An organization of Island builders is making an eleventh-hour pitch to block a plan by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission to tighten its thresholds for reviewing certain developments on the Vineyard.

In an email that went out to members last week, the board of the Martha’s Vineyard Builders Association — which represents more than 120 contracting companies on the Island — argued in emphatic language that the proposed changes amount to broad overreach by the 46-year-old state-chartered regional planning agency.

“The Martha’s Vineyard Commission is advancing its unilateral effort to oversee single-family construction on Martha’s Vineyard and prohibit the use of fossil fuels in homes and businesses,” the email said in part. “The Martha’s Vineyard Commission’s efforts to override our elected officials and constituent boards, and to bypass the process by which our industry is regulated, not only goes against statute but betrays the public trust.”

Every two years the commission, which has broad statutory authority to review certain developments, revises its checklist for what are termed developments of regional impact (DRIs).

The checklist is a list of criteria that trigger referral to the commission for review.

Ordinarily the checklist revisions attract little attention.

But this year, a commission study committee spent months examining possible changes to the checklist that generally focus on giving the commission more latitude to address the cumulative impacts of smaller development projects on the Island, including lowering review thresholds for subdivisions and commercial development. After a months-long public hearing process on the proposed changes, the commission plans to add triggers that would send smaller subdivisions to the MVC for review, and promote more energy efficiency in buildings, among other things.

A more controversial proposal, dubbed a big-house bylaw, that would have required review of very large homes, was shelved in favor of a placeholder clause that says it will address residential home construction in a future checklist review.

At a three-hour meeting last month, the commission approved most of the changes in concept, with a vote on the full document scheduled for this Thursday at 7 p.m..

The Martha’s Vineyard Builders Association has not participated extensively in the public review process of the checklist beyond a comment submitted last winter. And with the public hearing and written comment period closed, the email message that went out last week is not officially part of the commission’s public record on the checklist changes.

But in the email, the MVBA took issue with the big-house placeholder clause, as well as any future bylaw that would regulate the use of fossil fuels in single-family homes and businesses — requesting that both be removed from the checklist unless they are first approved by all six towns at town meetings.

“If the commission wants to regulate the construction of single-family homes, then the families who live in and build those homes should have their voices heard,” the email said.

The builders association joins a small cohort of Island officials who oppose the checklist changes, including the Oak Bluffs and Edgartown planning boards.

Other public officials, including individual planning board members, have said they support the changes, as has the Vineyard Conservation Society, a conservation advocacy group that wrote a letter supporting the revisions.

In an emailed statement Monday morning, MVBA board president Newell Isbell Shinn said the association stands with the Oak Bluffs and Edgartown planning boards in opposing the checklist changes, and he expressed concerns about the commission’s process despite a shared interest in addressing climate change.

“We on the MVBA board are entirely in support of addressing climate change through local action,” Mr. Isbell Shinn wrote. “This current proposal, however, represents rushed and incomplete thinking and we stand with the Island planning boards and elected officials who have called for a more careful process and wider consultation.”

Mr. Isbell Shinn said it is important to develop “clear and robust” policies to address climate change that have broad, Islandwide support. He referenced the current effort to win town meeting support for carbon reduction as an example — an effort the commission has helped spearhead. But he felt the current checklist changes weren’t fully fleshed out.

“If the DRI checklist and energy policy are approved as proposed we will eventually see a small group of elected and appointed commissioners making subjective decisions about fuel use in specific single family homes defined as ‘large’ according to definition that isn’t even on the table as these policies are being approved,” Mr. Isbell Shinn wrote.