Select Board Agrees To Send Our Island Home Relocation Plan Back To Voters

The Select Board voted unanimously on Wednesday to bring back a proposal to relocate the Our Island Home skilled nursing facility before Town Meeting this coming spring. But if voters don’t support the project this year, the Select Board will likely opt to shut down the municipally-owned nursing home for good.

After extended public testimony, most of it in favor of the relocation plan, the Select Board decided to move forward with a proposal nearly identical to the one voters narrowly rejected at Town Meeting last year.

“If we’re going to do this, it’s going to be the facility as it was considered, previously bid, in its full capacity,” Select Board member Tom Dixon said. “The work has been done.”

The Select Board hopes that the knowledge that this is Nantucket's last chance to stay in the nursing home business will motivate enough voters to secure two-thirds support for the project. If that support doesn’t materialize, the Select Board was clear that there will not be another chance.

“This is it,” Select Board member Brooke Mohr said. “If that does not pass, in my mind, that is a decision by the town not to continue in the nursing home business. We’re not going to spend more design money, we’re not going to have brainstorming sessions, we’re not going to have fundraising. We are going to either build this facility at whatever the number ends up being, more or less than what was proposed last year, or we are ending nursing home care on Nantucket.”

The Select Board explored the possibility of downsizing the project, but ultimately expressed little interest in doing so.

“The only choice I would support putting before the voters is basically the same design that was considered at last Town Meeting, because there isn’t enough savings relative to the operating deficit to warrant doing a smaller building,” Mohr said, calling the plan “basically what was put out there last year.”

Instead, the Select Board is setting the table for a do-over of the 2025 Annual Town Meeting, where voters narrowly defeated the proposal, which requires a two-thirds vote to pass. The proposal then went on to pass on the ballot.

Last week, the Select Board discussed the possibility of closing Our Island Home, but the mood was different on Wednesday. The vast majority of attendees who spoke at the Select Board meeting expressed support for the project.

“It is critical that we have healthcare options on our island,” island resident Mary Longacre said. “Not having this facility in some form would cause people to have to leave the island, and that would further fracture our community. Just for something as simple as a broken leg, you may not be able to be cared for in your home, you may have to leave the island.”

When Select Board chair Dawn Hill asked for a show of hands, the overwhelming majority in the room expressed support for relocating Our Island Home to Sherburne Commons, even after Dixon clarified that it would be essentially the same plan as last year.

“We stand at a defining moment of our civic identity,” island resident Kathy Greider said. “As the community prepares for one final opportunity to vote on this critical project, it must look beyond the sticker shock of the initial investment and recognize this vote for what it truly is: a definitive choice between maintaining a vital social safety net and abandoning a deeply-held community responsibility.”

But there was some opposition as well.

“The cost is insane,” island resident Amy Eldridge said. “We need to figure out whether we want to keep some middle class here, or do we want to tax the heck out of everybody, and have this become one percenter fantasy island? And there’s some hard decisions coming down the pike, and you can’t fault community members for looking at their wallets.”

Last year, the project would have cost around $135 million. The town is now rebidding the relocation plan, which could increase the cost even further. Total debt service might start to approach $200 million. A final number won’t be available until March.

While all five members of the Select Board voted to give voters one more chance to support relocating Our Island Home, several also expressed concerns about the project's cost.

“Our children and our grandchildren, they’re going to pay for this,” Select Board member Malcolm MacNab said. “Our youth, our children, are going to have a big pricetag to pay, and down the road if the economy changes, if things don’t go so well, people decide not to come to Nantucket anymore, our children, our grandchildren, are going to have some tough decisions to make about how to run this island, because the money may not be there.”

Before it goes to the voters, the proposal will have to come back before both the Select Board and the Finance Committee, the latter of which ultimately opposed last year’s nearly identical plan.

“I think we have a lot of challenges there, but we should bring it and let the people vote on it,” Select Board vice chair Matt Fee said. “We should go in understanding it’s going to all be on the tax base.”