Several funding questions planned for a special town meeting in West Tisbury Tuesday were put off after the town failed to muster a quorum.

The special town meeting was planned to start at 6 p.m. at the West Tisbury School but by 6:10 p.m., moderator Caroline Flanders was 39 people short of being able to call the meeting to order. 

Quorum in West Tisbury is 5 per cent of registered voters, or 139 people. 

“You never know if you’ll reach quorum,” select board member Jeffrey (Skipper) Manter said. 

There were lingering worries about reaching the necessary quorum, town officials said in the lead up to town meeting, though none of the seven articles were urgent enough to necessitate a rescheduled special town meeting.

All of the articles are planned to be added to the annual town meeting in April.  

On the special town meeting warrant were articles seeking to allocate $120,000 in free cash to install a new water hydrant near the parking lot of Lambert’s Cove Beach. Residents were also supposed to vote on spending $298,000 on a new water rescue truck for the fire department. 

Other matters of business include town bylaw changes. The town was proposing to amend the appointment process for trustees of the town’s affordable housing trust fund and require criminal offender record information checks for all employees and volunteers of the town.