A New Bedford barge company got permission this week to run new freight trips to Martha’s Vineyard.

The Steamship Authority board of governors Tuesday voted to approve 41 North Offshore’s plan to run a freight barge to the Island, limiting it to no more than one per day.

The new on-demand freight service has drawn concern from Island officials in Tisbury and Oak Bluffs, who worried it could add traffic to the busy Vineyard Haven harbor and streets of Oak Bluffs. 

After reviewing the proposal for nearly a year, the Steamship’s advisory port council suggested approving the application from 41 North Offshore owner Jonah Mikutowicz as long as the company gave the Steamship Authority a 24-hour notice of any trips, kept all of its staging on Steamship property and kept trips to a maximum of one per day. 

Mr. Mikutowicz previously said that he planned to carry trucks, heavy equipment, modular buildings and other freight to the Vineyard upon request, similar to the service he already runs from New Bedford to Nantucket. 

The Steamship Authority, a state-mandated transit service, grants licenses to other providers in the region that want to provide ferry and freight service. For instance, the Seastreak and Hy-Line ferries both need to get licenses from the Steamship Authority. 

Steamship Authority staff concluded that the new freight service would have minimal impact on the boat line’s operations and the board of governors voted unanimously in favor of the idea. 

The Steamship board Tuesday also rescinded a previous vote that tied salary increases to non-union staff to the weighted average pay of unionized workers. 

In June, the governors approved a 5 per cent pay increase for non-union employees. The board also decided that, if union contracts received raises of more than 5 per cent, the non-union staff would also receive the same increase. 

But Steamship Authority attorney Terence Kenneally Tuesday said there were legal and ethical concerns with coupling the union and non-union groups together. For instance, Mr. Kenneally and other senior staff would be involved in the union negotiations and, theoretically, if the union workers got a large raise so would they.

“The recommendation for myself and the rest of the bargaining group is to eliminate or rescind that portion of the vote, which will then free us up to just deal with the non-union compensation itself…so we don’t have this specter of unfair dealing,” Mr. Kenneally said.

After the coupling was stripped, the board passed another 5 per cent increase to non-unionized staff, not including Steamship senior management.