We can all agree that the Martha’s Vineyard Center for Living and the Supportive Day Program are excellent programs. The staff members are caring, giving people who work quite hard. No question about it.
The Center for Living serves frail and elderly Island residents, including those with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, in a supportive day program, and provides other social services. The center currently uses borrowed space at the Edgartown and Tisbury Council on Aging buildings, and has been searching unsuccessfully for a new home large enough to serve all the people who need services.
Island demographics, we are told, point to an aging Island, one that will require more services. Advocates for the elderly are right to push us to address future needs now.
None of that should preclude a thoughtful examination of the county-engineered request to purchase the former Vineyard Nursing Association (VNA) building in Tisbury off State Road at a price of up to $1.6 million to provide a permanent home for the Center for Living.
Questioning that deal, and even rejecting it, as the finance committees in Oak Bluffs, West Tisbury, and Tisbury did, does not mean the members of those committees have no understanding or appreciation for the program, or its importance.
Edgartown National Bank took the property in lieu of foreclosure at a listed sale price of $1,155,000, after the VNA ceased operations in March of 2014. The building purchase would be financed by a bond issued by Dukes County. The six Island towns would be solely responsible for the purchase price, interest on the loan over a term up to 30 years, and future maintenance.
Under the county formula outlined in a PowerPoint presentation, Edgartown taxpayers would pick up the lion’s share. The low estimate is $493,120, followed by Oak Bluffs ($335,360), Tisbury ($301,600), West Tisbury ($240,480), Chilmark ($177,440), and Aquinnah ($52,000).
The county says it would rent out excess space in the building at fair rental value and use that income to reduce the maintenance cost of the building, but it reserves the right, with the approval of the County Advisory Board, to make space available for less than fair value, or rent-free, “for use by a department, board or committee of the county or of one of the towns, or by a non-profit corporation.” There is no information on who those prospective tenants might be.
County taxpayers currently shell out a total of $491,739 in the form of the county assessment. That is money that comes right off the top and is not subject to a town meeting vote. In FY 15, Edgartown taxpayers shelled out $179,389, followed by Chilmark ($82,491), Oak Bluffs ($69,844), Tisbury ($69,414), West Tisbury ($64,577), Aquinnah ($19,076), and Gosnold ($6,944).
County taxpayers have every reason to question what they get for that money.
In the run-up to annual town meetings, we rely on the members of town finance committees to spend time examining the details of municipal spending plans. Those details may be overlooked by voters who haven’t the time, inclination, or understanding to dig down into the nuances of where their hard-earned tax dollars disappear. It is no easy thing in a small community to say no, when it is so much easier to say yes to a raise for employees, a new vehicle, another hire, or a program that all acknowledge does much good.
We count on our town finance committee to make the tough calls and provide an explanation of how they arrived at their decisions. The final spending decision rests with the voters. Very few, as it turns out.
In 2014, voter turnout ranged from 5.7 percent in Tisbury to 19 percent in Chilmark. For example, in Oak Bluffs, 282 voters out of an electorate of 3,655 spent $25.7 million. In Edgartown, 190 voters out of a total of 3,262 spent $30.6 million.
Next week, likely a small percentage of all registered voters in four of the six Island towns will attend annual town meetings and collectively spend more than $100 million to run town governments and fund municipal services in the next fiscal year, which begins on July 1. Much of the money will not even belong to them. It will be tax dollars chipped in by seasonal property owners, whom we voters expect to support our schools and other services for which our seasonal friends have no need — and subsidize our discounted ferry rates too while they are at it.
In that regard Vineyard residents are luckier than most in communities that rely solely on property taxes. We can spend knowing others must help pick up the tab.
Vote no in Oak Bluffs
Last week, The Times published a Letter to the Editor undersigned by 17 Island physicians and dentists, in which these respected members of our community urged Oak Bluffs voters to continue to keep the town water supply fluoridated and vote no to the ballot question: “Should the Town of Oak Bluffs cease adding fluoride to the drinking water?”
Voters should follow the advice of those they entrust to keep them healthy.
In Tisbury, vote yes on Article 7
As this page argued following the failures in communication and execution in the aftermath of the late-January blizzard (Feb. 18, “Blizzards and town government”), Tisbury selectmen are inexplicably unaccountable for the town Department of Public Works (DPW) and its performance. Supported unanimously by the town’s Finance and Advisory Committee, a yes vote on Article 7 would replace the current elected DPW board with an advisory one appointed by the selectmen, and would make DPW’s operations and personnel the direct responsibility of town management.