News
Potholes in roads will go without repairs, town beaches will have no lifeguards, more dogs may be running loose and fewer police officers will be directing traffic this summer in Oak Bluffs, as the town begins to feel the effects of bone-deep budget cuts from this spring.
In April town voters rejected 11 different Proposition 2 1/2 override articles totaling $650,000. As a result, town employees are being asked to do more with less just as the busy summer season arrives.
Cafe Moxie, the Tisbury restaurant destroyed by fire on July 4, 2008, seems sure to remain closed for a third summer season, its owner says.
Paul Currier said he now saw no way the rebuilding could be completed before the anniversary of the blaze, which also severely damaged the adjoining Bunch of Grapes bookstore, “and if you can’t open by July 4, you’ve pretty much missed the season.”
The reforestation of the eastern United States is widely seen as one of the greatest environmental success stories of this nation. And nowhere has the positive change been more dramatic than in New England.
Over about 100 years, forest cover re-established itself on about nine million acres of land. New England is now the nation’s most forested region, with trees now covering some 33 million acres of a total land area of 42 million acres. The environmental writer Bill McKibben described it as “an explosion of green.”
As the Atlantic Ocean continues its assault on the south-facing shoreline of the Vineyard, Lucy Vincent Beach in Chilmark has been turned into a hazard zone, its once-broad sweep of sand now chewed away by ocean waves and littered with pieces of collapsed cliff.
“The conditions are extremely dangerous, even for an experienced person like myself,” said Chilmark beach superintendent Martina Mastromonaco yesterday. “I think my biggest concern right now is keeping people away from the area.”
By MEGAN DOOLEY
Islanders are invited tomorrow for a roll in the clay with the owners of the new Flatbread pizza restaurant, which will share a building with Nectar’s nightclub at the airport this summer. They’ve already laid the foundation for the 20-ton clay oven that will fire their gourmet pizzas, but they’re inviting the community to pitch in with the rest.
A wide circle of friends showed up Tuesday night for an 80th summer celebration at Giordano’s Restaurant in Oak Bluffs. The anniversary party brought out more than 100 well-wishers over the course of the evening.