Tom Pachico
On one side, there’s the “together we can change” candidate, and on the other, the “straight talk” express. We’re talking not about Obama and McCain here, but Kristal and Pachico.
Tom Pachico is the one positioned as your straight talk guy. If he sometimes comes across as a little combative, well, at least you know where he stands.
Consider this example, from Wednesday this week, as he talked about the race for selectman.
If Tisbury restaurants had begun laying down wines when the question of alcohol sales in the town first came up, they would have a nicely aged cellar by now.
It was September 2005 when the Tisbury Business Association first brought the idea of allowing restaurant sales of beer and wine before town selectmen. Now, close to three years later, after an exhaustive round of meetings, hearings and business and taxpayer surveys, it will finally be voted on this Tuesday.
In an unprecedented act of cooperation between conservation organizations, the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank and Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation have completed a $3 million deal which will see 145 acres at Quansoo fully protected from development.
The land was given to Sheriff’s Meadow by the late Florence (Flipper) Harris, whose great generosity was matched by the great prudence to realize the foundation might have to sell off part of the land if it were to raise the money to properly manage the rest of it.
Bruce Doten tried just about everything to deter Tisbury voters from their free-spending ways at Wednesday night’s annual town meeting.
He cited Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke’s dark views of the state of the economy. He quoted dead Presidents. He claimed the town was breaking the law by spending so much. He rebuked Tisbury parents for the way they raised their children.
The town of Edgartown moved this week to formally join the fight against Cape Wind, both out of specific concern about the impact of the project and a broader concern about the erosion of the powers of local government.
On Monday the selectmen authorized town counsel Ronald H. Rappaport to file a motion to intervene in the proceedings before the Energy Facilities Siting Board in support of the Cape Cod Commission and the towns of Yarmouth and Barnstable, which oppose Cape Wind.
Long before Texas gave the world its better-known gift to democracy, George W. Bush, it gave the Vineyard Deborah Medders.
It was 1988 when Ms. Medders came to the Island from the Lone Star state, and saw for the first time that unique New England exercise in participatory democracy which is town meeting. She was enthralled.
“I remember so clearly my first town meeting, winter 1988. I was just so taken with this government of the people by the people,” said Ms. Medders this week, after presiding over yet another town meeting.
