Officials in Tisbury are stepping up the hunt for new office space, as building conditions at both town hall and the town hall annex have deteriorated to the point where worker safety may be at risk.
Officials in Tisbury are stepping up the hunt for new office space, as building conditions at both town hall and the town hall annex have deteriorated to the point where worker safety may be at risk.
Mold at town hall and a rodent infestation at the annex have accelerated the search for alternative offices, leading a town task group to recommend taking over some of the modular buildings now in use at the Tisbury School when they become available next summer.
“There is a sense of urgency,” said retired Tisbury fire chief John Schilling, a member of the town hall task group, at a joint meeting with the Tisbury select board Wednesday.
Town hall has been struggling with mold and a lack of space.
Town hall has been struggling with mold and a lack of space.
Many questions remain about the feasibility of using the modular units, including how many the town would acquire, whether to lease or purchase them and where on town property to place them.
But the clock is ticking.
“We have to make a decision by Feb. 15 as to whether or not we would like to extend the lease or we would like to negotiate for purchase,” task group chair Amy Houghton said Wednesday.
Town administrator John (Jay) Grande said the group’s recommendation needs to be fully vetted before the town makes a decision, and that he does not want a short-term solution to eclipse the town’s long-standing need for a consolidated town hall.
“We have a building and infrastructure capital fund already established,” Mr. Grande said. “We need some decisive decision-making [and] a strong commitment to a timeline.”
On Wednesday, the select board set a Jan. 11 special town meeting date and authorized Mr. Grande to draft warrant articles seeking voter support for the temporary offices, with details to be determined over the next few weeks.
Planning board administrator Amy Upton looks over EduComp building plans.
Planning board administrator Amy Upton looks over EduComp building plans.
The town task group was created in June to seek a consolidated solution for the town’s scattered municipal offices. Tisbury currently has a town hall on Spring street and an annex on High Point Lane, where the building, planning and health departments have been in trailer-like modular buildings for more than a decade.
Planning board administrator Amy Upton, who works in the annex, said it’s barely fit for use.
“The actual building needs to go away,” she told officials at a joint meeting of the task group, town planning board and finance and advisory committee. “It’s garbage. There’s nothing to be done.”
On Monday, Ms. Upton gave the Gazette a tour of the annex, where a recent paint job on the exterior trim did little to distract the eye from holes shielded by plywood.
Inside the crowded annex, linoleum floors are patchy, one toilet can only be flushed by reaching into the tank and the ceilings are stained.
Some records at the town hall annex are stored in a shipping container.
Some records at the town hall annex are stored in a shipping container.
Ms. Upton said she and other employees suffer from respiratory problems they suspect are connected to a recently-quelled rodent infestation above their offices.
“There are no currently-living mice up there, we’ve been told,” said Ms. Upton.
But no cleanup followed the exterminators’ treatment, leaving nest materials and excrement just on the other side of the thin ceiling tiles, she said.
“And what are we going to do about the new mice? We’re right next to the dump,” Ms. Upton said.
The annex also has run out of storage space. When documents are needed by the planning, health or building departments, Ms. Upton said, employees trudge outside to unbolt a shipping container stuffed with file boxes.
At town hall, Mr. Grande’s unheated former office is permanently locked due to mold; he and his staff have moved to the Department of Public Works building on High Point Lane.
Modular buildings used by the Tisbury School could be a temporary solution.
Modular buildings used by the Tisbury School could be a temporary solution.
The single-story town hall, a converted church built in 1844, remains crowded with a dozen employees, including town clerk J. Hillary Conklin and finance director Jon Snyder.
A sign on a bathroom door at the back of the building, near the stairs to Katharine Cornell Theatre, reads “[P]lease make sure to leave door open after use so pipes do not freeze.”
The proposed modular units would serve as a stopgap to ease the space crisis while the town proceeds with its long-term goal of a consolidated municipal center.
“Realistically, I think it would be at least 10 years,” Tisbury finance and advisory committee chair Nancy Gilfoy said at a meeting last week.
The task group has talked with two owners of private properties that could accommodate a consolidated town hall: the old Educomp building downtown, now owned by Xerxes Agassi, and Brooke Katzen’s miniature golf course on State Road.
Those options were less appealing, Ms. Houghton said, because the town would have to either rent a limited amount of space in Mr. Agassi’s mixed-use development or buy and develop Mr. Katzen’s land.
However, Mr. Grande told the Gazette this week, no options are off the table.
Editor's note: This story has been updated with comments from Wednesday's select board meeting.
Comments
The fact that hindsight is 20
JASON D PERINGER Vineyard HavenThe fact that hindsight is 20/20: The overbudget Tisbury school should have been converted into the "new" town hall. The "down to studs" agenda to save a building "for the children" was deceptive and rife with misrepresentation; lead and asbestos issues were undisclosed until after the select board at that time lacked any true leadership and passed the decision onto an uninformed electorate who chose "heart-strings over purse-strings".
As the costs for servicing all of the current bonds issued to pay for the Tisbury school continue to rise, the tax payers will be facing many more projects beyond the town hall, most notably increasing the waste water treatment facility's capacity to accommodate growing demand/development. All of this with no clear plan to increase town revenues beyond the added financial burden to taxpayers. That high bond rating that is so frequently touted by the town administrator will most likely be down-graded; continually financing projects on bonds without increasing varied sources of revenue is akin to living on credit cards, fiscally unsound and unsustainable.
Since the lack of leadership in town appears to be prone to wasting town resources on ill-conceived development like the recent downtown sidewalk reconfiguration that neglected to remove the eyesore of utility poles that has been planned for since the repaving of Main Street more than a decade ago, I guess the business community should not expect any support either; the loss of so many parking spaces in an already stressed area is yet another sign Tisbury is less than business-friendly.
The Tisbury Master Plan echoes all of the lack of leadership plaguing the town; all spending with no ideas to increase revenues to support any of the truly unrealistic projects proposed in any of the versions presented by the committee or the firm paid to develop/design all of those models presented since the inception of the committee.
The minority of the voices I have heard reflecting any sort of long-term fiscal responsibility or accountability have all been either ignored or drowned out by short-term plans that add to the burden of taxpayers without any true vision for the town to work with the current structure and assets of the town to develop a sustainable future for the town that is in dire need of progressive leadership.
Add new comment