Chilmark voters will convene their annual town meeting next week in an unconventional way in an unconventional year.
The meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. Monday at the Chilmark Community Center outdoor basketball court. There are 18 articles on the warrant, most of them small funding requests. A quorum of 25 voters is needed. Longtime moderator Everett Poole will preside. Face coverings are required for all who attend.
At the weekly selectmen’s meeting Tuesday, town administrator Tim Carroll outlined the safety protocols that will be in place for the town’s first in-person public gathering since March.
There will be a one-way flow of voters, entering from behind the tennis shack and exiting toward the post office. Two constables will direct voters to registration tables and seating, which will be spaced six feet apart. There will be 120 chairs available.
Parking for people who are elderly or have handicaps will be available behind the stage. Portable toilets will be located near the entrance and exit.
“Please respect other people’s desire to be socially distant,” Mr. Carroll said. “We have cut back the warrant to be non-controversial, but there is still a budget and other things that need to be voted.”
The largest single spending request is for $169,136 to pay the town’s share of a window replacement project at the Chilmark School. The funding includes design, procurement, installation and project management. West Tisbury and Aquinnah will be asked to pay the remaining $42,000. The three towns share a regional school district.
In a separate school spending request, voters will be asked to appropriate $5,216 as the town’s share of replacing the regional high school’s dust collection system. Both spending requests also hinge on an exemption from the provisions of Proposition 2 1/2, the state-mandated tax cap. The question will come before voters at the town election on June 10.
Voters will also be asked to put a total of $280,000 into town stabilization funds. The bulk of the money, $130,000 will go into the general stabilization fund, while $100,000 is being requested for the highway stabilization fund and $25,000 for the fire department and police vehicle stabilization funds.
Voters will be asked to approve four spending requests using Community Preservation Act funds totaling $454,500. Included in the requests are funds for community housing for homeless residents, the restoration of the baseball field at the Chilmark School and smaller requests for open space and historic resources funding.
Voters will also be asked to approve:
•$9,900 for three firefighting personal protective equipment sets;
•$33,470 for the town’s share of maintenance and upgrades to the regional communication center;
•$32,828 for the operating costs of five regional services provided through Dukes County, including social services, the CORE program, Healthy Aging Martha’s Vineyard, substance abuse prevention programs and the healthy aging task force;
•$8,990 for the town’s share of the up-Island regional school district’s roofing design project at the West Tisbury School.
An article seeking funds for the construction of a long-planned new fire station and EMS building has been postponed for now. Funding for the design work was approved in the fall, but due to the pandemic, the design work is still incomplete.
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