Next week the deer hunting season shifts from bow and arrow to shotgun.

“You are up close and personal when you are in archery season, at 20, maybe 30 yards away,” said Walter Ashley, an experienced hunter on the Island. “With a shotgun, it’s not so critical.”

Mr. Ashley has been hunting for nearly 50 years, whether it be bow and arrow, shotgun or muzzleloader.

“I’d go if they had a stick and stone season,” he said.

The Dukes County commission voted unanimously last week to seek an opinion from a labor lawyer over salary discrepancies between airport non-union employees and other county employees.

In a memorandum to the county commissioners at their Nov. 14 meeting, county manager Martina Thornton noted that four airport non-union employees received a 3.1 per cent cost of living adjustment while county employees received a 1.28 per cent adjustment in pay. The adjustments took effect July 1, at the start of the 2013 fiscal year.

The wind blows hard as Mark Crossland and his crew assemble the last of 18 Christmas trees in Ocean Park. Mr. Crossland and Alisson Brasil tie a rope in a knot at the end of a pole, mount the pole in the ground, cable the rope down, and start wrapping Christmas lights around the six-foot tree.

The guys zip-tie the string to the ropes, and splice each light to prevent burn-out. It takes the crew about a week to fill Ocean Park with the trees, which for now look a bit naked in the sunlight.

But at night?

The All-Island School Committee approved an 8.8 per cent increase in the superintendent’s budget for the 2014 fiscal year.

The committee voted 10-2, with Roxanne Ackerman of Aquinnah and Jeffrey (Skipper) Manter of West Tisbury opposing.

In his presentation to the committee last month, superintendent James H. Weiss admitted that the budget jump was steep.

“The budget increase is significantly higher than I would have liked,” he said at the meeting.

In 1991, Jason O’Donnell was on Coach Donald Herman’s first state championship football team at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School.

On Monday, Mr. O’Donnell is out on the field with the four other varsity assistant coaches alongside Coach Herman, helping the team prepare for the Island Cup this weekend.

After a tax rate classification hearing on Tuesday, Tisbury selectmen voted not to apply a tax shift to commercial properties and to continue the 20 per cent residential tax exemption of the average residential property value. Last year the average residential property value was $784,700 allowing residents to subtract $156,940 from their property values before paying their taxes. This year the average residential value in town is $757,475 resulting in a tax exemption of $151,495.