The annual town meeting warrant which will be addressed by Tisbury voters on Tuesday night is one cut to the economic times, featuring none of the big-cost initiatives of recent years.
This is the year Tisbury abandoned its free-spending ways. There are no new fire stations this time around, no other big new projects, almost nothing of a discretionary nature. Infrastructure outlays are mostly confined to replacing that which is broken.
There was talk of class warfare and fascism. There were dark forecasts of Martha’s Vineyard as a community polarized between very rich and very poor. There was a crowd. Last Monday’s was not your standard meeting of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission land use planning committee.
But as commission executive director Mark London noted even before it began, there’s something about the subject of big houses which gets people going.
Jeff Kristal and Tom Pachico almost bumped, then warily skirted one another as they went to take their seats at Tuesday’s Tisbury candidates’ forum.
With the collision averted, the crowd laughed, but there was no denying a certain tension in the air as the two big men lined up to put their respective cases to be elected selectman.
Three years ago, Mr. Kristal won the position from Mr. Pachico, the incumbent, by a mere 14 votes. Now, Mr.Pachico is back for a rematch, in the one and only contest of Tisbury’s upcoming town elections.
Tisbury voters will face the task of cleaning up old messes on a number of fronts at this year’s special town meeting, on Tuesday.
Wastewater which used to be dumped into the waters around the Island, garbage disposal on shore, neglected and abandoned buildings in town, people who don’t shovel their sidewalks after it snows, the consequences of profligate energy use: These are the literal messes.
Oak Bluffs voters will not lack for choice in this April’s town elections, with five disparate candidates running for two selectmen’s positions.
They lined up in alphabetical order on Wednesday night at the League of Women Voters candidates’ forum in the town library, five men with not a lot in common, save an acknowledged lack of hair, to put their pitches for a hand in running Martha’s Vineyard’s most cash-strapped town.
A study into the mooted amalgamation of the Tisbury and Oak Bluffs police departments has concluded that a merger would produce a better standard of policing and could save the towns close to $500,000 a year.
The MMA Consulting Group report, delivered to the towns this week, looked at options for greater cooperation between the towns’ police departments, ranging from limited sharing of some services to full amalgamation. It recommended amalgamation.
