Tisbury voters threw their overwhelming support behind a $55 million school renovation and addition project at a special town meeting Sunday afternoon, clearing the first of two hurdles needed.
It took 18 drafts, hundreds of hours of meetings and more than a year’s planning, but Tuesday night at the special town meeting, Tisbury residents voted into bylaw the first ever district of critical planning concern (DCPC) for Vineyard Haven harbor.
The health of Island waterways and fees necessary to protect them will top the list at the annual Tisbury town meeting this Tuesday evening when voters tackle two full warrants. Both the annual and special town meetings are being held on the same night due to problems reaching a quorum last year for the special town meeting agenda. The meetings begin at 7 p.m. in the Tisbury School gymnasium. Deborah Medders will moderate.
The construction of a road connecting State and Edgartown-Vineyard
Haven roads and a garage to temporarily house the town's new
ladder truck top an atypically weighty list of requests facing voters at
the Tisbury special town meeting Tuesday night.
In nine years’ experience running Tisbury town meeting, moderator Deborah Medders has noticed one type of warrant article which really gets people going is proposed changes to zoning bylaws. And so it was again this week.
The Tisbury special town meeting on Tuesday went pretty smoothly for the most part, until it came to two arcane, and, it must be said — for many people at the meeting said it — hard-to-comprehend proposed changes to zoning regulations.
Tisbury voters overwhelmingly endorsed a plan to spend some $7 million on a new emergency services facility at Tuesday’s special town meeting.
Concerns that townspeople might not be in a spending mood, given the tough economy, proved unfounded, and the article providing for the bulk of the money — $6.8 million — was passed by a count of 167 votes to 22.
The new building will house the town’s fire, ambulance and emergency management staff and equipment.
The long-held vision of a connector road to bypass one of the Island’s worst traffic spots, the Edgartown-State Road intersection in Tisbury, might finally be just one town meeting vote away from realization.
This Tuesday’s Tisbury special town meeting will be asked to approve construction of the bypass, and work could begin within months. Voters also will be asked to authorize the board of selectmen to apply for funding, so, with a little luck, the project can be completed at no further cost to town residents.
For 90 per cent of its duration, Tuesday’s Tisbury special town meeting went almost impossibly smoothly for town officials. But they fell at the last hurdle.
As is so often the case in Tisbury, the bone of contention was dog laws. Specifically, an article proposing penalties for breaches of a town policy prohibiting dogs from municipal buildings. It provided for a written warning for a first offense, and a $25 fine for every subsequent offense.
Surely Tuesday night’s Tisbury special town meeting, which finally saw police pay raises approved, set some kind of record for discomfort, noise and brevity.
From the time town moderator Deborah Medders called the meeting to order until the time she declared it over, it took just 17 minutes.
