West Tisbury’s special town meeting planned for last night was over before it began. The meeting failed to reach a required quorum of five percent of registered voters, or 139 people.
Town clerk Tara J. Whiting-Wells announced roughly ten minutes after the planned 6 pm start that they were still short 39 votes.
The plan is to bring the seven articles on the warrant, of which the majority were spending requests, to the annual town meeting in the spring.
The largest request was to spend $298,000 to purchase a water “dive” rescue truck for the fire department.
Another large request on the warrant is the spending of $120,000 to install a new, 20,000-gallon water storage tank at Lambert’s Cove Beach parking lot, in case of a fire. This comes in addition to the $115,000 for the water storage tank approved in West Tisbury’s 2022 annual town meeting, amounting to a total of $235,000 for the project.
For the West Tisbury Fire Department, who presented the project in 2022 and received no bids, the delay in the meeting will result in administrative challenges as the department will have to rewrite the bid again. The fire department had already received bids to take on the entire project this time around. The meeting’s postponement will also likely lead to a pricing increase.
“Unfortunately last night’s delay is likely going to result in prices increasing and we will probably have to adjust the numbers by the town meeting in the spring,” said West Tisbury Fire Chief Gregory Pachico.
Also on Tuesday’s warrant that will be pushed to the spring, the town is looking to amend a bylaw requiring all town employees and volunteers to undergo a Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) check.
