The Oak Bluffs selectmen took a significant step toward construction of the controversial blinker section roundabout on Monday morning, signing documents for temporary easements to take some small parcels of land bordering the road by eminent domain.
Construction on the state-funded $1.5 million traffic improvement project is expected to begin in October.
Highway superintendent Richard Combra told the selectmen yesterday that the town would spend about $12,150 from Chapter 90 funds to pay for the easements, prompting selectman Gail Barmakian to balk.
In the wake of the overwhelming votes this spring in five Island towns against the controversial roundabout project, a longtime member of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission has called for the regional planning agency to revisit its own position on the plan.
At the end of the MVC meeting Thursday night, Leonard Jason Jr. announced his intention to request a new vote on the controversial roundabout planned for the blinker intersection in Oak Bluffs.
There comes a time when you cannot be silent anymore and this is it. Like many people on the Island, I would like to live in a place with clean air, clean water, a flourishing natural environment and amiable neighbors who have a respect for each other and for the heritage of the place. As a proud citizen of the United States and the town of Oak Bluffs, I believe these are my basic rights. So when these rights are threatened for myself and others, I must speak up. I am standing up for the roundabout. What follows are my reasons.
Last week’s Gazette editorial eloquently recognizing the one-sided results of the ballot questions on the roundabout was a welcome coda to this ongoing and vexing issue.
Attorney fees for the lawsuit against the Martha’s Vineyard Commission’s roundabout decision will not come out of the town’s annual operating budget, West Tisbury selectmen said this week.
“I think it’s better not to try to budget . . . extraordinary legal events,” selectman Cynthia Mitchell said at the board’s meeting, held on Tuesday this week. “It ought to be raised separately not as part of the budget. And in that way you get the opportunity to ask the voters how do you feel about such a lawsuit.”
West Tisbury and Edgartown this week took the Martha’s Vineyard Commission to court seeking to block the roundabout project that has become a lightning rod over periodic traffic congestion at the center of the Island.
In their lawsuit filed in Dukes County superior court on Wednesday, the two towns seek to invalidate the commission’s Oct. 6 decision – which was affirmed on Nov. 3 — and force a more thorough review of the proposed project planned for the blinker intersection of Edgartown-Vineyard Haven and Barnes Roads.