Though it may be another five years before employment fully recovers from the recession, businesses who serve high-end consumers will bounce back fastest, Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce executive director Nancy Gardella told a meeting of Island businesswomen on Tuesday.

Already some Vineyard hotels had unexpectedly reported to her that this year’s spring and summer seasons had been their best ever, Ms. Gardella said, in a self-proclaimed optimistic take on the Island’s economic position.

Next Tuesday voters in cash-strapped Oak Bluffs will be asked to decide a number of tax and spending questions, and one question on the size of town government itself.

A petition signed by 159 Oak Bluffs taxpayers calls for reducing the number of selectmen in town from five to three. Oak Bluffs is the only town on the Island with a five-member board of selectmen.

More than 50 people crowded into the reading room at the West Tisbury Public Library on Saturday to hear Beth Lambert, river restoration program coordinator for the state Division of Ecological Restoration, discuss the state’s policy of dam destruction as a way of restoring natural stream ecology.

Ongoing concerns about density were aired last week during a public hearing on a plan to replace the existing one-story Wave Lengths hair salon building on Upper Main street in Edgartown with a three-story mixed-use residential commercial building, and to build another three-story residential building in the parking lot behind it.

Brianna Sylvia

Brianna L. Sylvia of West Tisbury, received a master of science in accounting degree from Western New England College on Oct. 15, 2010.

By PETER BRANNEN

Add a triathlon in Oak Bluffs to the long list of long-distance events available to Island athletes. On Tuesday this week the Oak Bluffs selectmen voted to allow a triathlon that will take place next year on the morning of Sept. 11.

After a tepid response from Chilmark, race coordinator Matthew Brackman had to redesign what was originally an up-Island race. The event now will include a one-mile swim along State Beach, a roughly 25-mile bike ride and a 6.2-mile run that is hoped to attract up to 500 competitors.