To our community and those in need of homecare:

On Wednesday, March 12, just a day before the notice went public, the Vineyard Nursing Association (VNA) learned that Martha’s Vineyard Community Services will be closing the doors of their Visiting Nurse Service (VNS) effective June 30. The news was received with concern for the patients and employees of the nursing service and was a complete surprise to our staff and board.

Unfortunate Move

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

The terrible news that the Visiting Nurse Service is closing is causing distress in the minds and hearts of many Vineyard residents who have come to rely on the services provided by this agency.

Particularly troubling is the loss of a uniquely dedicated team of nurses who have demonstrated a willingness time and time again to go above and beyond the call of duty in serving and advocating for their patients and the families of their patients.

The West Tisbury assessors have made public their first round of real estate abatements, applying reductions in valuations from 10 to 60 per cent on seven of 57 properties in the Tisbury Great Pond and Seven Gates Farm neighborhoods, the areas in town hit hardest by revaluations.

Abatement applications are taxpayer requests for lower valuations, thus lower tax bills. They challenge real estate values assigned after revaluation occurs.

A meeting at Oak Bluffs town hall on Wednesday was as much about a plan to mend the crumbling town waterfront as it was to mend frayed relations between certain town officials who disagree over what approach should be taken after a 30-ton retaining wall along Sea View avenue suddenly collapsed nearly a month ago.

Oil prices sitting stubbornly at more than $10 per barrel above budget forecasts. Cost overruns on capital projects totaling almost $3 million.

It was a sober March meeting for the governors of the Steamship Authority this week.

The good news was that the actual and projected traffic on SSA ferries remains strong. But it was the bad news which took up most of the time at Tuesday’s meeting.

The Vineyard Nursing Association (VNA) and Martha’s Vineyard Community Services met this week to develop a transition plan for the care of 66 patients now served by the Community Services Visiting Nurse Service.

Officials of both groups said real progress has been made in developing a plan to provide service continuity followed by an unexpected announcement by Community Services last week that it would shutter its nursing service on June 30 to focus on other areas, including behavioral health services.

After serving 21 years as Oak Bluffs selectman and eight years as Dukes County commissioner, Island political mainstay Roger Wey this week announced his intentions to run for the soon-to-be vacated seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives now held by Eric Turkington.

In the summer months, Island cook Jan Buhrman starts her days early. After waking her two sons, feeding her two pigs, checking on her 12 ducks and saying goodbye to her one husband, Ms. Buhrman gets into her car. Rather than head straight to work, many mornings she seeks out the farmers who sell to her. More often than not, these farmers are women.

It’s 8 p.m. on a Sunday inside the brand new World Revival Church — a colorful, million-dollar building on the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road in Oak Bluffs. Weeping men, women and children are belting out popular Brazilian evangelical songs. At the pulpit, a dozen harmonizing singers are accompanied by electric bass guitar, keyboards, and a full drum kit, while band leader Jorge Silveira plucks an amped-up Spanish guitar in front of an arcadian painted backdrop.

The Martha’s Vineyard Hospital is ready to pour the foundation for construction of its 90,000-square-foot expansion.

The site has undergone nearly six months of preparation for the construction, a project for which more than $46 million has been raised.

The expansion is on schedule for completion in late 2009.