The attorney representing the owners of a stand of willow trees which is gradually obscuring one of the Island’s best scenic views at the Tashmoo Overlook has extended an olive branch to the town of Tisbury over the dispute.
In a letter sent to Tisbury town administrator John Bugbee on August 15, Michael Goldsmith, an attorney with Reynolds, Rappaport and Kaplan in Edgartown, offered a formula for further talks about the problem.
They met on the equivalent of a blind date some 23 years ago, set up by a mutual friend. The subsequent marriage of Jim Reynolds and Ron Rappaport’s legal practices has worked because of complementary roles. One wears his suits off the rack; the other prefers custom tailoring. One works in a third floor office, out of view; the other can be found downstairs, unfailingly in the middle of the fray. One mostly hunts; the other mostly gathers. And the hair — well, what’s left to say?
Interviews by Mike Seccombe
The statistical evidence shows the real estate market on Martha’s Vineyard remains in a hole, but the anecdotal evidence suggests it might at last be beginning to climb out.
Figures for the period up to the start of August this year show sales numbers and prices both down sharply compared with the same period in 2007 — which was itself a bad year for real estate.
The median price paid for family homes to August 4 was down in all the Island towns, according to figures from Banker and Tradesman online, which compiles its figures from sale documents.
Following the resolution of a year-long contractual standoff between the University of Massachusetts and the state Department of Environmental Protection, a number of long-delayed reports on the health of the Vineyard’s ponds are again on track for completion.
The long dispute over who owned data used for computer modeling of water quality in bays and estuaries drastically slowed work on the federally-mandated effort to assess and then reduce pollution problems.
For close to two hours, in the new documenatry Under Our Skin, the bad news about Lyme Disease was laid out before a capacity crowd at the Chilmark Community Center on Wednesday night. And it was very bad.
The good news came afterwards, and it was just a little bit good. But perhaps we should be grateful for anything which might lead to better treatment of this most difficult and mysterious of illnesses, which statistics suggest is probably more prevalent on the Vineyard than anywhere else in America, if not the world
One of the great public views on the Vineyard at the Tashmoo Overlook is disappearing behind a wall of willows, but instead of calling in tree surgeons to open the vista up, the trees’ owners have called in their lawyers.
The Tisbury selectmen complained on Tuesday night that despite more than a year of attempts to negotiate a solution, the owners of the trees, the Thomas and Ginny Payette family of Tashmoo Farm, remained intransigent and have now refused to talk further, except through their legal representative.
