A former Tisbury employee is suing the town over allegations of workforce retaliation with a complaint that is resurfacing conflict of interest questions over properties connected to an offshore wind developer.
The complaint, filed in Dukes County Superior Court on Friday, seeks compensation for Amy Upton, former administrator of Tisbury Planning Board, over alleged retaliation, wrongful termination, and disability discrimination by Tisbury officials. A demand for a jury trial was also filed the same day.
The four Tisbury officials named as defendants are Town Administrator Joseph LaCivita, Building Inspector Greg Monka, and select board members Roy Cutrer and John Cahill.
“The town has no comment on pending litigation,” LaCivita said in a Tuesday email.
Cutrer and Cahill also declined to comment on the suit. Monka was not immediately available to comment.
The complaint lists a series of alleged issues in the town that date back to 2024, many of which stem from a property with ties to offshore wind developer Vineyard Wind, which recently finished construction on a 62-turbine wind farm 15 miles south of the Island and is owned by Danish investment firm Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and U.S.-based energy company Avangrid. Development of workforce housing planned to house Vineyard Wind workers previously brought up concerns over whether an unfair advantage was provided to the building owner as well as allegations of conflict of interest regarding a former town administrator.
According to the complaint, the retaliation allegedly began after Upton raised issues in 2024 about Xerxes Aghassipour, a developer who purchased and allegedly rebuilt various buildings in Tisbury without the planning board’s oversight. One of the projects Aghassipour led was the controversial 97 Spring St. house, which faced significant pushback from Tisbury residents concerned about the transient nature of those who may live in the building, such as Vineyard Wind workers.
“Ms. Upton soon discovered that this was by design and that Town officials were assisting the developer in bypassing proper channels and necessary bylaws,” the complaint reads. “When Ms. Upton pushed back and filed complaints regarding the officials responsible for flouting town bylaws, she was placed on leave and subjected to increasingly onerous conditions for her job.”
The timeline provided in the complaint states that the issues started in 2024 after several Tisbury residents came forward complaining that Aghassipour was doing work on properties without going through the proper processes, including “special permits, site plan reviews, referrals to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, and other regulatory oversight.”
The complaint states Upton raised the issue about a lack of a special permit to the planning board and the former town administrator, Jay Grande. The document states Upton was “shocked to discover” that Monka, who was tasked with referring projects to the planning board in his role as building inspector, recorded board reviews for Aghassipour’s projects as completed when they hadn’t been.
“Ms. Upton was concerned that one large developer was receiving clearly favorable treatment and being allowed to ignore town bylaws when less powerful individuals were required to follow all rules,” the complaint reads.
The development at 97 Spring St. was approved by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission in a split vote in June 2025.
Upton filed an ethics complaint with the state against Grande in Oct. 2024. At the time, Grande was preparing to retire and was training to join Sourati Engineering Group, a firm that did surveying work for Vineyard Wind and 97 Spring St. Grande’s job trajectory was under scrutiny for an apparent conflict of interest over his part in overseeing town departments that were in charge of permitting the Vineyard Wind maintenance and operations building on Beach Road, a property where Sourati conducted survey work. The select board previously told The Times that Grande had been cleared to transition to Sourati, and they didn’t see an issue. The complaint was under review by the State Ethics Commission, and the status of that probe still remains undetermined despite repeated requests to state officials. The commission previously told The Times in 2024 that it doesn’t confirm, deny, or share details regarding pending complaints or investigations.
And the denial of details about the ethics complaint’s status was reiterated on Tuesday when Massachusetts State Ethics Commission spokesperson Gerry Tuoti said that “due to restrictions for confidentiality imposed on the Commission by statute, I can neither confirm nor deny whether the Commission has received any complaint or reviewed any matter.”
Upton was also the target of a public records request by Aghassipour the same month, in which a text from Upton to planning board member Ben Robinson said, “It would appear that Jay, Greg, and [X]erxes are all in a big circle jerk,” after which the developer claimed he was targeted by town planning officials.
Upton was placed on leave pending a review, which the complaint alleges was based on this text. She was allowed to return in Nov. 2024. The complaint alleges Upton returned to a hostile work environment where Grande, Monka, and other unnamed staff allegedly treated her with “disrespect, willfully circumvented her and the entire planning board, instructed her not to properly perform her job, and let her know that the developer’s projects were more important than town bylaws.”
Grande was not immediately available to comment.
Upton has had other legal conflicts with Aghassipour’s projects before. Aghassipour sued several members of the Tisbury planning department, including Upton, in a separate Jan. 2025 case that alleged town officials violated due process on his projects. That suit was dismissed in superior court in July 2025.
According to the complaint, Upton requested an independent investigation in Dec. 2024 into a hostile work environment and filed a Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) complaint against Monka with allegations that his treatment of female coworkers was “markedly different” than toward male colleagues. Months later in March 20 25, after Joe LaCivita became town administrator, Upton received the town’s response, which backed Monka, according to the complaint.
Afterward, Upton was allegedly “repeatedly” questioned about her use of overtime. She would also be directed by LaCivita in Oct. 2025 to report directly to Monka rather than the planning board chair, a move the complaint states created a conflict of interest and prevented Upton from doing her job to the “best of her abilities.” The decision was also met by resistance from planning board members, and there was tension between the planning body and the town administrator and select board members at multiple public meetings, some of which can be viewed on MVTV. There were even questions of the town administrator’s authority over town boards, although that issue was postponed indefinitely at the annual town meeting in April 2026.
Ben Robinson, planning board chair, told The Times that the “long, drawn-out saga” described in the complaint was “pretty accurate.” He added that there’s remained a level of distrust and miscommunication between planning and select boards.
“We have a fairly dysfunctional town,” he said.
The complaints cited friction between Monka and Upton in the workplace, and she was disciplined with two unpaid suspensions in Jan. 2026. The document states Upton filed multiple grievances with AFSCME Local 93, a labor union that represents government employees in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, in response to disciplinary actions beginning in 2024, but they were ultimately ineffective.
Upton also asked the town last December that an investigation be done on Casey Hayward, a former planning board chair and her conduct toward Upton as the former planning board administrator. Casey Dobel, Upton’s attorney, said the tension stemmed from the town’s disagreement over who Upton’s supervisor was rather than interpersonal issues. But the request resulted in a report from Boston-based KP Law that admonished Upton for insubordinate behavior toward Hayward and instead sided with the planning board member. The report also questioned Upton’s use of overtime hours and her ability to do her job.
The “hostile work environment” allegedly caused Upton’s vasovagal syncope, a condition in which a person’s nervous system overreacts from certain triggers like stress and causes them to faint, to flare up, and become unsafe, according to the complaint. The complaint also states she needed surgery for cervical spinal stenosis and myelopathy, and Upton alleges the town didn’t provide reasonable accommodations for her health conditions.
The complaint states Upton was put on indefinite suspension on March 11, and she resigned “in protest” on May 1.
Upton has been unable to secure a position in her field, according to the complaint, because of Tisbury’s alleged “actions and ongoing disparagement” of her. This, according to the document, was worsened by Upton’s complaints against Tisbury becoming widely known on the Vineyard, a place where “options are limited.”
Robinson said between March and June, planning board members had to perform the tasks previously handled by Upton. While a temporary administrator, Shawna Lima, was since hired, the issue of who supervises that position remains contested. The planning board has even retained a separate attorney, Jack Collins, to review disagreements they have with the select board.
