The Tisbury School Committee voted 2-0 Tuesday night to authorize a lease with Vesta Modular for modular classrooms to accommodate students displaced by the $55 million Tisbury School project. The school committee did not disclose the lease amount, or provide the lease it had voted on. When asked following the vote what the dollar value of the lease was, neither committee chair Amy Houghton nor project manager Amanda Sawyer could muster the figure.
Ahead of the vote, Sawyer provided some background on the modulars, and indicated the school project’s architecture firm was integral to the selection process.
Sawyer said Tappé architect Chris Blessen put a lot of work into the lease issue, including work on lease details and getting “final lease agreements” to the town.
“So where we are with that is we’ve gone back and forth a bit with the arrangement of the modulars,” Sawyer said, and noted Blessen had done a lot of planning with Tisbury School Principal John Custer.
Sawyer said the size and number of modulars “had all been worked out with the school,” however she didn’t reveal that information.
“Jay [Grande] has the lease,” Sawyer said. “I know the town’s attorney has reviewed it.”
Houghton said Grande has had the opportunity to “review the lease and discuss it with Jay.”
Houghton articulated specific language for the vote, asking for a motion to “authorize the lease of modular units and related costs to establish the interim school facility as recommended by the owner’s project manager and architect, to be paid from the recent bond anticipation note issuance for the Tisbury School renovation and addition project and from the remaining monies from prior approved special town meeting warrant articles one and two.”
Following the vote, Houghton initially said, “I don’t actually have that in front of me,” when asked for the lease figure, and deferred to Sawyer, who said, “I don’t have it in front of me either.”
Sawyer said she would release the lease “once it’s executed.”
“I have a draft, but I don’t know if that’s going to be the final …” Houghton said in part, and declined to provide the draft until the Tisbury select board had signed a final version.
After the meeting Houghton reiterated that she would not release the draft lease. Under the state’s Open Meeting Law, any document reviewed at a public meeting is a public record.
Grande didn’t immediately respond to a voice message seeking access to the lease. The lease appears on the Tisbury select board’s Dec. 15 meeting agenda as “Agreement for modular lease.”
The old “trust me” response from the Committee? And with Grande involved, I feel better already.
Idiocy appears to be as contagious as Covid in Tisbury, spreading from the Bored of Selectmen, now infecting the school committee. They are taking votes on documents they don’t have in front of them and do not know the contents, are you kidding!!! Once again they fail to follow the law regarding public records hiding behind the shield of stupidity initiated by Cry-stall and the Grande. When will Someone step up and do the right thing??? Just pathetic!
Are you inferring that Tisbury voters have voted for incompetent leaders?
Does that mean that you consider Tisbury voters to be incompetent?
Albert– It is a tautological statement to say that Tisbury voters have voted for incompetent leaders.
I won’t say that all Tisbury voters are incompetent, but I will say that they have been repeatedly lied to, misled, and don’t seem to think things through very well. Naïve might be a better word.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that this cluster was going to drag on for years and cost many more millions to put lipstick on a pig than build a new school years ago.
…if the shoe fits.
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