Brian Borgeson Announces Run For Planning Board

Island charter boat captain Brian Borgeson has announced his candidacy for a seat on the Nantucket Planning Board.

For Borgeson, whose citizen petition to legalize and codify short-term rentals at the November 2025 Special Town Meeting was passed with 71 percent of voters in support, it would be his first run for elected office.

As it stands today, with one week to go before the deadline to return signed nomination papers to the Town Clerk's office, the Planning Board race would pit Borgeson against incumbent Hillary Hedges Rayport in a head-to-head race for a five-year seat on the board.

"The reason I'm running is that everyone says that all politics is local, and I'm a local, and I've had my house rezoned by the Planning Board, and I've gone through that process," Borgeson told the Current on Monday. "And I think that people who live here should be making decisions for the people that live here."

Borgeson, the captain of the Absolute charter fishing boat, said his experience sponsoring the citizen petition at last year's Special Town Meeting had also motivated him to run for the Planning Board seat.

"The Planning Board's job is to do the master plan, to regulate subdivisions, and do zoning," Borgeson said. "So if we do that with locals in mind, and we let people who are trying to subdivide stuff for locals and elderly housing, and we let that go through instead of fighting every single thing that comes up, we can be more efficient than what we are."

Borgeson will face Rayport, who is coming to the end of an abbreviated, one-year term on the Planning Board, a seat she won in May 2025 after John Trudel's resignation from the board in 2024.

Candidates have until 5 p.m. on Tuesday, March 31st to file their nomination papers with the Town Clerk to get their name on the ballot in the May 19th town election.