WIPING OUT LYME

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

Lyme disease comes from deer ticks. Deer ticks spend a crucial part of their life on deer. Eliminating or at least dramatically reducing the number of deer will reduce and perhaps eliminate new cases of Lyme. That much seems clear. The well-written and informative article by Peter Brannen in last week’s Gazette documents some of the work by Matt Poole and others to lead our Island community through the learning process. It behooves all of us to learn all we can about this insidious disease and at the same time we should be asking a lot more questions about the deer.

White-tailed deer lived here for thousands of years but were essentially wiped out by farmers during the 18th and 19th centuries, and were only reintroduced during the 20th century by hunters, so hunters would have them to hunt. Fallow deer (smallish deer with very large antlers) were also introduced mid-20th century for the same purpose, but they eventually died out.

The state Department of Natural Resources has done a wonderful job of managing the Island deer population to provide the largest possible kill each autumn. No kidding, if we think of deer as a farm crop and the DNR as the farmers, it is hard to imagine they could do a better job. The problem comes when we as a community change our priorities and begin looking at the deer as a disease vector instead of a sport.

It is time to consider the possibility that our collective good health is more important than having deer to hunt. I believe it really is past time and that we should take the extreme step of declaring all deer pests and allow them to be shot by anyone at any time. Of course all the usual safety measures should still apply, but there are plenty of hunters still on Martha’s Vineyard who would make quick work of the bulk of the deer herd.

Chris Murphy

Chilmark

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NO ON TWO

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

I have been involved in affordable housing for the Island since 2000, when there was a major forum raising awareness about the lack of secure year-round housing for our community. I was a founding member of the Secure Housing Action Committee, which created events to raise awareness of the problem. I joined the board of the fund-raising Island Affordable Housing Fund at that time and, from there, founded and served on affordable housing committees in Chilmark. I served on the boards of the regional housing authority, which runs lotteries for the towns when they create affordable housing and which manages affordable rental housing and helps their tenants. And I served on the board of the Island Housing Trust, which builds affordable ownership housing across the Island. I have not worked with Island Elderly Housing or Habitat for Humanity, which have been major success stories, but have admired their work.

Why am I writing all this? Because question two on the ballot this Nov. 2 would repeal our state’s affordable housing law. Without it, we wouldn’t have all the Island Elderly Housing apartments. We wouldn’t have Morgan Woods in Edgartown. We wouldn’t have several Habitat for Humanity houses and most other affordable housing in towns across the Island.

We still have neighbors who need affordable rental and ownership opportunities. They are hurting in this economy and will leave our community unless we find ways for them to get year-round, secure, affordable housing. For the health of our community, we cannot let them go.

So I hope you will join me in voting no on question two. It will stop Islanders who are working hard to help working families and seniors to secure affordable housing.

Zelda Gamson

Chilmark

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LOST LOYALTY

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

Some have called for a referendum on the subject of wind factories planned in federal and state waters to surround the Vineyard. Well, we’re having just such a referendum in November — it is called an election.

We will be asked to give Deval Patrick four more years, or to strike out in a different direction by electing another.

Governor Patrick is unyielding on his insistence on surrounding our Island with skyscrapers called wind turbines — at least 300. We who ask questions are called names (NIMBY) by him and by his Secretary of Energy and the Environment.

The concerns of the U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service in which they pointed out the total lack of information on which to base such decisions remain as unanswered today as when they were made in November of 2009.

A brief comparison with the studies conducted by Rhode Island before the promulgation of their plan is clear evidence of the slipshod lack of planning that preceded the issuance of Governor Patrick’s Ocean Plan.

His specious, even demagogic, arguments in favor of wind factories — lowering dependence on foreign oil, reducing CO2, etc., are easily dismissed. Less than one per cent of New England power is generated by oil; the U.S. is a net exporter of oil; wind is intermittent, can’t be stored, and therefore requires backup generation facilities powered by conventional sources.

Further, the governor’s insistence on requiring captive energy distributors to get credits only for the purchase of renewable energy generated in the state — notwithstanding the abundance of much less costly renewable energy from elsewhere — is contrary to the public good and would benefit only wind developers and politicians. The effect of this would soak Massachusetts taxpayers and ratepayers without doing anything constructive for the environment.

I voted for Governor Patrick last time with great optimism. Since then, Governor Patrick’s administration has overturned the centuries old public trust doctrine, repealed the ocean sanctuaries act and systematically weakened and undermined our tradition of local control — all without any public benefit whatsoever. And now that the true costs and burden to Massachusetts ratepayers of the expensive Cape Wind project are finally known, Governor Patrick continues to support this fiscally irresponsible project.

The governor and his administration won’t even engage in dialogue regarding their decision to locate the state’s only commercial-scale wind factory in our waters, most recently failing even to send a representative to the candidates’ forum on offshore wind energy in Chilmark this past August. Consequently, we are left with no other remedy but regime change to effect a public policy change.

I reach this conclusion reluctantly and with a sad feeling — a lifelong “yellow-dog” Democrat forced to follow the lead of our great President John F. Kennedy when he said, “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.” I am 75 years old and will be voting for my first Republican gubernatorial candidate, Charlie Baker.

Because protecting the Vineyard’s values and our way of life from being destroyed in the name of global warming — without actually doing anything to reduce global warming — is my overriding concern, I am required to vote for someone other than Governor Patrick.

While all of the other candidates take a better position on these matters than Governor Patrick, I believe that Charlie Baker has the best chance to prevail and that he will halt the wind tsunami that threatens to engulf our Islands and on all levels will serve us well and be an excellent governor.

Andrew Goldman

Chilmark

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KEEP DRIVER’S ED

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

I think it is a serious mistake not to provide an in-school-based driving school for our teenagers. I have a 16-year-old daughter attending our high school, and below are some sobering statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. How much effort was actually made searching for an instructor for this driving course?

• Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among 15 to 20-year-olds.

• 16-year-olds have higher crash rates than drivers of any other age.

• 16-year-olds are three times more likely to die in a motor vehicle crash than the average of all drivers.

• The number of drivers ages 15 to 20 involved in fatal crashes totaled 5,864 in 2008.

• In states with GDL programs there was a 20 per cent reduction in fatal crashes involving 16-year-old drivers.

Paul D. Adler

West Tisbury

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DIRT BIKE INTRUSION

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

Perhaps you live in West Tisbury, famous for its bucolic heritage, its serenity. Now imagine your neighbor hosts jet ski races two to four times a week for three hours a day on his lake. Or imagine another neighbor has several guys over to have a chainsaw contest, again two to four times a week for a couple of hours. Imagine the grating noise, spreading over a radius of a couple of miles. Or imagine a half dozen or more guys getting together two to four times a week for a dirt bike motorcycle race.

Oh wait: we don’t have to imagine that last disturbance of the peace because it takes place every week next to the Nip ’n Tuck Farm property just off State Road.

It takes place illegally. It has for many months.

These are dirt bikes, noisier than most street motorcycles. They rev high while they race around and their sound is invasive, coming through even the neighborhood’s closed windows. The noise disrupts work at home, it sends quiet outdoor gatherings inside, and it is antithetical to why people choose to live in West Tisbury.

Wait, you say, we were careful; we have laws to prevent this sort of thing, to preserve our way of life. And we do. These excerpts are from the West Tisbury town bylaws:

Section 8.5-2 (A), Nonresidential Uses in the RU (rural) and VR (village residential) districts — (the land being used for these races is rural) — states, firstly, “There shall be no evidence of the use through persistent or excessive sound, vibration or odor at the boundaries of the premises.” So if the sound exceeds the property’s boundaries, the law is being broken. Section 8.5-2 (G): “(Nonresidential uses) shall not create hazards, unacceptable disturbances, unacceptable injury to the neighborhood or unsightliness visible from any public way or neighboring property.”

The bylaws extend these restrictions even further in Section 3.2-1, “Prohibited Uses in All Districts: Any building or structure or any use of any building, structure or premises which is injurious, obnoxious, offensive, dangerous or a nuisance to the community or to the neighborhood through noise vibration, odors, fumes, smoke, gases, dust, harmful fluids or substances, danger of fire or explosion or other objectionable feature detrimental to the community or neighborhood health, safety, convenience, or welfare.”

The bylaws also clarify that loud residential noise — prohibited from 10 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. — refers to “excessive or unusual noises in the operation of any radio, phonograph or other mechanical sound-making device or instrument or in the playing of any band, orchestra, musician, or group of musicians, etc.” It specifically addresses music and party-type noise; dirt bike racing is not an acceptable residential use of property at any time.

The West Tisbury police have been informed about this activity, as has the building and zoning inspector. I urge anyone who considers loud dirt bike racing an assault on our town’s — our Island’s — soul to take three minutes and phone them and insist this activity does not gain a foothold and become a disgraceful precedent, a slippery slope indeed for any town on this Island. Imagine what your neighborhood would be like if the laws were not upheld.

Wayne K. Greenwell

West Tisbury

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POOR TREATMENT

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

The following letter was sent to Andrew Kendall at The Trustees of Reservations:

Everyone knows that to play fair, you can’t change the rules in the middle of the game. For a controlling authority to arbitrarily and unilaterally change the way events are scored once the game begins is, without question, contrary to every accepted principle of “fairness.” As such, it speaks for itself. Yet this is what TTOR has done in the Babson matter. As a result of TTOR’s flawed management restructuring, David Babson was inadvertently set up for failure and then made the scapegoat for an incident that was not his fault.

TTOR hired David Babson to be the superintendent of its Chappy property — like predecessors, the person in charge and responsible for managing all aspects of its operation — and then with a management restructuring, put another person, the engagement manager, on that property tasked with generating more cash flow for TTOR under the banner of education and community outreach. (Reasonable people question whether the blatantly commercial aspects of this reorganization are a good fit to TTOR’s charter . . . but I digress.)

Until then, Babson, like his predecessors, was in complete control of the property and able to make changes to staff assignments to fulfill his mandate. However, the engagement manager came on without staff and took staff from Babson by assuming responsibility for the income generating tasks that, until then, were in the superintendent’s domain. Those staff were mostly engaged in the sale of T-shirts, beach tours, kayak rides and fishing parties; however, they were always available as and when needed as determined by Babson to satisfy top priority needs, such as bird monitoring. But on the day of the incident a request from Babson to the engagement manager for a staff member to cover a bird monitoring need went unanswered and a needed bird monitor’s station was not manned. And that, Mr. Kendall, was the direct cause of the least tern endangerment issue which drove Babson’s forced resignation. Facts on the ground pose the question: Which is more important, generating cash flow or protecting an endangered species?

Mr. Kendall, you as president of TTOR have the responsibility and the authority overall of TTOR operations and personnel. It is rightly so, as like a ship’s captain or aircraft’s pilot there can be only one person in command if they are to be held responsible for a successful outcome. Until recently our Chappy community had regular reports as to David Babson’s outstanding progress on the Chappy superintendent learning curve. You had put a second person, the engagement manager, like a second captain or pilot, with a competing agenda in a position to dilute, and in certain areas to control, Babson’s authority and actions — and yet you held Babson entirely responsible for the endangerment issue. You call that fair?

Furthermore, is it not true that the person reporting the incident, a person who reportedly had been earlier reprimanded by Babson, violated a standing rule that in the interests of reporting accuracy and pending confirmation, such matters were to be handled by cell phone, not the radio? There’s a “gotcha” aspect to the use of the Island communication system radio, as it immediately raised a questionable bird endangerment issue that turned out to be a nonevent, into a big deal reportable incident and a TTOR embarrassment. One wonders what retraining and/or disciplinary action was taken or planned as regards that person and their failure to follow procedure?

For TTOR’s long-term benefit it is suggested that it correct its flawed Chappy property management structure to restore the one-property, one-man rule before hiring a new superintendent who will otherwise face the same no-win, set-up-to-fail situation that was imposed on David Babson by TTOR’s midgame rule change. All the functions, T-shirt sales, kayak rides, beach tours, fishing parties, etc, handed off to the engagement manager rightfully fits, as in the past, within the superintendent’s jurisdiction. (Community outreach seems to be a more appropriate corporate-level function.) If this had been the case, then Babson would have had a needed bird monitor in place and this matter would never have occurred. The conflicting interests and agendas so evident in TTOR’s current property management structure are obvious to the most casual observer and one would question the judgement of TTOR management in general, and Babson’s direct supervisors in particular, as to why they couldn’t see the inherent, intuitively obvious problems.

Furthermore, David Babson and his family deserve justice and fair treatment which has been absent thus far. Fair treatment demands that they be made well and compensated financially and otherwise to repair the damage that this TTOR management failure caused.

Edward Trider

Chappaquiddick

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GENEROUS DONATION

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High school junior class would like to thank Karpet Kare for the generous donation of tile they installed on the counter of the football concession stand, which is located near the high school’s football field. The concession stand sells food and drinks at every varsity home football game, and the money we make helps sponsor the junior class prom. The counter of the concession stand was in need of repair, and Karpet Kare not only donated the tile and labor costs but they thoughtfully installed the new tile counter in short notice so we would be ready for our first game. The tile looks great, and the junior class is incredibly thankful!

Meghan McHugh

Edgartown

The writer is junior class president.