The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School committee has vowed to continue its legal fight with the Oak Bluffs planning board, which this week announced it will appeal last month’s Massachusetts Land Court decision allowing the school to proceed with plans for an artificial turf field.
“We are enthusiastically moving forward, supported by the land court’s decision,” school committee chair Kathryn Schertzer said Friday morning, at a special meeting that was mostly taken up by a 45-minute executive session with attorney Brian Winner.
But paying for the court battle could be complicated.
Following the closed session, school finance director Suzanne Cioffi told the committee that once Mr. Winner has been paid for his most recent invoices, just $225 will remain from $5,000 in cash donations the school received for the case in July.
That’s not quite enough for the $300-an-hour lawyer’s time at the Friday meeting, let alone the work of preparing for the Oak Bluffs planning board’s upcoming appeal.
“[Mr. Winner]’s not going to be able to do what we discussed in executive session,” committee member Jeffrey (Skipper) Manter said Friday.
The school committee voted in May not to use legal funds from the high school budget to pay for the turf field litigation, after multiple town meetings voted down the entire school budget in protest over the case.
Ms. Schertzer said that more donations could come in before the committee’s next meeting Jan. 8.
“It is not beneath me to ask for it, because at this time of year many people are looking for opportunities for tax shelters and end of year donations. So there it is: I put it out there, both to the universe and [to] the public,” she said.
Public debate over the proposed artificial turf field has raged since 2016, when parents first pitched the idea to the high school committee.
The committee voted 5-4 in favor of the field in early 2019, as part of the planned comprehensive overhaul of high school facilities.
More than two years later, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission approved the plan in a 10-6 vote, with its approval remaining in effect until after all legal appeals have been completed.
The Oak Bluffs planning board rejected the turf field in a 2-2 tie in the spring of 2022, touching off the current litigation. A state Land Court judge earlier this year said the planning board overstepped its authority when it denied the project.
