Vineyard Haven Voters Decide June 12 on Successor to Edmond G.
Coogan

By JOSHUA SABATINI

On Tuesday, June 12, Tisbury voters will decide which of two
candidates, Cora Medeiros or Ray LaPorte, will fill the vacancy on the
board of selectmen resulting from the death of Edmond G. Coogan earlier
this year.

Mrs. Medeiros and Mr. LaPorte spoke with the Gazette in separate
interviews to discuss the race and the issues before the town.

Mrs. Medeiros, born and raised on Nantucket, has been a resident of
Tisbury for 51 years. She raised her six children, three sons and three
daughters, on the Island. For 31 years she has been involved in Island
businesses; she remains the owner of two gift shops, Plum Creek and
Neptune's Sea Chest.

Mrs. Medeiros has served as selectman for the town of Tisbury for a
total of 17 years, during which time she originated the Tisbury Street
Fair, now in its 30th year, helped establish the regional high school
boosters club and originated the eighth grade school trip from Tisbury
to Washington, D.C. Mrs. Medeiros is making a return to politics after a
retirement of nine years.

Gazette: What has made you decide to come back into politics?

Mrs. Medeiros: I feel that the town needs somebody that knows what
went on in the past, to be able to bring that into the future. I just
want to serve out the rest of Mr. Coogan's term; to give some
input as to what went on in the past and maybe some things that really
have not been carried out.

In my 17 years they have known what I have done and I can point to
many accomplishments that were done during my tenure as a selectman. I
had an awful lot of phone calls saying, ‘Look Cora, we are not
asking you to go in there and stay there, we are asking you to go in and
let your knowledge be available.' I will serve the two years. They
can pick my brains, they can ask me what went on in the past.

Because so many people called me and asked me, saying, ‘You
know what went on in the past, you know that you can help, why
don't you try to run,' I decided I would.

Gazette: What town issues are on your mind?

Mrs. Medeiros: Nine years ago, the town of Tisbury at a town meeting
voted to take the last piece of property by the Manter well site any way
possible. To this day we don't own it. If you don't protect
the water in the town of Tisbury, you are going to have deep problems in
the future. Therefore, about three months ago I initiated a petition
with the help of the selectmen and I got every selectman past and
present to sign the petition, petitioning the general court through Mr.
Turkington to ask to move the procedure to get the land free and clear
from the bottom of the pile to the top of the pile. They are still
researching it. Now, for nine years we've had it there.
Don't you think it's about time that the state of
Massachusetts could move on this?

I know a lot of things that went on in the past that people tend to
forget. The school department has something called the Manter Trust,
which was set up many years ago by Mr. Manter and his wife to provide
- in this day and age it is not necessary - but to provide
shoes for children that couldn't afford them. Right now they have
$280,000. However, we are paying $1,800 a year to the town of Oak Bluffs
because the town of Tisbury owns seven acres of land in Oak Bluffs that
was near the Manter lagoons. Prior to the closing of the lagoons, the
land wasn't really worth anything, but now that the lagoons are
closed, what do you think somebody will pay the town to purchase seven
acres that only one house could be built on? In this day and age, with
property so sky high, now is the time to sell. Put the money into the
Manter Trust, the principal of which could never be touched, but that
would give the [Tisbury] school additional monies to be used for
projects that can't be funded through the regular budget. If you
can find some way of helping out the schools, then you would reduce our
budget as well. But you have to educate the children. They are your
future.

Gazette: Affordable housing is a key concern for many residents. Can
you share some of your views?

Mrs. Medeiros: There is land around the Manter well that is not
within what they call the "zone of influence," so if that
land could be sold, let's give it a chance to low or
moderate-income people to buy the land, put it back on the tax rolls of
the town of Tisbury and build a home for themselves which by nowadays
kids are never going to be able to afford. You have got to give the kids
a chance. There is a great deal of property off the tax rolls. Why not
see if we can't give it to the planning board?

Gazette: There are innumerable issues pertaining to the SSA; can you
speak to some of them?

Mrs. Medeiros: I think that you have to let the SSA work out its own
problems. I wish one thing would happen, though. We have a full
hundred-car parking lot in the town, under-utilized. Maybe you get 20
cars in there at a time. Why not offer the SSA to take it over, pay us
like they pay Falmouth for the use of the parking lot, and let them
utilize it as a place to park so people won't congest the downtown
when they are going away?

Gazette: How do you feel about how Tisbury town government has been
functioning?

Mrs. Medeiros: I think they should open the communication again with
the heads of the boards and have back again a "jam session,"
where they got together the heads of the boards and asked them if they
had any problems and saw if they couldn't work out those problems.
The communication is good, but you can always do something to better it.

Raymond LaPorte

Mr. LaPorte was born and raised in Lowell, and moved to Tisbury in
1987. Mr. LaPorte and his wife, Bernadette, have a son attending college
in Wyoming. Mr. LaPorte served as director of the United States
Department Interior, Lowell Historic Preservation Commission for eight
years, worked as a loan officer for Plymouth Savings Bank of
Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, and is now a financial advisor
for Advest Inc. in Vineyard Haven. He has held five appointed town
government positions in Tisbury as a member and chairman of the zoning
board of appeals, a member of the planning committee, and, most
recently, the chairman of the town administrator search committee.

Gazette: Can you share your thoughts on affordable housing?

Mr. LaPorte: We just hired in February [town administrator Dennis]
Luttrell, and I worked for six months to try and find the individual who
could fit both in temperament and experience and be able also to afford
living out here. And that whole process really brought back again the
dilemma that we all face out here. How can we attract, compensate and
retain skilled help whether its for public service, like the school
system, or the private sector that supports this economy?

It's amazing how the Vineyard suffers the similar things that
other resorts suffer - Aspen, Vale, Cape Cod, Nantucket. The
difference, though, that the Vineyard and Nantucket have is that you
can't commute easily from anywhere else. We really have a
difficult task of being able to accommodate my son's generation,
who wants to stay here and work here because there is opportunity here.
There wasn't opportunity 25 years ago for someone out of college
to develop a career professionally or a business that you can now.

So we are in a dilemma: On the one hand we have our driving economy,
but on the other hand we have such a driving economy that we made it
unaffordable for the 20-something-year-olds to create an affordable
household. How do we do it? One town can't do it alone. Part of my
hope as selectman would be to help develop a planning strategy, and the
dialogue has to include the five other towns.

The issues of housing are complicated. Just finding a few lots and
doing a lottery isn't going to solve the problem. I think
it's structural and Islandwide and it would involve planning,
rewriting zoning bylaws, financial incentives and some creative
solutions that are not cookie-cut in nature.

Gazette: What are some of your priorities?

Mr. LaPorte: The biggest part of the budget is the school budget. A
priority for me, is how do we as a community, not just Tisbury, but all
Island towns, address the value system of providing quality education,
attracting and retaining talented teaching professionals, keeping the
student-teacher ratios at quality levels and addressing the population
growth?

There is a bit of a disconnection between how the school budget is
established and how the finance committees of the towns view that
process. They haven't quite bought into each other's
purpose. So my job would be to try to help get the finance committee,
selectmen and the school committee early on in the process agree to how
to establish an acceptable budget process. No one likes the numbers, but
we ought to come to some understanding on how to get there, the same
approach. Town meetings should be more of a celebration of the work of
the committees and board members. It doesn't have to be a drawn
out battle-royal which then discourages others to attend the next
meeting.

Gazette: The Steamship Authority is large issue for the town. Please
say a few words about it.

Mr. LaPorte: One thing Ed Coogan wanted to do was to strike a better
relationship with the Steamship Authority. That would be one of the
highest priorities that I would have, to try to improve on the
relationship that I think is sadly lacking right now with the SSA in the
town. How do we manage the impact of the traffic, automobile, truck and
pedestrian traffic; and the impact that it all has on shopping, parking
and the vitality of the town?

Clearly, planning is part of where I envision my role to be. I am
not a pothole kind of public servant. I come with a planning background
and I would be more inclined to do the long-term planning and strategy
development as it relates to these issues. Most of that traffic goes to
other towns. It's a Vineyard Haven impact but an Island-wide
issue. We need to get the streets cleared for parking for shoppers and
promote parking facilities for the commuter and for other longer-term
parkers.

We have the second-most-traveled port in the system, yet we have no
place at the table, no input into decisions made that impact our town
and so we need to have a place, whether it's through legislation
or through invitation. One way or another we should have a voice and it
should be heard.

Gazette: How is the town government operating now and how will you
fit in with the current selectmen?

Mr. LaPorte: I think we have a great professional staff. We
don't have conflict, and I am grateful for that. I know them [the
selectmen] very well and I understand what their strengths are, and I
think I can do much in helping to focus some of their discussion that
will advance the issues of Tisbury.

Gazette: Do you have a vision for the town?

Mr. LaPorte: There are plenty of opinions out there and plenty of
positions that have already been staked out. I think my approach is
process and reason versus some emotion out there. I would be asking
questions more than coming out with my own solutions. I am more of a
processing and question and vision planning kind of guy.