Debate Continues on Fair Share in Up-Island School Finances

By CHRIS BURRELL

Voters in West Tisbury will need more than a calculator to sort out the dispute raging up-Island over school costs.

Less than one week after Vineyard schools leaders unveiled financial scenarios showing that it would cost West Tisbury more than $600,000 in one year if it withdrew from the school region, the finance committee is busily crunching numbers and reaching an entirely different conclusion.

SSA Management Sets a Course for Collision on Security Measures

By JULIA WELLS
Gazette Senior Writer

Turning a deaf ear on the growing uproar among Islanders over a controversial new policy that will bar people from staying in their cars on board ferries, senior managers at the Steamship Authority announced flatly this week that the policy is expected to go into effect sometime later this month.

Oak Bluffs Is Set to Accept Bid for Vineyard's Largest Library

By CHRIS BURRELL

The backyard of Oak Bluffs town hall doesn't look like much now, but sometime this spring on a patch of dirt and grass that was once a school playground, the Island's largest public library will begin to rise up.

Bids for the new library were opened last week, and six of the seven came within the $3.5 million budget.

Heralded as the last of the coastal steamships in America, the steamer Nobska will be scrapped if her owners are unable to find a way to float her

It was built for skateboarders after a grassroots effort that lasted years, but less than three months after the Martha's Vineyard Skatepark opened in Oak Bluffs, the skaters are dealing with some uninvited guests - bicyclists.

Sweet Clover: Beloved Cow Had a Gentle Way with Kids

By MANDY LOCKE

Clover, a docile Brown Swiss cow that lured youngsters to her stall at the agricultural fair for nearly two decades, died in her sleep early Wednesday morning. She was 19.

The Island's only Brown Swiss, Clover - also known as Dairy Queen by those who loved her - came to the Vineyard in December of 1984, at the age of four weeks. Amy Lawry bought her as a birthday gift for her husband, Harold.