Nantucket Select Board: Candidate Questions, Round 2

They want your votes.

The 2022 Annual Town Election on Tuesday, May 10 is fast-approaching. Today we continue a series of questions for the four candidates vying for two seats on the Nantucket Select Board, the island's lead policy-making body. With current Select Board member Kristie Ferrantella not running for a second term, and the other incumbent, Matt Fee, seeking another three-year term, that means there will be at least one new face on the board this year. Fee is being challenged by Brooke Mohr, Henry Sanford, and Cliff Williams.

Question #2: Define your position on short-term rentals. What is the problem (if any) and what more should town government be doing to resolve it?

Matt Fee: I grew up doing the shuffle; my parents renting rooms or our entire home out of necessity, so I understand that ability needs to remain an option for regular people. The pressures we all increasingly face though are magnified. Regular people are now competing with multi-millionaires, institutional, and pooled corporate money. Nantucket real estate is viewed as a safe place to park wealth. It’s incredible. One click rentals in the palm of your hand.

The issue we need to understand and address fairly is the impacts of increased commercialization of all residences island wide. Even while building or renovating 100+ homes a year over the last decade, year-round and workforce housing has remained static. Larger lots in the mid island area, many of which previously housed regular workers, are now transitioning to second home estates, a percent of these undoubtably STR rental compounds with multiple units and a pool. These bring the highest “returns”. Gentrification displaces those that sell, but it also places more pressure to do so on neighbors, whose properties and tax bills increase in value, creating a feedback loop impossible to control. Demand for services increasing, with supply of workers decreasing, is not a recipe for a healthy community or economy. It’s not just the fault of STR’s. Outside demand for seasonal homes that never rent also displaces workers and drives up values. We need teachers and bakers and firemen. We need balance.

Fortunately, town meeting recognized the need for balance and passed article 39. Beginning January, 2023 Nantucket will begin to require STRs to sign up with a local registry. Town meeting also directed the Select Board, Planning Board and Finance Committee to convene a workgroup and return with a reasonable zoning article at the next Annual Town Meeting. The devil is in the details. How we do this is yet to be worked out. Hopefully we will appoint a facilitated group that can put aside preconceived notions, avoid petty bickering, and focus on known facts and trends, with an eye to the future. Figure out where the puck will be, not where it is now or was yesterday. Listen to each other’s concerns, learn from other communities, and create a positive path forward that allows reasonable short term rentals, while also protecting island neighborhoods and families.

Brooke Mohr: The results at Town Meeting on Monday demonstrated that the community was not ready to change our zoning by-law to allow STRs everywhere (Article 42), nor establish a set of limitations that may have over-restricted some of the traditional practices of STRs on Nantucket (Article 43).

Article 39 did pass, so we have a basic regulatory framework that will allow us to establish the most appropriate protections of and limitations on STRs. We can bring all the stakeholders together to analyze the STR market as it exists and how it might develop over time and to craft both a comprehensive set of regulations and a coordinated zoning bylaw proposal.

A Work Group like the Neighborhood First Advisory Committee should be established quickly by the Select Board, Planning Board and Finance Committee. I suggest that each of the three boards appoint 2 members to a steering committee that will come back to their boards with a recommended size and make-up for the Work Group.

The work group could include representatives from the community who have traditionally used STRs to better understand the impacts of any proposed regulations/zoning change on them along with people who have subject matter expertise. The Work Group’s recommendations should be based on objective data collection and analysis and broad community input and dialog. Professional, unbiased facilitation and data analysis will be critical to build community trust in the final recommendations. These services will require a funding source which should be determined as soon as possible so the process is not delayed.

I believe that when we are faced with contentious issues, the best way to move forward is to maximize open dialog and transparency. The juxtaposition of Articles 42 and 43 this year has caused a lot of fear and misunderstanding because the analysis of the potential negative impacts of each proposal was not done in a thorough public process. The STR industry is evolving rapidly from what has been a healthy local practice to one that could have long-term negative impacts on the balance of housing for workers and visitors. Personally, I want us to make sure we have as much information as possible before we make any changes to the zoning bylaw and to make sure the regulations that we create are designed to address the interests of the entire community. Let’s hit the reset button and bring our community back together.

Henry Sanford: Short term rentals are an integral component of Nantucket's economy. They account for 85% of visitor accommodation in approximately 1,800 homes. These properties represent about 15% of Nantucket property tax payers. In 2021, a UMASS study estimated short-term rental visitor spending was approximately $50 million in local receipts and directly supported about 400 jobs. This year the short term rental tax generated $7,900,000 to the Town, and was paid by visitors.

Homeowners have many motivations for renting short term. Some short term rent for a year or two, and for others short term rentals are an integral tool of ownership. For some it is an investment, for others it is a way of maintaining generational ownership. For many locals short term rental income represents a retirement plan. Some homes historically have been for short-term use: seasonal cottages on Smith's Point, Town docks, and in Codfish Park. Regulating such a diverse group is difficult and I agree with voters' decision to establish a local registry and a workgroup to study the issue.

The passage of Article 39 will require all STRs be registered locally starting in January 2023. This will provide a foundation of data on the issue. An independent consultant specializing in data science should be retained to effectively gather data necessary to the discussion.

Good regulation optimizes economies to the benefit of residents. STR owners and industry representatives should be surveyed to define best practices. A rubric of penalties and remedies should be set up to expose, and weed out bad actors. Voters should consider increasing the STR visitor tax from 6% to 8%.

Further, the Short Term Rental workgroup could be 7-9 members who must come to a super-majority consensus on recommendations for the next town meeting. This workgroup should be inclusive of citizen groups, environmental groups, and experts in the marketplace. Most importantly the enforcement bodies of Article 39, the Health and Police departments, should have a seat at the table to ensure feasible enforcement is part of any recommended regulation.

Regardless of the workgroup makeup, I would propose three main goals that advance the discussion towards solution: 1) Commitment to research over rhetoric, 2) Commitment to consensus in order to mend community division, and 3) To produce deliverable recommendations in a timely manner so that zoning regulation can be crafted for the next annual town meeting.

Clifford Williams: Like a lot of things on the island that have started out under the radar and now morphed into a potential problem for the local community, short-term rentals is one of them. After last night's Town Meeting, it's clear that there is not just one or two sides to this story, but maybe three or four. By passing 39 and tabling 42 and 43 to a work group, maybe by next year we can have some real answers, I thought is what was happening this year? Regardless, it is a major source of revenue for local home owners and needs to be addressed now that the lawsuits have been filed. Finding that common ground before next ATM is the big question, I think regardless there will be more lawsuits.