West Tisbury will host a four-article special town meeting next week to address fund transfers and bylaw wording changes.  

The meeting will be held Tuesday, Sept. 16 at 6 p.m. at the West Tisbury School. The quorum is 139 people.  

The most pressing fund transfer is to pay for town personnel services, according to town administrator Jennifer Rand. After former town treasurer Kathy Logue retired at the start of the calendar year, the town has been paying for an outside consultant to do her work. 

“We have the funding to pay them, but it’s in the line that can only be used to pay an employee, so we need to be able to move the money to the other line,” Ms. Rand said. 

Voters will be also asked to reallocate $66,000 that was originally approved in 2022 town meeting for Howes House renovations to removing invasive grey willow trees by the Mill Pond. The Mill Brook watershed management committee requested the funds to have this work done, and Ms. Rand worked with the accountant to see what existing funds were available for the removal. 

“We could wait until the annual where there are new available funds, but the work on this removal has to happen in the fall,” Ms. Rand added. “So if we don’t do the work now, even if we vote the money in April, we can’t do the work until the following September or October, and the whole point is to get this invasive species out.” 

Another fund transfer involves putting money in the town’s unemployment fund to pay employees as necessary.  

“We have an unemployment fund, but we don’t [usually] have many unemployment claims, and we happen to have potentially two that are coming up, so we are underfunded at this moment,” Ms. Rand said.  

The one bylaw change deals with map and lot sign numbers to standardize a technicality. 

“Map and lot is a fairly esoteric [concept],” she said. “It’s sort of modernizing what was an old requirement.” 

Reaching the quorum at the off-season meeting is a concern, and Ms. Rand urges people to come out and vote. 

“It should be a fairly quick town meeting if we can get a quorum, but it’s an important town meeting, and we definitely want people to show up for it,” she said.