Triage, Not Planning, at Island Hospital

By JULIA WELLS
Gazette Senior Writer

The wreckage now includes one chief executive officer, two good
doctors and a dozen Nightingales.

SSA Bill Issued by Committee

Joint Committee on Transportation Releases Revised Version of Bill
with Changes to Makeup of Boatline Board

By JULIA WELLS

A legislative bill to reorganize the Steamship Authority board of
governors emerged from the Joint Committee on Transportation this week,
markedly changed and reshaped to put more distance between New Bedford
and the public boat line that is the lifeline to the two Islands.

The blockbuster special town meeting this week in Oak Bluffs was supposed to chart the future of the southern woodlands, the last undeveloped stretch of land in town.

Lieutenant Now Runs Police Force

Theodore Saulnier Takes Leadership Role in Tisbury

By JOSHUA SABATINI

Just seven months into his tenure at the Tisbury police department,
Lieut. Theodore A. (Ted) Saulnier is the man in charge. After the
resignation of John McCarthy as police chief a week ago, the board of
selectmen instructed Lieutenant Saulnier to perform the duties of the
former chief.

Lieutenant Saulnier, 40, spoke with the Gazette Wednesday in the
chief's office at the station on the harbor in Tisbury.

In the last 25 years, only one person has unseated an incumbent
selectman in West Tisbury. Her name is Cynthia Mitchell, and she beat
Fred Fisher back in 1990. Now she's the one fighting to keep her
chair for a fifth term on the board of selectmen. Intriguingly, a
central issue in this race turns out to be Steamship Authority politics
rather than a village issue.

When the regional high school Minnesingers traveled to Lithuania
last year, they were warmly received by their host school, the
Lithuanian Youth Centre in the capital city of Vilnius. This year the
Vineyard community returned the favor, inviting a group of singers from
the renowned Versme choir from the school at Vilnius for a week-long
visit to the Vineyard.

Young Voices Invite Cheers of Our Island

By NIS KILDEGAARD

When the regional high school Minnesingers traveled to Lithuania
last year, they were warmly received by their host school, the
Lithuanian Youth Centre in the capital city of Vilnius. This year the
Vineyard community returned the favor, inviting a group of singers from
the renowned Versme choir from the school at Vilnius for a week-long
visit to the Vineyard.

Getting out was hard.

When Tisbury and Edgartown voted to withdraw from the Martha's Vineyard Commission in the late 1970s, what followed was a procedural and political tangle that went on for years.

In Tisbury, the fight was over the second slip for the Steamship Authority. In Edgartown, it was about the rules for the coastal district of critical planning concern.

By the time both towns rejoined the commission in 1984, the tumult had died down, deep political divisions had faded and few people remembered what the fight had been all about in the first place.

For the last two years, as battles raged over whether a private golf club should be built in the southern woodlands in Oak Bluffs, voters in town have watched elected officials make all the decisions.

Martha's Vineyard Commission Responds to Technical Problems

By JULIA WELLS
Gazette Senior Writer

Amid a ripple of allegations about possible open meeting law
violations on two separate fronts, leaders at the Martha's
Vineyard Commission this week turned to their attorney for help.

Eric Wodlinger, a partner at Choate Hall & Stewart in Boston,
recommended that the commission follow the advice of the Cape and
Islands district attorney and take a second vote on the written decision
for the Down Island Golf club plan.