The Chilmark planning board will send out a request for proposals for the Peaked Hill Pastures affordable housing project approved at town meeting last year, with plans to hire a consultant to help with the process.
At a select board meeting on Tuesday, planning board chair Richard Osnoss said the decision came out of a meeting with the Peaked Hill Pastures RFP committee, and after correspondence from town counsel.
“It’s taken awhile to get on the same page,” said Mr. Osnoss of the collaboration.
Voters approved a plan to develop 10 rental and four ownership units on six acres of town land last April. Since then, the RFP committee and planning board have debated how to honor those wishes despite a bylaw limiting them to nine units on the acreage, and the fact that it would preclude other uses for 10 acres of adjoining town land.
Mr. Osnoss said the board will host a series of public input sessions on how to proceed, with the potential to draft a bylaw change for a special town meeting.
The board took no vote on the issue but gave their blessing to continuing the RFP process with the consultant. An article on the town warrant this year will ask for $150,000 in community preservation committee funds to go toward the project, to be used in part for engineering work.
In other business, the select board heard an update on the Chilmark Community Center summer camp program, now seeking a new executive director after the resignation Keira Lapsley, who was hired last year.
“We were very disappointed that she decided not to come back,” said Chilmark town affairs council president Suellen Lazarus.
Ms. Lapsley’s resignation, Ms. Lazarus said, was in part due to significant community backlash over the hiring of a separate youth director for the tennis program.
“People in the tennis community...expressed some views very strongly to our executive director. I think that was very difficult for her,” Ms. Lazarus said.
Select board member Warren Doty expressed his concern over the incident.
“It’s distressing,” he said. “It hasn’t always been easy coordinating with the tennis program.”
-Thomas Humphrey
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