The future of the Home Port is in the hands of Chilmark voters who will decide whether to approve town purchase of the 70-year-old restaurant and surrounding property at a special town meeting Monday.

Voters face at least two choices: according to the first article on the warrant if the town buys the Home Port for $2 million, the restaurant will be taken down to make way for a park area, a site for additional public parking and rest room facilities and public access to the waterfront.

If the vote fails, a separate purchase agreement will kick in. The second agreement, between current owners on Will and Madeline Holtham and other Menemsha restaurateurs Robert and Sarah Nixon, would preserve the restaurant.

However, a third way now appears to have emerged. In an eleventh-hour twist members of the finance committee decided at a Wednesday night meeting to recommend the two Home Port articles with an additional recommendation that the town consider continuing the restaurant by leasing it out. Committee member Frank Yeomans said yesterday that the purchase is an attractive prospect for the town but the recommendation reflects widespread support for continuing the restaurant.

“A lot of people would like the restaurant to be there,” he said.

The special town meeting begins at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Chilmark Community Center.

The potential town purchase is dealt with in two articles on the warrant. The first outlines a municipal plan for the property and authorizes town to borrow $2 million. In the second selectmen request an extra $13,000 from the treasury to fund interest payments on the loan.

Selectmen signed a deal to buy the property, with voter approval, back in July, an agreement which predates the Nixon offer. Now both proposals have vocal supporters in the community.

Proponents of the town plan argue that the time is ripe to secure an area of natural beauty for town use. Detractors call for the preservation of an anchor Menemsha restaurant which has long summer business draw with its fresh seafood and harbor views.

The town plan has been spearheaded by selectman J.B. Riggs Parker, who negotiated the purchase and sale agreement. The reduced offer, signed by selectmen on July 29, is for the lot with the restaurant and two adjacent lots with waterfront access. It does not include an additional lot, historically used by the restaurant for staff and additional customer parking. That lot, which also has a dock, was sold to a private buyer.

It will be the second time the Home Port has been offered up to Chilmark voters for purchase. In 2005 a deal which included an additional dock lot but came with the much higher price tag of $3.9 million, failed to secure a needed two-thirds majority vote. The restaurant has been on the market intermittently for the past decade.

Also on Monday’s nine-article warrant are three requests relating to affordable housing.

A project to construct 12 affordable housing units on Middle Line Road continues apace with a request to authorize selectmen to sign an agreement on easements on two lots at the entrance of the proposed site.

Voters have already approved the $500,000 purchase earlier this year of two lots that make up the entrance. Selectmen have finalized one purchase and are negotiating the other.

There is also a request to transfer $55,000 to the year-round rental assistance program fund, with the majority coming from the affordable housing fund. Chilmark was the first Island town, back in 2001, to institute the year-round program, which offers landlords subsidies in return for providing year-round leases and prevents a landlord from throwing out the tenant to charge higher rents to summer visitors.

The program is run by the Dukes County regional housing authority and funded by the town using community preservation act money. Coordinator of administrative assistance Chuck Hodgkinson said three or four landlords are currently participating in the ongoing program.

“It’s very, very successful,” he said.

Using free cash and Chapter 90 money selectmen will seek approval for $260,000 to resurface a section of North Road leading to the West Tisbury town line. The repairs are part of a capital plan for road maintenance, which deals with Chilmark’s 18 miles of road in a 20-year cycle, said executive secretary Tim Carroll yesterday.

“We try and repair a mile a year,” he said, “we’ve got three miles to go.”

In a key step for a tri-town project to provide the up-Island area with wireless coverage, voters will be asked to approve a lease permit or permits for a central building for the distributed antenna system.

The building, known as a hotel, will be the hub for the wireless system, where the fiber optic cables will be fed into land lines to join the telephone system.

Mr. Carroll said the town hopes to complete construction on the hotel by Memorial Day and to have the system up and running by July 1.

Voters will also asked to approve $40,000 to remove dead standing trees along town roads; and $10,000 for new air conditioning units for the police station. The finance committee added its unreserved recommendation to the warrant’s other articles.