Devil's In The Details Of New Short-Term Rental Working Group

The next chapter in Nantucket’s protracted debate over short-term rentals is taking shape.

With the dust from last month’s Annual Town Meeting barely settled, the island’s municipal leaders are working through the details of a new work group that will attempt to build consensus around the divisive issue.

But, as they say, the devil is in the details.

The membership composition, mission and goals of the new “Short-Term Rental Working Group” are all at stake in the process now underway, with the residual hard feelings from Town Meeting still apparent.

“Everybody on this will have an agenda,” Select Board chair Jason Bridges said Wednesday night. “We’re trying to balance it out.”

As it stands right now, the short-term rental work group will have nine voting members, including one representative from each of the following groups: the Planning Board, the Finance Committee, the Advisory Committee of Non-Voting Taxpayers, and an affordable housing advocate. The two political action groups that have been at odds over potential short-term rental regulations for over a year - ACK Now and Nantucket Together - will both have a seat on the work group, along with three at-large members. The Board of Health and the Nantucket Association of Real Estate Brokers would have ex-officio, or non-voting, members on the work group.

Three members of the Select Board - Bridges, Matt Fee and Brooke Mohr - along with Planning Board member David Iverson and Finance Committee chair Denise Kronau, will have final sign-off on the appointment of all nine members. The framework under consideration stipulates that any proposal would need the support of seven of the nine members of the short-term rental work group in order to advance to the Select Board for final consideration before it heads to the voters.

While the Select Board had originally been slated to have at least one of its members represented on the work group along with a representative from the Nantucket Association of Real Estate Brokers, Bridges suggested that those two groups relinquish their seats in favor of adding two at-large members.

“I would sacrifice the Select Board because we're the policy makers,” Bridges said. “I can see the advantages of us being there, but if we can set the mission and tone, and then bookend it and guide it as much as we can and at the end implement it, that’s a good position for us.”

The committee that was formed to help create the work group as fairly as possible - including members of the Select Board, Finance Committee and Planning Board - met last week and decided to include members from the opposing political action groups - ACK Now and Nantucket Together - as well as the Advisory Committee on Non-Voting Taxpayers.

Even so, ACK Now executive director Julia Lindner raised concerns about the makeup of the work group in a letter sent out to the group’s contacts this week.

“The balance of viewpoints on the work group still raises concerns,” Lindner said. “In addition, the Select Board, our policy making leaders, should be at the table. The workgroup could grow to achieve this – or there's a solid argument for offering the Finance Committee seat to the Select Board instead. After all, FinCom is responsible for reviewing articles, not drafting them.”

There are also discussions happening regarding the possibility of hiring an independent facilitator to help guide the work group through its process and keep the conversations focused and respectful

“There are many, many perspectives in the community on this issue,” Mohr said on Wednesday. “Individuals' personal interests, overarching interests of the community, etc. We can't create a workgroup that has someone representing every perspective, so what’s really important is to try to bring the people who have had active positions on this to the table, to ensure that they're participating in the process. As well as through the at-large seats, making sure that a broad variety of other perspectives are represented in the conversation.”

Last month, the two most controversial warrant articles at Town Meeting - the Planning Board's proposal to codify short-term rentals by right in any island zoning district and the political action group ACK Now's petition to regulate and curtail short-term rentals by non-residents - were both tabled. Voters narrowly approved a motion to punt the two articles in favor of creating the new work group to attempt to find consensus.

“Everyone wants a reasonable committee with people who are willing to work together and come to the best interests of the town and everybody as a community,” Fee said. “Hopefully that means there’s been a little progress and improvement. We will see.”