Under construction for the last two years and on the drawing board far longer than that, the new emergency services building in Tisbury cannot accurately be called new anymore, although it remains unfinished and unoccupied. One deadline after another for completion of the problem-plagued building has passed in the last year. And still the seven million-dollar project drags on.

The story of the West Spring street building reads like a case study in Murphy’s law: if something could go wrong it did. Seaver Construction, the Woburn company that was the low bidder and general contractor for the job, took responsibility more than a year ago for a long list of problems flagged by an independent consultant for the town, including buckled steel supports, water damage and other major construction flaws. Seaver and the town negotiated contract adjustments and the problems eventually were corrected.

A steady dribble of other, smaller problems followed, and with the latest deadline of July 1 for completion of the building now well past, Tisbury selectman Tristan Israel is right to call for a clear plan of action to get the job done. The fire department and town emergency responders were meant to relocate with their equipment to the building more than a year ago. Having said all that, the project is still on budget, and once it can be occupied the building by all accounts will be an excellent space that will serve the town for many years into the future.

It will be up to Tisbury town leaders to navigate the tricky issues around this building with the general contractor. But the situation raises larger questions around the public bidding process and whether some kind of intelligent legislation could be written to give relief to small towns from state procurement laws. This is not a new subject. A report written by two consultants at the firm Schiff Hardin five years ago found that public construction projects are prone to problems, rooted primarily in the requirement that towns award contracts to the lowest bidder.

Though cost overruns have not been the problem in this case, the low-bid requirement can encourage contractors to “lowball their bids, generating claims and change order requests to make up the difference,” the report found. Equally frustrating, the current law tends to favor off-Island contractors for public works projects, with the result that little money stays on Island except in the rare cases where local subcontractors are used. Instead, workers on the project commute to and from the Vineyard.

The discussion about introducing legislation for relief from public procurement laws began in Tisbury again this week, and is expected to continue this fall at the all-Island selectmen’s association. Could a different process have led to a better result in the case of the emergency services building? Hard to say, but it’s a question worth exploring, especially while the lessons from Tisbury are still fresh in everyone’s mind.