A recently-installed fence at Tisbury’s Tashmoo Spring property will remain in place, following a unanimous select board vote on Tuesday afternoon.

Dividing the employee house on West Spring street from the rest of the Tashmoo Spring Building Area, the two-rail fence drew criticism last month from the town committee that manages the public property and from other Tisbury residents who objected to losing a strip of the grassy hill between the house and the picnic area.

“Townspeople have used that space for 100 years,” said Lorraine Wells of the Tashmoo Spring Building Area management committee, who said her group was not consulted on the fence and asked that it be moved closer to the house

On Tuesday, select board members instead ordered that a nearby patch of brush be cleared by the public works department, to make up for the loss of space to the fenced-in yard.

They also stipulated that native plants be added along the fence, to soften its visual impact.

The select board chose this solution from three options presented Tuesday by landscape architect Barbara Lampson, a member of the town’s open space and recreation committee who has been working to resolve the fence dispute.

“We need to rally behind the vote of this town to resume using this house as what it was built for, housing, and housing with a reasonable area of … exterior space reserved for use by the residents, whoever they may be,” Ms. Lampson said Tuesday.

She noted that the house is bounded on two of its four sides by asphalt, which extends to the building’s walls and is open 24 hours a day.

“People are driving through that drive-through driveway at all hours,” Ms. Lampson said. 

Ms. Lampson’s other two options both called for reducing the fenced-in area and either adding a raised deck to the house, or making no other changes.

Select board member Connie Alexander liked the reduced fence with decking, but chair Roy Cutrer was averse to making any alterations.

“I don’t want to go back to town [meeting] and ask for more money. I don’t want to go back to town needing to ask for more debt,” Mr. Cutrer said.

Both voted in favor of John Cahill’s motion to leave the fence, add the plantings and clear the brushy area for public use.

Although the Tashmoo Spring Building Area is not officially designated as a town park, it is open to the public and available to rent for special events.

The residence on the property was built in the last century for the waterworks director and originally was known as the Engineer’s House.

Over the ensuing years, it has held town offices and housed visiting contractors from the Tisbury School project.

Town voters agreed in 2025 to spend $297,000 to renovate the house as an employee residence, with town administrator Joseph LaCivita and his wife the first tenants.

Most of the work has been completed, but upgrades to the heating and cooling and septic system are still to come, Mr. LaCivita said Tuesday.

The town also is seeking new bids for the labor on a bathroom, for which all the components are already on hand, he said.

“We’re trying to do the best that we can to be good stewards of the people’s money, so we’ll be putting that back out to bid,” Mr. LaCivita said.

The final costs are still expected come in below the $297,000 budget, by about $12,000 to $15,000, he said.

Among other town business Tuesday, Vineyard Haven Public Library director Amy Ryan announced that the library on Main street will reopen next week after more than a year of renovations.

“We’re still busy unpacking, and as anyone can see driving by there’s still some site work to be done, but … we’ve decided we’d rather get open sooner than wait for everything to be perfect,” Ms. Ryan said.

On July 21, she said, the Tristan Israel Band is booked to perform at 6 p.m. in the new program room.

“We’ll be opening prior to that event, and hopefully earlier in the afternoon, which we’ll be announcing on our website,” Ms. Ryan said.

A grand opening celebration will take place July 25 beginning at 10 a.m., she said, with live music for kids and a ribbon cutting.

Town voters in 2025 approved a Proposition 2 1/2 override of up to $4.8 million for the project, which also used previously-appropriated town funds and millions in private donations.

Also Tuesday, the select board approved a new commercial mooring in Lagoon Pond for the Husselton Head oyster farm, which has unexpectedly lost access to the private berth it had been using for  its boat.

The Lagoon Pond Association, a homeowners group, called for more time before the town approved the new mooring, which now is set to be installed near the boat launch in the pond’s west arm.

“We don’t want to have a lot of excess moorings,” said association member Sherry Countryman, who also submitted a formal letter on behalf of the group.

“The west arm is the most polluted part of the pond, and the pond just simply can’t handle it,” Ms. Countryman said.

While acknowledging the homeowners’ concerns, the select board backed harbor master Michael Gately’s opinion that this was a unique case that should not lead to an influx of moorings.

“It’s a precarious position Mr. (Husselton Head owner Jeffrey) Canha has been put in,” he said.

“He has a commercial business in our harbor that has been established for some time, and … he’s lost access to a part of that business,” Mr. Gately said.