Edgartown’s Too-High Horse

The six Island towns have long coexisted like members of a lively, diverse and sometimes scrappy family, each with its own character, personality and style, but with an unwritten inside rule: Never think you are better than someone else.

Lately Edgartown has begun to show signs of doing just that and it’s not wearing well with the other towns whose leaders are far too polite to say something about it.

Why does Edgartown repeatedly think it can go its own way as if there were not five other towns who may be hurt by the town’s self-serving attitude?

The latest example was on Monday afternoon when the three Edgartown selectmen heard from their appointed member to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, James Joyce. Complaining about the projected town assessment to the commission’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which is the highest among the six towns, Mr. Joyce suggested the town, which has seen few development reviews by the commission in recent years, would be better off withdrawing from the commission. It’s a waste of money, Mr. Joyce, a full voting member of the commission who was appointed to represent the interests of his town, seemed to suggest.

Even worse, the three selectmen — one of whom served on the commission for many years — agreed.

Still in the early stages of being discussed as a draft, the annual commission budget depends on assessments from the six towns. The mandatory assessments are determined using a formula based on equalized property valuations.

A year and a half ago the Edgartown selectmen, unhappy with the way the commission budget was done, tried to craft a protest gesture by singling out the town assessment for the commission budget as an override question in the town ballot. Since the assessment is mandatory, the selectmen painted the decision as symbolic. It all backfired later when voters approved the question and the selectmen were forced to call a separate special town meeting to raise the money for the assessment which had been erased from the town budget. In the end the selectmen’s so-called gesture was widely viewed as a foolish boondoggle that cost the town more money than it would have if they had just paid the assessment.

Now the selectmen are at it again: Why should we participate in the commission, it’s too expensive, it does nothing for us, we can take care of ourselves, they say, collective noses in the air. But memories are long. Anyone who lived on the Island in the early 1980s remembers the painful years when Edgartown did pull out of the commission. The result was disastrous, with unchecked development in a town suddenly stranded and estranged from its neighbors.

If the Edgartown selectmen and their appointed representative to the commission are unhappy with the commission’s budget process, then they should attend budget meetings and work to change what isn’t working for them.

But that does not include lobbing a grenade into the spirit of regional cooperation, which is more important than ever these days.

It’s time for the Edgartown selectmen to climb off their high horse and remember their town role as one member in a family of six.