News
Real Estate Classes
Beginning this month January, Dukes Academy, the Vineyard’s only licensed real estate school, will add to its existing continuing education curriculum in response to the current socioeconomic issues confronting the marketplace. New courses include Foreclosures and Commercial Real Estate Basics, Massachusetts Consumer Protection Law, 93A, Commonly Used Real Estate Forms, Massachusetts Real Estate License Law and Brokerage Relationships.
Island Grown Schools, the Island Grown Initiative’s farm-to-school program, is set to bring more local produce into school meals and snacks in 2009, developing a connection between cafeterias and farms that helps create a year-round market for locally-grown foods and a source of off-season income for Island farmers.
Neighbor complaints about singing and music classes held at the West Tisbury branch of the Fellowship of Christians and Universities and Schools (FOCUS) could lead to a formal review by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission of whether the youth ministry violated its conditions of approval from 13 years ago.
Jan. 5, the day of the annual Christmas Bird Count, was freezing, snowy and windy. Not the sort of day you would expect to find a vagrant from the tropics.
But there on the beach at Squibnocket, Bob Woodruff spotted a species not usually seen north of the tip of Florida. How did it come to be there, dead in the sand thousands of miles north of its usual range?
Alas it may always remain a mystery; the one sure thing is that it didn’t fly. For their find was not a bird at all, but a lump of brain coral, Diploria strigosa, indigenous to the Caribbean.
An engineering report for Ocean Park in Oak Bluffs concludes that years of soggy conditions and flooding can be traced to failing septic grids, storm water runoff and a poorly functioning irrigation system.
Prepared by the engineering firm of Stearns & Wheler in response to a notice of noncompliance issued by the State Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) on Sept. 22, the report was due by Jan. 22. State DEP spokesmen visited the park in late August and found flooding and treated effluent seeping to the surface.
Refusing to take no for an answer, proponents of beer and wine sales in Tisbury and two of the three selectmen have opted to again put the town through the referendum process which split voters literally down the middle last year.
The warrant for this year’s annual town meeting will again contain an article seeking a home rule petition which would allow restaurants with a seating capacity of 30 or more — including restaurants in within inns and hotels, to offer alcohol with meals.