The view from the Tashmoo overlook, one of the great vistas of Martha’s Vineyard, has been restored, after the owners of a number of large trees finally bowed to pressure from the town of Tisbury and allowed the chainsaws in yesterday.

The removal of several of the largest trees, whose growth was gradually obliterating the view across Lake Tashmoo and Vineyard Sound, may end years of dispute between the town and Thomas and Ginny Payette of Tashmoo Farm.

It occurred, not coincidentally, as selectmen were in the final stages of approving an article for town meeting which would have provided for an appraisal of the offending trees, as a first step to asserting a view easement.

Tisbury voters will, however, be asked to approve an article providing $3,500 to pay for the removal of three of the most problematic of the trees — two willows and a cherry — and the pruning of others.

The Payettes’ intransigence over some three years had been vastly frustrating to selectmen.

In August 2008, it even prompted selectman Tristan Israel to pre-empt a closed executive session discussion of the matter to accuse the Payettes of selfishness and insensitivity to the greater good, of having stalled and failed to attend meetings: “I want the public to know we tried civilly, politely, any way we could to work with the Payettes on this matter.

“Mr. Payette . . . in effect blew us off,” Mr. Israel said.

“Now we are going to have to examine our options.”

And that is what the town has been doing ever since. There was a move to put an article on last year’s town meeting warrant, but that was withdrawn, in hope of an agreement with the Payettes.

Nothing came of it over the succeeding months, and on Wednesday night selectmen were again considering the Payette-related articles for this year’s warrant when selectman Jeff Kristal suggested they hold off.

He told the meeting he understood the cutting of the trees would begin the next morning. And it did.

Wednesday night’s meeting of the selectmen was a big one not only because of the news that the overlook issue had at last been resolved.

It began with the board signing notes of borrowing of $9.405 million, some $7.6 million of it to fund the town’s new emergency services building. The mood was buoyant as they signed, because the town had secured an interest rate of just 2.92 per cent.

A finalized list of candidates for the April 27 town election also was circulated. Only two positions will be contested. The chairman of the selectmen, Tristan Israal, will face two challengers: Bruce Llewellyn and Angela A. Cywinski.

And Kenneth Garde will be challenged by Michael D. Loberg for his seat on the board of health.

The meeting also included discussion of ballot questions and warrant articles for town meeting, but the drama was elsewhere.

First was controversy about a decision taken by the board in January, allowing a trial of skip dredging in Lake Tashmoo. It did not go well.

The selectmen heard one of the two trial operators had been cited for taking too many quahaugs. The shellfish committee was upset, too, about the effect of the dredging on the pond.

Steve Baccelli, the committee chairman, complained the selectmen had approved the trial despite their recommendation against it. The selectmen in turn said the committee had not made its views strongly enough known.

So Mr. Baccelli made them strongly. Skip dredging tore up the bottom “pretty good.” It strirred up sediment and threatened other life in the pond. It needed at the very least, more study.

And he invoked the former Tisbury shellfish constable Derek Cimeno, who died last year.

“If Derek was alive we would have seen no dredging,” he said.

It was a tense few minutes, made more so because the cited fisherman, now out of work, was there too. The selectmen voted to immediately end the practice.

But there was more emotion to come. Tisbury’s building and zoning inspector, Kenneth Barwick, made a somewhat dramatic appeal for the town to act against the owners of two pit bull dogs, on Lagoon Pond Road.

The dogs, he believed, were owned by two young men, who he believed to be restaurant workers, living in a house owned by the Black Dog restaurant.

He alluded to three previous incidents involving pit bulls on Lagoon Pond Road over the past 10 years. In two, the dogs were ordered destroyed after attacks. In the third, last year, Mr. Barwick said, his dog was almost killed by an unlicensed, unvaccinated pit bull, which also had nearly torn off his hand.

Mr. Barwick said the wait to find out if the attacking dog might have given him rabies had taken a year off his life.

Mr. Barwick said he had seen the new dogs unrestrained in the park, and believed they were not registered. Other people in the Lagoon Pond area, he said, were “trembling” at the potential threat posed by the two new dogs.

He wanted the selectmen to ensure the animal control officer checked out the dogs and the police checked out the owners.

Finally, he appeared to threaten to kill the dogs himself.

“If either one of these comes within 10 feet of me, I have the ways and means to take either one of them out where they stand,” Mr. Barwick said.

Mr. Barwick was told to contact the animal control officer.