Chilmark town officials are suggesting the town go out to bid to find an organization to run the town community center’s summer programs, but fear there won’t be enough time to do it this year. 

The suggestion from the Chilmark Community Center moderator’s committee was presented to the select board on Tuesday, and raised again at the committee’ meeting on Thursday. The potential change to the running of the community center follows months of tension over the community center’s management, mainly in relation to the tennis program. 

“The [committee] believes that the Town’s best course of action going forward will be to prepare and issue a Request for Proposal for operation of the Community Center summer programs,” town moderator Janet Weidner and committee member Matt Poole wrote in a letter to the board. “However, given the amount of time that an RFP process will require, the [committee] acknowledges that it likely can’t be accomplished in time for the Summer 2025 programs at the Community Center.” 

Currently, the community center programming is run by Chilmark Tennis Affairs Council (CTAC), a non-profit organization. Displeasure over the council’s running of the center spilled out into annual town meeting this year, prompting the formation of the moderator’s committee to look at the best way to move forward. 

At a moderator’s committee meeting Thursday, members said they planned to form several subcommittees to address their recent report, which suggested several changes to the community center. Among them were changes in leadership, programming changes and affordability. 

Matt Poole said subcommittees are the most efficient way to drill down final recommendations. 

“This concept of subcommittees has some merit, because if you try to hash everything out as a group of eight, we’re gonna drive ourselves crazy,” he said at a meeting Thursday. ”But if we split and settle into subcommittees of two and three and take on the topics, I’m betting that we can be pretty satisfied with what we produce, and we can bring something back that then can be hashed out by the group of eight.” 

One of the points subcommittees would address is the RFP process. The final groups will be determined at the committee’s next meeting on Tuesday. 

The committee will report their final findings and recommendations to the select board by Jan. 31, which aims to include a temporary agreement between the town and CTAC.