April Steamship Authority traffic was down slightly from the same period last year, though summer numbers are showing improvement.

At the Steamship Authority board of governors meeting Tuesday in Nantucket, general manager Wayne Lamson said April passenger traffic was down 3.3 per cent from April 2012.

A complicated arrangement that will require the town of Edgartown to put additional land under a conservation restriction in exchange for expanding an old hangar at the Katama Airfield was back up for discussion this week, with the town counsel asking for further thought about the deal.

Edgartown School students joined town and library officials Monday to celebrate the first visible marker of Edgartown’s new library: a sign announcing the beginning of the project. A group of students from kindergarten, first grade and third grade at the school posed for a picture in front of a sign that says: “Watch your new library being built here.” The sign is in front of the old brick Edgartown School, which will be demolished this summer to make way for the new library.

A Vineyard organization devoted to spaying and neutering feral cats will be closing its feral cat shelter at the end of the year.

Laurie Huff, the founder of Cattrap Inc., said the organization will lose its lease on a barn sheltering rescued feral cats in December. Cattrap is scrambling to find homes for some of the 15 to 20 cats, now semi-feral, who call the barn home, including Holiday, a friendly calico who was found with a distended colon; Frasier, a big black cat who lived under a porch, and Misty from Katama.

While winter storms have threatened some waterfront homes, they’ve been a boon to nesting piping plovers, who prefer the scoured beaches left by storms and hurricanes. But this year’s population of the tiny migratory shorebird still face challenges from predators.