I take a bit of a walk early in the morning. I always take the same route. Every day there is some tiny sign of impending spring.

At a special town meeting Tuesday, Oak Bluffs voters agreed to deep cuts to balance the budget for the current fiscal year. Voters slashed $249,666 from the budget; the majority of the cuts came from leaving positions unfilled including the town finance director, two teaching aide positions at the Oak Bluffs School, the zoning board of appeals administrator and a heavy equipment operator. A town library reference librarian position was saved after library trustees offered to take $12,000 from other places in their budget.

Classes will be cancelled at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School Wednesday due to the death of Joy Flanders, a longtime teacher at the high school who died over the weekend after a lengthy illness.

A service for Ms. Flanders will be held at the Abel’s Hill Cemetery in Chilmark followed by a reception at the Chilmark Community Center. Ms. Flanders had taught special education at the high school for 10 years and had been a teacher in the Vineyard public school system for 27 years.

Never Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen

The Martha’s Vineyard High School culinary arts program is a great training ground for future chefs — hopefully future Island chefs. It’s a hands-on learning experience of all facets of the restaurant business: The students not only prepare and cook the food, they learn how to present and serve it too.

Fire Damages Home

A recent rash of unusual thefts involving thousands of dollars worth of stolen construction and landscaping tools from Island contractors ended with the arrest of three young Island men, including two juveniles, this week.

Glenn Goulart, 18, of West Tisbury and two 16-year-olds from Edgartown were arraigned separately in Edgartown district court on multiple counts of breaking and entering, larceny, malicious destruction of property and conspiracy to commit a crime. Mr. Goulart was arraigned on Monday; the two juveniles were arraigned on Tuesday.

The Vineyard Gazette won 17 awards in the annual New England Newspaper and Press Association contest this year, including nine first-place awards for excellence in journalism and advertising. The awards were announced at the annual banquet held by the small newspaper press association in Boston last weekend. The contest saw nearly 3,000 entries from small daily, weekly and biweekly/monthly newspapers in the six-state region of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. Newspapers are judged in daily and weekly categories by circulation.

The Edgartown personnel board sent a letter of reprimand to the town planning board last week following a grievance that was filed claiming inappropriate behavior by an elected official toward a town employee.

Planning board assistant Georgiana Greenough filed the grievance against board member Fred Mascolo on Feb. 2, following a heated exchange at a Feb. 1 meeting.

The personnel board letter was sent to the planning board on Feb. 10.

Tara and Daniel Whiting have withdrawn their application to the West Tisbury historic district commission to demolish the Old Parsonage house.

On Wednesday historic district commission chairman Sean Conley said his board had received an e-mail from the Whitings earlier in the week effectively ending their pursuit of a demolition permit.

“It looks like Tara is pursuing something else besides demolition, which is great,” Mr. Conley said.

The Upper Main street business district in Edgartown will see some new enterprise this year following approval by the town planning board of two business projects on Tuesday night.

The board approved a change of use permit that will allow the Edgartown Meat and Fish Market to open in Post Office Square, and also voted to allow a new construction project by the owners of Wave Lengths salon.