Sam Bungey
The last time a new president was sworn in the only Vineyard party to make the news was an anti-inaugural street march complete with protest placards and a theme song.
The Appetite Stimulus Plan
If you’re in London and Paris, you can find on the Internet maps to “recession restaurants” — because as Jaunted, the pop culture travel guide so eloquently puts it, “This financial crisis thing-y is global, and everyone everywhere still has to eat (lavishly).”
Responding to high demand, a grant-writing consultancy business is seeking to double a housing repairs assistance program to $2 million and open the program up to the Island.
The program was previously available to just Oak Bluffs and Tisbury home-owners, based on grants written by Bailey Boyd and Associates for the past five years. The program qualifies low or very low income households for forgivable loans up to $30,000 to fund home repair projects from roof, window and door replacement to energy saving changes.
Should there be a bike path on Chappaquiddick? The island has been mulling over the question on and off for 30 years.
And rarely has the bike path been as live as today. There is a committee. There is a Web site. There are scores of letters and over 300 official positions.
But no definitive answer is likely to be forthcoming in the near future, particularly now that a frugally minded Edgartown finance committee voted Wednesday against recommending funding a survey for a path with Community Preservation Act money.
Amid deep concern over the town’s economic future Edgartown town administrator Pamela Dolby announced in a letter sent yesterday that no municipal employees will receive a cost of living adjustment (COLA) to their salaries this year.
“We are struggling to fund operating budgets, fixed costs, and articles needed by various departments,” Ms. Dolby wrote in a letter to all departments, adding that anticipated state funding cuts remain one of several unknown quantities.
A plan to apply vigorous environmental protections to five Edgartown ancient ways met with little opposition at a public hearing Tuesday. If approved, the measure would give Edgartown more special ways than the remainder of the Island combined.
Chairman of the byways committee William (Boo) Bassett is a driving force behind a project to identify and legally protect all remaining ancient ways in Edgartown.