Ted Gavin, who represents Martha’s Vineyard on the Steamship Authority board, called this week for the boat line to throttle back on its delivery schedule for the new reservations system, which was expected to launch this spring and now has been postponed to early 2027.

As a volunteer tester of the new software, Mr. Gavin said, he can see first-hand that the project is far from completed.

“That’s not a staff shortcoming, that’s a project management issue,” he said at Tuesday’s board meeting.

The Steamship’s all-hands-on-deck push to complete the reservations and website project is demanding too much of chief operating officer Mark Amundsen and treasurer/comptroller Mark Rozum, Mr. Gavin said.

“We need Mark A. being a chief operating officer. We need Mark R. getting us a budget for next year,” he said.

“I’m really concerned that we are resource constrained,” said Mr. Gavin, arguing for a pause in the process and an outside review by an established accounting firm. 

“My suggestion is, we take a step back, we get an outside assessment that’s independent, that is untethered from the decisions that have already been made, and we use that to decide what the path forward is going to be,” he said.

Mr. Gavin also moved to sever ties with Gibbous, LLC, the information technology consultancy that has been working with the authority since 2023 to manage the Steamship’s website, reservations system and technology overall .

“I move that the Authority terminate the contract with Gibbous, and use the time to reassess what we need [for] project management to get this to a successful conclusion on a timeline that does not cause our staff to come apart at the seams,” he said.

None of the other board members seconded Mr. Gavin’s motion, killing further discussion of his suggestion.

Their inaction drew fire from Martha’s Vineyard residents during the public comment period Tuesday morning.

“It was extremely disappointing that no other board member would at least second the motion so that there could be some discussion on it,” said Margaret Hannemann.

Elizabeth O’Connor agreed, saying she was shocked by the board members’ failure to act.

Both women are members of the Steamship Authority Citizens’ Action Group, a watchdog and advocacy coalition founded on the Vineyard in 2025.

“I’m absolutely so dismayed that no one on this board even seconded the conversation,” Ms. O’Connor said.

“Just so the entire public knows, we’re sending [Gibbous] north of $80,000 a month,” she said. 

The Steamship Authority hired Gibbous, LLC in the summer of 2023 to review the authority’s information technology systems following multiple breakdowns.

In early 2024, the board authorized a $245,000 annual contract with Gibbous to continue reviewing the systems and consulting with Steamship management.

The board amended the contract in August 2025 to $400,000 for Gibbous to serve through December, 2026 as the project management office for the new reservations system, which is being developed by Italian software firm E-Dea.

The original launch date for the system has already been pushed back to early 2027 and on Tuesday, Steamship Authority general manager Alex Kryska asked for more time, citing complications arising from the authority’s wide variety of fare types.

Mr. Gavin said there’s no reason to rush ahead with the new system.

“Our existing system works. It’s not going away tomorrow. We don’t need to be doing gymnastics,” he said.

“Let’s make sure we’re setting the right schedule, and not pouring good money after bad, trying to bootstrap an implementation that we don’t need to approach that way,” Mr. Gavin said