NP&EDC Reaches Compromise With Rayport On Reform Measures

After years of at times heated debate, the Nantucket Planning and Economic Development Commission has reached a compromise on reform with a group of citizen petitioners led by Hillary Hedges Rayport. An earlier round of negotiations collapsed a month ago, but Rayport announced Friday that the petitioners had assented to a framework discussed during a renewed effort earlier this week.

“We’ve agreed. I’m really happy that we agreed,” Rayport said. “We have absolute agreement about the framework.”

The deal could mark the end of a lengthy saga that has sprawled across dozens of meetings and multiple years, avoiding another pitched debate on the floor of this spring’s Annual Town Meeting, where Rayport’s reform proposal was set to go head-to-head with a proposal endorsed by a supermajority of the NP&EC. Rayport now sits on the regional planning agency by virtue of her election to the Planning Board, and she isn’t the only dissenting voice on the commission, but before negotiations resumed on Tuesday, it looked likely that voters would have to choose between her vision for the NP&EDC and the vision supported by most of its membership.

“First of all, I want to thank everyone for working behind the scenes to get there,” NP&EDC chair Abby De Molina told the Current, naming NP&EDC commissioners Brooke Mohr, Dave Iverson, and John Kitchener. “I think we are all relieved and hopeful we can put this painful chapter behind us. We will finalize the motion at [the Finance Committee] on March 3[rd] and then hopefully get it passed at [Annual Town Meeting].”

The agreement includes a residency requirement for the NP&EDC and one directly elected member. It does not include term limits, and reduces the Planning Board’s representation on the commission from five members to two. It also includes representation for the business community, in the form of an at-large seat dedicated to business interests, a compromise proposed by Mohr.

“It’s a reason to celebrate, and we can move forward to doing the work the NP&EDC should be doing,” Iverson told the Current Friday.

At the end of a lengthy negotiating session Tuesday, the NP&EDC and the petitioners had agreed on every issue but one: the number of at-large members on the commission. The majority of the NP&EDC was only willing to accept one directly elected seat on a thirteen-member commission out of five at-large members. Rayport was reluctant to accept an expansion from eleven to thirteen members without the concession of a second elected seat.

She refused to agree to the deal at the meeting, and tensions flared as it drew to a close.

“I am outraged that we are being held hostage by a minority position here,” Iverson said at the time. “I think it's wrong in every way.”

But Rayport said she needed time to bring the proposal to the petitioners and obtain their support.

“This has always been a consensus-based thing for me,” she told the Current Friday. “It wasn’t that I was trying to hold anyone hostage.”

Ultimately, the petitioners agreed to 13 members, paving the way for the compromise to move forward.

“It was within the realm of what people in my group had been comfortable with,” Rayport said. “Everybody felt that the NP&EDC had heard the things we cared about.”

Despite claims to the contrary from both sides, the petitioners and the NP&EDC have long been moving slowly towards a compromise. Both Rayport and several of the NP&EDC’s other members have proposed a series of concessions across months of negotiations, while the tenor of the debate has at times belied the progress being made. Now, the final piece of that compromise has fallen into place.

While the competing articles can’t be withdrawn from the Annual Town Meeting warrant, a motion can be drafted that proposes the language in the compromise. That motion will be debatable, and it’s still possible that it will be shot down on the floor of Town Meeting. It’s also possible that, even if the compromise is passed, the state will take no action on it.

The home-rule petition will need state approval to go into effect, and the state is sometimes slow to act on home-rule petitions. Twice, Rayport’s reform proposal passed at Town Meeting, and twice, the state did not certify it. A compromise proposal may have a better chance before the legislature, but there’s no guarantee it will be accepted.

A full comparison of the compromise and the existing legislation is included below.