For the second time in six months, the Dukes County Regional Housing Authority has been unable to make its payments to landlords involved in its subsidized housing program.

But the executive director of the authority, David Vigneault, said yesterday he remained hopeful of making at least a partial payment within days.

In a press release late last Thursday, the due day for payment of some $20,000 to the owners of 35 properties, the authority said it had run out of money and could not make its April commitment.

When Tisbury voters convene for their annual town meeting on Tuesday, they will consider a town budget cut for economically difficult times.

Sure, the bottom line will be an increase of almost $450,000 or five per cent, but almost all that increase is attributable to two items, debt servicing cost and the town’s contribution to the regional high school. Take those out of the equation, said finance director Tim McLean, and the cost of everything else has increased by almost nothing.

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the elementary school gymnasium.

West Tisbury voters will face a 48-article warrant at the annual town meeting Tuesday that includes a controversial request to fund an engineering study for dredging the Mill Pond, $150,000 in Community Preservation Act spending to restore the First Congregational Church and a $13.2 million budget for the coming year.

When the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) were unceremoniously disbanded in 1944, Ann Lesnikowski of Vineyard Haven was told to go home, with no explanation or money for transportation. In the decades that followed, the memory of the first female military pilots was either forgotten or deliberately obscured. But on March 10 at a ceremony at the United States Capitol Ms. Lesnikowski and her remaining fellow WASPs finally received their due: a congressional gold medal, the highest civilian award in the country. “It was a long 60 years coming,” she said.

It’s spring cleaning time in Edgartown, and voters at the annual town meeting Tuesday will take up a 63-article warrant that calls for repairs to town roadways and walkways, restoration of historic buildings, the replacement of several town vehicles and a fresh start for renovating and expanding the town library.

The meeting is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. at the Old Whaling Church. Moderator Philip J. Norton Jr. will preside over the meeting.

One letter at a time. That was the drill on Wednesday morning this week as the nameplate went up over the entrance to the new Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. A Columbia Construction worker was perched on a ladder to do the job, while project manager Connie Bulman looked on, standing in an empty parking lot awash in unseasonably warm April sunshine. It was one of a flurry of final touches underway as the hospital prepares for its grand opening on Saturday night and Sunday morning this weekend.

Oak Bluffs voters will face a new round of tough financial decisions at the annual town meeting Tuesday, beginning with a $24.7 million operating budget that the town may or may not be able to afford, and ending with a dozen override questions totaling $647,000 that put voters between a rock and a hard place: pay more taxes or do without.

I’m the very model of the modern model citizen, although I’m not as beautiful a model as Heidi Klum, which explains why I have never been featured in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

Still, I am proud and slightly flummoxed to say that I do not (as yet) have a criminal record. On the advice of my attorney, who is in jail, I can’t say anything else except that I am disappointed I wasn’t chosen to serve on a court case when I was called recently for jury duty.

On Sunday and Monday mornings, for those who rise early there is an impressive appearance of both the crescent moon and the planet Jupiter. The two are close together. Both are in the zodiacal constellation Pisces. You’ll see the two high in the southeastern sky just before dawn.

From Gazette editions of April, 1985: