Oak Bluffs Turns to Healing Rifts from Election

Fault Lines Can Still Be Seen

By CHRIS BURRELL

The phones have stopped ringing, and the yard signs are down. In Oak
Bluffs this week, there is a weary sense of relief that the town finally
has its answer: They will remain in the Martha's Vineyard
Commission.

"People are so tired of fighting," said Renee Balter, a
resident and executive director of the Oak Bluffs Association.
"Now it's finally been settled."

The answer came from the voters themselves, ending weeks, if not
months, of speculation about what townspeople really wanted.

But while the guesswork is gone, there's no disputing the rift
that remains and the wounds that need to be healed.

How will the town rebuild its relationship with the commission, and
how will voters regain their trust in town leaders? And then
there's the obvious question of what's next for the land
that sits at the center of this storm.

For the last three years, a proposal to turn nearly 300 acres of the
southern woodlands into a private golf course has fanned the flames of
controversy, testing the stamina of a town that is no stranger to
hardball politics.

The issue drove a wedge through the board of selectmen, and it split
the commissioners at the MVC who narrowly defeated the proposal each of
the three times it came before the regional agency for approval.

But more than anything else, the question of golf in the southern
woodlands divided an entire town. That was clear last year at a special
town meeting in March, when 427 voters favored taking the woodlands by
eminent domain and 433 opposed it. The measure fell far short of the
two-thirds majority needed for passage, but the tally told the stark
truth - a town torn down the middle.

Now, more than 13 months later, after all the public forums, the
legislative hearings, the telephone polling, the yard signs, the
leaflets handed out at the post office and the lobbyists calling voters
the night before the election, you can still see the fault line
separating the two camps.

Tuesday's vote was close, a 98-vote margin giving victory to
those siding with the commission.

"It's divided the town so intensely," said Judy
O'Donoghue, a school committee member who voted no to leaving the
commission. "We would like to heal and move on."

Ironically, while much of the battle was fought over a breakup with
the Martha's Vineyard Commission, the healing process is likely to
happen in-house, where some observers say the relationship between town
leaders and their constituents is badly strained.

Kerry Alley, a retired school guidance counselor, said
Tuesday's vote is a clear sign of public dissatisfaction with town
leadership.

"People just don't have confidence in the
leadership," he said. "The argument that we don't need
the commission because we can do it locally is begging the question.
Look at the fiasco over the [selectmen] chairmanship, the article asking
for three-quarters of a million dollars to build a new town hall based
on not much more than a sketch on the back of an envelope, the sewer
boxes. Those things have piled up."

And when it came to the golf plan, town leaders drew deep lines in
the sand. Three of the five current selectmen openly allied themselves
with the owner of the vast woodlands parcel - Connecticut
developer Corey Kupersmith - signing onto an agreement a year ago
that advocated removing the commission as an "impediment" to
plans for the luxury Down Island Golf Club.

For much of the last two years, those selectmen - a majority
of the board - argued they had the backing of the town as they met
behind closed doors to craft a deal with the developer. They pointed to
other town boards that voted to sign the same document with Mr.
Kupersmith.

"Selectmen truly believed they had most of the town behind
them . . . and they moved forward thinking they were doing the right
thing for the town," said Mrs. Balter, who supported staying with
the MVC. "That's when the confidence in them eroded. The
measures they were taking gave a lot of people a feeling of not being a
part of their government, of being shut out. That's not a good way
to feel in a town as small as ours."

The healing process will be an enormous challenge, said selectman
Gregory Coogan, who openly backed the commission.

"I am legitimately humbled by the thought of what's
ahead of us," said Mr. Coogan. "So many people put so much
time and energy on both sides. It was a massive undertaking. To almost
walk out of the commission, it's pretty impressive to almost beat
an institution. There's a lot of fervor on both sides, and I
don't expect it to die overnight."

Richard Combra, chairman of the selectmen and an advocate for the
golf club plans, promised to put an end to the internal divisions on his
board. "As a member of the board of selectmen, I have a clear
direction," he told the Gazette this week. "The selectmen in
Oak Bluffs are going to lead by example. People are going to see all
five members become unified on this issue."

Mr. Alley said he will be watching the selectmen closely. "It
depends entirely on what the three selectmen do, if they genuinely say
they've heard the people," he said.

But if the public's lack of trust in the Oak Bluffs selectmen
helped fuel at least part of the no vote, what gave supporters of the
yes vote so much traction?

Pam Swan, a mother of three schoolchildren who has lived in town for
nine years, firmly believed her selectmen were on the right track.
"Selectmen had forged a really good package with the golf
guy," she said. "It's too bad the commission
disregarded that."

Mrs. Swan pointed to her own lack of faith that the commission could
repel the 366-unit housing plan filed by Mr. Kupersmith.

Fire chief Dennis Alley, Kerry Alley's brother, called
Tuesday's vote a no-brainer from a financial perspective. A golf
club would have brought "an awful lot of money into the
town," he said, adding, "There's nothing prettier than
having a golf course on a piece of land like that."

Signs for the yes campaign cast the vote against the commission as a
vote for the schools and for lower taxes, a simple choice between golf
or houses. "Faced with some type of housing out there, it puts a
strain on the infrastructure, more children in the school system,"
Dennis Alley said.

There was also anger at the Martha's Vineyard Commission, a
perception that the rejection of the golf club left Oak Bluffs
vulnerable to a massive housing development and the feeling that some
commissioners viewed Oak Bluffs as a dumping ground for affordable
housing.

Mrs. Balter said the anti-commission campaign gained support by
playing on public fears. "Their signs were definitely fear-based,
that taxes would be raised, the school would be ruined," she said.
"They brought people out to the polls who normally wouldn't
come and who didn't really understand in a great deal of depth
what the issues were really about."

What happens next with Mr. Kupersmith's land is clearly a
topic of great curiosity. Whatever happens, Mr. Combra said, it will
have to go to the Martha's Vineyard Commission. And if the
proposal is for a housing development, Mr. Combra said he would be
staunchly opposed to granting approval.

Mark London, the executive director of the commission, is ready to
see the end of an adversarial and the beginning of a cooperative
relationship with Oak Bluffs. "We're going to have to work
very closely and together on issues related to the southern woodlands
now that we're on the same team," he said.

Mr. London pointed to other efforts that the commission is making to
heal the wounds. MVC planners are working on securing grant money to pay
for a roundabout at the blinker light intersection, he said.

But as Mr. Coogan said, the intensity of this political battle will
take time to cool down. "I think people were incorrectly thinking
the commission could protect them," said Mrs. Swan. "The
opposite is going to be true."

John Newsom, a real estate salesman, put it this way: "In this
town, when they say it's over because of the vote, it's not
over."