Some Tisbury officials are expressing second thoughts about the long-sought regional high school building project, which could cost the town between $36 million and $64 million, based on current estimates, for its share of the total expense.

Select board member John Cahill raised the subject at the board’s meeting Tuesday, noting that the town has the lowest per capita income on Martha’s Vineyard — just over $30,000, according to the state department of revenue — and already is carrying debt for the $82 million Tisbury School project completed last year.

“I’m not suggesting any delay. All I want to do is have a healthy dialogue with the select board and the people of Tisbury,” Mr. Cahill said.

Select board member Roy Cutrer said the median income figure is misleading for the town, which has many seasonal homeowners who earn significantly more but file their taxes in another municipality. Social Security income, which isn’t taxed, also is not reflected in the state numbers, Mr. Cutrer said.

Town administrator Joseph LaCivita said that the additional debt for the high school would hamper Tisbury’s ability to finance its own municipal projects.

“That’s really going to hamstring, or tighten, what this township can do in the future,” Mr. LaCivita said.

Rachel Orr, a member of the town finance and advisory committee, said her committee would like to see a revision of the cost-sharing agreement for the project that would place less of the financial burden on Tisbury.

“If we can find a way to address this, it would be certainly to our taxpayers’ best interest,” Ms. Orr said.

Amy Houghton, who chairs the Tisbury school committee and the all-Island school committee, said there’s little chance the other towns would agree to change the cost-sharing formula any time soon.

Developed in 2022 by a committee of officials from all six Island towns, the cost-sharing agreement was a key step toward the high school project’s acceptance into the selective Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) program, which would reimburse as much as 29 per cent of the total cost once the school is completed.

The Tisbury School was admitted to the MSBA program in 2016, but had to drop out in 2018 after a slim majority of voters opposed borrowing for school construction.

“That’s how we ended up with a project that cost us $40 million more than what it would have cost us to start out with,” Ms. Houghton said Tuesday.

Ms. Houghton also expressed disappointment that nobody from the school committees had been invited to take part in the select board discussion.

“This is the exact phase of this MSBA project that was the downfall of the Tisbury project, because there was not enough conversation in the public [and] there were a lot of assumptions made,” she said.

School superintendent Richard Smith said the school building committee is considering three potential projects: a simple code update of the existing building, a renovation with an addition and an all-new school of the same size.

Next month, he said, the committee must pick one of the three choices for the MSBA to review.

Before state reimbursements, Mr. Smith said, a code update is estimated to cost $220 million, an addition-renovation — which would not include athletic fields — $298 million and an all-new school $349 million.

Factoring in the MSBA reimbursements, which are estimated at 22 per cent to 29 per cent of the total, Mr. Smith said the net cost would be about $160 million, $220 million or $282 million, depending on the project selected.

While the code update offers the lowest project costs, it could also risk losing the MSBA reimbursement, Mr. Smith said.

That’s because the high school was accepted into the state program based largely on a statement of interest from school leaders that called out significant shortcomings in the existing school.

Chief among these is the school’s cramped career and technical education department, which does not meet state standards but is considered an important program for training Island health care workers, automotive engineers, cooks and other essential employees.

Select board members concluded Tuesday’s discussion by voting to replace one of its representatives on the school building committee, Rebekah El-Deiry, with Tisbury finance and advisory committee chair Nancy Gilfoy.

Mr. Cahill told the Gazette Wednesday that Ms. El-Deiry had offered up her seat following a closed-door meeting he held with the building committee representatives last week, when he was still select board chair.