News
Calling All Poets
The Island Voices poetry performance series continues at Che’s Lounge on Wednesday, June 3 at 7:30 p.m. All Island poets are invited. The event is slated to continue weekly through the summer, with a roster including spoken word performers, rappers and freestylers, slam poets, singer-songwriters, and free verse and traditional form poets.
The American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life sets up at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School next week for its sixth annual event. Teams of walkers and runners will gather at 3 p.m. on Friday, June 5 and most will camp overnight so they can continue taking turns on the track until the event ends at noon on Saturday.
In a strong endorsement of the planning powers of local towns, a superior court judge this week upheld Edgartown’s right to stop a Chappaquiddick resident from using a backyard “heliport” to fly to and from his property.
The Hon. Cornelius J. Moriarty, an associate justice of the superior court, upheld the town’s cease and desist order relating to the heliport and permanently enjoined the owner, William S. O’Connell, from using his property as a site for launching and/or landing helicopters.
Notice to our readers: the Gazette begins its twice-weekly publication this week, so watch for the Tuesday edition, beginning June 2. Summer is certain to follow. See you Tuesday.
Faced with a budget deficit for the current and next fiscal years that could total $1 million or more combined, Oak Bluffs officials are bracing for hard choices likely to include a special town meeting to slash spending as well as laying off some town employees.
A project to build an experimental blue mussel farm off the Vineyard has cleared a thorny bureaucratic hurdle and may begin as soon as a month from now.
Believed to be an innovative and key leg of a movement to revive the fishing industry here, the project has the backing of state, local and federal funds.
But a requirement for an archaeological survey at the deep water site was threatening to delay the project, and late last week Rick Karney, director of the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group, was hopping mad.