Barring the unforeseen, the Tisbury annual and special town meetings will take place Saturday, June 13 at 1:30 p.m., on the Tisbury school playground to provide for social distancing among voters.
Selectmen voted Tuesday to set the date and rent a tent for the town meetings, which currently are under their second 30-day postponement from the original March 31 date. Town moderator Deborah Medders will submit a third declaration of postponement to the state as the current 30-day extension expires, she said.
Out of concern for coronavirus infections, many other annual Tisbury events and activities will be canceled outright or postponed to undetermined dates following Tuesday’s meeting of the board of selectmen, held on the Zoom videoconferencing platform.
Selectmen unanimously voted to adopt several recommendations from the board of health, which met Tuesday morning.
Organized sports leagues will not be granted contracts to use Tisbury parks this year, and the Tisbury Street Fair will not take place in July.
“We’re not going to postpone it to a date certain,” board chairman Melinda Loberg said. “We’re just not going to have it on July 8 and we’ll have further discussions over the summer.”
Town buildings that have been rented for events in June will have those contracts canceled, and groups that have contracts for July and August will be asked if they want to reschedule.
Out of concern for musicians on the bandstand, selectmen agreed to cancel the Vineyard Haven Band concerts in Owen Park. But that longstanding tradition had already fallen to coronavirus fears.
“The band is not planning at this point in time on rehearsing, because the majority of the band is at risk,” said Tisbury fire chief John Schilling, a trumpeter with the ensemble.
First Fridays, a more recent summer series that brings live music and outdoor vendors to Main street once a month, will take place online instead of in downtown Vineyard Haven, selectman and innkeeper Jeff Kristal said.
Selectmen also discussed when to open public restrooms, whether to add portable toilets and how to manage the town’s beaches, topics they’ll return to at an additional board meeting Friday at 1:30 p.m.
The board of health is also adding a meeting Friday morning. Both bodies are looking to state Gov. Charlie Baker’s office for guidance on beaches, parks and other places that traditionally draw summer crowds.
Among other business Tuesday, selectmen heard presentations from Mayflower Wind about its plans for a 127,000-acre offshore wind farm near the Vineyard Wind project, southeast of the Island, and coastal engineer John Ramsey on protecting the Vineyard Haven waterfront as sea levels rise.
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