Just 10 days from summer's climactic event, the Oak Bluffs fireworks, top town officials are saying that Ocean Park will definitely host the blockbuster event even though they are still not happy with the condition of the park.

Just five days after a moped accident in Oak Bluffs killed a Virginia woman, another accident yesterday in Edgartown has left a 60-year-old moped rider from Florida in critical condition with severe head injuries.

It's one thing to hire cashiers, clerks and ice cream scoopers, train them and trust them for a summer's worth of work. But try hiring 42 summer cops, training them, handing them guns and putting them on the street.

Special town meetings are supposed to be tame housekeeping affairs, but Thursday's session in Oak Bluffs will steer voters into some dicey territory — asking them to reconsider the ban on smoking in bars and to release $110,000 to settle unspecified lawsuits against the town.

Backers of a plan to build a community swimming pool are suffering from sticker shock, having learned last month that the 38,500-square-foot complex would cost $8.85 million to construct, nearly twice the amount projected in a study done six years ago.

An after-prom party near Black Point beach in Chilmark turned violent in the early morning hours last Sunday when police who were called in to break up the party tried arresting a teenager and were forced to retreat under a barrage of beer bottles.