The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School committee at its Monday meeting approved a request by business administrator Mark Friedman to spend approximately $5,460 from the contingency budget line to cover prior and future invoices related to environmental testing.
“Last year the committee appropriated $66,200 for the special permitting process for the track project as it related to the Oak Bluffs planning board process,” Friedman said. “Through the spring we entered into contracts, and we spent the majority of those funds.”
Due to the timing of some vendors providing information to the school committee, some of those expenses occurred during the spring and summer, after the FY22 books had been closed, Friedman explained.
Friedman asked the school committee to approve about $5,460 from the FY23 contingency fund. That total number, according to Friedman, breaks down to $3,973 for Huntress Associates, with the remainder going toward environmental assessments from Weston & Sampson. If contingency funds earmarked for projects or specific expenditures are not encumbered before the end of the fiscal year, the funds are supposed to roll back into the contingency line. “In one case, there is a request to do a small amount of additional review of some of that work [from Weston & Sampson]; that’s about $800 worth of expenses. We are asking for permission to use the FY23 budget because the unspent FY22 funds did not roll over,” Friedman said.
Committee member Roxanne Ackerman asked why the school continues to spend money on testing when the Oak Bluffs planning board already denied the project.
Committee member Kris O’Brien said that the plans for an athletic campus overhaul are still very much in play, and stressed that the first phase of the project includes one natural grass field, which would be subject to the same scrutiny related to environmental impact. “To continue to move forward, we have to be prepared to know what is in the environment. This analysis will give us that. It’s the same process that the synthetic materials were put through, except we are looking at it for the grass field,” O’Brien said.
Friedman reiterated that much of the testing work has already been performed, and a liability has been incurred on behalf of the school committee. “We need to pay those invoices. Those are dated for July and August; that’s why they are in the FY23 budget,” Friedman said. Committee chair Robert Lionette said he has a problem with the fact that these dates came after the ruling of the planning board.
Committee member Skipper Manter also said he has questions about the process continuing after the Oak Bluffs decision. “Any kind of expenses toward that permitting process should cease. If we are unsuccessful in court, we will have to go back [to the planning board] and reapply, so I don’t want to have all this testing be null,” Manter said.
A motion to approve the $5,460 in past and upcoming expenditures related to environmental analysis passed, 6-3.
In other business, performing arts director Abigail Chandler was in front of the school committee to request either additional funding for the performing arts department, or an internal, more self-sustaining source of funding for the department, “The ask on our end is for more funding, and whether that comes from our ticket sales, which is something we have talked about for years, or whether you all decide that we need a bigger budget, that’s what we want,” Chandler said.
In 2018, the program began to receive funding from the Kathryn Goodman Foundation. Now, as the director position for the department is full-time, and the program emerges from COVID, there are budgetary needs that existing line items aren’t going to meet.
Former director of the department Brooke Hardman Ditchfield said although the Goodman gift has been secured in perpetuity, Chandler and other performing arts leadership are trying to grow the program and expand offerings. “We have asked if we could keep a percentage of the ticket sales from the shows. We talked with [Principal Sara Dingledy] about ways that could work,” Ditchfield said. “Just based on how ‘Les Mis’ and ‘West Side Story’ did, those were some of our biggest box office producers. What that $10,000 could do for the program is huge.”
Chandler continued to say that the department could potentially add more programs that reach more kids — a nonmusical production each year, off-Island competitions, and more. But the price tag for those programs would be high, and some supplementary funding would be needed.
“We are going to be asking for $15,000 to $20,000, which is way over the $6,000 that we receive currently,” Chandler said. She said getting a percentage of proceeds from performing arts ticket sales would help the program grow and expand its reach.
As of now, money from ticket sales goes into the school’s general fund, similarly to ticket sales from football games and other public school events. Lionette said the budget subcommittee did ask for a line-by-line run-through of the existing performing arts budget, and what the department’s request is specifically. “I think we should let the budget subcommittee address this,” Lionette said. No action was taken on this agenda item.
