ORLEANS — In the early 1980s, Police Lt. Kevin Higgins wore a different uniform. Clad in a lab coat, worn to protect the computers, he worked the midnight shift at Cape Cod Bank and Trust's data processing center. A colleague's husband, a state trooper at the Yarmouth barracks, would drop in for a coffee break. “He kept saying computers are the coming thing in police work,” Higgins recalled. Finally, he acce...

ORLEANS — If you missed last week's standing-room-only presentation on Pay As You Throw (PAYT) trash disposal and single-stream recycling—and you have the patience to sit through a few variance requests first—the conversation continues today (Sept. 19) after 2 p.m. at the board of health's meeting. The board joined the selectmen Sept. 10 for a public information session on switching to PAYT, which involves b...

ORLEANS — A new police station. A new DPW headquarters. A new tech school. And, coming down the road, a proposed rebuild of Nauset Regional High School and a library building project. You might say that some voters were edifice wrecks when they went to the polls in May and saw a $50,000 item for a “study to replace/renovate” the fire station near the bottom of the ballot. Although the study had sailed throug...

EASTHAM — Representatives of Orleans, Eastham, and Cape Cod National Seashore parsed a draft memorandum of understanding Sept. 9 at Eastham Town Hall and found ways to move forward on improving navigation and public safety in Nauset Estuary. Orleans, which is paying for a battery of environmental studies of the estuary, wants to see environmental questions related to dredging resolved and a multi-jurisdictio...

ORLEANS — The selectmen and board of health will hold a joint public information session Sept. 10 at 5:30 p.m. about a proposed Pay As You Throw (PAYT) trash disposal plan that could start as early as June 1. Members want to hear what citizens have to say on the possible change. “If I were to make a motion tonight, it would include the words, 'Time is of the essence,'” health board member Sims McGrath said. ...

ORLEANS — The atrium at the entrance of Orleans Elementary School will be full of books and displays when students return to classes this week. One giant “book” was opened to two blank pages. “What will your story be this year?” literary specialist Martha Jenkins said students will be asked. “Children will be writing their own story of the school year.” Adding their stories to the “book” celebrates indivi...

ORLEANS — David Currier is in the midst of having solar panels installed on the roofs of his business and his home. “Electric rates aren't going down,” the owner of Orleans Bowling Center said last week. “Those big companies don't like making less money.” Currier, who's also a selectman, is working with BlueSel Solar to realize his dream of generating his own power. He grew up with one of the company's sa...

ORLEANS — Attention, developers: affordable housing units could be built at the Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank operations center campus on West Road, according to a study presented last night (Aug. 28) to the board of selectmen. Two concepts, one with 45 units and the other with 51, are in no sense a fixed plan to be carried out by builders. They express the elements that the town's affordable housing comm...

ORLEANS — If you think Cape Cod doesn't have a prayer of solving its housing crisis, think again. Prayer itself is one of the elements involved in an effort to create short-term housing for people who find themselves without shelter during one of life's transitions. Heidi Scheffler and Stephane Ruault of Brewster, parishioners of St. Joan of Arc Roman Catholic Church in Orleans, have been praying, studying, ...

Several longtime teachers of the Academy of Performing Arts school in Orleans will be offering their classes at the Cape Cod Theatre Company/Harwich Junior Theatre's Arts Center in Harwich Center next month. The switch is more fallout from the financial difficulties of the Academy, which laid off production staff at its theater in January. The venue has since reopened for shows, and a modern version of “Romeo ...

ORLEANS - When he was a young man, Mark Vecchione of Eastham loved to hang out at Rock Harbor and see the fishing boats. On Sunday, as they’ve done for the last decade since he was killed in action in Iraq, volunteers held a day-long fishing trip in his memory. The fleet had a proper send-off from those aboard the Gold Medal Lifeboat CG36500. MARCIA...

ORLEANS — The town created an affordable housing trust fund board to move quickly when likely properties come on the market, but members are looking carefully before they leap. The board, with approval of the selectmen, funded the purchase in May of a half-acre lot at 15 Quanset Road on which Habitat for Humanity of Cape Cod will build a two-bedroom affordable home. It has backed analyses of the housing pote...