As a business consultant specializing in troubled companies, Ted Gavin has seen organizations at their worst, facing bankruptcy, lost jobs and forced sales.
As the Dukes County appointee on the Steamship Authority governing board, Mr. Gavin now is calling for a shift toward more transparency and accountability from the Island’s lifeline.
“The biggest change that’s needed is a culture change,” he said, during a wide-ranging interview at the Gazette offices in Edgartown last month.
Some things already are changing under general manager Alex Kryska, said Mr. Gavin, who was appointed to the board in March by the Dukes County Commission.
Mr. Kryska, who took over in January from former longtime general manager Robert Davis, took a noteworthy step in September by firing an employee who failed to follow Steamship Authority procedures for scheduling ferry inspections and license renewals, Mr. Gavin said.
Two ferries — including the authority’s largest, M/V Island Home — were abruptly pulled from the Vineyard route, leaving passengers stranded for hours.
“The fact that somebody who was responsible for a documentary lapse, just a paperwork lapse, was relieved of their position and terminated, is night and day compared to, for example, the Sankaty slipping its mooring and nobody facing disciplinary action,” Mr. Gavin said, referring to a 2023 incident in which the improperly-secured freight ferry came loose in Woods Hole and drifted into a private dock nearby.
“I’m happy to see that accountability is becoming part of the culture there, and it’s important because … they need to respect the people that they work with, and holding everybody on the team accountable for the same mission is important,” he said.
“I know Alex wants to do that, and he has the board’s unqualified support in doing that,” Mr. Gavin said.
The Steamship Authority also needs to push back its long-awaited new reservations system and website, Mr. Gavin said, restating his argument from the September board meeting.
While much of the new reservations system is close to being ready for the traveling public, he said, freight service has remained a programming challenge for the developer, E-Dea.
“The stuff that’s going on in the back end, and in particular with freight, is incredibly complex, and it’s what separates us from a lot of other ferry operators,” Mr. Gavin told the Gazette.
At the September board meeting, Mr. Gavin called for terminating the Steamship’s contract with its current technology project manager, Gibbous LLC, and hiring a larger firm with experience bringing new systems to the public.
It was a serious motion, he told the Gazette, but none of the other four board members, who represent Barnstable, Falmouth, Nantucket and New Bedford, would second it for discussion.
“I was surprised when no one spoke up, but I respect the reason,” Mr. Gavin told the Gazette.
“They wanted to read the contract to understand what that would entail [because] who memorizes a contract that was signed three years ago? Nobody,” Mr. Gavin said.
Nonetheless, he said, the Steamship Authority would be better off taking a fresh look at the reservations and website project before proceeding.
“Most private aviation accidents with young pilots, or new pilots, happen because the pilot doesn’t do the one thing that they could have done, which is make a 180 degree turn and fly home,” Mr. Gavin told the Gazette.
“‘Get-there-itis,’ is what it’s called,” he said. “The desire to get to the end overrides better thinking and and prudence.”
Mr. Gavin, whose firm is called Gavin/Solmonese, has witnessed the aftermath of many wrong business decisions in his consulting work.
“We go in, we figure out why the company is not doing well. We give them a plan to fix it, and … if they wait too long, more often than not, I become your tour guide through Chapter 11 [bankruptcy],” he said.
Before becoming a businessman, Mr. Gavin told the Gazette, he was on a very different path.
“My first career was in classical music. I was a symphony orchestra conductor,” he said.
As a young bassoonist in Philadelphia, Mr. Gavin said, he played in the youth symphony with other up-and-coming musicians such as Christian McBride, now an eminent jazz bassist with 11 Grammy awards.
He majored in music theory at the Philadelphia University of the Arts in Philadelphia and studied conducting with private instructors, until an old hand injury — from a deli-meat slicer blade at a job during his teens — began acting up.
“It got to the point where it really prohibited my continuing on as a conductor, and that was a pretty tough time in my early 20s,” Mr. Gavin said.
“I can’t really play piano at the level that a conductor needs to play piano, so… I thought it was better for my future if I went to my other love, which was business,” he said.
Mr. Gavin worked for a succession of smaller and larger companies over the course of his 20s, and then made his way into information technology and began running IT departments for manufacturing companies.
One of his jobs involved bringing the E-ZPass electronic road toll system to Delaware, where he met his wife Amy through an administrator at the state transportation department.
Twenty-three years later, the Gavins have two adult daughters and a grandson in Philadelphia, where the couple lived until moving to the Vineyard about a decade ago.
They began summering here in 2009, after a first visit to attend a fundraiser for then-Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, Mr. Gavin said.
For the first few years, their visits were 10-day to two-week affairs at inns and then at rented homes.
“We really got to like being here and dislike leaving,” he said.
In 2016, the Vineyard became even more enticing when the Gavins visited in June instead of later in the summer.
“It was a completely different Island and a different mix of people, a different feel,” he said. “We loved it, and we were home by July 4, and I immediately wanted to come back.”
The couple returned that August with a mission: to find a rental for the entire summer of 2017. Their new landlords in Chilmark liked the couple well enough to begin renting the house to them year-round and, a few years later, to sell them the property, Mr. Gavin said.
The Vineyard’s welcoming music scene was a major draw, he said.
“The reason why my wife and I decided we could actually make a life here was because of the local musician community,” said Mr. Gavin, who still plays rhythm guitar.
“I was sitting in with Johnny Hoy and the Bluefish and Rosie Guerin,” he said.
Jeremy Berlin, pianist with the Bluefish and one of the Vineyard’s most active performers with a variety of bands, said he considers Mr. Gavin a reliable sideman as well as a valued friend.
“He is one of the smartest people I know … and a good and smart musician,” Mr. Berlin said.
The Gavins also are active in Vineyard causes. Ms. Gavin chairs the board of Martha’s Vineyard Community Services and they also have served on the boards of the Martha’ Vineyard Camp Meeting Association and the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center, Mr. Gavin said.
The Dukes County Commission appointed him to succeed retired businessman James Malkin, who served three three-year terms on the Steamship Authority board before declining to seek a fourth.
Mr. Malkin’s predecessor, Oak Bluffs restaurateur Marc Hanover, served five terms and subsequently retired off-Island.
Both the Vineyard and Nantucket seats on the Steamship Authority board are endowed by law with weighted votes of 35 per cent each, compared to the remaining three members’ 10 per cent.
The next Steamship Authority board meeting is scheduled for Oct. 20 at 10 a.m. in the Tisbury emergency services building on Spring street.