The Tisbury select board voted unanimously this week to limit the number of taxi companies licensed in the town to seven, each with up to eight cabs on the road.
The town currently licenses six taxi companies and is scheduled to hold a hearing later this month on an application from Martha’s Vineyard Taxi to become the seventh.
The new regulation closes a gap in town policy that has been cloaked by misleading information on the town’s website portal for license applications, select board member Roy Cutrer said at the board’s Wednesday meeting.
“Our regulations do not include a limit on licenses or on the number of taxi permits for individual taxi vehicles, but … the online portal stated no new taxi cab companies shall be licensed and that the application form was only for transfer or renewal of a license,” he said.
Tisbury had six licensed taxi companies until the 2017 death of AAA Taxi owner Ira Yaffee, after which the town apparently ceased taking applications without creating a specific policy.
When a new cab company applied for AAA Taxi’s long-idled license earlier this year, cab operators doing business in other Island towns — including Martha’s Vineyard Taxi owner Peter Bradford —complained to the select board that they had been turned away when seeking to do the same thing after Mr. Yaffee died.
The Tisbury select board approved the new company, MV Sharks Taxi, for a license last month. Martha’s Vineyard Taxi is scheduled for its application hearing April 24.
Also Wednesday, the select board approved a request from the streaming video platform Netflix to film in downtown Vineyard Haven on May 13, for a television series made from the novel Forever by former seasonal Islander Judy Blume.
Netflix location manager Mark Fitzgerald said that showrunner Mara Brock Akil — who created the series, wrote all the episodes and will direct the Island filming — is also a seasonal resident.
“She’s been on the Island for about 20 years. And she very much is the reason why we’re coming here. The Island is very near and dear to her heart, and a lot of these locations are written because they’re places from her memories and from her life,” Mr. Fitzgerald told the select board.
Tisbury police chief Christopher Habekost said his concerns about the filming proposal had been addressed by Mr. Fitzgerald and that traffic impacts were unlikely to be significant.
The cast of the Forever series includes no big-name stars likely to attract a following to town, Mr. Fitzgerald said.
“They’re great actors, but nobody, you know, that people would recognize walking down the street,” he said.
Netflix will pay for three town police officers to provide security for the shoot, Mr. Fitzgerald said.
Filming of the scenes — a drive through downtown and a joyful meeting between two teenagers at the ferry terminal — should take two or three hours and will proceed rain or shine, he told the board.
“Unless it was severely torrential, emergency-type weather, we would absolutely go for this and shoot it on the day,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.
Mr. Cutrer and board members John Cahill and Christina Colarusso voted unanimously to approve the Netflix request.
“Thank you for choosing Tisbury,” Mr. Cutrer said.
In other business Wednesday, the board extended interim town accountant Edward Christofono’s contract through the end of the current fiscal year on June 30.
Mr. Christofono was appointed in January to a 90-day position following the retirement of longtime town accountant Suzanne Kennedy at the end of last year.
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