A long-running debate about the permitting process for the oversand vehicle trails on Chappaquiddick came to a swift halt on Wednesday at the Edgartown zoning board of appeals.
After no public comment and only a couple minutes of debate, the board unanimously dismissed an appeal from William Gazaille that questioned if the Trustees of Reservations had all of the approvals it needed to run its 16 miles of trails on the small island. The Trustees’ management of the trails has been a point of tension between beachgoers and Chappy residents for years.
Mr. Gazaille contended that the Trustees needed to get another layer of planning board approval due to the increased use of the trails since the conservation nonprofit first received a permit in the 1990s.
The zoning board on Wednesday largely stayed out of the merits of the complaint, and instead ruled that Mr. Gazaille didn’t have standing on the issue because he doesn’t own property on Chappaquiddick.
“As I was driving back from Boston yesterday – because this issue had been bothering me for a while – it suddenly dawned on me that I don’t believe the applicant, Mr. Gazaille, is the proper applicant,” said zoning board chair Martin (Skip) Tomassian. “He doesn’t own property, and he doesn’t have any particular injuries to himself.”
Mr. Gazaille’s appeal listed a property on Shear Pin Lane on Chappaquiddick. That property belongs to the Self family, according to town records.
A person filing an appeal needs to be directly impacted by the decision and they are often abutters.
Wednesday’s decision was the latest in numerous appeals and legal complaints connected to the Chappaquiddick oversand trails, which allow people with four-wheel drive vehicles to get out to the remote beaches on Chappy.
Mr. Gazaille’s appeal stems from the original town permit from 1990, which was either never filed in town hall or has since been lost. Town officials and the Trustees had tried to find a copy of the permit, but it couldn’t be located.
Without a permit in hand, the zoning board of appeals ordered the Trustees to apply for a new one with the Edgartown planning board. The Trustees applied for a permit for its buildings on Chappy and recieved approval from the planning board in May.
Some people still believed that the Trustees should need to apply for all of its activities on Chappaquiddick, not just the buildings.
At Wednesday’s meeting, zoning board member Pam Dolby said she didn’t think the zoning board had jurisdiction over Mr. Gazaille’s complaint.
“[The Trustees] received a special permit from the planning board,” she said. “If anybody was aggrieved by that permit being issued, they should have appealed that to the superior court…I do not understand why it’s back here.”
The zoning board voted unanimously to dismiss the appeal, and the whole issue took about three minutes.
In a statement to the Gazette Wednesday evening, Mr. Gazaille said the zoning board decision appears to be passing the buck and is not a resolution of the underlying complaint.
“If the zoning board of appeals believes standing is its biggest concern, then people with standing will come forward,” he wrote. “But the real issue has not changed: there is still a multimillion-dollar commercial operation being conducted on parcels that do not have the zoning permits this board previously said were required.”
This article appears in August 14, 2026.
Contrary to Mr Gazaille’s claim, the Trustees are not conducting a commercial operation. The Trustees are a nonprofit organization, and all nonprofits in this state are allowed to sell products and services if the proceeds from such sales are used to promote the mission of the nonprofit. This is precisely what the Trustees are doing.
OSVs Make Chappy Great