Updated Oct. 31.
Amid a controversial project intended to house Vineyard Wind workers that has riled Vineyard Haven residents, the town has placed planning board administrator Amy Upton on administrative leave as of Tuesday morning.
Town administrator Jay Grande confirmed Wednesday that Upton was placed on leave pending a review, but did not elaborate on the reasons why.
Casey Dobel, Upton’s attorney, said that town police chief Chris Habekost escorted Upton out of her office in front of town colleagues on Tuesday.
Upton confirmed that she had been placed on paid leave, but declined to comment further.
Her legal counsel believes the move is retaliation for a number of her client’s text messages to Tisbury planning board members that were recently publicized by the developer of a housing development at 97 Spring Street. In a letter to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission last week, developer Xerxes Aghassipour released Upton’s text messages — which are critical of his project and town officials and feature profane language — ahead of the commission’s vote on his project.
Upton’s attorney also said this wasn’t the first time Upton has been disciplined by the town over those text messages. Dobel said town officials, while they did not put Upton on leave, disciplined her about a month ago after Aghassipour brought them to their attention.
Upton’s texts to planning board member Ben Robinson came from a public records request Aghassipour sent in July, as the developer was concerned by what he saw as the board spreading falsehoods and unfairly scrutinizing his projects at 97 Spring Street and 123 Beach Road. The board referred both properties to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission that month for thorough reviews, though the commission rejected both referrals.
A significant portion of the texts concern Upton’s suspicions surrounding a spring meeting between building inspector Greg Monka, Aghassipour and town administrator Jay Grande. The meeting followed Monka issuing a stop-work order on the project, and was held to determine the future use of the property. The order was lifted shortly after Aghassipour stated his intentions to house Vineyard Wind workers in the development.
“Presumably you read the latest letter regarding 97 Spring st. and the meeting of the old boys [sic] club at 4 State Rd, deciding to ramrod ahead and lift the stop work order and then deal with the use question at a later date, knowing full well that the building inspector is already entirely in collusion with the developer and will never enforce or refer to the equally conflicted ZBA chair,” Upton texted Robinson in May. The text messages also used profane language.
Dobel said that if Upton had a lawyer at the time of the request, she would have never provided her texts to Aghassipour’s lawyers.
Emails obtained by The Times also show town counsel David Doneski advised Upton to not provide her personal messages, after Upton reached out for clarification on how to comply with the records request. The emails show that Doneski’s advice came, however, after Upton had already provided a large envelopes’ worth of materials.
Dobel said that her client will consult with her union, but that she is not necessarily looking to add to Tisbury’s legal troubles — former fire chief Greg Leland told The Times last week that he is planning to take legal action against the town with his employment ending on Monday.
Dobel said the town first took action against Upton when Aghassipour provided the messages to the town at least a month before filing them with the commission. But Dobel issues between Upton and town officials started months before.
About four months ago, Dobel said, inspector Monka stopped communicating altogether with Upton. “He stopped responding to her and referring projects to the planning board. He basically went rogue, and [determined] he was the unilateral decider of what did and didn’t constitute a special permit,” Dobel said.
Dobel said that Upton then went to file a grievance against Monka for poor communication and lack of professionalism, as her job requires her to coordinate with the building department.
However, according to Dobel, the town discouraged Upton from filing a complaint and instead took action against her for her texts. She said the town’s human resources department wrote up Upton a little over a month ago. “They said, ‘You’re not submitting a complaint against Monka, you’re getting written up,’” Dobel said.
She said that Dobel was asked to sign a letter acknowledging that the matter would be included in her personnel file. Upton then asked for time to review and rebut that disciplinary letter.
The Times has requested a comment from Grande and Monka.
This article has been updated to reflect attorney Dobel’s comments.
Tisbury raising the bar, again
Are we allowed to use fake names?
Coming soon to your neighborhood.
Multiple bedrooms and multiple washing machine hookups do not meet the definition of a single family home, and sets a precedent. This is clearly a violation of our bylaws, and publishing angry insults in messages meant to be read privately is obviously an attempt to discredit the planning board. Where does it say that Mr. Monka can create this precedent? I think the job here is for the planning board to work on creating a bylaw, which must pass at town meeting, that allows multiple unrelated people to live together, more than what is already allowed, which is three.
Vineyard Haven does not need the flaunting of our bylaws by our zoning and building inspector, whose job it is to enforce our bylaws and to protect our single family neighborhoods.
Instead of publiclly embarrassing Amy Upton, the town could ask for an apology, and move on.
You want a bylaw to approve unrelated people living together. I must say I am not a big fan of offshore wind, but the fact is there is an effort to correct our carbon footprint. It cannot work, it is too little, but it is something and it is important to want to do something. We are at a stage where it is crucial to try and ultimately find a way. But also, simply because we must, is not enough. We need to want, and admit, that we must find relief from our catastrophic climate as well as show some respect for the men and women who can fight climate change for us. We live next door to Vineyard Wind employees. I would say they are a pleasure and are needed.
Frank, you live on Beach Road, if I recall correctly.
This is not about the personalities of VW employees.
I am very surprised that you of all people—who are acutely aware of relevant laws as they relate to projects on Beach Road—are so cavalier about the flouting of Tisbury’s zoning laws and the consequences for abutters and neighbors and the general quality of life in Tisbury.
These zoning areas were created for good reasons, and voted on by Tisbury voters. To refresh your understanding of the various legal issues raised by the Aghassipour shortcuts (in addition to the appearance of impropriety) I recommend reading the correspondence available at the MVC website:
https://www.mvcommission.org/dri/summary/12024/64081
Frank, thank you so much for
your viewpoint.
There are people suffering around
the world from climate crisis.
Consider this story about the people
living in the Amazon Basin:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd6qvpe0dxqo.amp
The problem here is not Amy Upton’s use of a few words that grown-ups use all the time.
The real problem is the appearance of impropriety in the way this developer’s project was handled by Town of Tisbury officials, employees, and committee members.
As most grown-ups should know, the appearance of impropriety is just about as bad and as damaging as definitive proof of impropriety.
Tisbury Town government and admin is a laughingstock and elicits eye-rolls Island-wide.
Crude grown-ups, like Trump.
Dismiss her.
Wish we could dismiss Trump.
I have difficulty understanding why it’s so hard for local planning boards to enforce their own regulations and bylaws.
Have you ever been a planning board member?
I would usually say “follow the money” because that’s usually the case. In this case I would say “follow the Will to Power”. Men seem to really really LOVE themselves lately, don’t you agree? It’s almost a bit of a epidemic…MEN loving themselves and their power and money. It’s so annoying when women notice things and point it out to them. Oh well! Maybe then people will behave better. But I’m not holding my breath.
In this case the BI made darn sure that this permit for this property completely bypassed all mandatory review by the ZBA, planning board, MVC, Site Plan review and treated it differently then any other individual or corporation would have been treated. “nothing to see here”. The BI is also the enforcement officer and does not enforce the ZBL’s on any of this particular developers other properties that also violate the ZBL’s. Let’s ignore all of the residents requests/pleas/demands for enforcement. “nothing to see here”. That is the real question.
savevineyardhaven.org
Said developer is not just creating dormitory housing on 97 Spring Street and 123 Beach Road! What about 47 Carl Lairs Lane? A neighborhood of only 4 houses one of which is now used as dormitory housing to house Stop and Shop employees. I got a personal tour of this 5 bedroom “single family” house upon completion of the renovation in 2022 as I am the abutting neighbor. When you put 4 single beds in each room you sure can fit a hell of a lot of people in one house! Seems to me Amy Upton is doing her job to try and preserve our single-family neighborhoods but the corruption in this town is stronger than the ones trying to do good.
Like Marie Laursen says, “Coming soon to your neighborhood”!
The town of Tisbury should be ashamed of the way they are handling this situation! It’s amazing what you can get away with when you have money.
ooooh look! A “businessman” doing shady things and getting caught and then a WOMAN uses a bad word. We should TALK ABOUT THE WOMAN’S behavior ad nauseam and make sure no one actually discusses the REAL MATTER. Wow. Didn’t take long for Trump’s (and every other narcissist’s playbook behavior) to become mainstream. Yes. Let’s all stop and talk about how women should behave better when they are under crises. If only she used “better language”! Oh my! What now?? I spy oppression and misogyny! Do better please. Amy Upton has my support.
The fact of the matter is that the building inspector will no longer communicate with Ms. Upton. I’m wondering what qualifies Mr. Monika to be a building inspector. The last I heard, he was the director of property maintenance ant Island Elderly Housing and was let go under unclear circumstances. Ms. Upton clearly ruffled some feathers by calling out the deep pocketed developer who would rather do what he wanted and what, ask for forgiveness?
Keep fighting the good fight Amy! You are a professional and principled person employed under difficult circumstances.
Some several years ago, perhaps in the glorious 70s, the Oak Bluffs town meeting was faced with a new rule regarding number of unrelated people sharing a home. This rule was removed from the warrant before discussion or voting ostensibly because it risked being declared unconstitutional by the state AG. How did Tisbury slip that in?
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