Island police this week announced the new Martha’s Vineyard Tactical Response Team, an elite, highly trained group of officers that will assist the police departments during critical incidents such as hostage situations, searches for armed subjects and civic disorder.
Amid sinking consumer confidence nationally, Island towns and schools have received some rare good news: the RM Packer company agreed to renegotiate their fuel contract based on lower oil prices, saving them as much as $300,000 this winter.
Answers remain hard to come by about the septic grids buried underneath Ocean Park in Oak Bluffs, after a round of drilling at the park conducted earlier this month failed to shed any light as to why treated effluent is seeping to the surface of the popular public park.
Oak Bluffs wastewater superintendent Joe Alosso said the engineering firm of Stearns & Wheler dug about six holes around the park on Dec. 15. He said the digging yielded little information about why the leeching fields are malfunctioning, although that was not entirely unexpected.
Vineyard sports fans who love edge-of-your-seat contests had a good holiday week as both the boys’ hockey and boys’ basketball teams went down to the wire in thrilling but ultimately disappointing games.
The basketball team lost 55-54 to Harwich in the final seconds of the second round of the Cape and Islands Christmas Classic in Mashpee on Saturday, while the boys’ hockey team on the same day skated to a 5-5 tie against Bourne in an early season match-up of old rivals.
The Martha’s Vineyard Commission early this month unanimously approved a new policy aimed at regulating and reducing the amount of nonrenewable energy used in certain new construction projects. The new policy only affects larger construction projects that qualify for review as developments of regional impact (DRIs).
Work is set to begin sometime after the New Year on a major overhaul of the runway configuration at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport. The project calls for 300 feet of runway on the airport’s main airstrip to be dug up and removed and then rebuilt on the eastern side of the runway in Edgartown.
The project will cost approximately $6.5 million and will be paid for through a combination of federal, state and local money. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will pay for over 90 per cent of the total cost, with the airport paying approximately $165,000.