News
After five years of division over whether or not beer and wine should be sold in Tisbury restaurants, five years of discussion and debate, ceaseless lobbying and innumerable letters to the editor, the issue will go to a vote of the townspeople this Tuesday.
An extraordinary group of right whales — some 95 living specimens of the rarest of all large whale species — was feeding in the waters between Martha’s Vineyard and Block Island this week, while two mother and calf right whale pairs were spotted even closer to the Island.
On Saturday, federal scientists in the air saw one mother and calf pair just a mile or two off Oak Bluffs harbor, and on Tuesday, a distinct pair was spotted in Vineyard Sound.
A one-year moratorium on wind turbine applications and an array of housing initiatives, including a bylaw that addresses the thorny issue of inheritance for the children of affordable housing recipients, top the list of business for a double-header special and annual town meeting in Chilmark next week.
The meeting is Monday night in the Chilmark Community Center; longtime moderator Everett H. Poole will preside. The special town meeting begins at 7:30 p.m., immediately followed by the annual town meeting at 8 p.m. There are a total 31 articles on the two warrants.
The first two tumultuous nights of the Oak Bluffs town meeting are over, and despite some frayed nerves, the town has an approved budget for next year. Voters ratified a balanced budget in the amount of $24.7 million.
But that is only because at the town election last Thursday they rejected 11 of 12 Proposition 2 1/2 override articles, totaling some $650,000.
The result will mean no pay increases for the fire department, more than $200,000 cuts in road maintenance and improvements and no lifeguards at town beaches for the second summer in a row.
Learn Business Basics
To help potential and existing entrepreneurs on the Vineyard, the South Eastern Economic Development (SEED) Corporation and Martha’s Vineyard Savings Bank will hold two free, basic business workshops at the Harbor View Hotel in Edgartown on Wednesday, April 14.
Learn the Fundamentals in Planning and Financing Your Business will be held from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. Registration begins at 8 a.m. Breakfast and lunch will be provided free of charge to attendees.
The recently completed temporary Lagoon Pond drawbridge in Vineyard Haven that took six years to build and cost over $9 million is already suffering from some of the same problems that plagued the old drawbridge that was torn down last year.