The Tisbury select board reviewed potential town meeting articles in the spring geared toward the future of Town Hall, which include the construction of a whole new building.
Town administrator Jay Grande said the articles would also call for the formation of a town hall building committee, and the allocation of funds for a professional evaluation of the town’s space needs, along with site and feasibility studies.
Grande said this would position the town to later “request further funding to develop the final plans and construction documents.”
He compared the planning to the Tisbury School building project, but said the review would be conducted with a “higher level of detail.”
The town administrator also announced that he’s filed a second warrant article aimed at alleviating some of the “overcrowding” at Town Hall.
This comes after some Tisbury officials were criticized for supporting the use of the Katharine Cornell Theater — which sits atop Town Hall — as municipal office space.
Grande proposed garnering enough funds at the town meeting to either lease existing space or purchase outright modular office units.
The latter, which Grande expressed support for, would cost the town around $300,000, depending on wastewater plans.
The trailer could be located on town property “quite easily,” he said.
Those units would address the office space issue, and allow “time to work through the details of the Town Hall project.”
“Whenever there’s a future town hall — say three or four years out from today,” Grande said, the trailers can be repurposed or disposed of as surplus.
The alternative, Grande said, would be to lease space elsewhere. He said he’s been in communication with EduComp building owner Xerxes Agassi, and it may be possible to lease office space from him on an interim basis. But, he said, “I’m not aware of any office space presently available on a longer-term basis.”
Select board member John Cahill noted, “We’re trying to balance what’s the best decision for the town of Tisbury at this point.”
The select board took no votes. Board members wanted the town’s finance committee to weigh in on the proposed articles first.
In other business, State Sen. Julian Cyr (D-Truro) has filed an amendment to the existing state legislation that allows port towns in Barnstable, Nantucket, Bristol, and Dukes County to impose a surcharge on ferry tickets, select board chair Roy Cutrer said.
That surcharge, first put into effect in 2004, initially called for a fixed fee of 50 cents per passenger for ferry services over 100 passengers.
The amendment, which had been filed Jan 15, would allow for port towns to increase the embarkation fee to $2. “While it is too early to determine whether this amendment will be discussed, we’re optimistic that it will be passed,” Curter said.“If passed, it would mean a significant increase [in] fees due to the town of Tisbury.”
The proposed increase in embarkation fees, which had been discussed at both Tisbury and Oak Bluffs finance committee and select board meetings in December, would be on top of rate increases approved for 2023 by the SSA board. If approved, a roundtrip ticket to the Island would cost $22.
The select board also reorganized following a special election on Tuesday. Abbe Burt was elected to fill a seat left vacant by former member Larry Gomez, who stepped down last year for health reasons.
Cutrer and John Cahill were picked as chair and vice chair, respectively. Burt will take on the role of board clerk.
Oh come on, build buy spend, come on stop it. Where we vote for our toen elections is a great room on the back side of the emergency building on the bottom floor and it is large. By using portable movable walls which I did at a company I worked at in Boston is a way to utilize the space for up to six or seven cubicles and on voting day have the staff perform a training day at the senior center. The board of selectman must begin to look for alturnitives other then spending more and more money. Let the departments and boards work together for the town and it’s citizens and stop relying on the constant opening of the spigot that property taxes provides, do the hard and rewarding work to move us forward with existing materials and workforce.
Does anyone know what the actual economic impact is by the ferry coming into Vineyard Haven or Oak Bluffs? It looks like they are just picking numbers out of thin air with no rationale to them other than how much do you think we can get away with charging the public without them screaming too much. I would like to see a study to show what additional expenses are attributed to the boats coming in. As well as how much additional revenue the town makes from the public spending money in their town Because that’s the only place they go to when they get off/on the boat. There are several businesses near the boat that I frequent all the time when I am coming and going on the ferry.
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