The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School committee has rescinded a vote it took Nov. 7 that would have permitted an overnight homeless shelter for a second winter on school-owned property at Martha’s Vineyard Community Services.
The high school committee will take up the matter again at 6 p.m. Nov. 28, after member Kris O’Brien of Oak Bluffs called for the original vote to be rescinded based on information from the town’s police chief. Ms. O’Brien had voted in favor of approving the winter shelter at the Nov. 7 meeting.
“I asked before we voted if there were any issues and we were told that there were not,” Ms. O’Brien said at the committee’s Nov. 15 meeting.
“I spoke with the chief of police today. There were eight calls that the Oak Bluffs police department had to respond to in the 10 weeks that the shelter was open, and I consider that to be an issue,” she said.
Oak Bluffs town administrator Deborah Potter also attended the Nov. 15 meeting, strongly expressing disappointment that the town was not consulted before the committee decided to extend the winter shelter agreement, an action that was not on the Nov. 7 agenda.
“We had no idea that this was even going to be discussed,” Ms. Potter said. “We would have brought these concerns to you if we had been informed.”
The winter shelter request came up last week in response to a letter from community services executive director Beth Folcarelli at the Nov. 7 meeting. Although it did not appear on the meeting agenda, the high school committee discussed the request, and principal Sara Dingledy told the committee that she had not heard of any incidents at the shelter.
“It was smooth last year,” Ms. Dingeldy said last week.
The request prompted debate among school committee members, with Kimberly Kirk and others expressing concerns that the shelter was approved last year as a short-term fix, not as a permanent location.
“It was only for a few weeks when we actually approved it,” Ms. Kirk said. “Is this now going to be a long term solution?”
But other committee members felt strongly that it was important to continue the shelter.
“I don’t disagree with the concerns,” Jeffrey (Skipper) Manter, 3rd said. “But I know there is an emergency here, homelessness is a serious matter…I’d hate to see people not have a place to go.”
The measure was approved, with three members voting against it, including Ms. Kirk, Lou Paciello and Kathryn Shertzer.
Use of the community services building for the winter shelter began in January of this year, when the high school committee unanimously agreed to hold the shelter at the community services building across from the high school. At the time, shelter manager Lisa Belcastro of Harbor Homes, the Island’s homeless response nonprofit, said that there had been no calls to police for violence at the previous location in the parish house of St. Andrew’s in Edgartown.
“The most times I’ve called police is for P.C., protective custody,” she told the high school committee on Jan. 10, explaining that when a guest insists on leaving the shelter during a particularly cold night, a staffer may call police to pick them up so they don’t freeze outside. Ms. Belcastro also mentioned a persistent off-Island visitor who was too mentally ill to admit to the shelter and had to be removed by police.
At the Nov. 28 meeting, Oak Bluffs officials will be invited to speak, along with Ms. Belcastro and MVCS chief executive Beth Folcarelli, who has supported the shelter’s request to operate in the former early childhood building for a second winter.
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