The town of Tisbury is pushing to have the Island stop using the grant-writing company whose mistake cost the Vineyard $2 million in state community development block grants for next year.

At Tuesday night’s meeting, the town selectmen expressed anger and frustration at the failure by the company which made the grant applications on behalf of five of the six Island towns, and instructed Tisbury town administrator John Bugbee to work with his counterparts in other towns to find someone else to prepare future grant applications.

They also asked Mr. Bugbee to redraft a letter to state authorities, protesting proposed changes to the Community Development Block Grant process, which threatens to cost the Island millions more.

The failure by Bailey Boyd Associates of West Harwich means 77 Island children whose parents previously received money for child care so they could work, will now not be funded. Another consequence is that dozens of Vineyard homeowners in need of repairs they cannot afford will not be able to get the work done.

The company made the same mistake on four applications for the grants, two off-Island and two of them on the Island. One covered the towns of Edgartown, Chilmark and Aquinnah, and the other covered Oak Bluffs and Tisbury.

The error involved advertisements for public hearings in the lead-up to the applications, which should have enumerated all the towns involved in each application.

Instead they named only the lead applicants, Oak Bluffs and Edgartown, a breach of guidelines set down by the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, the ultimate source of the funds.

Faced with applications totaling more than twice the available money, the state Department of Housing and Community Development, which allocates the funds, simply ruled the Vineyard out of consideration.

The towns were informed by a short, apologetic note from Alice Boyd, the chief executive officer of Bailey Boyd Associates Inc.

On Tuesday night, selectman Jeff Kristal noted Ms. Boyd had sent a letter instead of appearing before the board, and said she was “not the only grant writer out there.”

Tristan Israel picked up the theme, saying that if the selectmen had been responsible for such a “major screw-up” and lost $2 million, Island residents would have had their heads.

Mr. Bugbee said the towns would have to act collectively, as all are contracted with Bailey Boyd. He was told to talk to the administrators of the other affected towns about finding a replacement firm.

He also was instructed to write to state and federal authorities expressing the town’s anger at the proposed changes to the block grants process.

Mr. Bugbee said the CDBG process was “one of the most utilized grants that we receive on an annual basis.”

If the program were changed so that communities could only apply every second year, it would hurt the entire Island, he said.

The Martha’s Vineyard Commission had circulated a form letter to all the Island towns to submit in opposition to the planned change, but Mr. Bugbee said he had decided not to use it, but to write in stronger terms.

Mr. Kristal commended Mr. Bugbee on the tone of a draft letter and said it could go even further. “We need to express to them that we’re angry. What have we got to lose? We already lost it,” the selectman said.

In other business, selectmen considered the problem of people using parking spaces behind the fire station which are supposed to be reserved for firefighters and emergency responders.

The selectmen have previously asked police chief Daniel Hanavan to instruct officers to use the 12 allotted spaces near the police station.

Fire chief John Schilling said he had no problem with on-duty police using the spaces, but some were using it when they were off duty. So were other town employees and some members of the public.

“You see people coming in and leaving for the weekend, that’s kind of abusing the system,” he told the selectmen.

Mr. Israel said he considered the fire station lot to be for the use of volunteer firemen and emergency responders, not police.