The Island political season isn’t quite over yet. Aquinnah will call a special town meeting next month to vote on school funding requests that were left off the annual town meeting warrant due to an error by school administrators.
Selectmen unanimously approved the special town meeting at their regular meeting Tuesday. The meeting will be held on June 5. There are three articles on the warrant.
Funding requests from the school superintendent’s office totaling $35,000 are for the town’s share of costs to repair the heating system in the Chilmark School and installing fire alarms at the West Tisbury School.
The missing requests caused confusion at the annual town meeting last week when up-Island regional school district committee member Theresa Manning asked why the funding wasn’t included as warrant articles.
On Tuesday, Vineyard schools superintendent Dr. Matthew D’Andrea took full responsibility for the problem, saying that the error was on the school side and that the articles in fact were never sent to town administrator Jeffrey Madison.
“I want to start off by apologizing,” Mr. D’Andrea said. “There was a glitch in the computer system and they [requested warrant articles] didn’t get to Jeff. It was something we should have followed up on.”
He explained that the school wants to get the projects done this summer and waiting until next year to approve the funding would put the projects on hold.
Mr. Madison said funding was difficult to find because of the town’s thin budget, but he and town accountant Emily Day were able to find a solution with help from town counsel Ron Rappaport. The special town meeting warrant will ask voters to transfer the $35,000 requested funds from the town building and grounds stabilization fund to the general stabilization fund to pay for the projects.
“We came up with a fix,” said Ms. Day, who received praise from assistant school superintendent Richard Smith at the selectmen’s meeting for dealing with the communication snafu.
The transfer and two funding requests will require a two-thirds majority vote.
In a related matter, selectmen also agreed to send a sternly worded letter to the Dukes County Commission requesting that all future budget communications be submitted in writing and sent by certified mail to the town administrator, accountant and treasurer.
The letter is in response to claims made by county manager Martina Thornton during the town meeting that the town omitted $27,500 in social services funding from the town budget. The funding was for the Center for Living and the Vineyard health care access program.
Voters approved adding the funding to the budget, but on Tuesday selectmen said a review of the records raised broader concerns about communication channels with the county. The letter notes that minutes from a town finance committee meeting with Ms. Thornton in March indicate that a funding request was discussed, but there was no record of any followup by Ms. Thornton.
“Clearly this is not a situation that can be repeated in coming years,” the letter to the county commission says in part.
Also on Tuesday in the annual board reorganization, Gary Haley will take over as chairman and Julianne Vanderhoop will become vice-chairman.
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