The Martha's Vineyard Regional High School budget now goes
back to the drawing board.
This is the next step following the vote in Oak Bluffs this week to
reduce its high school assessment by some $400,000. The vote capped
months of debate among Island towns over regional school assessments,
which were thrown into a state of widespread confusion because of a
14-year-old state law that for unknown reasons had never been enforced
on the Vineyard until this year.
Art Buchwald, the familiar, funny and irreverent Pulitzer-Prize
winning newspaper columnist whose decision to refuse kidney dialysis and
end his life earned him international acclaim early last year, died
peacefully at home late Wednesday night in Washington, D.C. He was 81.
Dr. Milton Mazer, the Vineyard's first psychiatrist whose
pioneering work in the field of rural mental health led to the
establishment of Martha's Vineyard Community Services more than
four decades ago, died Jan. 7 at the Long Hill assisted living home in
Edgartown, where he had been a resident for the past six years. The
cause of death was renal failure; he was 95.
The sudden resignation of Martha’s Vineyard Museum executive director Matthew Stackpole has shaken the 85-year-old county historical society as it plots a move from its home base in Edgartown to West Tisbury.
Lady Bird Johnson, the gracious widow of former President Lyndon
Baines Johnson, who was credited for her steadying influence on his
volatile personality, died Wednesday at her home in Austin, Tex., of
natural causes. She was 94.
Dukes County and Cooperative Banks Will Announce Merger
By JULIA WELLS
The Dukes County Savings Bank and Martha's Vineyard
Cooperative Bank - two respected community banks whose presence on
the Vineyard reaches back for more than 50 and nearly 100 years
respectively - plan to announce this week that they will merge,
the Gazette has learned.
It is understood that employees and corporators at both banks were
informed yesterday about the planned merger, which is still subject to
approval by state and federal regulators.
Philip R. Craig, the salty Edgartown author who earned national and local celebrity status for his popular Vineyard mystery series, died on May 8 at the Martha's Vineyard Hospital after a brief illness. He was 74 and had lived year-round in a renovated Ocean Heights camp with his wife Shirley.
A Middlesex superior court judge ruled late last month that the town of Newton may not renovate two large recreational parks using funds from the Community Preservation Act (CPA) because the parklands were not acquired with CPA funds.
A longstanding and unprecedented gift of 156 acres at Quansoo Farm in Chilmark from the late Florence (Flipper) Harris to the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation is now complete, leaders at the foundation announced this week.
Donated to Sheriff’s Meadow by Mrs. Harris over a period of years beginning more than a quarter century ago, the Quansoo Farm gift is the second largest land bequest in the history of Sheriff’s Meadow.
A staff report released by the Cape Cod Commission this week gives a decidedly mixed review to the controversial plan by Cape Wind Associates to build 130 wind turbines on Horseshoe Shoal. The report finds that Cape Wind’s plan to connect the turbines to land in West Yarmouth through underwater electricity transmission lines meets only eight of 32 performance standards set by the commission.
In general, the staff report concluded, a good deal more information is needed in order to satisfy the requirements of the commission.
