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The
Martha's Vineyard Times is a weekly publication.
June 9 - June 15, 2005 Edition
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in Brief The Oak Bluffs police department will sponsor the annual Public Safety Day this Saturday from 10 am to noon, at the Oak Bluffs fire station. The event will include free bicycle helmets, demonstrations of police and fire equipment, police mountain bikes, and information on fire and traffic safety. Oak Bluffs police received 100 helmets from the Governor’s Highway Safety Bureau to give away at the event. Recent changes in state law now require all children under the age of 17 who operate a bicycle, in-line skates, a scooter, or skateboard, to wear a properly fitted and fastened helmet. For more information on the new bicycle helmet law and public safety tips, visit the Governor’s Highway Safety Bureau’s website at www.mass.gov/ghsb. Section of North Road in Chilmark will close A section of North Road in Chilmark, between Tea Lane and the fire station, will be closed to vehicle traffic between 8 am and 5 pm from Monday to Friday next week. A town highway official said the closing is needed to prepare for the re-paving of a one-mile stretch. Emelia Armstead reaches second round in National Spelling Bee Emelia Armstead, an 11-year-old sixth-grader at the Edgartown School, was eliminated in the second round of the 78th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C. last week. Emelia joined 272 of the country’s best young spellers at the National Bee. She is the daughter of Lorna J. Giles and Kenneth J. Armstead. She won the All-Island Bee in March and earned the right to represent the Vineyard in Washington at the National Bee that began yesterday. Emelia failed to spell the word septuagenarian. The contest is administered by E. W. Scripps Co., and the youngsters have all won local contests sponsored by Scripps papers or other individual newspapers. It was started in 1925 by the Louisville Courier-Journal with nine contestants and was suspended only during the World War II years of 1943-1945. One hundred forty-six boys and 126 girls, ages nine to 14, from the United States, Canada, and several other countries will spell for the first-place prize of $28,000 in cash, plus scholarships and bonds, and a set of encyclopedias and other books from Encyclopedia Britannica. The Martha’s Vineyard Times sponsors the Bee for Martha’s Vineyard and has done so for more than a decade. County takes first crack at ‘06 budget With two weeks left in fiscal year 2005, the Dukes County commissioners were scheduled to meet last night to take their first look at a 2006 county operating budget. John Alley of West Tisbury, county commission chairman, said it was unlikely that the commissioners would vote on the budget at the meeting. “This is the first time we have seen anything, so more than likely we won’t vote on it,” he said. “We will want to review it, and come up with any questions or suggestions for the final budget.” Mr. Alley said that he would also like to have county department heads attend a future meeting to describe their departments and their budget requests. The commissioners heard similar presentations during last year’s budget process. Along with the 2006 budget, the commissioners were expected to discuss a piece of the 2005 budget that has continued to be a sticking point. A plan to charge each town in the county an additional fee for the services of the veterans’ agent on top of the county’s general assessment has met strong opposition from several Island towns. Last year the West Tisbury and Chilmark selectmen wrote letters objecting to the additional fees. The Tisbury selectmen have flatly refused to pay the assessments, and last month the Edgartown selectmen said they wouldn’t pay the fee until the issue is resolved with the other towns. The resolution of the issue may have come last week in the form of unexpected additional money that has become available to the county. On Tuesday, Mr. Davis said that county auditors informed him last week that there is more money in the county’s cash reserves than was originally projected in the 2005 budget. He said that the money would be used to fund the veteran’s agent, and the towns that have already paid the assessment would be reimbursed. “The only need for these additional assessments was because of a shortfall in our budget last year,” said Mr. Davis. “That shortfall is no longer there, so we no longer need to make those assessments.” Mr. Alley said he supported reimbursing the towns, but he said next year the towns should expect a similar assessment. “I’m willing to support repaying the towns that have paid their share, but I would want to let everybody know that in their next budget cycle they should budget appropriately for the veteran’s agent,” he said. Joint investigation leads to cocaine arrest A joint investigation by Oak Bluffs and State Police led to the arrest Friday of an Oak Bluffs man for cocaine possession. As part of an ongoing investigation, on Friday evening at approximately 6:40 pm, Oak Bluffs Detective Nick Curelli and State Police Sgt. Jeff Stone, members of the Island drug task force, stopped Derreck Coleman, 22, as he walked up Vineyard Avenue in the vicinity of Shawmut Avenue. A search of Mr. Coleman turned up 14 grams of cocaine in 11 separate packets tucked into his waistband, according to Detective Curelli. Mr. Coleman was arrested and charged with possession of cocaine with intent to distribute as well as a drug violation near a school or park. He was arraigned Monday in Edgartown District Court where his bail was initially set at $500. His bail was later set at $2,000 cash, when it was revealed that Mr. Coleman faces a previous drug trafficking charge in connection with an arrest last year in Edgartown, police said. Aquinnah holds special election Aquinnah voters face a brief election ballot Wednesday. In a bit of unfinished business left over from the annual town meeting on May 10, voters will be asked to approve one Proposition 2.5 override question for the purchase of a new fire department tank truck. The polls will be open from noon until 6 pm in the Aquinnah town hall. Because of uncertainty surrounding the amount of free cash available to the town, town officials were not able to meet the deadline to place the measure on the annual town election ballot that followed the annual town meeting. Days before the annual town meeting, town officials received a free-cash figure of $297,851 from the state. The amount, which was far more than expected, was applied to a fiscal year 2006 operating budget shortfall and several Proposition 2.5 spending requests, leaving only the fire truck for further action. Also on the town business agenda for Aquinnah voters is a special town meeting, scheduled for Tuesday, June 28. Vineyard Gazette fills empty news editor spot The Vineyard Gazette last month promoted assistant editor Alexis Tonti, 25, to the position of news editor. Quoted in a short news story announcing the promotion in the May 20 issue of the Edgartown weekly, Richard Reston, Gazette publisher, said Ms. Tonti, who began work as a summer intern, has a sound understanding of the principles that underlie good journalism. The story carried no explanation for the removal from the masthead that week of Chris Burrell, who had been the managing editor. Mr. Burrell’s byline has since begun appearing regularly on news stories. Last November, Julia Wells, Gazette editor, announced that Mr. Burrell, a staff writer since 1999, had been named managing editor. Ms. Wells did not return repeated telephone calls seeking comment on the most recent change. Ms. Tonti’s promotion to the news editor job left vacant by the resignation last September of Nis Kildegaard, news editor since January 1981, and Mr. Burrell’s return to the reporting staff are among several management changes to have occurred at the 159-year-old newspaper over the past 18 months. Mr. Kildegaard’s departure followed the abrupt dismissal of publisher and editor John W. Walter on Sept. 3, after 18 months on the job. Mr. Walter, former managing editor and executive editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was immediately replaced as editor by Julia Wells, a Gazette reporter since 1984. Mr. Reston resumed the job of publisher. In November, James Kinsella, a former reporter for the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror and resident of Mashpee, joined the reporting staff with the title of Gazette senior writer, a title previously held by Ms. Wells. SSA traffic off year earlier pace, despite improvement in weather Passenger traffic as of the end of May on all Steamship Authority routes was down 7.3 percent, compared to volumes for the same period a year ago. Autos were off 4.6 percent. The largest passenger declines occurred on Vineyard routes, which fell 7.5 percent. Passenger numbers to and from Nantucket were off just 6.4 percent. Autos were down more sharply to and from Nantucket, which saw a decline of 5.7 percent compared with a 4.5 percent shortfall on Vineyard routes. Freight, which means trucks, jumped 11.3 percent over the period, up 13.2 percent to the distant island and 10.5 percent to and from the Vineyard. In dollar terms, the passenger decline amounted to 10.6 percent, or slightly less than $200,000. The auto shortfall’s dollar value was 8.8 percent of last year’s number, or about $180,000. The increase in freight volumes added 7.6 percent, in dollar terms, or about $125,000. Tick-borne illness forum is Wednesday The Martha’s Vineyard Hospital (MVH) will convene a panel of experts to educate the public about how people can protect themselves from a variety of tick-borne diseases. Two forums – one in English and one in Portuguese – are scheduled for Wednesday, June 15. The English-speaking forum will begin at 7 pm at the MVH cafeteria, and the Portuguese forum will begin at 8:30 pm at the Brazilian church located at 258 Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road, near the Triangle in Edgartown. Panelists for the forums include Lisa Crowner, a health educator from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Bela Matyas, a physician with the department of public health, and Donna Enos, MVH infection control nurse. Although it is fairly well known that ticks can spread Lyme disease, they can also infect people with lesser-know diseases such as erlichiosis, babesiosis, and tularemia. A still unexplained outbreak of tularemia in 2000 claimed the life of a Chilmark man. For more information on the forum, please call Ms. Enos at 693-0410, ext. 141. Gerald Evans Gerald B. “Buffalo” Evans died at home in Juliette, Ga., on June 6. The former longtime Vineyard resident was 68. A full obituary will follow in a future edition of The Times. Corrections A photo that appears on page 20 of today’s graduation supplement incorrectly identified Kevin Goulart as the student standing with Finn Briggs. In fact, the young man pictured is Jordan Hoehn. Amy Wynne Derry, pictured in last week’s Times with her daughter, Celeste (Calendar, Art is bustin’ out all over, page 6), was identified incorrectly as Amy Lynne Perry. |
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