After initially denying the Conservation Commission’s request for independent counsel in litigation surrounding its enforcement order to remove the Sconset Beach Preservation Fund’s erosion-control geotubes, the Select Board has now approved the commission’s bid for representation.
“The Select Board approved the request for the ConCom to obtain independent counsel,” said the town’s Natural Resources Director Jeff Carlson. “The ConCom will be seeking firms to fill that role shortly and hope to have someone under contract in the next couple of weeks.”
Town manager Libby Gibson said the request was granted with certain conditions, including that the Select Board be provided with the identity of the attorney in advance, details on the legal strategy, the scope of services related to the enforcement order, and a prohibition on hiring any counsel that already represents parties in litigation against the town. That would specifically prohibit attorney Dennis Murphy, who is representing Hoicks Hollow Road resident Robert Greenhill in his civil lawsuit against the SBPF and the Conservation Commission, from representing the ConCom.
While members of the Conservation Commission certainly felt that their request for independent counsel had initially been rejected by the Select Board over the summer, its chairman Jason Bridges said that was not the case.
“We never really changed course,” Bridges said. “We had to take a look at authorizing counsel for a regulatory board in the short term and long term. The answer was never a hard no. We needed time to understand the what, how, who and why for this request within a very complex and litigious situation. I think our two-hour conversation between Select Board and ConCom really helped move things forward in this regard and for overall understanding of each group’s challenges.”
As Bridges mentioned, the development comes after the members of the Conservation Commission and the Select Board met last week in a joint meeting to find common ground on the controversial project and enforcement order that the ConCom voted for in June and issued in September. The summit followed a summer of acrimony over the project that found the Select Board at odds with the members of the Conservation Commission and their decision to order the removal of the geotubes. At one point the Select Board had requested that the Conservation Commission reconsider its vote, urging it to wait for the results of a town
Over the past two months, the Conservation Commission’s enforcement order has been appealed by the SBPF, and the Select Board announced an agreement to work together with non-profit organization to expand the geotube project.
