An aerial drug sweep of the Island this month by the Massachusetts State Police and federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) task force found 169 illegal marijuana plants. Authorities are still investigating who planted the crops and have yet to make any arrests or issue summonses.
“There will be charges, maybe this week,” said state police Sergeant Jeff Stone, also head of the Martha’s Vineyard Drug Task Force. “But as of right now the investigation is ongoing.”
Hardest hit among the six Island towns by the recession, Oak Bluffs ended the fiscal year two months ago with a deficit of approximately $300,000, and is already facing a projected shortfall for the current fiscal year of at least $500,000.
Town leaders met last week to discuss the severe budget shortfalls and the need to schedule a special town meeting in order to address them. The new fiscal year began July 1.
No date has been set for the meeting yet.
But employee layoffs are now considered a certainty.
After three years of exhaustive discussion and analysis on a wide range of issues from nitrogen loading in coastal ponds to traffic backups at key intersections, the Island Plan is ready for public release.
A draft version of the final plan will be released by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission this morning.
A Columbus, Ohio, man died on Friday afternoon after he was pulled from the ocean at Abel’s Hill Beach in Chilmark where he had been swimming with his wife.
William Laidlaw Jr., who worked as chief executive officer of the Ohio Historical Society and was a longtime seasonal resident of Abel’s Hill, was pronounced dead at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital at 5:28 p.m. He was 66.
Motor vehicle accidents, noise complaints and the need for crowd control at several large events kept police in all six Island towns busy over the weekend.
Edgartown
Just before 1 a.m. on Saturday Edgartown police observed a man hanging out the window of a sport utility vehicle on Main street. The vehicle was moving through a crowd of people near the Wharf Restaurant when the driver began to blow the horn and the person hanging out the window began yelling.
In the second fatal incident on the south shore of the Vineyard in a week, an Ohio man was pronounced dead on Friday after he was pulled from the water at Abel’s Hill Beach in Chilmark.
William Laidlaw, 66, of Columbus, Ohio, was pronounced dead at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital at 5:28 p.m. Friday. Police, fire, and emergency responders were dispatched to the scene at 4 p.m. after receiving a report of two distressed swimmers. When responders arrived both swimmers were out of the water and one of the beach patrons was performing CPR on Mr. Laidlaw.
