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- Town meeting starts at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
Tisbury Town Meeting to Consider Override, Sewer Funds
- Louisa Hufstader
- Thursday, April 23, 2026 - 3:10pm
VoTE NO ON #24
Tisbury voters to consider elimination of short-term rental cap
Overrides and various bylaw amendments will be before voters at town meeting. 
by Eunki SeonwooApril 23, 2026 2:26 pm
Affordable Housing Article #7 - yes
https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2026/03/25/short-term-rentals-are-town-meeting-agendas
Short-Term Rentals Are on Town Meeting Warrants
- Wednesday, March 25, 2026 - 4:25pm
Affordable Housing Article #7 - yes
Affordable Housing Article #7 - yes
Affordable Housing Article #7 - yes
Concerned about finding housing that’s affordable in Tisbury?
To the Editor:
If you’re concerned about finding housing that is affordable in Tisbury, we urge you to make your voice heard and vote count at the Tisbury Town Meeting, April 28, 7 pm, Tisbury School.
Here are the bare facts: Tisbury has 4,900-plus residents, 1,900 households, 3,121 housing units of which 53 percent (1,668) are occupied by residents (that’s 232 fewer than the number of households), and 47 percent (1,458) are unoccupied (used seasonally, short-term, or empty). Between 400 and 700-plus of nonresident occupied units are used for short-term rentals.
Dukes County Regional Housing Authority has a certified-eligible waiting list of 357 tenants; 122
(nearly a third) of those tenants are from Tisbury. DCRHA currently rents nine units in Tisbury, of a total 102 Island-wide.
The median sale price of a home in Tisbury in 2024 was $1,500,000. Annual rental-rate data
ranges from $3,600-plus to $15,000-plus per month (skewed by short-term rates).
The annual Town Meeting has warrant articles that will:
1. Ask the town to adopt a Massachusetts law that allows towns to provide a property tax
Exemption or reduction (like the residential exemption) for property owners who rent their
properties annually to tenants who meet criteria for affordable housing (STM No. 7).
2. Ask the town to change the zoning bylaw approved at the Dec. 17, 2024, Special
Town Meeting by removing the limit on the number of nights a property can be rented on a
short-term basis. It is now 75 nights per year (STM No. 24).
3. Has a variety of articles that fund the Tisbury Housing Trust, and Dukes County Regional
Housing Authority, at the same levels approved in previous town meetings.
The Tisbury affordable housing committee (TAHC) proposed to expand affordable housing
opportunities by making it attractive to use existing nonresident housing for annual rentals.
Using existing but underused housing stock is less expensive and more immediate than building
new units on difficult-to-find lots. Therefore, the TAHC urges voters to:
1. Support Special Town Meeting article 7 to adopt Massachusetts General Law allowing property-tax exemptions for properties rented on an affordable basis. A tax break to add 20 year-round rentals would only mean a reduction of about $60,000 in total tax revenue.
2. Reject Special Town Meeting Article 24, which allows unlimited use of short-term rental
properties by removing the 75-night limit approved at STM in December 2024. This provision encourages further erosion of Tisbury housing to STR, and benefits mainly the nonresident owners (two-thirds of total) of STRs in the town.
3. Support Special and annual Town Meeting articles that fund DCRHA rentals and
Tisbury Housing Trust, to expand affordable housing opportunities for residents.
Victor Capoccia, chair
Tisbury affordable housing committee
Vote yes to expand Select Board #34
Affordable Housing Article #7 - yes
Vote yes to expand Select Board #34
Tisbury to Consider Expanding Its Select Board
- Ethan Genter
- Wednesday, February 4, 2026 - 5:20pm
Tisbury voters will consider beefing up the size of its select board at the annual town meeting this spring.
A group of residents submitted a petition to the town clerk last week that would get the ball rolling on expanding the town’s executive board from three to five members. Proponents argue that having a three-member board puts increasing pressure on the sitting members, and adding two more could bring a larger array of opinions and allow for better governance.
“[The select board members] have full-time jobs and they can only give so much time to the issues in town,” said Lynne Fraker, who with Bernadette Cormie collected signatures for the petition. “If you had two more selectmen, the workload would be reduced on each one.”
The select board is the executive branch of government in many Massachusetts towns, and members work to prepare the town meeting warrant, make town board appointments, oversee the town administrator and act as the licensing authority.
Though several other small Massachusetts towns have three members, the Vineyard is the last stronghold of the three-member type in the region. Five of the six Island select boards have three members. Only Oak Bluffs has a five-member board, instituted in 1993.
Fourteen of the 15 Cape Cod towns have five-member boards, including some towns that are smaller than Tisbury. Barnstable, the only town that doesn’t have a select board, has a 13-member town council. Nantucket also has a five-member board.
Tisbury’s current select board has been down to two members since September, when member Christina Colarusso started missing meetings. Ms. Colarusso, who is now facing criminal charges, resigned from the board last week, leaving select board members John Cahill and Roy Cutrer to handle the rest of the town’s business.
Ms. Cormie emphasized that the petition doesn’t have to do with the performance of the sitting select board, but makes sense when working with a budget that is tens of millions of dollars.
“For a $42 million business, which is going through some complex, major capital expenditures, we’re down to two people and even if we weren’t down, three is tough as well,” she said.
“Our selectmen, they’re great, that’s not what this is about,” continued Ms. Cormie, a member of the town planning board and the Martha’s Vineyard Commission. “But they have a lot of work to do.”
If approved, the citizen’s petition article would authorize the select board to file for special legislation at the State House that would increase the size of the board. If the legislature passed the bill, it would have to come back for a town-wide vote.
If that vote was in favor, the town would add the two new seats at the next election.
Ms. Fraker says she has heard some of the opposition to the idea in the past, and knows it would buck much of the Vineyard tradition. It can make meetings longer and cause debates to go in circles. While Edgartown select board meetings rarely go past the 30-minute mark, the five-members in Oak Bluffs often talk for several hours.
“Do the meetings take a little bit longer? Maybe they do,” said Ms. Fraker, who films the meetings for Martha’s Vineyard Television. “But that’s a good thing...It’s a process, government is a process.”
The sitting members of the select board have yet to weigh in on if they’d like to add more to their ranks. Mr. Cahill declined to comment and Mr. Cutrer said he wanted to wait until it could be addressed at the board’s next meeting.
Louisa Hufstader contributed to this article.
Vote Yes on #34
Affordable Housing Article #7 - yes
Vote yes to expand Select Board #34
Tisbury residents call for bigger select board
by Eunki SeonwooFebruary 6, 2026 3:07 pmUpdated February 11, 2026 3:53 pm
Some Tisbury residents are proposing an expansion to one of the central governing bodies of the town.
A petition was filed with the Tisbury town clerk’s office on Jan. 27 by Mary Bernadette Budinger-Cormie, a Tisbury planning board member and town representative on the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, to expand the Tisbury Select Board from three to five members. The number of signatures indicates it will be heard at the annual town meeting.
The select board is the executive office of Tisbury and oversees town interests like projects, prepares town meeting warrants, and sets many municipal policies.
The petition was filed only a day before Christina Colarusso resigned as select board chairfollowing legal trouble and months of absences from public meetings. In her absence, select board members Roy Cutrer and John Cahill continued to run the daily operations of the board.
If voters approve the proposal in town meeting, scheduled to be held on April 22, it would make Tisbury the second town in Dukes County to have a select board with five members. Currently, all of the select boards on the Vineyard besides Oak Bluffs, which has five members, consist of three members.
Although rare in Dukes County, the rest of the towns in the Cape and Islands region have five members on their select boards except for Barnstable, which has a town council with 13 seats.
Lynne Fraker, a Tisbury resident who helped collect signatures, said the petition wasn’t aimed at any of the current members but stemmed from the recognition that if either of the two existing members is absent, the board cannot form a quorum. Fraker said adding more members would lessen the workload for the board members and bring a more “diverse expertise” and “robust discussion” at meetings. She said this has been an ongoing discussion among Tisbury residents, and she became involved herself in 2018.
“People are recognizing this is something that can benefit our town,” Fraker said. She added that a bigger board could also represent more parts of Tisbury’s population.
While the signatures are still being certified, Tisbury Town Clerk Hilary Conklin said she expects there to be 80 certified signatures on the petition. A home rule petition like this only requires 10 certified signatures to be taken up during the annual town meeting. The proposal would also need to be reviewed by the state legislature.
The proposal would mean two select board seats would be on the 2027 ballot, one for a three-year term and another for a two-year term. The new offices on the ballot would appear alongside the board terms expiring in 2030.
“The two candidates receiving the highest number of votes at the election shall serve for terms of three years, and the candidate receiving the next highest number of votes shall serve a term of two years,” the proposed warrant article reads.
Cahill and Cutrer declined to comment when reached by The Times, but they shared at the Feb. 10 select board meeting that they were unsure on whether they were in favor of the idea but would fall in line with what voters want.
The board also unanimously voted to have the third select board seat go on the May 12 ballot for the annual town election rather than hold a special election in April, which would give the new member filling in for Colarusso only a one-month term before new elections are scheduled to be held.