News
Citing budgetary concerns, the Oak Bluffs wastewater commission voted Thursday to eliminate plant manager Joe Alosso’s position.
“It wasn’t a performance-based decision. It was really a financial decision,” wastewater commissioner Gail Barmakian said Saturday, adding that the town needs to cut costs and she preferred not to raise rates for wastewater users.
For the second year in a row, Bob Dillon and Michelle Baum of The Little Red Smokehouse in Carver, Mass., took home the top prize in the professional division at the Martha’s Vineyard Big Chili (“Chilifest”) Contest on Saturday. The event, which draws attendees from across New England, is in its 26th year.
Ms. Baum said the secret to the award-winning chili lie in simply smoking the meat rather than “adding fire.”
The town of Oak Bluffs has decided to take a harder look at operations at the Goodale’s Sand and Gravel Pit in Oak Bluffs. Recently-appointed building inspector James Dunn has determined that a hot asphalt storage silo operating on the site since last April runs afoul of town zoning.
Vineyarders are rightfully proud of the yearly abundance of oysters and scallops pulled from Island ponds, but little is made of what goes back into the water. Jessica Kanozak, creator of the Island’s nascent shell recovery program, hopes to change all that. After the first year of a pilot program on the Vineyard to return seashells to the sea, experts and community leaders met Saturday to discuss the program’s strengths, weaknesses and potential for expansion.
It is months away from the start of both the recreational and commercial fishing season, yet already there is change ahead. Fisheries managers, looking at the health of fish stocks, are making a regulatory forecast and some predictions about the availability of fish for the year ahead.
Striped bass, one of the most precious resources in our waters, will likely be more scarce this summer, and anglers who love to catch fluke will likely be able to take more home.
At least three Island towns will likely be asking voters in the spring what they think about the controversial roundabout, even as town officials said this week not even a lawsuit could stop the project if the state decides to go ahead with it.
Oak Bluffs this week joined the towns of Edgartown and West Tisbury in certifying petitions for a nonbinding referendum about the project on annual election ballots. All three towns would pose the simple question: Should a roundabout be built at the blinker intersection of Edgartown-Vineyard Haven and Barnes Roads?