's First Church Editor: The article “Happy 225th Birthday, Orleans” (March 10) neatly sums up the history of Orleans. Your readers might be interested to know how intertwined that history is with The Federated Church of Orleans. When the first seven families from Plymouth Colony settled in “Nauset,” they were required to build a church before they could establish a township. In 1646 th...

The Chatham Select Board made the right choice in backing an article for the May annual town meeting that, if approved by voters, would set aside four acres of town-owned land along Middle Road for affordable housing. The town's open space committee had requested that a perpetual conservation restriction be placed on all 19 acres of this particular parcel, which is contiguous with some 70 acres of land that su...

The process of lowering nitrogen in the region's waterways to reach acceptable water quality levels is a slow one. It takes time, and significant money, to install sewers or other treatment methods that remove nitrogen from wastewater, and it takes longer still for clean groundwater to migrate to coastal embayments and begin the process of recovery. It's self evident that doing so is good for the environment a...

Preserve The Goose Pond Forest Editor: It is clear there is a housing crisis on the Cape. It is also clear there is a climate crisis, and it affects every living thing on the planet. The United Nation's Sixth Assessment Report on global climate change, released on Feb. 28, paints a dire picture. The Earth is heating up at a pace unmatched in recorded history. We can avert the worst consequences of climat...