The Tisbury EMS department has been dipping into its overtime pay budget to ensure full coverage for emergency response, ambulance coordinator Tracy Jones told the town selectmen this week. Ms. Jones said the department is having trouble attracting personnel to fill shifts, and that many shifts are being paid on an hourly basis rather than a stipend in order to meet coverage requirements. The town has two licensed ambulances, one of which must be staffed around the clock seven days a week by a paramedic and an EMT.

Nearly three years after construction started, and more than a decade since the project was first conceived, Tisbury officials gathered Sunday to celebrate the official opening of the town’s new emergency facilities building.

The ambulance is in at the Tisbury emergency services facility on West Spring street; fire trucks will be next.

“The fire [department’s] move will be imminent,” building committee chairman Joe Tierney told the Tisbury selectmen this week. He said repaving should be completed in about two weeks; after that, the fire department can move their vehicles into the $7.38 million building that was due to be completed a year ago. Mr. Tierney also said that despite all its problems, the ESF building is still on budget.

With still no end date in sight for the Tisbury Emergency Services Facility building, now long overdue for completion, one town selectman expressed open frustration Tuesday and called for a new strategy.

“We have to have an end game here,” said selectman Tristan Israel. “Maybe the end game at this point should be, this is the end, we are going to hire our own people to do it [complete the building], and we are going to go to court and charge [the contractor] back with the difference.”

Tisbury selectmen read the riot act on Tuesday night to the company building the town’s new $7.4 million emergency services building on, citing a long list of faults which have delayed the project.

The building was due to be finished before the summer. Now it is unlikely to be operational until well into fall. The general contractor for the project, Seaver Constructions, removed the project manager of the site several weeks ago and is still in the process of installing a permanent replacement.

Tisbury town leaders and those involved in building the town’s new $7.4 million emergency services building are in the process of vetting a new construction supervisor, after the former one was sacked over the trouble-plagued project.

The former construction supervisor was terminated at the town’s request, in response to a long list of faults in the building, which have delayed the project. An interim supervisor is in place, but has yet to be approved to take over permanently.

A consultant’s report into construction work on Tisbury’s new emergency services building has found a long list of deficiencies inside and outside, from the foundation to the roof shingles.

Parts of the building off Spring street will have to be rebuilt, according to the report done by Building Enclosure Consultants (BEA), the Cambridge firm engaged by the town to assess the trouble-plagued project, which originally was due for completion this week.

The town of Tisbury will extend the contracts of the people overseeing work on its trouble-plagued new emergency services building, at a likely cost of around $100,000.

The extensions — for the architects, HKT, and owner’s property manager and clerk of the works — were ticked off by the selectmen on Tuesday night at a meeting with the building committee, called to discuss the allegedly shoddy workmanship by the main building contractor, Seaver Constructions, lengthening delays and increasing costs and frustration.

The new Tisbury fire station, also known as the emergency services facility (ESF), will open in July according to building committee chairman Joe Tierney. The building was originally slated to open last July, and its opening date has been pushed back a number of times due to construction flaws and ongoing negotiations with the project’s architect and its contractors about payment. In February Mr. Tierney announced that the building would open April 1.

A year late and still not ready to be occupied, the Tisbury Emergency Services Facility is slowly but surely inching toward completion.