News
After more than eight years of controversy, a final decision on the Cape Wind development planned for Nantucket Sound will be made by the end of April, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar promised this week.
Mr. Salazar made the commitment after an exhaustive round of meetings in Washington on Wednesday involving all the major parties supporting and opposing the development, which would see 130 wind turbines, each more than 400 feet tall, placed in federal waters on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound.
The basis of John Thayer’s complaint to the Tisbury selectmen this week was simple inequity. Mr. Thayer receives a $240 a year stipend for being a Department of Public Works commissioner, while two other commissioners receive their stipend plus health benefits worth around $20,000 a year.
Spokesmen for the Island Housing Trust found themselves on the hot seat Monday when they appeared before the West Tisbury planning board to ask for an amendment to a special permit for the eight-unit project nearing completion at 250 State Road. Required under bank lending rules, the amendment adds language that will allow the homes to be sold at market rates if they ever go into foreclosure.
The phone is ringing at Nectar’s nightclub near the airport with requests to book shows for the coming summer, but the owners say before they can commit to scheduling musical acts, they need to be able to buy the place.
And they are hoping to do just that.
A light, peaceful snow draped the West Tisbury School last Friday morning. If principal Michael Halt sees snow again in the coming months, it may be a world away, perhaps from a remote outpost in the central highlands of Afghanistan or the jagged Hindu Kush.
Tuesday afternoon’s earthquake in Haiti measured seven on the Richter scale, but the tragedy it created is incalculable. Yet as cries of “Amwe! Amwe!” — ”Help me!” in Creole — were reported heard in the rubble of a primary school in a Port-au-Prince neighborhood, already Vineyarders of all ages were doing what they could to answer the call.