ORLEANS — With solemn faces, members of the fire and rescue department sat in the rear of the Nauset Room Jan. 22 as the board of selectmen discussed the process of finding a successor to Chief Tony Pike, whose last day before retirement will be Feb. 22. If a new leader isn’t found by then, Deputy Chief Geof Deering, who sat with his colleagues during last week’s meeting, would become acting chief. The board d...

ORLEANS — The town’s projected budget for fiscal year 2021, which begins July 1, includes a 2.9 percent decrease in the tax rate and no property tax increase. On the other hand, the first look at operating expenses for the non-school budget shows a 4.7 increase, a bit over the board of selectmen’s 4 percent cap. But there could be good news there, too, if the Cape Cod Municipal Health Group sets coverage rates lo...

ORLEANS – That the problem of mass incarceration is alarming is seen not only in the statistics but in the strong and passionate commitments of those aware of and concerned about over-incarceration in America today. Many know there is a problem, but how it came to exist and how to address it are often less clear. The Honorable Donald L. Cabell, the guest speaker at this year’s Martin Luther King Day Breakfast at ...

ORLEANS — “New occasions teach new duties,” James Russell Lowell wrote. That thought may be helpful as Nauset Regional School District taxpayers weigh a high school reconstruction project that will benefit not only the district’s children but also some from other Cape towns as well as adult learners from the system’s four communities. The Eastham high school’s student body is a mix of pupils from Brewster, Eas...

ORLEANS — Recent studies of sediment types and shellfish resources, and preliminary consultations with regulatory agencies, have not dredged up any issues that would stall efforts to improve navigation in Nauset Estuary, a stakeholder group learned Monday. Woods Hole Group senior coastal geologist Leslie Fields said core samples identified areas that were primarily sandy, which would mean dredged materials c...

BREWSTER — The first cuts of next fiscal year’s budgets for the Nauset Regional middle and high schools should please selectmen. Both are showing an overall increase of less than 4 percent, the cap requested by the Orleans board. At the Jan. 9 regional school committee meeting in Brewster, middle school principal Julie Kobold’s $8,485,859 budget showed a proposed increase of 2.91 percent over the current yea...

ORLEANS — At the town’s community building on Main Street, things are quieter than when firetrucks raced out the door, but that doesn’t mean the former fire and police station is any less busy. Many programs have activities there, and the potential of the structure has yet to be fully realized, some say. “It’s a small building, but a hub of activity,” JoAnna Keeley, chairperson of the Orleans Cultural Distri...

ORLEANS — There are robots, and then there are ROBOTS. The eerily human-ish automatons of contemporary cinema may provide a chill, but the Snow Library has boldly gone where man has gone before with its warm celebration of the bulky, gleaming toy robots of the last century. The packed display case opposite the entrance doors brings young and old to a standstill as they marvel at the colorful creations of ...

HARWICH – From his boyhood on Cape Cod to this day, “Pleasant Bay has been my playground,” Mon Cochran told an appreciative audience at Pleasant Bay Community Boating last month. “I was out on the bay by the time I was 6 or 7 by myself in a fairly raggedy catboat.” Cochran, executive director of the Cape Cod Climate Change Collaborative and a former president of Friends of Pleasant Bay, crosses the bay on a mo...

ORLEANS – The story of 2019 is how different it was from 2018. Housing Twelve months ago, the affordable housing trust board had yet to hold its first meeting. The town hadn’t bought land to turn over to Habitat for Humanity to build an affordable home, nor had it purchased a condo unit to rent at an affordable rate. Working with the affordable housing committee and consultants, the trust looked at conver...

ORLEANS - The former fraternal lodge property at 107 Main St. could accommodate a mix of 11 to 14 affordable rental dwellings, the affordable housing trust and affordable housing committee was told last week. Contracted to consider the site’s potential, Ted Malone, president of Provincetown-based Community Housing Resources, Inc., spun three scenarios: nine one-bedrooms and two two-bedrooms with a mix of units...

ORLEANS – When Santa gets back to the North Pole this week, he’ll find another wish list waiting for him. Twenty-two applications for Community Preservation funds to support community housing, open space, historic preservation, and recreation efforts have been submitted to the town, twice last year’s number. Formal review by the community preservation committee begins at its Jan. 2 meeting, and a public hearin...