HARWICH — Voters made it clear in the first night of the annual town meeting that they are dissatisfied with town spending and its impact on the tax rate. After a lengthy discussion on the budget, during which no amendments were proposed, voters approved a $39.6 million budget by only 34 votes, 267-233. They also turned aside the one major debt exclusion warrant article seeking $4.5 million for the reconstruct...

HARWICH — The selectmen did battle Monday night over the issuance of a seasonal wine and malt beverage license for the Dockside Seafood Shack, which has a 10-year lease to operate out of the new snack shack at Saquatucket Harbor. The leaseholder, Joseph W. Griffiths, was applying for the license and to serve as manager of the operation. Griffith's was the only response to a request for proposals to lease the n...

HARWICH — The pet cemetery debate is expected to be the hot topic in town meeting, with three articles addressing the burial grounds on Queen Anne Road. Town meeting will begin Monday at 7 p.m. at the community center on Oak Street with voters facing 69 articles. The major financial issue facing voters is a debt exclusion request estimated at $4.6 million for the reconstruction of 2.25 miles of Lower County Ro...

ORLEANS — Jeremy Gingras, the former executive director of the Harwich Chamber of Commerce, has been accused of embezzling funds from the chamber and its charitable foundation for years before he was fired in 2017. According to a conservative estimate from a forensic accountant, Gingras allegedly received at least $37,712.73 from the scheme. On Tuesday, Gingras was in Orleans District Court to answer two cou...

EAST HARWICH — At age 100, Isabelle Monteleone still enjoys pretty good health, still has a wry sense of humor, and still remembers spending time with the young paratroopers who fought and died in places like Normandy and Bastogne. It seems like a lifetime ago that she was a Red Cross worker embedded with a regiment of the famed 101 st Airborne Division, running makeshift clubs where they could write letters h...

HARWICH — The choppy waters surrounding the appointment of a new assistant town administrator have settled, with selectmen Monday night confirming Joseph Powers, currently town clerk/assistant town administrator in Wellfleet. He will begin his new job May 20. Powers confirmed his interest in serving as the assistant here in an email to Town Administrator Christopher Clark on April 17. “I look forward to workin...

HARWICH — They might seem like a repository of dry information, but annual town reports can shed light on a community’s values, its problems and its strengths. Now, thanks to a program of the Boston Public Library, many of Harwich’s old town reports are now just a click away. Through a portal known as Digital Commonwealth, and at no expense to the town, the reports back to 1866 have been scanned and can be v...

If you think art is something to be appreciated from afar, it’s time to roll up your sleeves, pick up a paint brush, knitting needle, or chisel and start creating. That’s the message from the organizers of ArtWeek, a 10-day, state-wide festival that gets underway tomorrow. While there are ArtWeek demonstrations, classes and lectures around the Cape, the Lower Cape—and Harwich in particular—will be a center of ...

HARWICH — Bank Street residents told selectmen last week that they do not want parking for Harwich Port employees in their residential neighborhood. Responding to a recommendation from the ad hoc parking committee to use the former fire station lot at 203 Bank St. for employee parking, several residents expressed concern for increased traffic, increased speeding, late night disturbances and the lack for pedest...

Stop & Shop supermarkets in Orleans, East Harwich and around southern New England are open and the shelves are rapidly being stocked, days after the company and workers reached agreement on a three-year labor deal, ending a 10-day strike. On Easter Sunday, the corporation and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union announced that negotiators had reached tentative agreement, subject to ratification vot...

HARWICH —The owners of two dogs which the board of selectmen ordered to be euthanized have appealed the decision in Second District Court in Orleans. The dogs, both one-year old American Staffordshire terriers owned by Melissa Sullivan and her daughter, Mary Spurrier, of Wendy's Way, were determined to be “dangerous” based on testimony provided to Town Administrator Christopher Clark in a public hearing on Mar...

WEST HARWICH — If it was a joke, public safety officials aren’t laughing. On Monday afternoon, police and firefighters were called to the Herring River marsh near the North Road footbridge for a report of a man face-down in the water. Unable to reach him from the opposite bank of the river, firefighters launched a full response by the regional dive team, as well as their own rescue boat. They summoned anothe...