Community Soup Supper

By COLE LOUISON

Though many shops lining the once-crowded streets of Vineyard Haven
closed months ago, the doors and kitchen of Grace Episcopal Church have
remained open.

Each Friday, from 5 to 6:30 p.m., the church hosts a winter soup
supper where anyone can sit down, have dinner and find respite from the
coldness and isolation which affect so many each Vineyard winter.

Skateboarders and their backers have high hopes for a meeting this Tuesday when board members at the Martha's Vineyard Ice Arena are expected to decide whether to lease arena land for use as a skateboard park.

The new sewer system in Oak Bluffs was supposed to begin operating
by late June, but top officials in Oak Bluffs now say there is almost no
chance it will be finished by then. The project is more than a month
behind schedule.

A contractor in financial crisis is to blame. Workers abandoned the
site at the old landfill for most of the last three weeks, leaving the
bulk of the treatment plant phase of the job undone.

It takes dedication and hard work to achieve Dr. Martin Luther
King's goals and visions.

Which is exactly what some Vineyarders are willing to offer.

The leading spokesman for the Herring Creek Farm Trust told the Edgartown planning board this week that the sale of the farm to a private buyer now hinges on the board's approval of a luxury home subdivision plan for the farm.

Teachers who do their math might be smiling this week, knowing that
their new salary contract will boost wages by as much as 27 per cent
over three years, turning today's $50,000 job into a $63,893
position by the fall of 2003.

NANTUCKET - Placing a surprise trump card on the table in the
testy and complicated match over opening up ferry service from New
Bedford, Steamship Authority governors announced yesterday that they
will take immediate steps to buy the ferry Schamonchi, a privatepassenger ferry that operates between New Bedford and the Vineyard.

There is a proposal before federal and state fisheries managers that
will make it a crime to possess scup next summer. If the regulation is
adopted, youngsters all along the Atlantic seaboard won't be
allowed to keep their catch.

A short-term land deal cut by the regional high school committee
Monday night has flung open the starting gates on an ambitious
$6-million plan to build an addition to Martha's Vineyard
Community Services (MVCS), doubling the space at the social services
agency.

The Herring Creek Farm Trust has filed a new lawsuit against the Martha's Vineyard Commission, appealing a recent decision by the commission to eliminate a private beach association from a development plan for the farm. The 32-lot luxury home development plan for the farm was approved by the commission in November. The approval was accompanied by some 22 conditions. One condition eliminated a 250-member private beach association from the plan.