The Oak Bluffs selectmen have released the minutes of a May 9 executive session during which the board voted to terminate town administrator Casey Sharpe without cause, triggering a clause in her contract to pay her more than $76,000 in salary, sick time and vacation pay.
After leaving her post July 15, Ms. Sharpe received $45,427 for six months’ salary and $31,449 in unused sick days, for a total payout of $76,876.
Using charts, graphs and an encyclopedic knowledge of sharks, a leading state marine biologist told the Oak Bluffs selectmen this week that the embattled Boston Big Game Fishing Club's Monster Shark tournament is less about drinking beer and killing sharks, and more about providing a rare opportunity to collect vital information for research.
On the surface, the four candidates running for the open seat on the
Oak Bluffs board of selectmen in next week's special election
share the same ideas on most of the major issues in recent town
politics.
Herbert A. (Bert) Combra Jr., Kenneth DeBettencourt, Ronald DiOrio
and David E. Morris Jr. are all vying for the single seat vacated when
former selectman Michael Dutton stepped down to take over as town
administrator.
Not so long ago, it was commonplace for Vineyard towns to have multiple blacksmith shops: thriving places of commerce that sold items such as bolts, hinges, horseshoes, cooking utensils and iron gates.
But as the all-consuming age of the machine took hold, the old village smithy went the way of the horse and buggy. The last blacksmith on the Island was Orin Norton, who operated a shop in Edgartown for sixty years until his death in 1961.
Like an ominous dorsal fin appearing behind unsuspecting bathers set
to the familiar theme music from Jaws, debate over the Boston Big Game
Fishing Club Monster Shark Tournament resurfaced these past few weeks
just as the countdown to the summer season began in earnest.
In a return to form of sorts, Oak Bluffs selectmen on Tuesday clashed over what seemed like a relatively harmless plan to allow principal assessor Dianne Wilson to work a three-day work week with longer days instead of a traditional five-day work week.
The Boston Pops concert at Ocean Park in Oak Bluffs was a highlight of summer last year, and with an attendance figure of 5,000 people it ranked among the most attended Island event of the season.
Building on last year’s success, promoters this year want to expand the concert to include food and alcohol sales and also have a longer running time from early afternoon to late evening. They also want to put up high barricades along Seaview avenue to control crowds and to block people from watching the concert for free along the road and town beach.
Oak Bluffs selectmen unanimously approved an application to alter the premises over Danny Quinn’s Pub, allowing Mark Wallace to move forward with plans to create a banquet hall facility that could accommodate large events such as weddings, dances and balls.
Selectmen agreed to sign off on an application that will be sent to the Alcohol Beverage Control Commission (ABCC). Under state law any establishment that serves alcohol is required to make an application to the ABCC any time they make substantive changes to the premises.
The time-honored Vineyard tradition of jumping off the Big Bridge into Sengekontacket Pond has now been joined by a yearly concern about the safety of jumpers — not for their daring leaps into the water below, but for the time they spend sitting and standing on the bridge as traffic whizzes by.
Low railings that divide pedestrians, including bridge jumpers, from Beach Road are the worry, and Oak Bluffs and Edgartown are taking steps to address the problem that they say ultimately should be dealt with by the state.
