Sea View rehab effort hobbled; official criticized
The Oak Bluffs selectmen created the Sea View Waterfront Committee to fix a popular but deteriorating stretch of public beach. But infighting has left the committee paralyzed and in disarray.
Memos, emails, and conversations with committee members and town officials reflect personality conflicts and disputes over jurisdiction that have hampered efforts to restore areas of beach and sea wall along Sea View Avenue.
An outfall pipe dumps storm water on The Inkwell beach, carving a gully in the sand. Erosion and drain issues are the subjects of a growing dispute among Oak Bluffs officials. Photo by Steve Myrick
Several committee members who are also town officials said that Kerry Scott, chairman of the committee and a selectman, has repeatedly exceeded her authority, and in several instances engaged consultants at a cost to the town without the required authorization. It is a charge Ms. Scott denies.
Eroding support
Faced with a seawall that had collapsed onto the beach, significant structural problems with the roadway and coastal bank, and ever more scarce sources of funding for repairs, one year ago Oak Bluffs selectmen created the Sea View committee to help oversee the beach restoration effort.
At the time, town administrator Michael Dutton, the architect of the committee, said he foresaw it as the driving force behind making final recommendations to the parks commission and board of selectmen, initiating and running public hearings, and researching funding sources. He recommended the committee be comprised of eight members and that work be completed by December 1, 2008.
Stop-gap measures have been employed in some spots along Sea View Avenue to keep the coastal bank in place.
The selectmen appointed Ms. Scott chairman. The committee, made up of appointees drawn from a number of town boards and organizations, was expanded at the suggestion of Ms. Scott to 19 members.
The committee proved unwieldy from the start and was soon bogged down by personal conflicts, according to committee members. No minutes of the meetings were ever posted to the town's web site, or distributed.
Committee members, along with other town officials, have repeatedly objected to the lack of minutes, including the lack of recorded attendance at meetings.
Bill McGrath, who represents the capital planning committee and the finance advisory board on the committee, participated in many meetings, but is one of the members who no longer attend.
"My inclination is it's not so much a committee as a platform, a forum for the self-appointed chair to pass the word, get what she wants, and call it a committee effort," said Mr. McGrath. "She and some other members of the committee have knocked heads, and it gets uncomfortable. Certainly there are lots of members who have never been there or have been there once. There are very few that go consistently."
While some committee members participate by phone conference call, the only people who now consistently attend scheduled meetings are Mr. Dutton, Ms. Scott, Gail Barmakian, who represents the wastewater commission, and Bernadette Crossland, representing year-round residents, according to several committee members.
Ms. Scott said she doesn't know why attendance is low, and rejected the criticism that the committee's decisions do not represent a consensus. "Attendance is tough," she said. "The people who attend should not be disenfranchised. The people who faithfully come represent constituents, and that matters."
Unauthorized spending
Irrespective of wider participation by committee members, it is Ms. Scott's actions as chairman of the Sea View committee that have raised the ire of town officials.
A bill to the town for $3,731 from a Marion engineering firm spurred a memo dated February 9 from conservation agent Liz Durkee to Mr. Dutton in which she outlined concerns about "unauthorized use of conservation commission/special town meeting funds."
With a reference to Ms. Scott, Ms. Durkee wrote, "The Sea View Waterfront Committee has been hiring CLE Engineering for other services despite the fact that the committee chairman was told that the conservation commission would not pay any bills that were not first authorized by the conservation commission."
Ms. Durkee said she expected to receive more bills. "I am very disappointed that the situation has come to this," she wrote. "Everyone wants the waterfront restored, but it is an embarrassment for the Town when a respected engineering firm is caught in the middle of an internal Town problem."
The bill was for preparation of an engineering proposal to fix drainage problems near the section of beach popularly known as The Inkwell. When water gushes from a storm water outfall pipe it carves a large gully as beach sand washes into the ocean along with the storm runoff.
According to town records, CLE billed the town from $105 per hour to $130 per hour for project coordination meetings, a drainage survey, preliminary design, and permit applications. On February 2, 3, and 4, the firm billed the town $390 for two hours of correspondence with Ms. Scott, and one hour for preparing detailed responses to her emails.
In a telephone conversation with The Times yesterday, Ms. Scott said she did not authorize the engineering work. She shifted the responsibility to Mr. Dutton.
"We don't have any spending authority at all," Ms. Scott said, referring to the Sea View committee. "There's a lot of misinformation, a lot of misunderstanding."
Mr. Dutton said he has no recollection of authorizing engineering on the drainage project. He said the project was outside the scope of any engineering that was properly authorized. "There's a difference between authorizing something, and mentioning it," he said.
Access issues
Ms. Scott and Ms. Durkee are also at loggerheads over the permitting requirements for a walkway that would provide disabled access to the beach and the water.
In 2008, Ulwick Affiliates, a Hanover architectural firm headed by Douglas Ulwick, an Oak Bluffs resident, provided the town with a design for a portable sloping walkway to provide access for disabled people and billed the town $2,500.
At issue is who authorized the work. Mr. Dutton said he does not recall hiring Mr. Ulwick.
Ms. Scott said she participated in the design process with Mr. Ulwick, but did not authorize funding. "That was authorized by Michael Dutton," she said. "Once Michael gave me the idea that we could go ahead with it, the funding piece was his bailiwick."
In a phone conversation with The Times yesterday, Mr. Ulwick said, "Kerry Scott was the instigator. She instigated the hiring of me by the town. I normally do a contract. I can't recall whether I did for this."
The town purchased the roll-up walkway recommended by Mr. Ulwick at a cost of $10,133, but days after it was installed, Ms. Scott said at a selectmen's meeting that she was bitterly disappointed. She said a platform providing access from the street to the walkway was never completed, and blamed Nancy Phillips, then a member, and now the chairman of the Parks Commission for stopping the project.
The walkway remained on the beach for only a few months in 2008 and has yet to be installed this year. Ms. Scott is again championing the access project. "This year it's going to be done right," she said. "This was intramural politics at its worst. Nobody was served by that, it didn't help people get to the beach"
But the conservation commission said that before any new walkway project could go forward the permitting must be in place.
"Why do we need a new hearing?" wrote Ms. Scott in an email dated April 21, 2009, to Ms. Durkee. "Isn't this maintenance and completion of last year's permitted project, not a new project?"
Ms. Scott added, "Why is Doug Ulwick's plan not suitable? Why do we need an engineer this year when we didn't need one last year?"
In her reply, Ms. Durkee wrote, "My goal is not to make the process complicated but to make sure the planning and permitting is consistent will other like projects. The town, above all, should set the right example."
