On Wednesday, Nov. 16, West Tisbury selectmen heard from highway superintendent Richard Olsen and West Tisbury Police Chief Dan Rossi regarding the construction schedule for the new highway barn, which is expected to be completed six months earlier than planned.
“I’m happy to report that the highway barn project as of today is on-budget,” Chief Rossi told selectmen. “It looks really good.”
Chairman of the selectmen Richard Knabel jokingly asked Mr. Olsen if he would be having a New Year’s party in his office. Mr. Olsen has heretofore not had an actual office.
Before Chief Rossi departed the meeting, selectmen renewed his contract, which expires at the end of the month.
The new three-year contract had only two changes from the previous document (Dec. 13, 2013, “West Tisbury selectmen pen new contract for police chief”); the first alteration was an allowance for a 2.5 percent increase for each year the contract is to run (the previous contact allowed for a 5 percent increase each year the contract was to run), and the second change was to remove education incentives from the benefits portion.
“I took out education incentives; it’s something that the department members are working on, not for this fiscal year but the one after, and I thought it was important that it does not include the chief,” Chief Rossi said.
Selectmen approved the police chief’s contract renewal.
“Thank you for your continuing service,” selectman Cynthia Mitchell said.
“Thank you, Dan, for a job well done,” Mr. Knabel said.
Library generator
Selectmen also voted to award the West Tisbury library generator contract to Hi-Voltage. Selectmen initially did not understand this situation, and library director Beth Kramer was called to the meeting from across the street to explain the reasoning and need for the $55,148 price tag.
“Fifty-five thousand dollars is a lot of money,” Mr. Knabel said.
Selectmen were confused as to why the proper-size generator was not purchased and installed in the first place, as this expense was thought to be an upgrade to the generator.
“Originally the plan for the generator was, in a power outage, to be able to supply the library with power,” Ms. Kramer said.
“Because of the cost, it was value-engineered-out during the project [i.e., it was removed]. The idea always was to hook the generator back up to the rest of the library once we got our grant from the state for the LEED funds, which we received quite a while ago,” Ms. Kramer said.
Ms. Kramer explained the purpose of the LEED funds (July 14, 2011, “State awards library grant to West Tisbury, bypasses Edgartown”) was to continue the project and to enhance the project.
“Right now the way that it exists is, only if there is a power outage and, God forbid, a fire at the library, the generator kicks on the fire suppression system — that is the sole thing that it is hooked up to right now,” Ms. Kramer said, and further explained that the thought of supplying the library with power during an outage would be a second phase.
“It’s not the whole library — elevators are not included — but it’s 99.9 percent of the library,” Ms. Kramer said. “Yes, [the current generator] has the capacity to do it, but it’s not connected. It was tweaked to work for the bid process.”
The cost is for a “hookup,” not for a new generator and not for an upgrade to the existing generator.
“This is the most cost-effective way to go about it,” Ms. Kramer said.
“I would just like to point out that the language about the LEED grant is kind of confounding,” Kathy Logue, West Tisbury treasurer, said. “You don’t get the money until well after the project is over, but it can only be spent on construction kinds of things.”
The “wiring” work is completely paid for by the LEED grant.
Other business
Selectmen then decided to extend the UniBank Fiscal Advisory Services contract, which was addressed by treasurer Logue.
“This contract doesn’t actually expire until the end of the fiscal year, but they sent it to me this fall, mostly because there are a couple of minor increases and fees that would only affect us if we were to do another big borrowing, which I don’t actually see us doing anytime soon,” Ms. Logue said. “I see no reason to shop it around just for the heck of it.”
Ms. Logue added that before this contract, the fees had not been changed for six years.
On Wednesday night, selectmen voted to allow newly appointed West Tisbury animal control officer (ACO) Prudence Fisher to have a second job at the communication center, if it does not interfere with her ACO responsibilities. The motion included a provision to review the situation in three months.
Ms. Mitchell would not second the motion, as she “felt it was excessive oversight on the board’s part.”
Selectmen also discussed a complaint that former Bluefish taxi driver Kyle Newall had filed with the West Tisbury police for being verbally assaulted by Benoit Baldwin, the owner of Alpha Taxi. Town administrator Jennifer Rand contacted town counsel to inquire as to whether Mr. Newall could participate in a hearing via telephone. Counsel said it was up to selectmen’s discretion as to whether to allow participation by phone. Selectmen will allow this, and a hearing will be held at an undetermined future date. Concurrently, the Town of West Tisbury is being sued by Mr. Baldwin of Alpha Taxi for its lack of Uber regulations.
There has been no resolution of when the commercial oyster season will open, but selectmen did approve the opening of the family season as of Thursday, Nov. 17. Selectmen will now request that families record their catch for the year at the end of the season. They will meet again in December to discuss opening the commercial season.
Selectmen do not meet Wednesday, Nov. 23.
