Ivy Ashe
The flag stood at half-mast outside of the Ag Hall in West Tisbury, a shining green John Deere tractor parked beneath it in honor of longtime Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society president Elisha Smith, who died Friday. He was 90 years old.
A graveside service and Masonic service were held earlier in the day for Mr. Smith at the family plot at Smith Cemetery off Barnes Road in Oak Bluffs. Mr. Smith was not only the seventh generation of Smiths to be born on the Island, he was the seventh Elisha.
Despite a slow start, Tisbury’s planned solar project is now getting back on track, Maggie Downey, director of the Cape Light Compact and the Cape and Vineyard Energy Compact, told the selectmen on Tuesday.
A tall asphalt silo that has been a source of neighborhood controversy and pending litigation will be dismantled over the summer, according to the terms of an agreement signed off on during a hearing before the Oak Bluffs Zoning Board of Appeals on March 21.
The proposal was offered by White Brothers-Lynch Construction corporation, operators of the asphalt plant at the Goodale Construction Company sand and gravel pit in Oak Bluffs, and will reduce the size and profile of the silo in question.
The Dukes County Advisory Board on County Expenditures was presented with an uncommon windfall during Wednesday afternoon’s meeting, learning from a preliminary audit of the fiscal year 2012 budget that the county had an overall surplus of $572,726. That figure includes a net income of $300,000 for FY2012, as well as additional funds from FY2010 and FY2011 surpluses.
Although frost still covers the ground some mornings, Island boards of health already have their focus turned towards summer and tick season.
At last week’s All-Island Selectmen’s meeting, Tisbury health commissioner Michael Loberg and Edgartown health agent Matthew Poole presented their annual year-end report for the Tick-Borne Illness Reduction Initiative, a five-year study funded by a grant from the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. The study has just completed its second year.
After hearing heated arguments from both sides of a shellfish licensing dispute, Tisbury selectmen at their Tuesday meeting voted to take no action regarding the question of revoking or suspending the license of commercial shellfisherman Tom Searle. The case concerned two incidents, one on Nov. 26, 2012 and one on Jan. 8, 2013, for which Mr. Searle received citations from Tisbury shellfish constable Danielle Ewart.