CHATHAM — Contractors are hoping that the most recent adjustments to the Mitchell River drawbridge will allow it to function properly, at least through this summer season. The two-year-old bridge has been prone to swelling during humid weather, causing the center span both to stick shut and to not close completely after being opened. Last week, crews from bridge contractor SPS New England, Inc., spent three ...

CHATHAM – Vandals caused $46,000 in damage to solar panels at the town's capped landfill in May, according to police. A blunt object was used to smash 45 of the photovoltaic panels, a meter and inverter components, said Lt. Michael Anderson. Security cameras in the area were not operational at the time, and there were no witnesses to the May 4 incident. Police don't believe the incident was a random act of ...

Though the Bob Murray Housing With Love Walk might have taken its last steps in 2017, those at both the Harwich Ecumenical Council For Housing and the Chatham Ecumenical Council for Preventing Homelessness know the need is still great, which is why they've combined forces for the first Mini Love Walk. Slated for July 12, folks from CECH and HECH will be walking the Chatham to Harwich leg of the Bob Murray walk...

CHATHAM – For Stuart Varney, the sometimes-controversial host of Fox Business Network’s Varney and Co. since 2012 and a part-time Chatham resident, Chatham’s Fourth of July parade is one of the highlights of the year. “I just like that feeling of the town of Chatham coming together for this event,” he said during a telephone interview last week. “It’s a long parade; the whole town is there.” Varney will spe...

With July 4 landing on a Wednesday, this week promises to be busy on both ends. If you've arrived for the summer or are just visiting, there's plenty to do over the next several days. Beginning, of course, with Independence Day parades in both Chatham and Orleans. Chatham's parade kicks off at 9:30 a.m. while Orleans starts at 10 a.m. (see below for Orleans event details). More than 100 entries are expected...

CHATHAM – “We're losing homes at a significant rate.” Historical Commission Chairman Frank Messina was speaking at a hearing for yet another demolition of a home on Stage Harbor Road, but was talking more generally about why the town adopted and the commission often enforces a delay on the razing of buildings determined to be historically significant. “We want to make owners stop and think about it,” he sai...

CHATHAM — A regional coalition of bike experts is peddling the possibility of a new bike path that would link Orleans with Chatham using a right-of-way under Eversource high-tension wires. Currently, pedestrians or cyclists traveling between the two towns either have to travel west all the way to the junction of the Cape Cod Rail Trail and Old Colony Rail Trail in Harwich Center – a detour of almost 18 miles...

CHATHAM – The St. Martin's Masonic Lodge, which has sold balloons at the July 4 parade and Friday night Chatham band concerts for the past seven years, won't be continuing balloon sales this summer. The decision comes after town meeting voted in May to ban the sale of balloons inflated with lighter-than-air gas. Even though the ban does not go into effect until Sept. 15, the Lodge won't be selling balloons at ...

CHATHAM – Downtown Chatham will come alive each week with music, activities and special events in a new festival debuting Monday, July 2. “Mondays on Main” will feature live bands performing outdoors at various locations along the downtown business district from 5:30 to 9 p.m. Each of the eight Monday nights through Aug. 20 will feature a different theme, and businesses are being encouraged to hold special eve...

Cars are at a standstill on Route 28 from the traffic light at Crowell Road all the way to West Chatham. No parking spaces are available on Main Street. Oversized tour buses hog the narrow roads. Day-trippers have no manners. These are some of the complaints about tourist-season Chatham heard Saturday during a forum called “Chatham in the 21 st Century: How Does the Town Cope with the ‘Unintended Con...

CHATHAM – The all-you-can-eat July 4 Pancake Festival, run for 50 years by the Kiwanis Club of Central Cape Cod, ended in 2014. With its membership dwindling, the club no longer had the numbers to pull off the event; it had to bring in folks from other Kiwanis Clubs to help in that final griddle marathon. But next Wednesday, the holiday Pancake Festival will be back again, this time sponsored by the Rotary Clu...

As many of us start the grocery shopping lists for Fourth of July cookouts, lots of other local families are left wondering where they’ll find their next meal. It’s a harsh reality that a large number of people on the Lower Cape – even in affluent neighborhoods in Chatham, Orleans and Harwich – suffer from “food insecurity,” or not knowing where their next meal will come from. But in the summertime, when secon...