Up-Island Regional School District board votes to cut budget

The budget trimming was achieved by kicking the can down the road, after school officials said bathroom renovations could wait.

0
West Tisbury resident Michael Marcus, right, and Kate DeVane of Aquinnah discuss the West Tisbury school budget. — Photo by Michael Cummo

The Up-Island Regional School District (UIRSD) met last Thursday and voted to cut more than $440,000 from its budget. The budget trimming was made necessary by the refusal of West Tisbury voters to approve a $300,000 Proposition 2.5 override at the ballot box on April 15.

West Tisbury voters had approved the total school budget of $7,120,061, including the $300,000, at town meeting on April 15.

West Tisbury’s portion of the budget reduction, which would be shared with UIRSD member towns Chilmark and Aquinnah, would amount to $301,136, and would eliminate the need for an override vote, but only if the revised budget passes at a special town meeting scheduled for June 2.

The only other article on the special town meeting warrant is a request to leave the UIRSD. That article was placed on the warrant at the request of Selectman Jeffrey “Skipper” Manter, who also sits on the school committee.

The Thursday vote to reduce the budget was four to one. Mr. Manter, a staunch fiscal conservative, voted against the blanket reduction, because he said voters should know what was being cut.

Board chairman Michael Marcus of West Tisbury told The Times that the specifics of the reduction would be decided at a meeting on Monday.

Mr. Marcus began the meeting with a suggestion that there be a blanket cut. The issue did not come up again until after almost an hour of discussion of budget items that could be cut, and methods of accounting juggling to achieve the desired result.

The break in the logjam came when West Tisbury School Principal Donna Lowell-Bettencourt said that West Tisbury building inspector Joe Tierney had told her and board member Robert Lionette of Chilmark that morning that not all eight bathrooms in the West Tisbury School had to be rebuilt this coming year to meet state codes, as he had previously thought.

The eight-bathroom cost was budgeted at more than $400,000. According to Ms. Lowell-Bettencourt, Mr. Tierney told them that renovating two bathrooms would be enough to show good faith and would be sufficient for this coming year, and allow $300,000 to be cut from the budget.

Mr. Manter said the committee had decided that the cost per bathroom would be lower if they were all done in the same year. “We would just be moving the cost forward, and it will be more expensive. We have to look at the bigger picture,” he said.

Martha’s Vineyard Regional School Superintendent James Weiss, who was at the meeting with calculator in hand, said that the $440,000 would reduce the UIRSD budget for West Tisbury by $301,136, to a total of $6,818,924 down from $7,120,060.