BREWSTER – Having digested residents’ feedback from a Jan. 17 public information session, the Bay Property Planning Committee on Jan. 24 approved a set of operating rules for running what will be the Cape’s first municipal swimming pool during its inaugural public summer season. Pending final approval by the select board on Feb. 13, the former Cape Cod Sea Camps pool is tentatively set to open on Monday, June 26...

BREWSTER – Abigail Rhoads doesn’t follow people on social media. She follows animals. “I just really love animals,” Rhoads said by phone recently. A volunteer at the Wareham-based nonprofit Peace for Ponies, which is rebranding as Peace for All Animals, she spends her leisure time rescuing miniature donkeys, sparing them from slaughterhouses. “A lot of people are stopping by to see what’s going on with them,” s...

Petitioners Force Special Town Meeting, Trust Loses Donation BREWSTER — A group of adamant residents, many of them Friends of Wing Island members, has petitioned for a special town meeting well ahead of the May 1 spring town meeting to settle the fate of the proposed Wing Island boardwalk. Liz Perry and Carl Ahlstrom IV, whom the group asked to deliver the petition to town hall last Thursday, a...

Limited To 100 Users Because Of Staffing Concerns BREWSTER — With lifeguards in short supply regionally, the town anticipates staffing will be the greatest challenge facing the summer opening of the former Sea Camps outdoor swimming pool. For that reason, the pool would be accessible only to 100 residents during its first season. "We want to make sure we don’t take on too much in this first year," said Town...

BREWSTER – Black slaves once were part of the First Parish Unitarian Universalist (UU) Church congregation, Susan T. Smith, former president of the parish board of trustees, said candidly the day before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. ”That history has all been erased, and it mustn’t be,” Smith said. “Unless you own it, we can’t be honest with ourselves.” Founded in 1700, First Parish originally was a Purit...

BREWSTER – Brewster published its five-year, $66.4 million capital improvement plan online last week as part of the town’s new Open Government digital platform designed to increase transparency. “No more spreadsheets with 1,000 lines…which was difficult to navigate and access,” Town Manager Peter Lombardi said during a joint meeting of the select board and finance committee last Wednesday. The town’s annual...

BREWSTER — In November, conversation on the Facebook page "Orleans, Ma. Community Space" speculated about the future of what locals have colloquially come to call "the Pink Bridge." A post on the page, which also included video of a vehicle approaching the overpass along Freemans Way in Brewster running over Route 6, said the bridge would lose its identifiable pink colored steel as a result of an ongoing state...

BREWSTER – Meg Morris, chair of the town’s recycling commission, called nip bottles “a littering epidemic” and plans to ask spring town meeting voters to prohibit the sale of tiny liquor containers. Upon opening the spring town meeting warrant Monday, the Brewster Select Board asked Morris to draft an article that would prohibit the sale of nips in town. “I t's a quick drink…used mainly for...

BREWSTER – The town’s charter, drafted four years ago, at last won approval by the state legislature on Jan. 5. “We’ve been talking about a charter for decades,” now Town Manager Peter Lombardi said at the Jan. 9 select board meeting. Approved by voters at the May 2021 town meeting, the charter “serves as our local constitution” as local government becomes increasingly complex over time. The char...

BREWSTER – More residents are requesting municipal aid to pay rising housing and childcare costs. Housing assistance requests were up during the second quarter of 2022, with 77 requests for assistance in October, Housing Coordinator Jill Scalise said at the affordable housing trust’s December meeting. “There were a lot of questions about the [Oct. 27] housing forum, which is a good thing, and a lot of quest...

Hoffman Urges ‘Changing Tone’ of Wing Island Boardwalk Discussions BREWSTER – Horsley-Witten, the engineering group hired to explore building a raised boardwalk from Drummer Boy Park to Wing Island, has been told to stop design work and remain in a holding pattern. Residents resoundingly voted down the Drummer Boy Park Master Plan at the Nov. 14 special town meeting. Boardwalk opponents formed a group calle...

BREWSTER – The proprietors of Apt Cape Cod Farm-to-Table at 2149 Main St. have closed up shop and left town, leaving building owner Art Arnold "holding the bag.” The restaurant made the national news in July 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Apt temporarily closed for breakfast to treat employees to a day of kindness after impatient customers were verbally abusive toward the staff. “The property ...