News
When Oak Bluffs voters go to town meeting on April 8, they will consider for the first time in six years an override of Proposition 2 1/2, the state law which limits the annual increase in a community’s tax levy to 2.5 per cent.
As it has the past few years, the department of Dukes County Sheriff Michael McCormack will continue to face budgetary uncertainty this year.
So said Sheriff McCormack this week after news leaked that the effort from Gov. Deval Patrick to assume budgetary control of the seven county sheriffs still elected independently in the state appears headed for defeat.
It may be hard to tell now, but there was a time when the Bradley Memorial Church was arguably the spiritual and social center of Oak Bluffs.
Long before Texas gave the world its better-known gift to democracy, George W. Bush, it gave the Vineyard Deborah Medders.
It was 1988 when Ms. Medders came to the Island from the Lone Star state, and saw for the first time that unique New England exercise in participatory democracy which is town meeting. She was enthralled.
“I remember so clearly my first town meeting, winter 1988. I was just so taken with this government of the people by the people,” said Ms. Medders this week, after presiding over yet another town meeting.
A ban on cars. A moratorium on fossil fuels. A bus that runs on cafeteria burger grease.
These are among the many projects in discussion or already under way at Island schools seeking to lead environmental action on the Vineyard.
With support from private donors, West Tibsury’s green-minded design and building firm South Mountain Company is managing two such projects: to eliminate fossil fuel consumption at Chilmark elementary school and to construct a highly visible solar energy producer for the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School.
Tisbury voters will consider a budget of almost $20 million, as part of a 44- article annual town meeting warrant on Tuesday.
The total is an increase of 7.6 per cent on last year. Education costs make up almost 40 per cent of the total, and the biggest single cost increase is the town’s contribution to the regional high school, up almost 10 per cent, largely due to the new school funding formula foisted on the Island by the state.