If the effort to save the Denniston House in Oak Bluffs was a thorny process, demolishing it may prove just as difficult. In a unanimous vote, the Oak Bluffs historical commission determined on Wednesday that the old house meets the definition of a historically significant building.
Ongoing concerns about density were aired last week during a public hearing on a plan to replace the existing one-story Wave Lengths hair salon building on Upper Main street in Edgartown with a three-story mixed-use residential commercial building, and to build another three-story residential building in the parking lot behind it.
Next Tuesday voters in cash-strapped Oak Bluffs will be asked to decide a number of tax and spending questions, and one question on the size of town government itself.
A petition signed by 159 Oak Bluffs taxpayers calls for reducing the number of selectmen in town from five to three. Oak Bluffs is the only town on the Island with a five-member board of selectmen.
By PETER BRANNEN
Add a triathlon in Oak Bluffs to the long list of long-distance events available to Island athletes. On Tuesday this week the Oak Bluffs selectmen voted to allow a triathlon that will take place next year on the morning of Sept. 11.
After a tepid response from Chilmark, race coordinator Matthew Brackman had to redesign what was originally an up-Island race. The event now will include a one-mile swim along State Beach, a roughly 25-mile bike ride and a 6.2-mile run that is hoped to attract up to 500 competitors.
From now until at least next spring, anyone who wants to put up a wind turbine — on land, except in Edgartown and at sea anywhere within three miles of the Island — must go before the Martha’s Vineyard Commission for review.
With a yearlong moratorium on large wind turbines set to expire, the commission voted last Thursday to extend the period that towns have to develop final wind regulations until at least the next spring town meeting cycle.
A blast reverberated around the Island on Wednesday night as an off-Island team of Naval explosives experts detonated five potentially dangerous World War II-era bombs on the beach near Quansoo in West Tisbury.
On Wednesday morning a couple walking the beach near the cut between Tisbury Great Pond and the Atlantic Ocean discovered a suspicious object in the water and contacted the police.
