Barack Obama and John McCain were the official winners of a scientifically bereft poll conducted Wednesday and Thursday among voters across the Vineyard. But as Iowa kicked off the 2008 primary elections last night, the informal going over of this Island’s body politic found a pulse palpitating in fits and starts.

As community preservation committees across the Island prepare their recommendations for the coming fiscal year, they report growing interest by Vineyarders in the possibilities offered by Community Preservation Act funding.

More than $3 million in requests are under consideration by preservation committees on the Island.

Town officials who oversee CPA funds have seen a surge in activity and applications.

A proposal to build a sewage treatment plant for Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School has resurfaced at a newly revised cost estimate of $1.5 million.

The school committee is scheduled to discuss the proposal at its meeting next Thursday, Jan. 3 at the high school. The meeting is set for 7 p.m.

The proposed sewage plant was removed from the budget amid uproar earlier this month from high school students and teachers over proposed drama and music program cuts.

In a 1952 aerial photograph of Sengekontacket Pond that hangs behind the door to Augustus Ben David’s World of Reptiles And Birds in Edgartown, you can count two properties — the one you’re standing in and the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary. Today Mr. Ben David estimates that the homes clustered along the shoreline number in the thousands.

Divisiveness continues to plague attempts by Vineyard officials to reach consensus on a way to fund the Island’s regional high school.

On Monday, the high school assessment committee — a group established in July this year to find an answer to an unpopular, state-imposed school taxation formula — met at the school to address the issue.

The Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School has received the largest private donation ever made to a Vineyard school. Taking the form of a matching grant, the gift will double all money up to $100,000 raised by the school before February 2008. Charter school director of development Paul Karasik said the $200,000 is needed to pay for enlarged classrooms and a modest addition, which will include a new art room and a second bathroom facility at the public school.