Lagoon Pond is in trouble. Island residents heard a familiar story on Wednesday from representatives of the Massachusetts Estuaries Project about another degraded coastal pond on the Island, but town officials say that they are determined to find a solution.
West Tisbury is one step closer to owning and preserving the Field Gallery and sculpture garden this week, after the community preservation committee agreed to fund a large part of its acquisition.
For more than a century on Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod, the words of the Wampanoag were not their own.
“It was prophesied that language would go away from here for a time,” Jessie Little Doe Baird intones at the opening of filmmaker Anne Makepeace’s documentary We Still Live Here. “When the appointed time came, if the people here decided that they wanted to welcome language home then there would be a way made for that to happen.”
Three Oak Bluffs landowners on Crystal Lake and Brush Pond have been cited for clear-cutting trees and vegetation in violation of the Massachusetts Wetlands Protection Act and the town’s wetlands bylaw. The Oak Bluffs conservation commission has ordered the property owners to carry out restoration work in the coming months to repair the damage.
In their effort to buy and preserve the Field Gallery and its sculpture garden for posterity, West Tisbury selectmen have singled out one town body in particular for funding. On Wednesday selectman Cynthia Mitchell was blunt with the Community Preservation Committee.
“Essentially what we’re here to ask is, can we have all your money?” she said.
In their first meeting since cutting a quarter-million dollars from their fiscal year 2011 budget, Oak Bluffs selectmen turned their attention to next year’s budget and the April town meeting. After a disastrous town meeting last spring which saw voters reject 11 of 12 Proposition 2 1/2 overrides as well as a hotel room tax that sent the selectmen back to the budget chopping block, the board has decided to simplify their approach.
