West Tisbury Voters Convene Tuesday

By IAN FEIN

Two months after receiving a sharp rebuke from town voters, West
Tisbury selectmen will go back to the well on Tuesday for another
special town meeting to take up many of the same issues.

Front and center will be $170,000 in legal bills from the costly tax
case against town assessors, which a record turnout of voters rejected
at the special town meeting in November.

Also on the 14-article docket next week are a series of zoning bylaw
amendments, a new quorum requirement, and a discussion about the town
hall renovation project that selectmen are trying to resurrect.

Moderator F. Patrick Gregory will call the meeting to order on
Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the West Tisbury School.

The town hall renovation project was a rallying point at the
November meeting, when voters decisively killed a $1.8 million cost
overrun to the $3.7 million price tag they had approved the year before.

The meeting Tuesday will begin with a report from the building
committee, which decided late last month to pursue a scaled-back version
of the project and try to get it back under the $3.7 million cap.
Selectmen this week also appointed three new members to the building
committee - Robert Schwartz, Peter Rodegast and Stephen Berlucchi,
who is the Dukes County engineer and a West Tisbury resident.

Selectmen, all three of whom are also on the building committee,
authorized $12,000 for the redesign last month, but said they wanted to
hear from voters before spending the additional $36,000 needed to
prepare the scaled-back project for another professional estimate.

It is not known how much discussion on the project the moderator
will allow. Mr. Gregory did not attend a scheduled meeting with
selectmen to discuss the warrant this week and did not return calls for
comment yesterday.

A proposed quorum requirement for future town meetings will also be
on the warrant. If adopted as a town bylaw, it would require that five
per cent of registered voters - or roughly 100 residents -
attend a town meeting before a quorum is called. West Tisbury is
currently the only town on the Vineyard without such a bylaw.

The proposed bylaw arose as a citizen petition, drafted following a
controversial special town meeting in October, when Mr. Gregory called a
quorum with less than two per cent of voters present. The West Tisbury
finance committee has recommended the quorum requirement; the selectmen
have not endorsed it.

The series of zoning bylaw amendments may look familiar from the
November town meeting, when proposed zoning changes generated unexpected
debate and fell about two dozen votes short of the necessary two-thirds
approval.

Planning board chairman Murray Frank said this week that the board
realized it erred by lumping all of the proposed changes into a single
article in November; this time the board withheld the two most
controversial proposals and broke the remaining changes into five
separate articles. Mr. Murray said the board plans to bring the other
two amendments - which redefine the maximum building size allowed
in the North Tisbury business district and require property owners to
shield or contain indoor lighting - back to voters at the annual
town meeting in April.

Mr. Frank called the five remaining proposals housekeeping articles.
Two substantive changes would make a distinction between permits needed
for permanent in-ground swimming pools and temporary above-ground ones,
and extend the amnesty period for illegal, non-permitted apartments so
the building inspector can ensure the space is safe for occupants.

As zoning bylaw amendments, all five articles will require
two-thirds approval on town meeting floor. The finance committee opposes
the articles because the planning board did not provide explanations
beforehand.

But the main event on Tuesday will unquestionably be the legal bills
for the town assessors' tax case.

The case was brought by town resident William W. Graham, who owns
235 acres at Mohu off Lambert's Cove Road and is challenging his
assessments from fiscal years 2003 and 2004.

The legal bills in recent months have proved to be a controversial
and divisive issue in town.

While there is little dispute that the bills correspond to services
that were in fact provided to the town, there has been considerable
debate over the terms of various contracts and also whether voters and
other town officials had the ability to exercise proper oversight.

Town attorneys and the Massachusetts Department of Revenue agree
that because the bills were incurred outside of the law and without
prior approval from voters at a town meeting, the town is under no legal
obligation to pay them. But attorneys and the department of revenue also
suggest that an after-the-fact appropriation is an acceptable way for
voters to endorse payment of the bills.

Selectmen have pared down the appropriation request since the last
town meeting by negotiating reductions in the bills from the attorney
for the assessors and independent contractors who were used during a
hearing before the Massachusetts Appellate Tax Board over the spring and
summer. The overall estimated $275,000 price tag for the case has been
cut by roughly $35,000.

On Tuesday voters will be asked to appropriate $185,000, not because
the cost of the Graham tax case has been cut to that amount, but because
selectmen are also asking for less money for other legal cases before
the town.

Selectmen have broken down the requests - expanding the number
of legal bill articles from two to seven. Two articles are for work done
during the previous fiscal year, prior to July 1, and will require
nine-tenths approval on town meeting floor.

By a vote of 3-2, the finance committee will oppose payment of all
the bills from the Graham case.

The requests include:

* An additional $110,000 for attorney Ellen Hutchinson, who
represents the assessors in the case. The town has already paid her
$45,000 for her work on the case through May of last year. Ms.
Hutchinson's bills are divided into three separate articles:
$20,000 for unpaid work done in the last fiscal year; $55,000 for unpaid
work done between last July and December; and $35,000 for upcoming work
to write the final briefs in the tax case. Her bills have been reduced
$8,000 since November.

* $12,000 for Vision Appraisal Technology Inc. of Northboro,
the company that assists town assessors with their triennial townwide
revaluations. Assessors requested that Vision employees attend the
hearing last summer, when the company's appraisal system came
under intense scrutiny. The Vision contract with the town sets out a
$700 per diem rate for providing expert witnesses, though most of the
billed services were for consultant work and not expert witness
testimony.

The Vision bills will be split into two separate articles.

Vision's request was reduced $7,000 since November.

* $47,000 for Coleman & Sons Appraisal Group of Waltham,
the third-party appraiser hired by assessors to value Mr. Graham's
property and testify at the tax board hearing. Assessors signed a
contract with Coleman in spring of 2004, though selectmen did not learn
of the appraiser until midway through the hearing last summer. Assessors
said the appraisal was required by the tax board, though a tax board
official said in November that there is no such obligation.

Roughly $15,000 of the money selectmen want to pay Coleman was for
work done during the previous fiscal year, but in order to avoid the
nine-tenths rule, they will not place the amount into a separate article
as a past-due bill.

The Coleman bill was reduced $25,000 since November.

* $15,000 to supplement the general legal line item, which has
been depleted. Some of this money would be used to pay for court fees
and transcripts from the Graham hearing.

This is the sole legal bill request which has the support of the
town finance committee.