ORLEANS – If the town's beaches can be considered among the best things in life, then for residents the best things in life are free. That won't be the case if a proposed new resident beach parking sticker fee makes it to town meeting and is approved. Of course, taxpayers support the beaches financially in other ways already, but a resident sticker fee has always been a step too far. Last week, the selectme...

ORLEANS – The town's new affordable housing trust agreed to put dollars behind desires last week, earmarking $2,200 to help spur marketing for an affordable unit that could lose that designation otherwise. The board met Feb. 13 to address a two-bedroom condo at 18 West Rd., one of 11 units designated affordable at the 42-unit complex. The designated units are under a deed restriction that requires they be sold...

HARWICH — Each foreign national employed in the U.S. under the H2B temporary non-agricultural visa program sustains the jobs of 4.6 Americans, according to Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Wendy Northcross. Northcross joined a panel of representatives of the business and political worlds Feb. 9 at the cultural center to demystify the seasonal worker program. “Without an influx of additional wo...

ORLEANS — It's been a long haul to get dredging Nauset Estuary on the public's radar, but now that the signal is strong some eager proponents are urging patience. “I ask that people in this room open their hearts and their minds to the obvious challenges that are going to be ahead of us, to not lose patience with the amount of time it will take for the permit process,” fisherman and dredging advisory committ...

ORLEANS – Talk to Stan and Bonnie Snow and topics range from ship and train models to historic Orleans houses to the history of Snow’s of Cape Cod. Stan, 86, who retired on Dec. 31 after 61 years of employment at his family business, Snow’s, is a passionate and skilled creator of model ships, trains, houses and buildings. (He made his first model ship when he was 11.) Bonnie is a well-known local historian who...

ORLEANS — The future of adults with autism was as bright as the sunny skies during the Feb. 4 groundbreaking ceremony for Cape Cod Village. A crowd gathered inside Mid-Cape Home Centers to celebrate the shovels-in-the-ground stage of a dream nurtured for almost eight years by parents of severely autistic children who were concerned about a lack of programs for them as adults. Now, just months away, is the so...

ORLEANS — A local man has agreed with the seller on a price for Sipson Island, and a purchase and sales agreement is expected to be signed this month. The price is confidential until then. The resident has been working with the Friends of Pleasant Bay and The Compact of Cape Cod Conservation Trusts regarding the purchase, serving as a buyer/backer to take the property off the market. The Friends intends to r...

ORLEANS — The state will begin taxing short-term rentals of vacation homes, one or more rooms in houses, condos and the like beginning July 1. Town officials and business leaders are already thinking long-term about the uses of the new revenues. “Taxes will be collected by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Aug. 20, and then on the 20 th of the month from then on,” Selectmen Chairman Alan McClennen said Jan....

ORLEANS — The selectmen put the proposed Fiscal Year 2020 budget under a microscope Jan. 23 and also talked about rearranging the five-year capital plan. They discussed un-budgeted needs in light of some surprisingly good news: the Cape Cod Municipal Health Group is likely to vote this week for no increase in health and life insurance premium rates. “They had a great year last year, with claims running very ...

ORLEANS — For decades, New Englanders looking for a daily antidote to life's stresses turned their radio dials to WGBH-FM for the start of “Eric in the Evening.” With the first notes of Tommy Flanagan's rendition of Horace Silver's “Peace,” listeners' souls were calmed and stirred. On the 90 th anniversary of the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, radio host and musicologist Eric Jackson did it again...

ORLEANS — Townspeople are flocking to courses to learn how to “Stop the Bleed.” The monthly sessions given by the fire and rescue department with the support of the Orleans Citizens Forum are already fully booked into the spring. Twenty-five people attended a training Jan. 17 at the senior center, where Fire Chief Anthony Pike explained that the program had originated at the White House in 2015 as a way to r...

ORLEANS – The Nauset Regional High School building project is about more than a building. It's also an invitation to imagine what education will look like in the middle of the 21 st century. In welcoming about 30 people to a community forum on the project Jan. 14 at town hall, building committee chair Greg Levasseur laid out two goals: “the education plan that shows us what we need to teach and want to teac...