The Tisbury select board this week agreed to remove the benches from two bus stop shelters across from the Steamship Authority terminal in Vineyard Haven.

Meant for transit riders, the shelters have become a hang-out for loiterers and a turn-off for bus and ferry passengers, police Sgt. Max Sherman said.

“It’s been a site of alcohol use, drug use, urination and people sleeping there as well,” Mr. Sherman told the select board at a public meeting Monday afternoon. “It’s become, as the main port, kind of an eyesore as you come in.”

Martha’s Vineyard Transit Authority (VTA) administrator Angela Gompert detailed the problems in a letter to Mr. Sherman earlier this year, requesting the benches’ removal.

“That area has increasingly become a site of concerning activity, including the misuse of the benches by individuals engaged in substance abuse, fighting, loudly cursing and other inappropriate behavior,” Ms. Gompert wrote.

With the Harbor Homes winter shelter program scheduled to close later this month, Mr. Sherman said the bus shelters could attract even more people if the benches are still in place.

“You know we’re all for trying to support them [homeless people] as much as we can, and we don’t want to turn their lifestyle into a criminal matter, but I do believe that if we remove the benches — just inside the stalls, not outside — that we will see a decrease in their sleeping there or hanging out there, and [more] people that are actually taking the bus,” he said.

Tisbury police chief Christopher Habekost also spoke Monday, saying he believed the bench removal would not pose an undue hardship.

“It’s just kind of like a discouragement of sort of camping out in those two enclosures. There’s still benches in other areas... if they’d like to sit for a reasonable period of time. And there’s other places that they can go as well, especially in the nicer weather,” Mr. Habekost said.

The police department also is working with the Steamship Authority and Harbor Homes regarding individuals who linger in the ferry terminal building, he said.

“We’ve discussed many different things that we can do, both enforcement wise, but also just assisting people, and we’ve come up with some good solutions,” Mr. Habekost said.

The police department now checks in with terminal management every evening, he said.

“Those reports have been coming back to me, and I think that it’s successful,” Mr. Habekost said.

The select board voted unanimously in favor of removing the covered benches, rendering the two bus shelters standing-room-only for the future.

Among other business Monday, the select board voted to alter the wording of the leaf blower ban article for the annual town meeting warrant, removing all language regarding electric-powered blowers and Sunday/holiday limitations.

Board member Roy Cutrer was the main proponent of the last-minute changes, which came one day before the board officially signed the town meeting warrant.

Mr. Cutrer spoke heatedly against the inclusion of electric blowers in the warrant article, which — as in other towns — asked for Tisbury to limit the use of all powered blowers to specific hours and times of day and prohibit them on Sundays and federal holidays.

Board member Christine Colarusso also favored leaving Sundays out of the proposed bylaw, saying she often works six days a week and wants to do yard work when she can.

Tisbury resident Margo Sharff, the article’s sponsor, said many Tisbury residents — including about 90 people who signed her informal petition to the board calling for leaf blower control — take a different view.

“I do hear you that we are in working class neighborhoods and that people work six days a week, but we also have residents saying ‘I work 6 days a week, and I want one day and a few federal holidays to open my windows, sit in my yard, play with my children, study and rest,’” she said.

As changed by the board, the article now gives electric leaf blowers free rein while imposing a complete prohibition of gas-powered blower use on Sundays, town counsel David Doneski said, because the remaining language specifies only what days the machinery may be used: Monday through Saturday, within specific hours and times of year.

“The conclusion from that would be that they are not permissible outside of those hours, meaning no Sunday operations,” Mr. Doneski said.

Ms. Sharff lamented that the last-minute changes left her and her neighbors — who have already held a voter information session on the original article — no time to bring a citizens’ petition to the board before the warrant was finalized Tuesday.

“This has left us in a position in which we’re presenting the article we did not want to present,” Ms. Sharff said.

Tisbury holds its 2025 annual town meeting on April 29.

Also Monday, the select board voted to give town administrator Joseph LaCivita the task of vetting candidates for harbor master, a position that will become vacant after Gary Kovack leaves next week to replace retiring Edgartown harbor master Charlie Blair.

Human resources director Pam Bennett said the town has begun advertising the job and received one applicant as of Monday afternoon.

Mr. LaCivita will review the applications and conduct interviews to screen for finalists, with the select board conducting the final interviews, according to Monday’s vote.

“We are up against a busy season,” Mr. LaCivita said, acknowledging the urgency of bringing a new harbor master on board. “Our former harbor master has agreed to help us in getting him or her up to speed,” Mr. LaCivita added.