NP&EDC Reform: Is A Compromise Finally Within Reach?

A month after the latest round of negotiations collapsed, the Nantucket Planning and Economic Development Commission is once again attempting to reach a compromise with a group of citizen petitioners led by Hillary Hedges Rayport. Once again, an agreement is proving elusive.

But the two groups are closer to a deal than they ever have been before. After nearly three hours of debate on Tuesday, they had agreed on every issue except one: should the commission have five at-large members, or three?

“I think this board has come a really long way,” said Kristina Jelleme, the chair of the Nantucket Land Bank Commission, who sits on the NP&EDC and has at times voted against the majority of the commission to push for more concessions in the ongoing negotiations with Rayport.

After agreeing on everything from a residency requirement to the absence of term limits, the size of the commission might seem like a relatively minor disagreement. But it’s threatening to derail the entire negotiation.

Rayport is willing to accept five at-large members if two are directly elected by the general public. Still, the NP&EDC doesn’t seem willing to agree to more than one elected member. If that’s the case, Rayport is reluctant to budge from an eleven member commission with three at-large seats, worried that adding more members would dilute the voice of the elected representative.

For years, Rayport and the NP&EDC have sparred over how to reform the regional planning agency, exchanging at times sharply personal criticisms across a sprawling series of heated, often esoteric debates that have spilled onto the floor of Town Meeting three times. Twice, Rayport’s reform proposal has passed, but both times the Massachusetts legislature has declined to certify her home-rule petition, which cannot take effect without state support.

The NP&EDC has never brought a counterproposal of its own, until now. If the NP&EDC can’t eventually reach a compromise with Rayport, who now sits on the commission by virtue of her election to the Planning Board, voters will have two competing reform proposals to choose between at Town Meeting this spring. Town leaders across a wide variety of elected and appointed boards have raised concerns that this could result in both articles failing and nothing being sent to the state.

Tuesday’s meeting ended with Rayport agreeing to bring the proposal for a thirteen-member commission to her fellow petitioners. If they assent to the deal, the two parties will have reached a somewhat uneasy agreement despite signalling last month that compromise efforts had failed. But if the petitioners refuse to accept the deal, that’s unlikely.

Several members of the NP&EDC were unhappy with Rayport’s refusal to decide during the meeting. As it drew to a close, tensions flared again.

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

But for her part, Rayport accused the NP&EDC of “suddenly shifting” to five at-large members, a suggestion that “wasn’t in the realm” of what had been discussed before.

The proposed number of at-large members increased after Rayport and the NP&EDC agreed to a compromise on representation for the business community. The NP&EDC initially pushed for the Chamber of Commerce to have a representative on the commission, while Rayport opposed including a seat dedicated to business. They agreed to reserve one of the at-large seats appointed by the County Commissioners for business interests.

The NP&EDC also agreed to a single directly elected seat on the commission, a major concession for some members.

“One elected is my maximum because we really shouldn't be doing it,” Planning Board and NP&EDC member Nat Lowell said. “That's a big one for me, and I'm not alone in that.”

Advocates both for and against elected positions have framed the decision as an issue of accessibility, public participation, and diversity.

Other key elements of the new compromise include reducing the Planning Board’s representation on the commission to two members and giving the Council for Human Services the right to appoint one member.

Throughout the debate, Rayport and members of the NP&EDC have repeatedly accused each other of bad faith, refusal to compromise, and unwillingness to discuss the most important issues openly. The animosity hasn’t always been contained to the reform issue. Since Rayport joined the NP&EDC, she has repeatedly broken with the majority of the commission, sometimes sparking spirited debates over topics as routine as the approval of minutes.

But despite the intensity of the debate and the accusations, the two sides have slowly inched together, guided at times by Planning Board and NP&EDC member John Kitchener, who drafted the bulk of the compromise proposal that Rayport and the NP&EDC nearly agreed to on Tuesday. Kitchener has long emphasized how similar the two reform proposals are, striving to find common ground. It remains to be seen if his efforts will be successful.

A full comparison of the competing proposals is available below.