Candidates for Aquinnah’s select board spoke their minds at a public forum last month, addressing housing worries and whether to regionalize a short-staffed police department.
First-time Aquinnah select board candidate Chris Manning is set to challenge three-term incumbent Gary Haley for the only contested position in the May 15 election.
Manning, keeper of the Gay Head Light since 2021, has served as town constable, and with multiple Island police departments. He is also a member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), grew up in the town, and returned after serving in the U.S. Navy.
In his opening statement, the 36-year-old Manning described his younger age as a benefit. “I’m hoping to … bring some fresh voices in and usher in the next generation for Aquinnah,” he said.
Haley, an electrician, is eyeing his fourth consecutive term. His opening statement focused on a list of town projects that he said are going smoothly.
The most expensive project is to renovate the iconic Gay Head Light with $1.5 million of town and third-party funds. A playground is mostly complete behind town hall, he added, a public foraging area is planned nearby, and upkeep of town offices has been a priority.
Money and housing were top of mind for the more than half a dozen attendees at the forum, with some asking how the board can control excessive spending.
Haley said that he has attended finance committee meetings for the past few years. “Any department that’s getting an increase over, I think it’s a percent, or 2 percent … we go through their department line by line and figure out what the increase is for,” he said. There’s not much that can be done about salary increases, he added, as most town employees are already part-time. Expenses like a coffee machine can be eliminated, he said.
While Haley noted a slight increase in residents’ property taxes this year, he also said that there will be no budget override needed at the upcoming town meeting, and that the town has very little debt.
Resident Carla Cuch was especially worried about the tax burden on residents. “I believe that our taxes are off the charts,” she said. “We don’t have a lot to show for that here,” she added, noting that taxes increase each year.
Haley attributed rising taxes to rising town salaries, and said that property taxes reflect the increases because property taxes contribute the vast majority of town revenue.
“Every year salaries go up. Every year the taxes are going to have to go up,” he said.
Manning focused on the tax impacts of the Kennedy property’s sale to the M.V. Land Bank and Sheriff’s Meadow. The sale of Jacqueline Kennedy’s summer retreat reclassified hundreds of acres of land from taxable to nontaxable. The town should look at increasing its taxable land, while keeping the burden on residents to a minimum, he said.
“Whether that’s identifying town lots that could be transitioned into youth lots or otherwise brought into taxable land,” he explained, town officials should make it easier for younger people such as himself to buy property and raise a family in town.
“It’s very tough for the younger and upcoming generations to try to stay here and continue to live and thrive and keep the town functioning,” he said.
Around 300 acres of the Kennedy property, Haley said, was purchased by the Land Bank and Sheriff’s Meadow. Each organization plans to add parking spaces on either side of the home. The town was not aware of the sales until they were a done deal, he said.
Both candidates were wary about regionalizing police, though Aquinnah’s department has long struggled with short-staffing. Town Police Chief Randhi Belain is planning to retire in a year, and the department recently reached a deal with the county sheriff to have deputies help out during this year’s busy summer season.
Haley was optimistic that the town will attract more police in coming years, noting that police salaries in town are slightly lower than but still competitive with those in larger, down-Island towns.
He was also against regionalizing. “I don’t like to regionalize the police department. But if that’s what has to be done, that’s what has to be done,” he said.
Manning, whose father, Paul Manning, is Aquinnah’s police sergeant, cited response time as a key concern over regionalization. He pointed to the Tri-Town Ambulance as a reference point.
“In the dead middle of winter, when your ambulance is 20 minutes away … the very first people who are arriving at that doorstep are going to be the police officers,” he said of the ambulance service. “I think if we regionalize the police department, then are they going to be 20 minutes away as well, because they’re coming from Chilmark or coming from West Tisbury?”
Manning supported union contracts for town police in order to attract applicants.
Manning also wondered whether Aquinnah would be expected to pay its fair share of funding for regional services and projects, a common gripe in the roughly 450-person town.
Cuch also asked candidates how the town could better work with the tribe. Manning highlighted his work with the tribe’s Natural Resources Department upon returning to Aquinnah in 2019, and said he would work on finding common ground and mutual benefits. “I think that I would be able to [work] with our tribal government, our tribal council, our tribal administrator to really repair what has been a broken relationship between the town and tribe for many, many years,” he said.
Haley said the tribe rarely answers communications from the town. “We have been getting some responses recently … But in general, the questions that we send and the messages we send over there come back unaccounted for,” he said.
