On Tuesday evening, Chilmark Selectmen approved a cost-of-living adjustment increase for town employees and prioritized more than a dozen projects to ensure that workflow will be adequately divided among town staff.
Among the priority projects was the repair of the Chilmark Community Center roof and floor, and the lottery the selectmen are conducting for affordable housing at Nab’s Corner, which is well underway. “We have quite a bit of the process moving along,” said Selectman Warren Doty regarding the Nab’s Corner progress. “The housing committee has done a great job, but we still have a whole lot of nuts and bolts — things such as the utilities and how are we getting that done.”
The utilities part of the Nab’s Corner process requires two steps. The first, which is almost complete, is a request for proposals to have private utilities brought to the four lots from NSTAR. The work itself cannot be done until NSTAR completes the work of bringing power to South Road at the intersection of the new curb cut. The town is trying to get the $19,558 NSTAR design fee paid as soon as possible so that NSTAR can start its work and bring power to the site.
The next step is to rough-cut the new road from the curb cut to the intersection with Ridge Hill Road, as that is where the utility line will emerge.
Of the 14 eligible applicants for the Nab’s Corner affordable housing lots, only four will win the lottery on December 5. “We’re going to wind up saying ‘no’ to a group of people who need a house and deserve one,” Mr. Doty said.
Mr. Doty has proposed a new affordable housing project at Peaked Hill, which would include four new home sites on already subdivided town land. There is a proposal to redraw existing lot lines. The project is in conceptual phase and will be explored at a later date.
In other business, selectmen approved a 1.3 percent cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for town employees. Last year it was 1.5 percent. The formula for establishing inreases, which uses the Consumer Price Index date for the Northeast, has been employed for the past five years. The 12 months ending December 30 of the current year was compared to the index for the 12 months ending the previous year, which resulted in the 1.3 percent increase.
In a related topic, selectmen also approved the request for proposal for a pay classification study. “When the Human Resources Board (HRB) gets the study results back,” said member Jim Malkin, the HRB “will review it, accept it, accept part of it, some of it, none of it, and then make recommendations,” to Selectmen about how to proceed. The goal is to ensure that pay for full-time non-seasonal Chilmark town positions are consistent with pay for similar jobs in other Island towns.
There was also a heated conversation between selectmen and commercial fisherman Lev Wlodyka about the guidelines by which a commercial fisherman may use a slip on the Menemsha commercial dock. The current rules state that a resident must be a commercial fisherman and cannot be running a charter business out of that location. Discussion followed about what percentage of a vessel must be owned by a Chilmark resident in order use a commercial slip, along with a discussion about how to determine what defines a commercial fisherman, based on what percentage of one’s income is garnered from fishing.
“In many ways we are more relaxed than we used to be because commercial fisherman are having a hard time,” explained Selectman Warren Doty. “We used to have a definition of a commercial fisherman that you had to have a certain percentage of your income from commercial fishing. We know that it has been harder and harder to make ends meet as a commercial fisherman. Two of our seven commercial slips were not used at all this summer, and that’s a problem, as long as we have other people waiting for a slip. We need to review what our rules are for those seven slips.”
Mr. Doty also said he believes that “we can have other rules for the other [non-commercial] slips. We need to ensure that we keep commercial boats in the harbor.”
Chairman Bill Rossi agreed. “We need to get together with the harbor advisory committee and review regulations.”
Separately, Mr. Doty reported that The Chilmark Beach Committee requested a shack at Squibnocket Beach. Mr. Doty proposed that the old harbor shack be cleaned, restored, and relocated to Squibnocket Beach, as this would be the most economical option. A motion to go forward with this idea was approved.