The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School agreed to use private donations to fund its lawsuit against the town of Oak Bluffs and its planning board over a synthetic turf field.
The committee met Thursday to discuss paying an outstanding bill of $1,952.60 to school attorney Brian Winner.
The school is appealing an Oak Bluffs planning board decision to reject its proposed turf field at the high school. The board rejected the project over concerns about PFAS getting into the groundwater.
On Thursday, MVRHS finance manager Suzanne Cioffi told the committee it had received two donations for legal expenses relating to the lawsuit. One was an anonymous donation of $2,000, and the other was of $3,000 from Islander Regis Nepomuceno and unnamed friends.
Committee member Skip Manter shared that he would be uncomfortable accepting donations to pay a past expenditure that the committee had taken upon itself, calling it “poor fiscal practice.” He also said that he would instead be comfortable accepting the money for future legal expenses.
However, after M.V. Public Schools finance manager Mark Friedman told the committee that he was confident that they could, by majority vote, appropriate the donated money to pay the bill, multiple members were receptive to the idea.
“We should accept the $5,000 with gratitude,” committee member Kris O’Brien said.
Manter also remarked that the school would, of course, have to pay Winner for his services. “If we don’t pay the $1,900, we’ll pay when he sues [us],” he said.
At Thursday’s school committee meeting, the motion to use the donated money to pay Winner passed 6-1-1, with Robert Lionette voting against the motion, and Roxanne Ackerman abstaining.
“There must be a strategy if the committee is to keep engaging with Winner,” Lionette said. “How long, and to what end?”
In response, committee member Michael Watts shared points from a conversation between himself and Winner. “[Winner] is well aware of our limitations,” said Watts, adding that Winner’s obligations to the school are for now set to end when Winner forwards the decision of Judge Kevin Smith, which is currently pending.
“Beyond that, we’d have to meet with him and give him guidance,” Watts said.
The committee then passed a motion that its current engagement with Winner would not extend past Winner forwarding Judge Smith’s decision. The committee would have to vote again to re-engage Winner after that point.
The school committee, after a contentious round of town meetings in the spring, voted to allocate no funding in the current fiscal year’s budget to the lawsuit.
Also during the contentious town meetings, while approving the school’s budget, voters in Aquinnah, West Tisbury, and Chilmark voted for nonbinding resolutions to ask the school not to accept anonymous donations over $5,000.
The committee also plans to request an extension from the Martha’s Vineyard Commission for approval to work on the turf field, as its current approval is set to expire on August 27. In discussing how much of an extension to ask for, M.V. Public Schools Superintendent Richie Smith noted that the longer the extension the school asks for, the less likely approval will be.
The committee then passed a motion for Smith to request a two-year extension at the next full committee meeting of the commission on August 3, with that extension set to expire in 2026 if approved.
