MVC Powers Eyed by Court

Did the Commission Correctly Act in Refusing Gas Station? Is There
‘Tunnel Vision'? Judge Will Decide

By JULIA WELLS
Gazette Senior Writer

The unique power of the Martha's Vineyard Commission to hear
evidence, weigh facts and use judgment in deciding whether to approve or
deny development projects went on trial last week in the Tisbury Fuel
Services case, which will now go to a superior court judge for a
decision.

West Tisbury Republican Plans to Topple Eight-Term Legislator

By CHRIS BURRELL

He's a Spanish teacher at the regional high school and a
part-time farmer who wakes at 5:30 every morning to feed the sheep and
collect eggs on a family farm off Lambert's Cove Road in West
Tisbury.

New Hospital's Final Number: $41.8 Million

By JULIA WELLS

The new number is $41.8 million. The final number. Leaders at the
Martha's Vineyard Hospital now say this is what they must raise or
borrow in order to replace the decrepit building that houses the
Island's only hospital.

120 at MVRHS to Go on to Post-Secondary Study

By BRIEN HEFLER

On Sunday, the class of 2004 at Martha's Vineyard Regional
High School will graduate. Said to be bright, hardworking and proactive,
the class of 189 will shed backpacks and combination locks for gowns and
mortarboards and enter the outside world, one that was hard to ignore
during their school years.

Some Transitions, New Faces as Farms Stand Ready for the Growing
Season

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By MARK ALAN LOVEWELL

Vineyard farmers are primed for the growing season. The soil is
properly watered and now it is time for some serious sunshine.

Graduating Class at Charter School, Four Strong, Is Confident,
Motivated

By C.K. WOLFSON

It took them six months to come to a consensus about the music to
choose, but on Saturday morning, dressed in white and blue, garlands in
their hair, they will stroll in to the sound of Dreams, by the
Cranberries, and when the ceremony concludes, walk out to the Beatles
singing, In My Life.

Mr. Barnes, along with an assortment of local builders, contractors
and heavy machinery, helped place a 1,000-pound, seven-and-a-half-foot
fossilized Triceratops skull atop a metal pedestal in the specially
renovated hallway of a Vineyard Haven home.

Bad news if you bought or built a new house on the Vineyard and figured you could cover some of your mortgage by renting it out for a chunk of summer: You weren't the only one with that idea. Now real estate agents say the market is glutted with houses for rent.

"There's a lot of houses out there to rent," said Deborah Hancock, a longtime real estate broker in Chilmark. "We have houses that have never been vacant that are still vacant . . . . It used to be that anything good was gone by January."

That's the cost of doing business for landscaper James Hayes now that gas prices have soared beyond $2.50 a gallon. Every five days, he swallows the steep price to keep his GMC 4X4 truck on the road. He charges it and reminds himself that as a small businessman, he can write it off at the end of the year.

Eight months after town health officials first detected a contaminated plume running beneath Edgartown Meadows subdivision, they are turning their attention to installing clean drinking water in the neighborhood instead of pinpointing the cause.

"This has dragged on for more than half a year. It's obviously more of a long-term problem," said Matthew Poole, Edgartown health agent.

"The most important thing is for people to have safe drinking water regardless of whether the source is septic systems or the golf club or something we haven't even considered," he added.