The town of West Tisbury has filed a lawsuit against a mainland subprime mortgage company that loaned more than half a million dollars to an affordable homesite owner in town who had no ability to repay — and then foreclosed on the property.

The lawsuit charges Saxon Mortgage Services Inc., a Texas-based lending institution, and Fremont Investment and Loan of southern California, with unfair, deceptive and predatory lending practices.

Although names were never discussed, it might have been called Middletown or Centerville, a seventh town in the center of the Island that some envisioned as the future social and economic center of the Vineyard.

A 1972 study from the engineering firm Metcalf and Eddy suggested the creation of this town, both as a means to protect the integrity of the existing down-Island centers and to keep large-scale development away from the more vulnerable ecology and geography of the up-Island towns.

Faced with rising operating costs, nearly no growth in the residential and commercial sectors and sharply reduced revenues, Oak Bluffs officials will have to cut spending even more this year as they begin to draft the town’s next operating budget.

Town administrator Michael Dutton on Tuesday told selectmen the town faces a $1 million deficit at the start of this budget season. Although it is early in the process, he noted, and that figure is expected to shrink, the early shortfall is a telling indicator of the tough economy facing the Island.

In frustration over their failure to negotiate change to what they consider a blatantly unfair state-imposed formula for funding the regional high school, Tisbury selectmen will take the matter to court.

A lawsuit filed in Dukes County Superior Court last Friday names the Massachusetts Board of Education, the Acting Commissioner of Education Jeffrey Nellhaus, Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School and the town of Oak Bluffs as defendants in the matter.

On Thursday, Jan. 17 at 9:30 a.m. as part of the Island’s celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., St. Andrews Episcopal church on North Summer street in Edgartown will become the twentieth site on the African American Heritage Trail of Martha’s Vineyard.

The church was the site of the first meetings in 1964 of the Martha’s Vineyard chapter of the NAACP. A bronze plaque will be unveiled honoring those citizens of all ethnic groups and from all walks of life who organized to participate in the building of a colorblind society.