Edgartown voters will take up an 81-article warrant and a $40.7 million budget at the Edgartown School field at annual town meeting on Saturday, May 22, at 1 pm.
This is the second year in a row Edgartown will hold its meeting outside at the Edgartown School, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
To begin, voters will have to elect a one-time town moderator on the town meeting floor, following the death of town moderator Sean Murphy.
Voters will decide on a $2.8 million article for the renovation of Memorial Wharf, which will also require approval at the ballot box at annual town election through a Proposition 2½ debt exclusion. According to town administrator James Hagerty, the estimated increase of the tax rate would be 3 cents per $1,000 valuation. The town’s current tax rate is $3.28. The average single-family residence worth $1.6 million would pay an additional $50.73.
There are numerous funding articles on the warrant, including $400,000 to rebuild and resurface town streets; $300,000 to build and repair various town sidewalks, bike paths, parking lots, and stormwater drainage systems; $240,000 to repair the rapid infiltration basin system at the wastewater plant; $230,000 to repair the wastewater plant’s Schwing pump; and $164,840 for the town’s share of technology infrastructure at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School.
Voters will also decide whether to change the town’s tax collector position from elected to appointed, adopt a stretch energy code, and whether to change the town’s highest elected officials from selectmen to select board.
Once again voters will decide on whether to allow the Vineyard Transit Authority to install electric bus chargers on Church Street. At last year’s town meeting, voters voted 96-83 for a committee to review the Church Street project, which seeks to install induction chargers for the VTA’s growing fleet of electric buses. That committee gave an unbridled endorsement of the project.
Edgartown moved its annual town election to Tuesday, May 25, from 10 am to 7 pm. There are no contested races. Voters will have to write in a candidate for town moderator due to Murphy being the only candidate on the ballot.
I invite all of my fellow Edgartown voters to the Annual Town Meeting to support the Energy Committee’s 3 Warrant Articles: installation of electric vehicle chargers at the Edgartown Park & Ride lot; adoption of the “stretch code”, which will allow our town to become a “Green Community” at long last; and the aspirational, non-binding goal of reducing fossil fuel consumption & increasing renewable electricity by 100% by 2040. Let’s bring Edgartown into the Green Energy Future!
I hope it’s okay to let readers know that I’m standing as a write-in candidate for election to the Edgartown Library Board of Trustees. I’ve been an Edgartown year-round resident since 1981; worked as news editor of the Gazette for almost 24 years, and as a columnist for this newspaper for about 10. My wife Carolyn and I (she’s recently retired as a counselor at MV Community Services) raised two children here and saw them educated through the Vineyard’s excellent public schools.
More to the point, I was the Edgartown Library’s reference librarian for 14 years before retiring in February of 2020 — 14 years during which I developed a deep appreciation for the library as a community resource. I was recently appointed by the Edgartown select board to serve out the remaining term of library trustee Herbert Foster, who died in February. Those are big shoes to fill, but I promise to do my very best if elected.