CHATHAM — With the burgeoning need for affordable and attainable housing, selectmen are methodically moving ahead on several initiatives. “We do hear a lot of criticism about us not getting things done, but I think we’ve been very thoughtful in our approach,” Selectmen Chairman Shareen Davis said at last week’s board meeting. “We’re taking these steps in a way that’s going to build on itself, in a way that’s r...

CHATHAM — Boat owners will soon be able to do something they’ve wanted to do for a long time: renew their mooring permit or waiting list application from their computer or smart phone. Making good on a longstanding goal, town officials are rolling out a system that allows mooring holders and people on the waiting list for moorings to renew and pay online. Given the green light by selectmen last week, the softw...

CHATHAM – An accessible path has been completed in Chase Park, providing access to the historic grist mill and community labyrinth at the back of the downtown green space. “It's looking pretty good,” said Frank Messina, a volunteer at the Godfrey Grist Mill, which dates from 1797 and is one of the oldest working mills on the Cape. The winding path provides access from the parking lot off Shattuck Place to t...

HARWICH — Having just put a FY21 budget in place, selectmen on Monday began shaping the message for funding the next fiscal year’s spending plan. The message contained in the draft proposal stated the desire to stay within the spending limits of Proposition 2½, but that was not strong enough for members of the board. “Selectmen desire a budget that is within the Proposition 2½ limits without the need for a gen...

Still No Plans For Future Development  HARWICH — The land remediation work on the 3.14-acre Handler Auto Parts site along Route 28 in Harwich Port is nearing completion, but there remains no plan for the redevelopment of the land, which commands sweeping views of Allen Harbor and its marsh. Jeff Handler said this week no decisions have been made on future plans for development of the property, which is zone...

HARWICH — The grounds around the A. Elmer Crowell barn at Brooks Academy are looking shabby, Harwich Center resident Paul Doane told members of the Brooks Academy Museum committee last week. Doane, who volunteers at the historic barn where the renowned decoy carver did his work, said the trees lost during last year’s tornado and the drought this area experienced over the summer have created dire landscape cond...

HARWICH – New rules and a whole new way of playing the game didn’t seem to faze the Monomoy girls varsity field hockey team when they took on the Barnstable Red Raiders on Oct. 1, cruising to a 5-1 victory in their season opener. Caroline DiGiovanni was in top form in the outing, netting four of the five goals scored by the home team. DiGiovanni scored her first goal of the game at 12:59 in the first half on a...

HARWICH – The Nauset boys varsity soccer team is out once again to prove their might, capitalizing on numerous scoring chances in their 6-0 defeat of Monomoy on Oct. 2, the season opener for both teams. The Warriors made it clear from the start that they’d come to do battle, and though the Sharks kept them to one goal in the opening frame, Nauset gained much momentum in the second, scoring three of its six goa...

While we all wish we were not living in a state of semi-quarantine during the coronavirus pandemic, the time spent at home has been good to a certain group of people: Writers. “The pandemic also turned out to be kind of a plus,” says author Kat Szmit, whose first novel “The Sugar House” (Wicked Whale Publishing, 2020) has just been released. Working her day job from home, Szmit found she had more time on her h...

Author Andrew R. “Bob” Black did a bit of preliminary research on the steps of the Boston Public Library before embarking upon his new book “Buried Dreams: The Hoosac Tunnel and the Demise of the Railroad Age” (Louisiana State University Press, 2020). He had been researching another topic when “this Hoosac Tunnel kept popping up. It was a political football,” he recalled during a telephone interview last week....

Candidate Knows The Cape Editor: Whether you are voting by mail, early or in person on Nov. 3, please get out and vote. We are fortunate to live in a country where we have the right to vote and locally, to have a regional coordinating body in the Barnstable County Commissioners. Please join me in voting for Mark Forest for county commissioner. I had the pleasure of working with Mark for a year as he served ...

Even putting aside the impact of the pandemic, the drop in enrollment in the Monomoy Regional School District is alarming. As we reported last week, the district has 102 fewer pupils this fall than last school year. Families opting to home school their kids account for a large percentage of that figure – 55 students, according to Superintendent Scott Carpenter. But there are also 20 new students who are living...

Julie Witas, social services coordinator at the Harwich Council on Aging, has spent exactly half of her first year on the job working in challenging coronavirus pandemic circumstances. “Almost all services at the council on aging are done in person,” Witas said during a telephone interview last week. “It was a challenge to go remote, but we’ve done very well.” A major portion of the COA’s function lies in b...

ORLEANS — Steering a ship of skeptics and advocates of the town buying its own dredge, dredge advisory committee chairman Charlie Carlson kept an even keel Monday during discussion of a financial model prepared by Woods Hole Group. Members punched holes in the draft model and each other’s arguments in a process that will lead to a recommendation to the select board and, if it passes that hurdle, a future town ...

ORLEANS — You don’t find a 314 percent increase in something often – maybe that’s how much your blood pressure rose during last week’s presidential debate – but that figure is an indication of the real estate market’s exponential growth. Pending sales of single-family properties in Orleans jumped from seven in August 2019 to 29 this August, a 314.3 percent increase, according to the Cape Cod & Islands Asso...

ORLEANS — When Eastham historian and selectman Donald Sparrow died in 2014, his obituary listed many accomplishments but stressed that “(h)e was most proud that his grandchildren were the 13th generation to attend school in Eastham.” Now Perry and Maya Sparrow, the brother and sister co-owners of the Hot Chocolate Sparrow, have helped eight of the cafe’s seasonal workers sink their own roots into Cape Cod soil...