After repeatedly denouncing a 30-foot-tall camera tower on Menemsha’s West Dock Tuesday night, Chilmark’s harbor advisory and parks and recreation committees voted to halt security camera installation on the West Dock until the project can be studied further, and to support security camera installation on the east side of the harbor.

The committee votes amounted to a recommendation to the select board, and were rooted in the opinion the erection of the tower wasn’t done through proper procedures and with appropriate input, and had created an eyesore. Ahead of the votes, Chilmark harbormaster Ryan Rossi came before a special joint session of the two committees and offered a mea culpa and raft of potential remedial actions. Rossi led off by telling the committees he’d removed a 10-foot section of the tower prior to the meeting. However, that appeared to do little to quell dissatisfaction with the tower among officials and local business owners, many of whom had remained as worked up on the subject as they had been during a select board discussion on the tower last week. 

Real estate broker Deborah Hancock told Rossi and the committees she understood cameras for the harbor were approved at the last town meeting, but she didn’t recall mention of a tower, or she would have questioned it then. 

“Taking 10 feet off the top, yeah, it helps,” Hancock said, “but it’s still a huge installation in the middle of Menemsha Harbor.” 

Hancock suggested “a major pause” should be placed on the tower. She said she wasn’t against security cameras, but wanted to “keep the character of a fishing village.” She suggested the tower might establish a precedent for other towers. 

Parks and recreation committee member Jane Slater said the loss of 10 feet hadn’t altered her negative opinion of the tower.

Parks and recreation committee member Julie Flanders said trimming 10 feet was an improvement. Nevertheless, she said, the tower “crosses the horizon” and rises above the dunes on the opposite side of the channel in Aquinnah, and still has a negative aesthetic effect.

“I believe that most people who go to Menemsha in the summer who have not seen it even at 20 feet, when you drive around the corner going to Dutcher Dock, I think it’s going to be a shock for them, and I don’t think people are going to like it,” Flanders said. 

Menemsha Texaco co-owner Katie Carroll described the tower as incongruous with Chilmark’s master plan, and a structural project that should have had a Martha’s Vineyard Commission review. 

Rossi said he attempted to gather additional information after questions and concerns were raised at the select board meeting. Traditional Wi-Fi cameras won’t work in the area, he said, because there is too much Wi-Fi in the area already in place. 

Another contractor who had been consulted for the work said while the tower they would have erected would have been more expensive, they would have chosen the “same installation,” and they also said the concrete pedestal was “absolutely necessary” to withstand hurricane winds, Rossi said. Based on the recommendation of engineers, the tower that was erected represented the “most economical and least environmentally invasive way” to install the camera system, Rossi said. 

With the 10-foot loss of height, Rossi said, the contractor concluded the tower “may still keep the system operational, but they cannot guarantee reliability, as the signal may be lost by passing sailboat masts and large fishing vessels.” 

Rossi said the option exists to remove the tower and “install a piling in its place that’s more in keeping with the pilings and structures that you see around the harbor.”

Alternatively, he said, he could have the tower painted to match “sailboat masts or fishing vessel rigging,” and could also wrap the pedestal with decking or a hawser line. He also suggested he could keep the tower up “during the busy season, and take it down during the winter months.”

A more expensive route to bypassing the tower would be to tie into underground fiber optics at the intersection of North and Basin roads, Rossi said, but it involves a lot of trenching, and would partially cross into the town of Aquinnah on Boathouse Road.

As to concerns the structure could be scaled by somebody, Rossi said “fairly inexpensive safety panels” could be installed to thwart climbers and eliminate the need for a fence.

As to privacy issues, Rossi noted there are already four cameras at the Menemsha Texaco, one on the M.V. Seafood Collaborative, multiple indoor and outdoor cameras at the Menemsha Fish Market (including a livestream viewable on The Times website), cameras on the McDowell shanty, and multiple cameras around the Coast Guard boathouse. In summer, there are “well over 500 cell phones in use capable of lawfully recording video,” Rossi said. 

Only trained and authorized persons will ever review footage from the security system, Rossi said. 

“I realize that the decision to move forward with this project should have been brought to the attention of the harbor advisory committee and to a public meeting before authorization,” Rossi said. “Had that been done, we would have raised the concerns that we’re discussing today, and given members of the community the opportunity to voice their opinion on the matter.”

“I think we can all see that Ryan has taken our concerns seriously,” select board member Warren Doty said, “and thought about what should happen next, and he’s given us a handful of options.” Doty was asked by the select board to meet with the two committees and report back to them at their next meeting.

Harbor advisory committee chair Jeff Maida said a proper process didn’t unfold, and needs to happen. “This is a very serious matter,” Maida said. “It’s not just about the height of the tower, it’s about the size of the pedestal as well.”

Maida said he realizes security cameras for the harbor passed at town meeting, but had the tower been presented then, Maida doubted the article would have survived. He advocated for connecting to fiber optics, or at least pricing that out.

“My gut feeling is it’s going to be a lot more money, but people care enough about Menemsha that maybe that’s not going to be an issue, rather than look at a tower all the time.”

He recommended a “pause” of the camera project on the West Dock, and to move forward on the east side of the harbor camera installation. 

In response to a question by harbor advisory committee member Susan Murphy about mounting cameras on light poles and elsewhere, Rossi said engineers looked at the prospect of distributing Wi-Fi cameras around the harbor, but found it wouldn’t work. Rossi said the necessity of the tower isn’t just for mounting cameras, but to relay signal to the harbormaster’s shack across the harbor. 

“I do think the presence of a security system serves as a deterrent,” Chilmark Police Chief Jonathan Klaren said. Klaren said it was his experience that when people “know they’re being filmed, they tend to behave and act better.”

Parks and recreation committee chair Andy Goldman said whether the vote at town meeting on the camera system was “wise or foolish,” it was passed after “substantial discussion.” However, to those “used to process,” the tower caused people to be “shocked.” 

Goldman said from some vantage points the tower was unobtrusive, but from other angles, it wasn’t.

Flanders said she wasn’t opposed to security cameras, just to the tower on the West Dock. She supported putting cameras up on the Basin Road side of the harbor, the east side, but putting the West Dock cameras portion of the project on hold until more research could be done. She lauded Rossi for continuing to explore options and come up with answers to questions that arose at the select board meeting.

“I approved, along with everybody else at town meeting, of the surveillance system, but I had no idea that it would look like it does,” Slater said. In addition to the tower itself, Slater objected to the concrete block pedestal it was mounted on, which she described as “huge,” something that has eliminated a parking space, and “the kind of technical invasion that will eventually eat up more and more of that area.”

Doty noted it looked rather easy to unbolt and disassemble the tower for storage, but not so easy to remove the pedestal. “I would like to ask John Keene how difficult it would be to remove that cement pedestal,” Hancock said.

Keene, who runs an excavation company and has done work for the town in Menemsha and elsewhere in town, said, “I’d have to go check it out, but I think it would be pretty easy …”

He suggested that done the right way, it could be removed intact, and put back at a later time. Keene said he would be happy to take a look and report back later.

“That would be good information to have, yes, thank you,” Doty said.

Following the vote, Rossi asked if he should remove the tower and base, or partially remove more of it.

“I fully support the recommendation to press pause on the project, by the way,” Rossi said. He asked what specific action he should take going forward.

Doty said the action required is to “pause,” and no more. 

“He should not plan to do anything until he hears from the selectmen,” Slater said. 

Go look at the video from the current publicly available camera view now. https://youtu.be/MAuXQgZsq3Y

Imagine if the Coast Guard set up this camera system themselves.

People would be all for it.

Being wisely done for safety by a small town, the ” we will have none attitude is silly.

Would it be acceptable if a sailboat mast was used in leu of the current structure, or is it some other issue indeed?

I was thinking about the aesthetics of that. For my mental work, I imagined one Etchells mast. Meh. Maybe if this camera tower were surrounded by boat spars in a marina.

The MV Times comment policy requires first and last name for all comments.