News
After the Storm, Sledding Is Fine Sport from Farm Neck Fairways to Tashmoo
By MAX HART
The snowdrifts near the tee box on the third hole at Farm Neck Golf Club in Oak Bluffs are deep, very deep.
So deep, in fact, that they rise up past the waist of an average-sized adult, a good three to four feet of snow. Trying to wade through them is an exercise in absurdity; it's nearly impossible to navigate without falling on your face.
Tea Lane Residents Clamor for Paving Ancient Town Byway
By MAX HART
Fed up with the ruts and potholes on their dirt road, residents along historic Tea Lane in Chilmark are pleading with town leaders to consider paving the 242-year-old byway.
"This is not just a colonial road anymore," Thomas Rivers, a resident who lives off Tea Lane, told the Gazette this week. "This is a colonial road in modern times, and it is failing its residents. It is past time that the town responds accordingly, and some of us think that means paving it."
State environmental officials said this week that they will delay and radically change a plan to clear more than 500 acres of planted trees in the
School Study Group Sees Little Progress
Task Force Charged with Fiscal Probe of Up-Island Regional School District Hits One Roadblock After Another
By IAN FEIN
A study group charged with evaluating the finances of the Up-Island Regional School District hit yet another snag this week, as the deadline for consultant proposals came and went without a single response.
The financial analysis was supposed to be ready for annual town meetings in April - but that timeline now appears well out of reach.
Oak Bluffs voters this week narrowly defeated a proposal to include the North Bluff section of town in the Cottage City Historic District.
Against a backdrop of escalating property values and the high cost of construction, housing starts on the Vineyard fell in 2004 for the second straight year.
A total of 1,210 building permits from the Island's six towns were issued in 2004, down seven per cent from the 2003 total of 1,300 and eight per cent from the 1,311 permits granted in 2002. Four of the Vineyard's six towns saw drops in the number of total building permits issued; only Aquinnah and West Tisbury saw increases.