Steamship general manager gets high marks, pay raise 

Following a closed-door session in Oak Bluffs Town Hall, new Steamship Authority General Manager Alex Kryska was given high marks for his first six months on the job, and the ferry line’s board rewarded him with a more than $26,000 pay bump. 

The decision followed a public evaluation of Kryska’s performance on Tuesday during the Steamship Authority board’s monthly meeting. After exiting an executive session, the board voted 4-0 to increase Kryska’s salary from $225,000 to $251,513.60, an 11.78 percent increase. 

The only board member who didn’t vote or provide an evaluation was Kreg Espinola, the newly appointed New Bedford representative. The Tuesday meeting was Espinola’s first public appearance in a meeting; he replaced longtime New Bedford representative Moira Tierney. 

Kryska submitted a self-evaluation on July 1 prior to the public review, and among various topics touched on, he made a note about compensation, comparing his salary to his predecessor, Robert Davis. 

“I came into this role at a starting salary of $225,000. My predecessor, who served as general manager with the same title and full scope of responsibility, was compensated at $239,400, a rate he continues to receive in his current role as senior advisor, prior to any annual adjustment,” Kryska wrote. “I want to be clear that I appreciate the senior advisor role, and recognize the commitment and value he has provided to the authority throughout his career and in his current capacity.

“I raise this not as a complaint, but as a straightforward and material point of comparison … Given that my predecessor’s full-time GM compensation exceeds my current salary, and that I am now performing the full scope of that role while he is not, I believe it is appropriate for the board to consider adjusting my salary to at least parity with his former General Manager compensation. I would further ask the board to consider whether an adjustment beyond parity is warranted in recognition of the scope of responsibility I now carry.”

Board members gave high marks to Kryska during the public part of the meeting, where he got an average grade of 90.5 out of 100. While these evaluations typically happen on an annual basis, the midpoint review for Kryska was a part of the contract he signed in December. 

Kryska said he’s “still having fun” and learning daily. He emphasized that running the ferry line is a team effort. “There’s a phrase I heard a couple of years ago: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, you go together,” he said. 

Ted Gavin, the Vineyard’s representative, gave Kryska a 95. Gavin said Kryska’s “most visible positive attribute” was his ability to “reprioritize quickly while coming back to the core task.” In particular, Gavin highlighted Kryska’s role of responding to what he called one-off “fires” from Vineyarders. 

Gavin was appointed to the board in March, and he expressed confidence in the approach Kryska’s taken — committing to public transparency and culture shift — since that time. All were aspects that the board emphasized were necessary in its search for a new general manager last year. 

“It’s your first six months, and you’re running and shooting,” Gavin said. But he warned Kryska that the next six months will be “a lot harder,” adding that “as you get into the minutiae, the machine will resist the changes that you are trying to make.” 

Change was the board’s theme when it launched into finding a new general manager to lead the ferry line. Well before the search process launched in 2025, Vineyarders expressed frustration over how the ferry line was run, including a heavily delayed new website that cost nearly $3 million, and a dysfunctional reservation system. Some called for a more responsive culture, and proposed caps to the board members’ terms. It was in the wake of these frustrations that the former general manager, Robert Davis, announced in September 2024 that he would step down from his position. Davis is still with the ferry line as a senior advisor to the board. 

Kryska was selected over Mark Amundsen, the Steamship Authority COO, this past November. But not long after his hiring, Kryska was hit by troubles left behind by the past administration. The Massachusetts Office of the Inspector General released a report in December highlighting how the previous, now-shelved website project wasted millions in public funds. In the wake of the state report that outlined deficiencies and routes for improvement at the ferry line, Kryska outlined in February an 18-month draft plan to address various issues, including leadership structure, financial planning, and transparency.

So far, Kryska seems to be en route to success, at least in the eyes of the ferry line’s board members, a five-person body whose members represent different port communities. Robert Jones of Barnstable and Robert Ranney of Nantucket both praised Kryska, and gave him a 92 and 90 respectively. 

The strictest grading came from Peter Jeffrey, board chair and Falmouth representative, who was the only one not to award a grade of at least 90. Instead, he graded Kryska’s first six months at an 85. Jeffrey said the implementation of the general manager’s timeline of key objectives was slower than initially planned. Still, he praised Kryska’s leadership, accountability, and efforts to restore relations with port communities. “We’re very positive we’re headed in the right direction,” Jeffrey said. 

Kryska has made efforts to learn about the five port communities of Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Falmouth, Barnstable, and New Bedford. At the time the last boat departed the Vineyard on Monday at 9:30 pm, General Manager Kryska was sitting at a booth by a window. He’d left partway through a summer collegiate baseball matchup between the Martha’s Vineyard Sharks and the Keene Swamp Bats, at which point the hometown team was losing 2-0.

Ferry schedules meant Kryska wasn’t able to see the Sharks’ comeback, but after sitting behind for five innings, the Sharks turned the game around starting in the sixth inning, and managed to secure a 4-3 victory.

Kryska was back on a boat to the Island early Tuesday to receive his high marks and raise.