A decision by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission decision to review the expansion of an Oak Bluffs restaurant last week spilled into heated words at the Oak Bluffs selectmen’s meeting this week, where board members questioned the commission’s role in determining town matters.

At its meeting last Thursday the commission voted to review a second floor entertainment venue at the Ocean Club in Oak Bluffs as a development of regional impact (DRI), among other things citing traffic and parking concerns. The upstairs area was an arcade until 2006, but has been unoccupied since. The move would expand Ocean Club’s capacity from 90 to 500 people.

At the selectmen’s meeting Tuesday, Ron DiOrio criticized the decision, saying Oak Bluffs is already well equipped to review the expansion through the zoning board of appeals and the town planning board.

“Too much gets referred to the commission,” Mr. DiOrio said. “If parking and traffic were the driving factor in every decision we made, then we’d be boarding up Circuit avenue. It continues to bother me that people from up-Island have a lot to say about what goes on in Oak Bluffs.”

Selectman Kathy Burton agreed.

“I’ve reviewed the commission [DRI] checklist and it appears to me that just about every building permit should go through the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, which I think is certainly not what its intent was,” she said, “But if you really read it, it’s like if you put in a new window you should go before the commission for a DRI, and it seems ridiculous.”

Appearing before the board, Fred Hancock, who is the town’s appointed member to the MVC, argued that given the Steamship Authority’s role as a lifeline to the Island, traffic in the area does in fact represent a regional concern.

At the commission meeting on Thursday night, Ocean Club owner Mark Wallace argued against the need to review the expansion as a DRI, saying that the issue was in front of the MVC as the result of one angry abutter, Surfside Motel owner Jeff Young. Letters to the commission from Oak Bluffs selectmen Ron DiOrio and Duncan Ross back the project.

“We’re not here to try to buck the system,” said Mr. Wallace, “but I’m on the planning board in Oak Bluffs and it’s widely the opinion in town in general that with this particular thing in a preexisting building . . . we should not even have town boards if we’re not capable of managing this type of situation.”

Representing the Youngs of the Surfside Motel, attorney Michelle Kim Lee argued that the second floor development would disrupt the neighborhood.

“This just seems to be a huge increase in the intensity of use when you’re going from 90 people to 500,” she said. “There are going to be a lot of traffic concerns, noise concerns and wastewater concerns.”

Mr. Wallace dismissed those concerns.

“We’re willing to work with the commission but my own honest belief is that, as you can see by this public meeting we have only one foe here tonight and it’s the same at every meeting,” he said. “To me that doesn’t constitute a regional interest or impact.”

The commission disagreed, saying that potential traffic and noise issues attending the project would be best discussed at a public hearing.

Last Thursday the commission also voted to approve three new special ways in West Tisbury for inclusion in the Islandwide special ways district of critical planning concern: Pine Hill Road, Shubael Weeks Road and Mott’s Hill-Red Coat Hill Road. Mott’s Hill and Red Coat Hill Road, so named because of its use as a lookout during the Revolutionary War and its seizure by the hated General Grey on Sept. 10, 1778, serve as connectors to other conserved trails, while Pine Hill Road serves as a popular thoroughfare for biking and horseback riding. Shubael Weeks Road at one point extended from State Road to the cranberry bogs along Lambert’s Cove Road, but has been developed near State Road.

Taken last Thursday night, the vote by the commission restricts building 20 feet from either side of the centerline, forbids paving and preserves the roads for public use.

“I think it’s important to consider that West Tisbury is the geographic center of the Island,” said Rez Williams, a member of the West Tisbury roads and byways committee. “If we’re talking about an Islandwide system, it would be critical to get this nexus of trails protected.”

In other MVC business, on Monday this week, the land use planning committee voted to recommend to the full commission the approval of the proposed Big Sky Tents facility in the West Tisbury light industrial district. The project has drawn opposition from abutters in the adjacent residential district who say it would be disruptive and out of scale with the neighborhood. The full commission is scheduled to vote on the plan on Oct. 7.