Since Stop & Shop abruptly withdrew a plan to expand its Vineyard Haven store in May, the Gazette has been assembling public records in hopes of offering the community a more complete view of what transpired.

In this week’s Gazette, we provide detail showing that while a town-appointed parking lot committee was having very public meetings to consider reconfiguration of the lot adjacent to the grocery store, selectmen were addressing a range of related issues in private emails with Stop & Shop and behind closed doors.

If all this sounds a bit like ancient history, that’s largely because it took the town of Tisbury four months to provide records that were first requested on April 2. Astonishingly, the Gazette did not get the minutes of the regular selectmen’s meeting held on January 28 until August 8.

Ironically, the picture that emerges from records that have now been supplied suggests that town officials’ failure to keep the public informed of its deliberations while they were occurring may have helped kill the project.

The selectmen discussed Stop & Shop not less than seven times in executive session and in numerous email exchanges from August 2013 to May 2014. Information provided to the Gazette in the last few weeks shows that the selectmen had been working since August 2013 on a detailed mitigation package — a list of financial concessions it wanted from Stop & Shop if the expansion plan was to be approved.

Mitigation deals are not unusual in instances where a project will cause new stresses on town services and infrastructure. But discussion of these matters is not listed among the exceptions to the state open meeting law, which provides ten specific instances where public bodies can legally go into executive session. Each time the selectmen went into executive session to discuss Stop & Shop, they said it was to discuss pending litigation or contract negotiations.

Beyond the question of legality, there was so little mention in public of a mitigation agreement that when the selectmen emerged on April 1 from executive session with a draft of a detailed $1.16 million package it had negotiated with Stop & Shop, it was met with stunned surprise. The inclusion of a line that said the town would support the project to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission proved to be the project’s undoing.

Democracy is a messy business, and it is difficult to negotiate complicated agreements with the public insisting on having their say. But because the selectmen didn’t share what they were doing while they were doing it, the public ended up confused and angry.

Lack of transparency breeds distrust, and the Tisbury selectmen did not help their cause by taking months to respond to the Gazette’s requests for minutes that most towns post on their websites within days of the meeting.

In an email to the Gazette, Tisbury administrator Jay Grande said he has taken steps to make sure the town has a more timely response in the future. Let us hope so.