With Island voters set to vote in June on a $333.5 million school bond measure with an additional $47 million in debt service, Tisbury officials are looking for ways to save and raise more money for their town.
A recent study of Tisbury’s finances, conducted by the Center for Public Management at UMass Boston, calls for immediate action, town administrator Joseph LaCivita said this week.
“Our financial management system is in dire need of repair [and] our policies are somewhat nonexistent,” Mr. LaCivita told the select board and finance and advisory committee during a joint meeting of the two elected bodies Tuesday afternoon.
The town had hoped to build a new town hall on High Point Lane.
— Ray Ewing
The UMass report recommends that Tisbury spend less, raise more and hire an accounting firm with extensive municipal experience to work with and train the town’s finance department, he said.
An article on the April 28 annual town meeting warrant will ask voters for $250,000 to engage a qualified accounting firm to train Tisbury finance staff and implement internal controls, Mr. LaCivita said.
The contract also would include a comprehensive review of the tax structure and an analysis of the residential exemption and the tax classification options, as well as of all the possible ways Tisbury could raise revenue through municipal fees, he said.
The town previously had planned to seek voter approval for borrowing to build a new town hall, which Mr. LaCivita said the UMass report cited as direly needed.
But that project will have to wait, he said, along with a new position he had hoped to create for a director of planning and sustainability, as recommended in the Tisbury master plan of 2024.
“These are some of the serious cuts that we have to look at … in order for us to get our financial house in order,” Mr. LaCivita said.
The finance and advisory committee has recommended a complete freeze on new positions, Mr. LaCivita said.
Mr. LaCivita said the complete report from the UMass study will be posted on the town website later this week.
“We’re going to be fully engaged in getting Tisbury to be fiscally healthy in years to come,” Mr. LaCivita said.
Rick Homans, who chairs the town hall committee, said the proposed building project on High Point Lane could be scaled back by eliminating the public meeting room and associated facilities in the current design, which was estimated last month at $32 million to build — far higher than expected, he said.
Architects Mark McKevitz and Ned Collier of Icon Architecture said that total likely could be trimmed further by switching to modular construction and potentially changing the location to West William street, where the town owns a property they said would need less site preparation than High Point Lane.
Tisbury officials also discussed the possibility of renting office space for municipal employees, who work in an assortment of substandard offices that include decaying mobile structures, a moldy former church and the town’s aging public works department building.
The Vineyard Haven library currently leases space on Church street that it will vacate when the library building project is completed later this year, select board member John Cahill said.
The board agreed to continue the town hall discussion at its March 24 meeting.
Also Tuesday, Mr. Cahill and chair Roy Cutrer welcomed Nadia Rife as the new administrative assistant to the select board and town administrator.
Ms. Rife replaces Elena DeFoe, who is now the town’s treasurer, tax collector and finance director.
