Aquinnah Leaders Make Painful Budget Choices After Failure of
Override

By JULIA WELLS
Gazette Senior Writer

Swinging the proverbial budget ax, selectmen and town department
heads in Aquinnah took their first whacks yesterday at trying to cut
$260,000 from a $2.4 million town budget.

"We're here tonight to try and come up with some cost
savings," declared Aquinnah selectman and board chairman Carl
Widdiss.

Mr. Widdiss chaired a strategy meeting called by the selectmen
following a special election last week when voters rejected a $260,000
override to Proposition 2 1/2, the state mandated tax cap. The general
override failed by three votes, and selectmen must now find a way to
reduce the town budget by 10 per cent.

For more than two hours last night the group went over the budget
line by agonizing line, chipping away at an array of programs from legal
protection to the police department to the library. A number of town
department heads stepped forward and offered to shave dollars from their
already lean budgets. The town's contribution to the
Martha's Vineyard Shellfish Group was eliminated entirely, and
proposals to reduce education spending by $109,000 and cut or eliminate
a cost of living increase for town employees are all now under
consideration.

But in the end it was still not enough, and the meeting will be
continued again tonight in the selectmen's room in the town hall
at 6 p.m.

The final decision on how to make the cuts will rest with voters on
Thursday night when the annual town meeting reconvenes. The meeting
begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Aquinnah town hall.

Last night the discussion strayed beyond the subject of government
spending and into a companion topic: What can the second smallest town
in the commonwealth do to increase revenues?

"We're going to have a meeting to talk about
that," Mr. Widdiss said.

"The exercise tonight is to cut this side - the
outgoing - but if there are some ways to raise revenues before
the end of next year, why not figure that out before the town meeting on
Thursday night?" said Joe Carbo, a member of the town finance
committee.

More than once the discussion also turned to the subject of town
fees, and whether the monetary contributions to the town from the
well-funded Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) are enough.

The tribe, the only federally recognized tribe in the commonwealth,
makes its home in Aquinnah. Town-tribe relations have been strained this
year by the sovereign immunity case which is now waiting for arguments
before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

At the outset last night, town accountant Marjorie Spitz presented
the board with an up-to-date ledger showing how much money is in various
town bank accounts, one week before the close of the fiscal year.

As Aquinnah faces its first budget crisis in many years, education
spending is a central theme. The number of children attending the
regional high school from Aquinnah jumped from nine to 13 this year, and
regional assessments are up both for the high school and the up-Island
regional school district, which includes the West Tisbury and Chilmark
elementary schools.

Town moderator Walter Delaney proposed that the town school budget
be reduced by some $109,000. "That's the difference between
last year's school budget and this year's school
budget," he said.

"It's too bad no one is here from the school
committee," said Ms. Spitz, who earlier had volunteered to cut
$2,000 from her own budget, possibly shortchanging a badly needed new
computer system for her office.

Town membership in the Martha's Vineyard Shellfish group
- a $23,000 line item - was almost the first thing to go.

"What will the impact be if we do not participate in the
shellfish group for one year?" asked selectman Jim Newman.

"They are not going to close their doors if they don't
have our money," Mr. Widdiss replied.

A six-town nonprofit program that operates on a shoestring of its
own, the shellfish group helps to seed the Vineyard ponds with quahaugs,
oysters and scallops grown in a solar shellfish hatchery on the Lagoon
Pond. The group also monitors water quality in the ponds.

The Aquinnah town report for 2003 shows that the shellfish group
distributed 1.6 million seed quahaugs and more than 600,000 scallops in
Aquinnah last year.

Selectmen agreed to cut $10,000 from the legal budget for the coming
year.

The town police department was also able to give up some money
because of an unusual situation - Aquinnah police chief Doug
Fortes has been on an extended medical leave and is now expected to
retire on disability. Mr. Widdiss said he had spoken to town counsel
earlier in the day and had learned that the town could eliminate most of
the police chief's salary from the upcoming budget. Acting police
chief Randhi Belain offered some more cuts of his own, because he will
hire only two summer officers this year while the budget calls for
three.

Mr. Newman and others worried out loud that the move may be
shortsighted because in the long run the town will need to hire a new
chief.

But the need to cut $260,000 from the town budget has forced the
selectmen into a short-run mentality.

"The police department is functioning, and we need to do
something now to get us through this year," Mr. Widdiss said. Some
extra money will be transferred into a special account to compensate Mr.
Belain, who is the former sergeant, for his extra work.

The meeting saw moments of humor.

As he looked at a budget line item for $16,000 for data processing,
Mr. Widdiss said, "Can't we throw away all the computers and
buy notebooks?"

During a discussion about utilities, one member of the finance
committee asked about the new solar panels at the town comfort station.

"How is that working, have the electric bills gone
down?" the committee member said.

"The electric bill has something very odd happening to it, it
has a negative balance," Ms. Spitz replied.

"Sounds like it's working to me," Mr. Widdiss
concluded.