In a lightly attended special town meeting at the Chilmark Community Center Monday, Dec. 5, Chilmark voters displayed their generosity and quickly plowed through and approved of eight warrant articles, many to do with Menemsha improvements, in under a half-hour.
“Can I say swimmingly?” selectman James Malkin told The Times after the meeting, when asked how he thought the special town meeting had gone.
“Nobody wants to change the town,” Mr. Malkin continued, “but it does help to communicate with people, for the 10 weeks when our infrastructure is straining, where they’re supposed to go.”
Longtime moderator Everett Poole presided over the evening and moved briskly through the agenda. Only three warrant articles generated questions from residents:
Article 4, $9,600 to purchase and equip an electric low-speed vehicle or utility terrain vehicle (UTV) for the police department’s use in Menemsha
“Could you ask somebody from the police department to explain to us what it does and why?” Chilmark resident Chris Murphy asked.
Chilmark Police Chief Brian Cioffi was on hand to field the question.
“As we are looking at Menemsha and trying to figure out how we can get fewer vehicles down there and still provide service, one of the recommendations was to keep the cruiser out of there all day long and go with either an electric slow-moving vehicle or a UTV,” Chief Cioffi said. “We’re having a tough time narrowing down which one would be better service to Menemsha for year-round use.”
“Will it be able to go on the beach sand?” one resident asked.
Mr. Cioffi explained that this is one area where the UTV is a good choice.
“We have had calls [from the beach] out there before, and I want to be able to get medical equipment down there and transport somebody off,” the chief said. He also explained there are electric- or gas-powered UTVs.
“We are looking at the availability for recharging and the durability over long term,” Chief Cioffi said, who added there is currently no charging station in Menemsha.
Article 6, $15,000 to pay for improvements to the Menemsha Park and Ride parking lot off Tabor House Road
One resident asked selectmen about the usage of the lot, and asked if they had numbers. Board of selectmen chair Warren Doty replied that he had the numbers only for the number of people who rode the shuttle bus to that lot.
“It was about 2,000 riders in the month of August, less in the month of July,” Mr. Doty said. “On a rainy night, there’s nobody there. Sometimes it has up to about 50 cars, but it has been used on a regular basis — the police department has checked the lot — and the use is growing,” Mr. Doty said.
A planning board subcommittee is involved in the parking lot improvement project. The choice seems to be whether to wait and do all the improvements at once, or pick some things that could be done quickly and be ready for the upcoming summer. The parking lot off Tabor House Road was considered by the committee to be “low-hanging fruit.”
“It’s easy for us because we know where we’re going, but for somebody visiting, there isn’t a lot of signage to point them to the lot,” planning board subcommittee member Janet Weidner said.
The planning board is currently engaged in updating the Town’s Master Plan with a focus on long-range Menemsha upgrades to assist in public safety and transportation issues. In an email from the planning board to selectmen, the major short-term improvements were highlighted, including the upgrade of the Tabor House Road satellite parking.
“Based on our meetings with the community, it appears that if the satellite parking lot were improved, more people might be inclined to use it, thus reducing congestion in Menemsha,” the email stated.
Mr. Doty said lot lighting will be expensive; he estimates this cost to be $5,000. He also said about $3,000 will be spent on a bus shelter, “which just puts a little roof over the head of people who are sitting there.”
Article 7, $3,000 to fund improved signage, pavement markings, and vegetation management along town roads to Menemsha
“I’m just curious as to whether there’s some sense of the maximum number of signs we want in this community,” resident Rick Shweder said. “We’ve now had two discussions for funds for signage, and I can easily imagine the process by which the suburbanization of the community is tied to more and more signs. We had a discussion years ago about putting up even names of roads, which already was a big step. I can see how the temptation is to worry about people getting lost, and before you know it, the community is covered with signs. I’m wondering if that issue is on people’s minds.”
“I’m on the committee, and I can say it is on their minds,” planning board subcommittee member Joan Malkin said. “We agree with you that we don’t want to be lost in a forest of signs, but we do want some clarity.”
Also included might be a three-way stop sign at North Road and Basin Road.
“This article is not about signs in the parking lot. We’re trying to fix what we have, we’re not really planning to add much to it,” executive secretary Tim Carroll said, who added it also includes brush cutting and sweeping the parking lot, which have not been budgeted for in the past but have been necessary “the past couple of years.”
There was zero discussion over Article 1, the $50,000 to conduct the property re-evaluation of Chilmark properties; Article 5, the $50,000 to pay for the relocation of revetment stones and the installation of pilings to anchor the temporary floating dock; the $7,372 to pay for the library’s temporary youth services position from summer 2016 (Article 2); the $8,000 to fund either the replacement or the repair of the town hall chimney (Article 8); or Article 3, the $7,650 to pay for the repeater channel at Peaked Hill to assist communication for emergency services.
There were 55 voters present; there are 970 registered voters in Chilmark.
A moment of silence was held at the meeting’s start to honor the recently passed Kristin Maloney, who worked for 25 years at the Chilmark library as the assistant library director and the children’s librarian.
