With just days to go before President Obama departs Martha’s Vineyard, we can say with some certainty that he and his family appear to be enjoying the same vacation activities as many other August visitors, and have been as unobtrusive as a traveling presidential family can be.
Much of the president’s time has been spent playing golf at Farm Neck Golf Club in Oak Bluffs and Vineyard Golf Club in Edgartown. His foursomes have included NBA and financial superstars, one ex-president, and as far as we can discern, no Republicans. On the Island this president is all about vacation, not schmoozing for congressional votes.
In all of these activities Mr. Obama has almost totally avoided the press and the public. Photo ops have been as scarce as Steamship Authority reservations on an August weekend.
The Obamas’ vacation takes place in a bubble of security that insulates the president from most of the interactions and experiences with year-round Islanders that many longtime well-to-do summer visitors and seasonal residents value and appreciate. Vacationers who come to the Island to relax, including President Obama, may be interested to know what has been transpiring on Martha’s Vineyard beyond the greens.
In August, working Islanders barely find time to go to the beach. Many hold multiple jobs in order to afford to live on an Island where the cost of living is high.
For example, AAA reported Monday a gallon of self-serve, regular gas costs an average of $2.48 in Massachusetts. A gallon of gasoline was $3.59 at one Island pump this week.
On Monday, Gil Traverso will leave his job as principal of the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School after one year of a three-year contract. Even on an annual salary of $140,000, Mr. Traverso cited the high cost of housing as one of the reasons he decided to depart. Many teachers who earn far less are all too familiar with the struggle to find decent housing on an Island where modest homes rent for several thousand dollars a week in August.
Come September, legions of Islanders will make the seasonal switch from a summer to a winter rental, better known as the “Island shuffle.” The lack of sufficient affordable housing erodes the bedrock of the community and remains a challenge for local leaders.
Last week, another young Islander succumbed to the scourge of heroin. Island police and EMTs regularly respond to reports of overdoses.
In a recent story (June 17, “Heroin overdoses spike locally and statewide”), Dr. Jeffrey Zack, head of the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital emergency medicine department, said he had seen a threefold increase in the number of overdose visits.
Island police on the frontlines can tick off the names of eight Islanders who died on- or off-Island in the past two years from heroin. Despite the toll, treatment options remain limited and often inaccessible.
In many respects and at its core, the Island is similar to small communities across the country. Residents work hard to pay taxes, raise their children, and make a living. That reality is lost on many from the national media assigned to the Obama trip, who prefer to stick with the tired and overdone theme of rich summer folks versus Island yeomen.
A recent story in the Washington Post on the Wampanoag Tribe’s effort to turn its unbuilt community center into a bingo hall (Aug. 11, “On Martha’s Vineyard, a battle between old money and a casino,”) reported that the high cost of finding a room or renting a car does not trouble many visitors here, “plenty of whom spend their days searching not for parking spaces but for yacht moorings.”
Really? The story ignored the views of elected Island officials, including two members of the tribe who also sit on the Aquinnah board of selectmen, and the issue of law central to the case and of the utmost importance to the larger Vineyard community: Does the settlement act, which has governed tribal–town affairs for more than three decades, trump the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act?
That question is now before a federal judge, and has huge implications for the Island. Old money or new money, Islanders, including members of the tribe, think Aquinnah is the wrong place for a gaming hall.
Those with good memories will recall a story published one year ago, just a week after President Obama arrived for his fifth Island vacation, about the most recent arrest of Leandro Miranda, a 23-year-old Brazilian national who had amassed a string of four earlier arrests for driving without a license, speeding, and OUI. One of those arrests resulted in charges of fleeing from police at high speeds on July 4th, along Oak Bluffs streets packed with tourists.
Last October, Mr. Miranda was sentenced to 2.5 years in our house of correction, with nine months to serve, and the balance suspended for two years of probation. In March of this year, Mr. Miranda was released into the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) service. He was deported on May 27 to Brazil. Just two months later he returned to Martha’s Vineyard.
On Saturday night Edgartown Police arrested Mr. Miranda, 24, on an outstanding warrant related to his last stay. He is now incarcerated in the Dukes County Jail, much to the frustration of Island police and residents unconcerned with yacht moorings.