Letters to the Editor
Posted July 12, 2007
Brazen theft
reflects changing community
To the Editor:
On June 18, I left my home on Spring Street in Vineyard Haven to catch the 8 am boat on the first leg of a trip out to California. We'd been packing for several days. I had put my jewelry into a roll-up red jewelry bag and into my purse where I keep it, close at hand, when we travel. The day before we were to go, I left the house, just taking my credit card (not my purse) to walk down to Bunch of Grapes to get a book for the trip. I was gone an hour. It was the only time I had been away from the house since I had put my jewelry into my purse. I left the purse on the floor of our den when I walked into town.
On the boat the next day I went to buy a cup of coffee. The first thing I noticed is that all my money but $6 was missing from my wallet. I was confused, started thinking how I could have lost or spent it, when all of a sudden a chill went through my body. My jewelry. And sure enough, it was gone. Someone had walked up my driveway, past my car which was parked right outside our kitchen door, opened the door, come in, seen my purse, thought they'd take money (they took about $120), and got a real bonus.
The thing is, they got my grandmother's oval, black onyx ring, along with everything else - the ring I tried to pry off her hand since I was two years old. The one she gave me for my 30th birthday. The one my grandfather gave her. The one I remember to wear to all our family holidays so that she's "there" with us. The one I never travel without, because it's my lucky ring. Not worth so much, just a lifetime of memories that I so wanted to leave to family as the only tangible memory of our beloved grandmother. I can't even tell my mother, it would break her heart.
They also got the circle of diamonds, people call an "eternity" ring, which Joe gave me for our 20-year anniversary. And more.
As time passes, and now it's been three weeks, the pain doesn't get easier, it gets worse. I cry in the shower and wake up thinking someone has my things. Someone came into my house.
I was talking to Officer Michael Gately at the police department recently; he's been a policeman on the Island since 1986, and he told me he has never experienced more theft and vandalism. "The Island is swamped," he said.
Living on the Island since 1982, I got out of the habit of locking either the door to my house or my car. I left the keys dangling in my car while at the post office, windows open, shopping bags on the seat. I didn't even have a key to my house.
That party is over for me. And I'm writing to let people know how shockingly brazen someone could be. To warn my friends and neighbors that something like this can happen.
One other thing, if you see someone wearing a big black oval ring with a silver slash across it, and three tiny diamonds in it, please call Michael Gately at the Tisbury Police Department. He also has photos and descriptions of the other jewelry stolen from my home. We're offering a $2,000 reward for information leading to the return of the jewelry.
I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news - you can't imagine how sorry I am - but I just want you to all be aware.
Susan Branch
Vineyard Haven
Out of line
To the Editor:
You are so out of line in your editorial of July 5, I feel compelled to respond. First, itwould be much more appropriate if you or News Editor Nelson Sigelman spoke with me regarding county revenues before you write your misleading articles.
Your second paragraph is a blatant lie. We - county treasurer, county manager, countycommissioners, county advisory board and the county government finance review board - have been extremely careful about not balancing the budget by artificially and unreasonably inflating revenue. During the course of the years there have been times when a department has not met its revenue projections, but other departments have exceeded theirs or expenses have been reduced. We have ended each year since 1993 with a positive fund balance
You are absolutely wrong regarding deeds excise. In FY07, deeds excise was projected at $150,000, and it has exceeded its projection by more than $15,000. What you are looking at are the registry fees for recording deeds. Your repeated failure to obtain and print all the facts misleads your readers. The truth is that you quote numbers that have been turned over to the county only through April 2007. The total FY 07 registry revenue is $265,497, down 10.31 percent.
I ask you:
Have any of the towns stayed within Proposition 2.5 percent for the past 15 years? The county has.
How could we have built the county administration building without a loan if we did not have a positive cash balance?
Did you know that rodent control is meeting its FY07 $20,000 projected revenue. The reports you have are on a cash basis, but the department has received $14,998 to date and has over $5,000 in accounts receivable that will be paid during July and credited to FY07(as MGL allows).
Did you look at the revenue from Cape & Island License Plates for the past five years? It was never below $115,000 and went as high as $127,900 in FY06. A projected revenue of $115,000 was perfectly reasonable.
As of today we have revenues through May from the state amounting to $90,391. June 2006 revenues were $15,000, so if we stay level we will have $105,000. We reduced the FY08 projected revenue to $100,000.
Did you look at the FY08 budget to see that projected revenue from the registry and engineer has also been reduced?
Overall, FY08 revenue projections have been reduced more than $100,000.
In your usual negative manner, you make no mention of the departments that haveexceeded their projections or decreased expenses, i.e. Communication Center revenue and miscellaneous income or environmental department and miscellaneous expense.
The citizens of the County of Dukes County look to the media to stay informed. They deserve to get correct information and all the facts, not just the ones convenient to the journalist. I look forward to corrections in your next issue.
Noreen Mavro Flanders
County Treasurer
Lovely view
To the Editor:
I'm sitting here in Norway, and I just had a lovely view of the boat coming in at Vineyard Haven harbor, at 7:48 - on a clear and cool morning. What I wouldn't give to hear some seagulls. Thank you for the webcam. If another web cam should be on the agenda, Edgartown Harbor would be really fun, and perhaps informative to those interested in regulating the boat traffic there.
Debbie Belisle Pedersen
Spydeberg, Norway
A matter
of character
To the Editor:
On Page 5 of the July 5 Times, there is an article on placing electrical wire underground.
Several years ago, a group of nine of us joined together to remove approximately 1,050 feet of overhead wire for $130,000, in the vicinity of the East Chop Beach Club.
We assigned nine shares to the project and agreed that those shares per home should be weighted according to the visual impact the wires had for each of us. Thus, two homes agreed to fund two shares each, and the remaining homes chipped in for lesser amounts, one as little as a quarter share.
The organizer obtained a firm contract figure from ComElectric (now NSTAR) and collected the money from each shareholder before the project contract was signed and started.
To this day, all participants continue to express their happiness with the method of sharing as well as the results.
I don't know how the cost was divided in the article in the paper. If the organizer of the project doesn't collect the funds before the project begins, there may be one or more in the group who will stiff his/her neighbors, and those neighbors have no recourse but to shoulder the slacker's share.
Be careful. Know your neighbors' characters.
Pat Carroll
Oak Bluffs
Lots left to do
To the Editor:
Of course, the weather was wonderful for the Fourth of July holiday, but Main Street, Vineyard Haven looked especially good this year. Lots of interesting shops, people on benches enjoying the scene, restaurants with varied menus, the movie theatre open for business, the terrace in front of Bowl and Board, the new parking lot with a bench and planted area in front of the public bathrooms.
Some shops, banks, restaurants and retail stores have done an exceptional job this season with beautiful flower boxes, lights, planters, trellises, awnings, welcoming entrances. I hope everyone, particularly residents of Tisbury, will walk in and let them know that we notice and appreciate the work they've done to make our town more appealing.
However, there still remain some establishments that disdain customers by allowing a continuing build up of debris, cans and plastic bags and worse left in alleys between buildings, sidewalks littered with cigarette butts, empty water bottles, pots of dead plants and weeds. I also urge those of you who have the nerve to walk in and let them know what you think.
Owners, please ask your employees to spend time on the outside of your businesses as well as the inside. It only takes minutes during the day to make sure flowers are watered, dead-headed, trash is removed, the sidewalk swept.
And of course, we members of the consuming public must also keep the town clean. Use trash containers, don't leave empty drink containers on the sidewalk, pick up your dog's waste, don't grind out cigarette butts in planters, under benches, in mulched areas under trees, or fling them still-burning out of car windows. Do your part, and if you see something you don't like, go to the source and speak up or pick up.
Caron Soond
Member
Tisbury Beautification
Volunteers
Traffic signals
at Five Corners
To the Editor:
Traffic lights are politically incorrect on Martha's Vineyard, but an exception should be made for Five Corners in Vineyard Haven. Despite the new road signs, everyone passing through that intersection must rely on eye contact and hand signals to negotiate the confusion. If traffic signals are not feasible, speed bumps would be an easy short-term solution.
Christine Powers
Waltham
No change
To the Editor:
Each spring, when I arrive to open my Victorian on Ocean Park, I look to see whether the owner of Nancy's Restaurant on Oak Bluffs Harbor has set aside his four space lot for customer parking as required by by laws, in effect when his added storage deck "morphed" into 50 additional restaurant seats. Even though he has not done so, the selectmen have again unconditionally renewed both his restaurant and entertainment licenses.
I also look to see whether he has torn down, as ordered by the town and a judge, the one story storage garage that morphed into a three story apartment building with six balconies. Not surprisingly, it is still standing on the North Bluff, as a gateway for our visiting tourists.
Joseph Sequeira Vera
Oak Bluffs and Cambridge
Turn them all out
To the Editor:
After another futile effort to contact our elected congressman, William Delahunt, to express my views, I gave up. I wondered if this was standard procedure among our elected representatives.
In the 11 years that I have lived in Massachusetts I have sent three letters to Senator Edward Kennedy and two to Senator Kerry. I have also written two or three letters to Mr. Delahunt along with three or four e mails. Those are answered with a form letter reply but with no chance for a direct response. The bottom line is that I have never received any kind of reply from any of these gentlemen.
Those experiences suggest to me that we may elect our representatives, but they don't represent us. How can they? They are employed by the 12,000 lobbyists, who in turn work for corporations who contribute many millions of dollars to political campaigns to allow our alleged representatives to stay in one of the country's best jobs. Salary in excess of $200,000, and if you want to raise your salary, just vote yourself an increase. You get lifetime free health benefits, a large fully paid staff, free golf, free entertainment, free vacations, etc.
What a wonderful country to live in. And the job itself, you don't have to write any bills that you must vote on. The lobbyists who are employed by the corporations take care of that, and you don't even have to read them. The leadership, such as it is, tells you how to vote. Any meaningful legislation does not get passed and the Congress blunders on. There was a great slogan which I believe occurred during the re¬election of U.S. Grant, by his opponents, "Turn The Rascals Out," and this time around that include both sides.
Harvey Hinds
Edgartown
All about
enriching friends
To the Editor:
The military industrial complex had its way. We went to war to enrich a small, select few who had control over our government's foreign policy. Halliburton/KBR/Blackwater/et al, are making out like bandits. The Bush administration hijacked the post 9/11 climate for corporate gain. I feel terrible for the patriotic soldiers whose heartfelt intentions have been abused by the Bush administration, which is determined to create wealth for the corporations they are affiliated with.
Lloyd Petruzzell
Edgartown
The vote for D.C.
To the Editor:
Americans around the country just celebrated Independence Day 2007, while Americans living in Washington, D.C., will continue to be taxed without representation.
My friends in Washington are denied a vote in Congress. D.C. residents pay taxes, serve on juries, and defend our country during times of war, but have no vote in Congress. This is taxation without representation, and it's wrong.
After more than 200 years of D.C.'s injustice, Congress is on the verge of solving this problem. In April, the House of Representatives passed the D.C. House Voting Rights Act, a bill that would give D.C. citizens our first-ever vote in Congress. The bill also cleared a Senate committee, and the next step is a vote on the Senate floor.
We need help from people in America. There are some senators who are considering blocking this bill. Senators have not blocked a piece of voting rights legislation since the days of segregation. Let's not repeat one of the darkest times in American history.
After celebrating America's independence with barbeque and fireworks, you can do something truly patriotic. Urge your senators to end taxation without representation in the nation's capital by passing the D.C. House Voting Rights Act. Our friends in Washington, D.C. should be able to join us in our celebration of American democracy.
Carole G. Early
Vineyard Haven
More movement
To the Editor:
Both Island papers had editorials regarding the Fourth of July. The editorial board of both papers, however, has failed to address a very un-American thing that happens on the Island. I'm referring to the towns of West Tisbury and Chilmark denying the public access to public beaches.
If first you don't succeed, try again. The movement continues to End Beach Apartheid.
Erik Albert
Oak Bluffs
Matt Patrick is wrong
To the Editor:
My Fellow Islanders, as a former selectman and county commissioner for Nantucket, I am coming out on record that state Representative Matt Patrick is wrong for pushing for legislation that would put the Steamship Authority under jurisdiction of the state government's Executive Office of Transportation (EOT). Mr. Patrick is flip-flopping on original legislation that he supported, which exempted the Steamship Authority from the EOT jurisdiction in 2004. If his new legislation passes on Beacon Hill, then the people of the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket will lose control over what has been our statutory regulatory body, which allows us Islanders to have control over our water highways to the mainland. Thus, we must not allow the state government to take our rightful powers.
Representative Patrick's district is not even affected by the Steamship Authority. He should instead worry about his own constituents and allow us Islanders to govern ourselves.
Doug Bennett
Nantucket
Donald "All set" J. Graves
To the Editor:
Many folks will wonder why he's gone or where he's off to. Donnie "All Set" Graves is away from us now and wondering who cares any more. To offer Donnie anything was uncomfortable at best. Something deep inside hurt when offering. How is that when one human being can so readily reflect us? No nonsense here, a direct conversation to his heart. "It's a share" were his last words to me. I was never ashamed to ask him if he needed money, coffee or someone to listen. I was only uncomfortable and yearning to help "All Set" Donnie and also unable to, but not unavailable.
Unless we learn lessons from each other, we fail as a whole. And yet, some of us listened perfectly well to his silence and now argue quietly with the loss, in peace.
D. Dean
Oak Bluffs
Island state of mind
To the Editor:
Why do I become a clothes horse when I'm off to Martha's Vineyard? I mean of all places, laid-back and relaxed, the Vineyard mostly calls for bare feet and bathing suits, plus a pair of jeans for cool nights. So, why is my bed covered with every article of clothing I own as I try to pack? My cute tops, skirts, Capri pants and shorts await the suitcase. All of a sudden I'm wanting to wear head scarves, belts, long skirts and about 10 bathing suit cover ups. I would have to be on Martha's island for a thousand nights to use each casual yet cute nighttime outfit I've set out.
As I take out several pair of earrings and bangles, my mind wanders to the summers past. Something in the air there transforms me. The girl transplanted from D.C. to Jersey becomes Carly Simon in a split second. Suddenly, I'm tall with Vineyard chic oozing from every pore. I walk into churches in my bare feet, shy and ready to sing, "Haven't Got Time For The Pain." I dance the two-step on the Tabernacle stage with James in my arms while the crowd is left to wonder and surmise. Are we just friends or could we be lovers yet again?
I turn up at Alleys, Leslie's or Black Point unannounced and without fanfare, just taking care of errands or attending a clam bake like other folks. I slurp clams watching the sunset at Menemsha. Passersby will try not to stare. They think I've got an unrecorded song flying around in my head, while I'm thinking about what I should order from the health food store for lunch. And "No, I won't disclose who that song was about. Mick and Warren who?" I'll tease and flirt and smile, and you'll never know. I fold the last of the offbeat tunics and shawls into my bag.
"I'm bound for The Island. The tide is with me. And it feels like, I've never, never been gone." CS
Laura Rodgers
Chilmark
Many thanks
To the Editor:
On June 3, my mom, Gloria R. Jeffers passed away to be with God.
Although her passing brought great pain and sorrow to our family and friends, we know that mom is in a better place, without prejudice, or conviction. My thanks go out to everyone's kind words during our family's struggle to cope with our loss.
A very special thanks goes out to the Edgartown Ambulance Squad and A.L.S. personnel who took care of mom during her time of need.
Mom always said that our Ambulance crew was A#1 and exceeded the level of standards taught by the state.Last of all, I have been blessed by the kindness of my extended family of the Edgartown Fire Department and E.M.S. squad, who was there for me, and by my side during mom'spassing.
It's nice to know that I'm surrounded by these types of people who give of their time and effort unselfishly when their neighbors need them most.
And this is the reason I continue to serve my community as a firefighter and an E.M.T. It is our duty to act and give back. It's caring, and always will be.
Matthew M. Silva
Edgartown
