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.