The busy season on Martha’s Vineyard usually takes off in earnest around the last week of June, when schools finish up for the year and families become more mobile. Although possibly a bit later this year owing to the need to make up more snow days than usual, there’s no doubt that the crowds are arriving, and have merged in with the steady boat traffic generated by year-round Islanders and local workers.
More than any other bond, ferry travel is our great shared experience. Whatever our station, and regardless of the urgency of our respective missions off-Island, we all worry about schedules, reservations, last boats, standby lines, and the always awkward moment when we realize we’re headed for Oak Bluffs when we expected to arrive in Vineyard Haven.
In general, the Steamship Authority (SSA) does a good job of managing and meeting customer expectations. It maintains reliable schedules in the face of complex demand, and it improves amenities, such as the recent successful and speedily executed facelift of the Vineyard Haven passenger drop-off areas and planned attempts at better Wi-Fi connections aboard the boats. It may even confront its baffling crisis of the moment and join the rest of polite society (including SSA customers) by barring employees from smoking outside designated nonpublic areas.
At the same time as the Authority honors its obligation to maintain sound finances by watching its numbers — capital projects, borrowing, labor costs, fares, and fees rigorously in balance — it needs to be reminded that fiscal stability is an operating imperative but not a mission. Once the swap in mindset occurs, strategy and service become the variables, and all that the Authority controls about Island life happens to us rather than through us.
And so we see fares and fees increased because it “seems prudent,” turning aside a serious petition-backed effort to get a sympathetic hearing for restraint (although the SSA argument rests uncomfortably on the idea that one way or another, they’ll need the operating revenue). And we see strong and well-reasoned Vineyard-centric boat design preferences stiff-armed, decided by efficiencies realized elsewhere. Perhaps most alarming, we are on the hook for the Authority’s plans for enormous capital expenditures and accompanying bond indebtedness, which commit us to an implicit strategic plan for the Island while limiting long-term flexibility and controlling investments in passenger and freight service for the next 30 years.
The risk of strategic disconnect doesn’t stem from intellectual failure or venality. It’s natural that the Authority sees the future through a bureaucratic and fiscally conservative lens. And the professionalism of SSA management means that the Authority will be clear in making and defending its policies. For example, as we reported last summer (August 20, 2014), Wayne Lamson, SSA general manager, put the single-ender decision this way: “After many months, we concluded that what the Authority needs at this time [italics added] is an improved single-ended freight boat …” The “we” here sounds awfully imperial and paternalistic.
In a way, the SSA’s bureaucratic self-assuredness and turn of mind shouldn’t be surprising: The state’s 1960 enabling legislation grants a near monopoly to the Authority, in return for a pretty low standard, actually charging the Authority to provide “adequate” service — not exactly heady stuff nor high expectations. And since the Authority’s finances depend first and foremost on revenue from its near-monopoly hold on ferry services, rather than on tax support, it insulates the Authority from customer and market forces while reducing Vineyard government interest.
Here’s a modest proposition: If we expect to increase Vineyard influence over defining the Authority’s “adequacy,” we need to show up. The Authority holds two regular business meetings each year on the Island, with the next one scheduled for 9:30 am on July 21 at the Katharine Cornell Theater in Vineyard Haven. Take the time to read the meeting materials in advance (posted at steamshipauthority.com) and attend the meeting, and make sure your selectmen hear from you that you expect them to be there to articulate our collective interests. If we’re not making the Vineyard case, who will?