News
Tisbury police this week arrested two young men and charged them with the robbery of a 79-year-old Capawock theatre employee who was dropping off receipts for the evening in a nearby overnight bank deposit box.
Michael Ellis, 20, of Edgartown was taken into custody on Tuesday and Brett Geddis, 18, of Vineyard Haven was taken into custody on Wednesday. Both are suspected of robbing George Buckley on the evening of Sept. 30.
The national hot button issues of financial security and high fuel prices as they relate to one of the Island’s largest institutions occupied members of the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School committee at a meeting Monday night.
The question of whether the high school’s money is safely secured was brought up by committee member Susan Parker at a budget subcommittee meeting and again at the high school committee meeting.
With a scant four weeks left until the November election, the race for Cape and Islands state representative is heating up quietly as four candidates — one Democrat and three independents — begin to work their campaigns in earnest.
The real estate market on the Vineyard had already begun to see a sharp downturn this year, and the recent collapse in global financial markets and turmoil on Wall Street certainly has not made things better.
Statistical evidence gathered from Banker and Tradesman online, which compiles real estate figures from sale documents, shows the Dukes County housing market is off sharply from last year, with sales down almost 15 per cent and prices off by more than nine per cent.
Here on the Vineyard, the fun is over. This week saw the first light frost of the fall. Those who spent their summers in shacks are scuttling inside and sliding down the storm windows. Ocean bathers have become a scarce breed.
And while few have yet reached for the thermostat, there can be no doubt that looming on the horizon, alongside a diabolical financial crisis, is an army of monstrous energy bills.
As the national economy continues to sputter dangerously, the outlook for the Vineyard remains uncertain, especially when it comes to the main economic engines of construction and real estate, which by most accounts have fallen off dramatically in recent weeks.
And while there are few statistical measures, the anecdotes suggest that what was already going to be a long, hard winter is likely to be even harder now that problems have spread into the financial markets and wider economy.