Tribal Council Elections

Cheryl Andrews-Maltais was reelected for a second three-year term as chairwoman of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) on Nov. 21. She ran unopposed.

Councilman William Durwood (Woody) Vanderhoop was elected Tribal Council secretary, replacing incumbent Eleanor Hebert.

Councilwoman Naomi Carney was reelected and Shelley Carter was elected for a three-year term on the Tribal Council.

Council members will be sworn in at a ceremony on Jan. 8, 2011.

High School to Harvard

Elaine Cawley Weintraub, chairman of the history department at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School and developer of the new Brazilian history and culture program at the school has been invited to speak at a seminar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University on Saturday, Dec. 11. The theme will be the challenges that prompted the creation of this unique course offering in Massachusetts, and the triumphs and tribulations of the class.

With little discussion, the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School district committee voted on Monday night to certify a $16.6 million operating budget for the coming fiscal year, a .98 per cent increase over last year.

Even with most teachers receiving two per cent contractual salary increases next year, the extra spending will be offset by staff reductions due to retirements and the elimination of the home economics program.

By PETER BRANNEN

Plans announced this week to build an offshore wind farm off Rhode Island have leapfrogged Cape Wind as the largest proposed facility in the country.

Friends of the Island Food Pantry marked its second anniversary with volunteers continuing their year-round food collection program on behalf on the Island’s needy families, seniors and seasonally unemployed residents.

Under bright, chilly skies this past Tuesday, with a steam shovel in the background, key members of the Martha’s Vineyard YMCA broke ground for a new teen center.

The Martha’s Vineyard Hospital announced this week that a series of grants were awarded on Monday under its state-mandated Community Health Initiative.

The West Tisbury library has always been the overachieving runt of the Island library system, keeping its voracious readership sated despite humble resources. Designs for a vastly expanded library unveiled on Monday call for a facility that may finally accommodate that book-hungry community by the spring of 2014.

When you walk into the Martha’s Vineyard Family Planning office in Vineyard Haven, a large bowl full of condoms greets you. No one is staring at you to see if you’ll be the first one to take a few, no one is whispering to the person next to them, there are no judging eyes.

It is this safe environment that family planning program director Patty Begley has worked hard to establish over the past 27 years, even if it did garner her the title of Condom Queen amongst her children’s friends.

It has been more than 40 years since the publication of the book The Archaeology of Martha’s Vineyard, which identified a long, rich history of human habitation stretching back at least 4,000 years, “on this relatively unravaged Island.”

Now, finally, the last of the Vineyard’s towns, Tisbury, is moving to find out just where that history may lie, lest it be ravaged accidentally in the future.

Tisbury is seeking $20,000 in a grant under the Community Preservation Act to map its archaeology.