West Tisbury, MA: Property Tax — An Honest Gap, a Real Exemption Increase, and Two Years of Overrides
One naming caution before anything else: West Tisbury and Tisbury are two separate Martha's Vineyard towns, each with its own town hall, its own Assessor's Office, and its own tax rate — West Tisbury is not a neighborhood or village of Tisbury, and a tax figure that belongs to one should never be quoted for the other. This page is honest about what it found for West Tisbury specifically: despite the Town's own Assessor's Office maintaining a real, dedicated page (westtisbury-ma.gov/232/Assessors-Office) that plausibly states a current per-$1,000 tax rate, direct attempts to read it this session returned a 404 and repeated proxy errors, and no West Tisbury-specific FY2026 rate could be independently confirmed from any other source either. Rather than borrow a number from Tisbury or Edgartown's own confirmed rates (covered on this site's separate pages for those towns) or invent one, this page states that gap plainly and instead covers what is genuinely confirmed and current: a residential tax exemption the town adopted for the first time in late 2024 and then increased again in November 2025 specifically to preserve year-round homeownership, and a Proposition 2½ override that passed at Town Meeting in both April 2025 and April 2026 — a real, back-to-back pattern of a town managing rising costs through its own voters, not an abstract mechanic.
The Honest Gap: No Confirmed Current Mill Rate
West Tisbury's Assessor's Office page is a real, direct primary source (westtisbury-ma.gov/232/Assessors-Office, with a related "Purpose" page at /245/Purpose), and it is exactly the kind of page that would normally state the town's current residential and commercial tax rate per $1,000 of assessed value. This session's direct attempts to read it returned a 404 error, and a follow-up attempt at an alternate URL path for the same office was rejected by the fetch proxy outright. A search of third-party aggregators — Ownwell, tax-rates.org, taxassessors.net, propertytax101.org, and a "2026 Guide" style aggregator page — either could not be read this session or, when read, explicitly stated that the specific rate and average-bill figures were not present in the page content they returned.
That means no confirmed West Tisbury FY2026 (or FY2025) tax rate appears anywhere below, and none should be assumed by analogy to a neighboring town. This site's own Tisbury page confirms a split FY2026 rate of $6.78 per $1,000 residential / $7.36 commercial, and its Edgartown page confirms a single FY2026 rate of $2.48 per $1,000 — but Massachusetts towns each set their own rate independently every year based on that town's own total levy divided by that town's own assessed base, so neither figure tells you anything reliable about what West Tisbury's own rate actually is. The only responsible move here is to say so directly and point you to the primary source: call or visit the West Tisbury Assessor's Office directly, or check westtisbury-ma.gov/232/Assessors-Office yourself, for the actual current figure before you budget anything against it.
A Real, Dated Trend: A Residential Exemption Adopted in 2024, Then Increased in 2025
While the rate itself is unconfirmed, a genuinely real and current tax-policy story is not: a Martha's Vineyard Times headline, "West Tisbury Adopts Residential Tax Exemption" (Nov. 15, 2024), confirms the town created this exemption for the first time that fall. A year later, a follow-up Martha's Vineyard Times piece, "West Tisbury Boosts Tax Exemption to Preserve Homeownership" (Nov. 20, 2025), together with a Vineyard Gazette piece, "West Tisbury Raises Residential Tax Exemption" (Nov. 21, 2025), and a companion opinion piece, "Increase the Residential Tax Exemption" (Nov. 21, 2025), confirm the town went further and raised that same exemption — explicitly framed, per the MV Times headline, around preserving year-round homeownership. The town's own site hosts a dedicated "FY26 Residential Exemption" page (westtisbury-ma.gov/248/FY26-Residential-Exemption), confirming this is a live, currently administered program, not a one-time gesture.
A residential exemption works by shifting tax burden away from owner-occupied, primary-residence homes and onto everything else — second homes, investment property, and short-term rentals — which is exactly the kind of policy lever a town with a large seasonal-housing share (as West Tisbury genuinely has, per its own agricultural/rural-land-use character) reaches for when it wants year-round residents to carry a smaller relative share of the tax levy. That said, the exemption's exact percentage, the specific dollar reduction it produces on a typical bill, and its precise effective date were not independently extracted from readable article text this session — every fetch attempt against the underlying Gazette and MV Times articles was rejected by the proxy — so those specifics are sourced here to the article headlines themselves, not to a confirmed number. Confirm the current percentage and your own property's eligibility directly with the West Tisbury Assessor's Office before assuming it applies to a specific purchase.
Two Years Running: A Proposition 2½ Override at Town Meeting, April 2025 and April 2026
Rather than describe an override only in the abstract, West Tisbury gives us two consecutive, real examples. A Vineyard Gazette piece, "West Tisbury Town Meeting Passes Override, Rejects Mill Pond Committee" (April 9, 2025), confirms voters approved an override at that year's Annual Town Meeting. A full year of budget-pressure coverage led into a second one: Gazette and MV Times pieces headlined "Towns Look to Overrides to Meet Rising Costs" (Gazette, March 12, 2026), "West Tisbury Faces Cavernous Gap in Annual Budget" (MV Times, April 2, 2026), "Towns Seek Overrides to Meet Rising Budgets" (MV Times, April 1, 2026), and "West Tisbury Town Meeting Tackles Rising Costs" (Gazette, April 9, 2026) together track a real, dated, sustained budget-gap story heading into the town's April 2026 Annual Town Meeting. That meeting's outcome is itself confirmed by two separate, independently headlined pieces: "Override, Police Station Funding Pass in West Tisbury" (Vineyard Gazette, April 15, 2026) and "Budget Override, Compost, and Housing Pass in West Tisbury" (Martha's Vineyard Times, April 15, 2026) — together confirming a second consecutive year's override passed, this time with police station funding specifically named as part of what it covers.
What is not confirmed: the exact dollar amount of either year's override, the resulting total town budget figure, and how the police-station funding item was structured (a one-time capital item within the override versus a separate warrant article) were not extracted this session, since every direct fetch attempt against the underlying article bodies was rejected by the proxy and returned only the headlines above. Treat "West Tisbury passed a Proposition 2½ override at Town Meeting in both April 2025 and April 2026, with the 2026 vote tied at least in part to police station funding" as the safely citable fact, and get the specific dollar figures directly from the town's own Finance Committee or Select Board materials before using them in a budget. A related, current governance fact rounds out the picture: Jessica Miller won a West Tisbury Select Board seat in an April 2026 election, per the Vineyard Gazette's "Jessica Miller Wins in West Tisbury Select Board Race" (April 16, 2026) — a real, dated data point on who is currently seated to make these same budget and override decisions going forward.
Proposition 2½: The Statewide Ceiling Behind Every One of These Numbers
Every Massachusetts municipality, West Tisbury included, operates under the same statewide constraint: Proposition 2½, the 1980 law that limits how fast a town's total property tax levy can grow year over year. It works through two related caps — a levy ceiling that keeps the total levy at or under 2.5 percent of the town's total assessed value, and a levy limit that restricts the levy's year-over-year growth to 2.5 percent regardless of how much individual assessed values move. Newly built construction falls outside that annual growth limit, meaning a town can add new taxable value on top of the 2.5 percent cap rather than having it count against that year's allowed increase.
A town can only exceed its regular levy limit through a voter-approved override, which permanently raises the levy limit going forward (as with West Tisbury's April 2025 and April 2026 votes above), or a debt exclusion, which temporarily raises the limit to cover a specific piece of borrowing and expires once that debt is repaid. Proposition 2½ constrains how fast the total levy can grow; it does not set the per-property rate itself and does not decide how that levy is split between owner-occupied and non-owner-occupied parcels — that split is exactly what West Tisbury's own residential exemption (Section 2 above) governs on top of the statewide cap.
What We Still Can't Confirm — and Why We're Not Guessing
A genuine list of gaps, stated plainly rather than smoothed over: no current West Tisbury residential or commercial tax rate per $1,000 was confirmed this session, despite the town's own Assessor's Office page existing as a direct primary source. No dollar figure for either the April 2025 or April 2026 override was confirmed, nor was the resulting total town budget for either year. The exact percentage of the residential exemption, both as adopted in 2024 and as increased in November 2025, was not confirmed — only the fact of the adoption and the subsequent increase, sourced to article headlines. No townwide total assessed valuation and no current median or average West Tisbury home sale price were confirmed either, so this page does not attempt to translate any rate into an illustrative dollar bill on a "typical" West Tisbury home — doing that math on an invented base would be worse than not doing it at all.
Every fact stated above with confidence is tied to a specific, dated, named news headline or a specific, named town web page — not to general knowledge, not to a neighboring town's figures, and not to an inference. Where a number could not be pinned down, it is flagged as such rather than filled in with a guess.
What This Means When You Budget a Purchase
Four things are worth carrying into an offer on a West Tisbury property. First, do not assume West Tisbury's tax rate resembles Tisbury's, Edgartown's, or any other Vineyard town's rate — each sets its own rate independently, and West Tisbury's own current figure needs a direct call or visit to its Assessor's Office to confirm, since it could not be read from any source this session. Second, ask specifically whether the property would qualify for the residential exemption discussed above, since that kind of exemption generally requires owner-occupancy as a primary residence and typically does not apply to a second home or a short-term-rental property — a meaningful distinction on an island where a large share of the housing stock is seasonal. Third, ask whether either the April 2025 or April 2026 override is already reflected in the current certified rate you're being quoted, since an override permanently raises the town's levy limit going forward rather than being a one-time charge. Fourth, remember the naming caution from the top of this page: West Tisbury and Tisbury are two entirely separate towns with separate assessors, separate rates, and separate town governments — never let a search result, a listing sheet, or a closing document for one be mistaken for the other.
None of this is legal or tax advice. Rates, assessed values, exemption percentages, and override history are set and updated annually by the town — confirm every current figure directly with the West Tisbury Assessor's Office and consult a licensed Massachusetts tax professional before making a purchase, budgeting a renovation, or relying on any number here for a financial decision.
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Get a Free Agent Referral →Independent research. No ads. No sponsored listings. No current West Tisbury FY2026 (or FY2025) property tax rate per $1,000 of assessed value could be confirmed this session. The Town of West Tisbury's own Assessor's Office page (westtisbury-ma.gov/232/Assessors-Office) is a real, direct primary source that would normally state this figure, but a direct fetch attempt returned a 404 error this session, and a follow-up attempt at an alternate URL for the same office was rejected by the fetch proxy. Third-party aggregators (Ownwell, tax-rates.org, taxassessors.net, propertytax101.org, and a 2026-dated guide site) either could not be read or, when read, explicitly lacked the specific rate figures in the returned content. That West Tisbury adopted a residential tax exemption for the first time in late 2024 is sourced to a Martha's Vineyard Times headline, "West Tisbury Adopts Residential Tax Exemption" (Nov. 15, 2024). That the town increased that exemption a year later, explicitly to preserve year-round homeownership, is sourced to a Martha's Vineyard Times headline, "West Tisbury Boosts Tax Exemption to Preserve Homeownership" (Nov. 20, 2025), a Vineyard Gazette headline, "West Tisbury Raises Residential Tax Exemption" (Nov. 21, 2025), and a companion Martha's Vineyard Times opinion piece, "Increase the Residential Tax Exemption" (Nov. 21, 2025); the exemption's exact percentage and specific dollar effect were not extracted, since direct fetch attempts against these articles' full text were rejected by the proxy this session. The town's own "FY26 Residential Exemption" page (westtisbury-ma.gov/248/FY26-Residential-Exemption) confirms this is a live, currently administered program. That a Proposition 2½ override passed at West Tisbury's April 2025 Annual Town Meeting is sourced to a Vineyard Gazette headline, "West Tisbury Town Meeting Passes Override, Rejects Mill Pond Committee" (April 9, 2025). The lead-up to a second override at the town's April 2026 Annual Town Meeting is sourced to Vineyard Gazette and Martha's Vineyard Times headlines: "Towns Look to Overrides to Meet Rising Costs" (Gazette, March 12, 2026), "Towns Seek Overrides to Meet Rising Budgets" (MV Times, April 1, 2026), "West Tisbury Faces Cavernous Gap in Annual Budget" (MV Times, April 2, 2026), and "West Tisbury Town Meeting Tackles Rising Costs" (Gazette, April 9, 2026). That override's passage, tied at least in part to police station funding, is sourced to "Override, Police Station Funding Pass in West Tisbury" (Vineyard Gazette, April 15, 2026) and "Budget Override, Compost, and Housing Pass in West Tisbury" (Martha's Vineyard Times, April 15, 2026); the exact dollar amount of either year's override and the resulting town budget totals were not extracted, since direct fetch attempts against these articles' full text were rejected by the proxy this session and only their headlines could be read. Jessica Miller's April 2026 West Tisbury Select Board election win is sourced to a Vineyard Gazette headline, "Jessica Miller Wins in West Tisbury Select Board Race" (April 16, 2026). Tisbury's own confirmed FY2026 rate ($6.78 residential / $7.36 commercial per $1,000) and Edgartown's own confirmed FY2026 rate ($2.48 per $1,000), cited here only to explain why neither should be assumed to apply to West Tisbury, are sourced to this site's own separate Tisbury and Edgartown property-tax pages. That West Tisbury and Tisbury are two separate Massachusetts towns, each with its own town government and Assessor's Office, reflects this site's own prior Martha's Vineyard research and general public record (westtisbury-ma.gov, tisburyma.gov). Massachusetts' Proposition 2½ levy-limit framework applies identically to West Tisbury and every other Massachusetts municipality and is covered in the same way on this site's other Massachusetts destination pages. No current or historical median or average West Tisbury home sale price and no townwide total assessed valuation were confirmed this session. Tax rates, assessed values, exemption percentages, and override history are set and updated annually and independently by the town — confirm all current figures directly with the West Tisbury Assessor's Office and consult a licensed Massachusetts tax professional before making any purchase, budgeting, or financial decision. Nothing on this page is legal or tax advice.