Trying to get people\'s thoughts on the new Island Home ferry
during its maiden voyage Monday afternoon was kind of like asking a
child what they thought of their new stepmom or stepdad the same day
their parents got divorced.

The Steamship Authority board of governors is expected to declare
the Islander surplus and put the vessel up for sale when it meets next
week.

The general manager of the boat line, Wayne Lamson, said he would
recommend the board invite potential buyers to submit sealed bids, with
a view to disposing of the 57-year-old ferry within three or four
months.

Officials from Martha's Vineyard Regional High School joined
forces with a determined group of student athletes this week to fight
the recent decision by the South Coast athletic conference to remove
several Vineyard sports teams from its ranks.

The Vineyard school is mounting a double-barreled effort, lobbying
mainland officials for support while mulling a legal challenge to the
removal.

Forced to choose the assessment method that is most likely to gain
the needed approval - or else face the possibility of entering the
next fiscal year without a budget - the regional high school
district committee voted Monday to continue using the long-held
enrollment-based formula in the regional agreement, rather than the
"statutory" formula put forward by the state.

Town-Tribe Pact on Land Use Comes to Vote Next Thursday

By IAN FEIN

A much-debated land use agreement between the town and Wampanoag
Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) will come back before Aquinnah voters at a
special town meeting next week.

They hustled, they fought for rebounds and they battled through a
tenacious full court press, but in the end the boys' basketball
team just couldn't match a larger and quicker team from Scituate
Wednesday, falling 73-41 in the second round of the Division 3 south
region state tournament.

Earlier in the week, the Vineyarders overcame a first half deficit
against a talented team from Carver to win their first round playoff
game at home, before going on the road to face the 18-2 Scituate
juggernaut.

The discovery last week of a dead mink on the side of an Edgartown road has brought on a furor of questions over whether a mink population still exists on the Vineyard.

The discovery of the carcass opens an environmental question that offers no immediate answer.

Gus Ben David is on the case. One of the Island's top naturalists with an expertise that spans the Vineyard's natural kingdom, Mr. Ben David received the dead mink last week from a friend. His detective work has just begun.

To those sitting in the booths near the lunch counter during one of
the final trips of the ferry Islander, the usual docking announcement
over the public address system was utterly indecipherable.

Wah, wah ,wah, it went. It didn't matter; people know the
drill.

A searing internal review prepared by two longtime Oak Bluffs
attorneys concludes bluntly that the former town administrator had no
legal authority to award personal service contracts and special one-time
bonuses to a variety of town employees.

Property owners wanting to put houses on undersized lots in Ocean
Heights and Arbutus Park may have to pay for the cost of bringing town
water to their neighbors, under a plan to avert a public health threat
that will be considered next week.

Substandard lot owners also may be required to pay for expensive
denitrifying septic systems under new regulations proposed as a solution
to groundwater pollution in the densely settled area.