Moves are afoot to use the economic stimulus package being planned by President Bush and Congress to deal with the national economic crisis, to also resolve an immigration problem which threatens to leave Island businesses without their usual supply of foreign seasonal workers.
Cong. William Delahunt is pushing the proposal to restore immigration provisions of the H2B visa scheme, which have expired as a result of the Congressional gridlock over immigration law.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has finally put beyond doubt the power of local officials to prevent developers from tearing down small houses on undersized lots and replacing them with McMansions.
Almost two and a half years after the state’s highest court deadlocked 3-3 in the case of Katama homeowners who wanted to double the size of their house on a substandard half-acre lot, the court came down decisively against such practices in an almost identical case involving a house in Norwell.
America’s first major offshore wind power generation project, Cape Wind, has cleared a key hurdle after a comprehensive federal environmental study found it would have no lasting major adverse impacts on wildlife, navigation, fishing, tourism or recreation.
The draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) by the Minerals Management Service, running to almost 2,000 pages, will now be subject to a process of community consultation, but if no major new concerns surface, federal approval of the $1 billion project appears likely by around the end of the year.
By 10 p.m. on the night of the New Hampshire primary, the signature chants of the hundreds of Barack Obama faithful gathered in the Nashua school gymnasium were getting pretty thin.
Sporadically, and particularly when the big screen on the wall cut to the speeches of the various Republican candidates — whose contest had been decided two hours previously — the call-and-response broke out still.
“Fired Up. Ready to go”.
The Steamship Authority appears likely to go to court to stop a Vineyard barge operator from bringing rental cars to and from the Island for the summer tourist season.
SSA general manager Wayne Lamson told a meeting of the boat line governors on Tuesday that repeated warnings to the barge operator had gone unheeded, and that any further shipments would bring legal action.
Ralph Packer, who owns Tisbury Towing and Transportation, said yesterday he believed the company was entitled to continue the practice.
In frustration over their failure to negotiate change to what they consider a blatantly unfair state-imposed formula for funding the regional high school, Tisbury selectmen will take the matter to court.
A lawsuit filed in Dukes County Superior Court last Friday names the Massachusetts Board of Education, the Acting Commissioner of Education Jeffrey Nellhaus, Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School and the town of Oak Bluffs as defendants in the matter.
