Orleans Watchdog
Kent's Point:
Bac kground
Kent’s Point was purchased by the Town of Orleans in 1998. Here is the deed, which expressly provided for a perpetual public trust for open-space conservation purposes:

https://www.town.orleans.ma.us/DocumentCenter/View/7827/1988-Kents-Point-Deed


Some people who knew Charlotte Kent insist that she gave the land so that dogs could run free. This belief – which might be true, especially if there was no dog restraint law back then – explains why some dog walkers have scoffed when asked by local residents to leash their dogs. However, that intention, if it existed, is not expressed in the deed.
In any event, everyone agrees that open-space conservation purposes includes dog walking. Some people are unhappy that the current Orleans dog regulations allow off-leash walking if the owner has voice control. Some local residents avoid the area for this reason. There is a bit of a history of friction with nearby residents, pertaining to traffic issues and perceived “attitude problems.” Most of this stuff is conflict-resolvable, in my judgment, and the dog owners have offered that, but our adversaries seem much more interested in a regulatory approach.


The first time Town Government asked Town Counsel if they could impose a parking sticker requirement was in 2015. This is a hugely important point. We are in the midst of a plan conceived a long time ago. I’ll devote a separate page to the horrifically bad legal work which has been done about this issue. 


In 2018, a man was seriously attacked by two dogs while arguing with their owner. Three Select Board members (Mefford Runyon, Kevin Galligan, and Mark Mathison) went on public record at the time that they would prefer dogs to be segregated in a closed-in park. The proposed location for that was near the sewage treatment plant, which partly explains why dog owners resisted it.


In 2019, Wildflower Beach was first closed to dogs and then reopened under restricted hours. That story is not pretty, but this page is not the place to tell it.


In 2019-2020, the Dog Regulation Task Force was created, to rewrite Orleans’ dog regulations. That story is not pretty either, but this page is also not the place to tell the details. The key point is that Town Government attempted to manipulate and bully the task force into imposing a leash law and/or apply to a charity for funds to build the sewage treatment plan park. I know this because I was first a member and then the Chair.


In 2022 there was what I judge to be a hugely inappropriate effort by the Select Board to drag the Orleans Police Chief into the fray, by having him “recommend a leash law.” That story is appalling, in my judgment, but this page is not the place to tell it.


Finally, in 2024, several petitioners asked the Select Board to consider problems at Kent’s Point which they asserted were caused by “overuse”:


https://www.town.orleans.ma.us/DocumentCenter/View/7825/2024-Kents-Pt-Petition-KLA
It was signed by five nearby landowners:

Key assertions the petitioners made were that:


We believe there are, annually, 45,000 vistors [sic] each year – and likely tens of thousands more. Many do not respect the area for the special asset that it is.
Young children—even infants—have been jumped on by pets.
The first assertion, about lack of respect, lacks evidence and is somewhat “othering.” The second assertion is closer to what I call “red meat.” This is the type of thing you win with when you’re trying to sway a crowd or a community. There was only one problem, though: Soon after the petition appeared, I had coffee with Devon P., one of the petition's signers, and then followed up by texting him. In one of my messages, I asked if he could give me details about the incident he had testified at before the Select Board, in which a dog had – according to him – pawed at his baby while his wife had been carrying their son in a forward-facing carrier.
Surprisingly, Devon couldn’t remember one single detail: not the time, approximate location, appearance of dog, appearance of owners – nothing. I have a screen shot of our conversation, and I have provided it to the Select Board. When I brought this up to the Conservation Commission, they shut down conversation in a bizarre way which led to the Chair officially admitting to an Open Meeting Law violation. When I mentioned it to a Select Board member, they shrugged it off, commenting that “we take these things with a grain of salt.” My perspective is that I want Orleans boards and committees to be as impeccable as possible about using true data, and I would personally send someone home (with permission to come back and start over) if I discovered that a key piece of evidence was probably unreliable. Therefore, I find this casual enablement of such “sloppiness” (I’m being kind) disturbing. It’s also disturbing to me that the petition is on the Town website, such that the Town is actually publishing these inflammatory assertions. My subjective assessment of why Town officials tolerate such things is that they are members of Orleans' Anti-Dog Walker "tribe" at heart, and this primitive loyalty is more important to them than ethics or actual problem-solving.
Anyway, there was a $15,000 environmental assessment which was delivered in February, 2025, and I thought that would be the end of things, because it did not support any of the petitioners assertions about “overuse,” and the need for access restrictions. However, the Conservation Commission and at least some of the members of the Select Board are gamely soldiering on, apparently hoping that we won’t notice that it’s all a sham (not to mention illegal). Now you’re up to date.
Let’s move on to explore Town Government’s deceptions about the environmental expert’s report …