CHATHAM — Each year, selectmen and the town manager begin the process of creating a budget by setting their goals and objectives, meeting in a special Saturday session. This year’s session yielded a list of priorities shaped in part by the pandemic. “Seeing that COVID-19 was impacting a lot of our ability to move forward with our work that we had been thinking about doing, we did review our established mission...

CHATHAM – The historic business district commission's denial of a request to demolish five buildings on the former Monomoy Theatre property was discriminatory and overstepped its authority, the owners of the property claim. Chatham Productions LLC is asking the board of selectmen to overturn the commission's Nov. 18 decision. In an appeal sent to selectmen Nov. 25, owner Greg Clark wrote that during the hearin...

First Woman Elected To Board Of Selectman Dies At 99 CHATHAM – For more than 275 years, half of the town's residents lacked representation on the board of selectmen. That changed in 1988, when Josephine Ives became the first woman elected to the board. “It was huge to have a woman represented on the board,” said Shareen Davis, the board's current chair. “She certainly did pave the way for others to step int...

The Monomoy Regional School Committee violated the state's Open Meeting Law in March when it discussed a topic that was not included on a posted meeting notice, the Attorney General's Office ruled this week. In a Nov. 23 letter, Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Carnes Flynn of the office's Division of Open Government wrote that an investigation found that the committee did not intentionally violate the law...

When the pandemic hit last spring and the hunkering down began, Peter and Bonnie Brenner decided to make lemons out of lemonade. Peter had retired from a 40-year career in the ministry, including two decades as a Navy chaplain, and Bonnie knew that there were boxes of his professional material stored in their basement. Bonnie also knew that Peter, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2013, would ...

And Puts Unfair Burden On Harwich Taxpayers A precipitous drop in enrollment, driven by the loss of young families from town, is threatening the future of Chatham Elementary School. That also has big implications for Harwich taxpayers and the pact between the two towns that form the Monomoy school district. In the short term, Chatham taxpayers will likely be asked to pay a larger share of the budget for the...

CHATHAM – Lacking a plan for redevelopment of the former Monomoy Theatre property, the historic business district commission last week denied requests to demolish five of the seven buildings at 766 Main St. and 70 Depot Rd. “I feel very uncomfortable approving a demolition of anything down there without a comprehensive plan,” said Chairman Dan Sylver. There were previous plans for redevelopment of the prope...

WEST CHATHAM — The new roundabout at the corner of Main Street and George Ryder Road is taking shape, and there have been reports that particularly long tractor trailers have had trouble navigating the traffic circle. The news seems to support longtime concerns raised by critics of the new traffic plan, but officials say the tractor trailer problem is temporary. Last Tuesday, a truck pulling a car carrier tr...

CHATHAM — Though it will be without the crowds, the holiday season won’t be without Christmas cheer in downtown Chatham. In lieu of the Christmas Stroll, the merchants’ association and chamber of commerce are planning a more subdued holiday celebration that will encourage holiday shoppers to spend their dollars locally while observing the necessary precautions during the pandemic. “The focus begins Thanksgi...

In New Memoir, Chatham's Charles Daly Recalls Korea, Kennedy And Life Of Service One rainy Sunday a couple of years ago, Christine Daly of Chatham was sorting through a century-old box of photos of her husband’s family in Ireland when she made an astonishing discovery. Beneath the “piles and piles” of photos, she found a “big old tattered Manilla folder” marked “WH.” In it were 200 or 300 typed four-by-six ...

CHATHAM — After a community center staff member tested positive for COVID-19, town officials announced that the PARK after school childcare program will be shut down until Nov. 30. As of early this week, there was no indication that any of the children in the program had contracted the illness, but parents had been warned to watch their youngsters for symptoms. Last Friday, town officials learned that the comm...

CHATHAM — For researchers hoping to understand the death of a stranded whale, sometimes the answer is simple: There is no answer. That’s not yet the case with the young humpback that stranded on shoals outside Stage Harbor earlier this month, since researchers are still waiting for lab results from tissue samples taken during a postmortem exam. But absent any indication of illness, they don’t have much to go o...