Occupying almost every available seat in the Chilmark Community Center, voters rejected a $2 million purchase of the Home Port restaurant at a special town meeting last night, flouting months of effort on the part of selectmen to acquire the Menemsha restaurant and surrounding property for public use.
As a result of last night’s vote, the longstanding Menemsha seafood restaurant will now likely go to Robert and Sarah Nixon, private buyers who signed an alternate purchase agreement with the current owners.
Chilmark’s most diehard scallopers will have a chance to increase the bushel limit in exchange for some community service.
Menemsha seafood retailer Karsten Larsen convinced selectmen at a meeting Tuesday to raise the small pond limits from two to three bushels a day, arguing that those ponds are oversubscribed with small scallops which would die in a freeze and potentially damage the pond bed.
On Sunday night opponents of wind development off Vineyard shores — including selectmen, fishermen, Wampanoags and a Republican candidate for Massachusetts governor — were given a megaphone to voice their views.
Hosted by POINT (Protect Our Islands Now for Tomorrow), a group led by Andrew Goldman of Chilmark, the forum drew a large crowd to the Chilmark Community Center.
“We will have the largest concentration of turbines anywhere in the world,” declared Mr. Goldman, who moderated the forum.
Menemsha may have a new lunch option this summer, after the Chilmark selectmen approved an innkeeper and common victualler’s license for Dennis Barquinero, the new general manager of the Home Port, Beach Plum Inn and Menemsha Inn, with the understanding that Mr. Barquinero may open the Home Port’s take-out window for lunch.
Chilmark selectmen are now rethinking the future of the house at Tea Lane Farm after voters rejected a second plan at a special town meeting on Monday. The plan would have have renovated the 18th century house at a cost of $550,000 to prepare it for leasing to a tenant farmer.
With little discussion voters defeated the article by indefinite postponement.
Chilmark is now accepting proposals for Tea Lane Farm after town voters agreed, with sweeping support this week, to lease out the historic farm on a long-term basis.
Applications are due by next month; the Tea Lane Farm committee is still finishing a timetable and rubric for the project. The farm committee will review proposals and conduct interviews with applicants and then make recommendations to a joint committee of the selectmen and land bank advisory board, which will make a final decision.
