Fall Special Town Meeting For Short-Term Rentals Is Back On Following Citizen Petition

Local charter boat captain Brian Borgeson has submitted a petition that will require the town to hold a Special Town Meeting focused on short-term rentals this fall, according to Town Manager Libby Gibson. While the signatures still need to be verified before the Special Town Meeting (STM) can be confirmed, Gibson said the town is tentatively targeting November 4th for a meeting date.

The announcement comes after months of back-and-forth over whether or not the town would hold an STM dealing with short-term rentals (STRs) in response to the June 2025 Massachusetts Land Court ruling in island resident Cathy Ward's lawsuit that has thrown Nantucket's zoning regulations pertaining to STRs into uncertainty. The town has appealed the ruling, and the parties involved reached a deal in July to pause enforcement of Judge Michael Vhay's ruling while that appeal is pending. 

The town initially set aside November 4th for an STM in July as a hedge against a citizen-called meeting, allowing more time for town staff and contractors to prepare, but they reversed course in early August after hearing from their attorneys that no one had indicated an intention to call an STM. Now, someone has.

“I just think this is all unnecessary,” Select Board member Malcolm MacNab said. “I'm very upset about this.”

Under Massachusetts law, 200 or more citizens may call a Special Town Meeting regardless of any objections from the Select Board. If they choose to do so, the meeting must be held within 45 days, despite the often enormously challenging logistics. Forty-five days from September 17th is November 1st, but Gibson said she didn’t expect the slight delay would pose a significant legal challenge for the town.

Borgeson declined to comment Wednesday night, but said he would be speaking soon on his decision to call the meeting. At this point, it’s unclear what articles will be put before voters on the 4th, should the signatures be certified successfully. Several other names have been tied to proposed STR articles in the last few months, including Planning Board Chair Dave Iverson.

Iverson didn’t comment on his article, but did confirm that he was working on a compromise proposal that would go before the Planning Board next week.

Gibson said that the Select Board will most likely meet next week to adopt the warrant for STM, which will include Borgeson’s article and any others submitted in the intervening days—though there isn’t much time to submit alternate proposals.

While the specific language of the proposals is not yet publicly available, Gibson and Select Board member Tom Dixon expressed hope that Iverson’s proposal would gain the support of the Planning Board.

“Dave [Iverson] is pretty close on his article. It's pretty fleshed out,” Dixon said. “He's been hard at work at it, meeting a lot of stakeholders.”

“Hopefully, we will not have extra articles that are submitted which will detract from the whole purpose of this,” Gibson said, suggesting that Iverson’s article could garner enough support to pass if there aren’t any competitors beyond Borgeson’s proposal.

Dixon suggested that the Select Board is aware of three articles: Borgeson’s, Iverson’s, and one written by island attorney Arthur Reade.

“The general parameters of these three articles are fairly easy to understand,” he said. “At least that’s potential good news.”

Psychologist Caroline Baltzer, the sponsor of Article 66 at this spring's Annual Town Meeting (which earned a majority but failed to reach the two-thirds threshold needed for passage), has also been connected to STR proposals this summer and confirmed that she worked with Borgeson on his article.

The Town is working on how to get a warrant to voters ahead of STM so that they have the information they need in advance.

At first, the Select Board had hoped to use closed-door mediation to obviate the need for an STM by bringing various stakeholders with differing perspectives on the issue together and hashing out a compromise. But they opted against mediation after a number of island residents deeply involved in the island's ongoing STR battle, with widely varying perspectives on how STRs should be regulated, expressed their opposition.

“I think that the concept of mediation in this situation, with all due respect, is flawed. I really think that in a mediation situation, you necessarily have to have all stakeholders participating,” island attorney Arthur Reade, involved with one effort to craft an STR bylaw, said at the time. “Unfortunately, the stakeholders are however many people show up at Town Meeting that night, and, obviously, we're not going to have all of them participate in a mediation session, and therefore I don't see how it's going to accomplish anything.”

Advocates have pushed for an STM in part because of the ongoing litigation in Silver Street resident Cathy Ward’s lawsuit against her neighbors, Peter and Linda Grape, and the Nantucket Zoning Board of Appeals. The Grapes' property on West Dover Street backs up to Ward's home on Silver Street. Ward claims the Grapes' short-term rentals were an illegal commercial use in a residential zoning district, and Judge Vhay ultimately ruled that:

"the current Nantucket Zoning Bylaw does not allow rentals shorter than 31 days of 'primary dwellings' in the Nantucket Residential Old Historic district, except for 'the rental of rooms within an owner-occupied dwelling unit'."

If Ward emerges victorious in the appeal, it could endanger nearly all non-owner-occupied STRs on-island, and some petitioners worry about the implications on contracts inked for next summer.

While it’s difficult to know how long the appeal will take, Town Counsel John Giorgio believes it won’t be resolved until after the regularly scheduled Annual Town Meeting next spring.

“While it's very, very difficult to assess how long that [appeal] might take, I have had consultations with [Town Counsel George] Pucci, and he and I are in agreement that it is more than likely that that appeal will not be finally resolved through a decision before the May 4th Annual Town Meeting,” Giorgio said. “Now, we could be proven wrong, but appeals take quite a while.”