This morning going through the 20 mile-per-hour zone in front of my town’s grade school I watched the little kids walking along the sidewalk with their enormous backpacks. Little kids, first graders; what on earth is in those bags? And the older kids look like they are setting out on a serious trek, and they are just going to school. Maybe it is full of sports equipment; it can’t all be books. There were a few kids with bikes; besides the packs on their backs there was a bag fixed over their back fender. It looked stuffed too. (It must be sneakers).
Next Monday night voters in Chilmark will have the opportunity to decide whether the town should better protect the community’s character by regulating the size of new residential construction.
I have lived in Chilmark since the early 1970s. I have been a member and chairman of the board of appeals as well as a selectman. In addition I am a licensed contractor and real estate broker. I do not mean to bang my drum but simply to state my long years of involvement with the town of Chilmark.
The average house size in America in the 1960s was 1,200 square feet. Two thousand square feet of house is big, 5,000 square feet is huge, yet 10,000 and bigger is becoming commonplace. If everyone builds out to zoning capacity not only will the bird and other animal populations dwindle because of habitat destruction but the middle class would get priced out too (not to mention the drain on natural resources).
Our thorniest national problems — climate change, environmental degradation and an economy in which one per cent of the population holds more than 90 per cent of all assets — are the result of the empowerment of individuals to abuse the commons we all share.
The Chilmark board of health would like to pay tribute to the long and dedicated service of Mike Renahan, who served on the board from 1995 until his untimely death in October 2012. Throughout these years, Mike’s vast experience in the building trades, his intimate knowledge of the town and its citizens and his devotion to their welfare marked his tenure on the Chilmark board of health.
As a grandmother, and I specify grandmother rather than mother, it saddens me to my core to know that our grandchildren are living in a world where just another horrific event has occurred. As we grew up in the 1940s and beyond, never did we witness violence to the degree it is happening today.
I was appalled by the recent front page article in the Boston Globe regarding an 8,300-square-foot house on Chappaquiddick.
After yet another rejection at town meeting, it seems clear to me that Tisbury voters do not want the connector road. They don’t like its roundabout route, they question whether it will effectively reduce traffic and they don’t like its high price tag.
The development office of Martha’s Vineyard Community Services thanks the Martha’s Vineyard community for disposing of your old, tired and used electronics at our spring electronics disposal day on Saturday, April 6. By 2 p.m. we had filled more than four containers graciously provided by Bruno’s Rolloff, Inc. Thank you to Greg Carroll and his excellent team at Bruno’s who sponsored this event and assisted with all aspects of the day — including the heavy lifting!
