Tisbury holds special town meeting Tuesday

Posted February 15, 2007

Tisbury voters will be asked to take action on 22 warrant articles, totaling $471,500, when they gather for a special town meeting at 7:30 pm in the Tisbury School gymnasium Tuesday.

Improvements to the Water Street parking lot, the disposal of surplus property, zoning bylaw amendments and additional funding for town departments and projects are among the topics voters will be asked to take up at the mid-winter prelude to the annual spring town meeting.

Town officials will ask voters to accept the provisions of a state law that would under certain conditions allow a member of a board, committee, or commission to miss an adjudicatory hearing without being disqualified from a final vote on the matter that was the subject of the hearings.

Proposed zoning changes include an amendment to sign regulations that would allow businesses such as those located on Breakdown Lane off of Holmes Hole Road to put their names on a directory sign at the intersection on State Road. Another article would amend the wording of a zoning bylaw to clarify that it restricts construction, renovation, and/or expansion of all structures, residential and non-residential, within the shore zone, to 500 square feet in total.

The community preservation committee will ask voters to approve the allocation to specific reserve funds of $56,289 to open space; $56,289 to affordable housing; $56,289 to historic; and $394,028 to a budget reserve account.

Voters will be asked to spend $150,000 of Tisbury's share of the embarkation fee fund, $196,000 collected to date, on Water Street parking lot improvements Embarkation fee revenues are generated by a 50-cent fee on each one-way passenger ticket, payable to the town where the trip originated. The law requires that ferry fees be deposited in a special fund, "to be solely appropriated for the purpose of mitigating the impacts of ferry service on the city or town."

Voters will be asked to spend so-called free cash, money left over from the previous year, on five articles: $100,000 for improvements to the Water Street parking lot; $25,000 for emergency repairs on the historic Water Works Spring Building; $47,500 for spraying trees on town property to protect against moths and caterpillars; $80,000 for sidewalk replacement and lighting work on Main Street; and $49,000 for underground ductwork for utilities along the Water Street parking lot and Cromwell Lane.