Planning Board Advances Alternative Short-Term Rental Proposal Despite Concerns

The Planning Board voted unanimously on Wednesday to advance a short-term rental article sponsored by chair Dave Iverson to the November 4th Special Town Meeting, but did not take a vote on whether to endorse the proposal.

The board is expected to vote on whether to endorse the article at a public hearing on October 9th, when they will also review local charter boat captain Brian Borgeson’s proposal to fully legalize short-term rentals (STRs) by right across the island. After Wednesday’s meeting, it seems likely the Planning Board will be split on which article, if any, to endorse, though a majority of the Board’s members indicated their support for Iverson’s proposal.

There was consensus on Wednesday that, if nothing else, voters should have a choice between multiple articles on the floor of the Special Town Meeting, scheduled as a result of a petition filed by Borgeson that requires a Town Meeting to be held within 45 days.

“What's best for the community is that they have options,” Iverson said. “Yes, the timeline hasn't been perfect, but I think we would do a disservice as a board to the community that elected us if we don't offer this on the warrant and offer the community an option.”

The Planning Board was racing against the clock Wednesday, with a final vote coming at 12:52 p.m., only eight minutes before a 1:00 p.m. deadline to file a required legal advertisement announcing the October 9th public hearing.

Iverson’s proposal, billed as a razor-thin compromise, would limit the number of days a building can be used as a short-term rental (49 days between June 15 and August 31, and no more than 70 days in any calendar year) and cap the number of changes of occupancy permitted during the peak summer season at seven. Hosted stays, in which an STR operator lives in the building they are renting, or in another building on the same lot, would be exempt.

The Planning Board is split on whether to endorse the article.

“I strongly agree with it,” said Planning Board member John Kitchener, involved with multiple past efforts to craft a compromise article. “What you and [Select Board member] Tom [Dixon] have here hits most, if not all, of the boxes…this does feel different, and better, and I really hope that we can support it.”

But not every member of the Planning Board sided with him.

“I think this is going to have a major impact on a lot of small local businesses,” Planning Board member Joe Topham said. “I don't think we should be recommending it because I don't think we know all the numbers of it. I think it's being really rushed.”

Planning Board vice chair Nat Lowell echoed his sentiments.

“We are trying, in my opinion, to put 50 to 60 years of change back in the bottle and [start] over. I think that's wrong. I think it's impossible. I think it's unenforceable. That's the only word that keeps coming into my head,” he said. “It's not right to try to go that far in one article when we have not legalized the whole process of renting.”

Iverson argued that, while the proposal might not be ideal, it emerged from months of negotiations between stakeholders with a wide variety of opinions on how to regulate STRs and might be the only way to secure the necessary two-thirds vote to pass a zoning bylaw amendment.

“I want to make it really clear that this consensus really lies on a knife's edge. Any movement to either broaden the restrictions or reduce the restrictions will result in losing support from one side or the other,” he said. “We have rammed full codification down the public's throat for almost six years now, and it has failed every single time. We are elected officials. We need to listen to the community, and if the community has rejected full codification that many times, we need to offer them a better option.”

Hillary Hedges Rayport, the final member of the Planning Board, suggested that she would vote to endorse Iverson’s article.

“I absolutely support this framework,” she said. “We have to support what's best for the overall community…we have to get the support from both sides.”

That could mean that the Planning Board is headed for a 3-2 vote in favor of Iverson’s article if no one changes their position between now and October 9th.

Borgeson’s competing proposal is similar to Article 66 from last year’s Annual Town Meeting, which was the latest in a series of failed attempts to codify STRs as an allowed use by right in all zoning districts, except the commercial-industrial district. While Article 66 garnered the majority of the vote, it did not gain the two-thirds support required to pass most zoning bylaw amendments. That article’s sponsor, psychologist Caroline Baltzar, was also involved in drafting the new article. In addition to codifying STRs, the latest article would also protect long-term rentals, which currently face no immediate legal threat, and define a "principal use" of a dwelling to include short-term rentals.

"We need to codify long-term and short-term rentals, because in our town code, there is no language for rentals - it was taken out in 2015 in a clean-up," said Borgeson, explaining the reasoning behind his proposal. "We don’t have zoning for rentals. If you’re renting your house right now, it’s illegal."

The November Special Town Meeting comes with a heightened sense of urgency surrounding STRs following the June 2025 Massachusetts Land Court ruling in island resident Cathy Ward's lawsuit against her neighbors and the Nantucket Zoning Board of Appeals, which has thrown Nantucket's zoning regulations pertaining to STRs into uncertainty.

In her suit, Ward claimed that her neighbors’ use of their property as an STR violated Nantucket’s zoning code. Land Court judge Michael Vhay has now sided with her twice. The town has appealed his latest ruling, and the parties involved reached a deal in July to pause enforcement of Vhay's decision while that appeal is pending.