Select Board Begins Prioritizing 10-Year Capital Projects Plan And $1 Billion In Potential Spending

The Select Board met Thursday to prioritize Nantucket’s 10-year capital improvement plan, which includes over $1 billion in potential spending. They made it through less than three years of the plan before adjourning.

More meetings will be needed as the Board tackles the massive plan, sorting through dozens of recommendations from the town’s various departments. At the first meeting on Thursday, Select Board members also suggested it could be beneficial to have targeted meetings with specific department leaders about some of the projects in the plan, teeing up what could be one of the more involved capital prioritization processes in the Select Board’s history.

The numbers in the plan are tentative. Some may go down and others may go up as the needs of the town and how much the projects will cost come into clearer focus. In some cases, the numbers may go down significantly.

Town of Nantucket sustainability projects manager Vince Murphy said that one line item, for $120 million to improve the resilience of the Steamboat Wharf, could go to zero. It depends on how much of the project the Steamship Authority is able to fund itself.

“We probably won’t need all of it,” Murphy said.

Additional meetings will be scheduled over the next several months as the Select Board attempts to chart a course for the town after the election of Jill Vieth and Bob DeCosta, two new members of the Board who have called to rein in spending and slash the amount of money asked for in overrides from voters at upcoming Town Meetings.

Vieth also suggested that some of the smaller items in the plan could be funded by free cash rather than borrowing in an effort to reduce taxes and avoid asking voters to pass sometimes controversial override spending articles.

Some of the projects discussed Thursday received broad support from the Select Board’s members, including general municipal facilities improvements, a new Department of Public Works facility, upgrades to the LORAN station’s seasonal barracks, utilities on Orange Street and at the Milestone Rotary, and a town-wide radio system replacement.

Voters rejected the improvements to the LORAN station this year, but the Select Board ranked it as a high priority anyway.

“I’m all about maintenance,” DeCosta said.

Some of the lowest-ranked projects include a new senior center and a fire station in Sconset. Most of the remaining initiatives divided the Select Board’s members. At this point, it is unclear which projects will end up getting cut from the plan.

Several of the largest projects, including some with price tags over $100 million, are related to coastal resilience. While some members of the Select Board strongly support funding coastal resilience projects, DeCosta has been outspoken about his opposition to many of them. Vieth suggested that a standalone meeting on coastal resilience projects could be in order.

The Select Board also discussed the need to advocate for the projects they choose to support to increase their odds of passing at Town Meeting.

“If we, as a board, decide that we want to move something forward, we’ve got to say, yeah, we’re willing to put in letters to the editor, or call people and ask them to talk about it publicly,” Vieth said. “We have to own it, and I think, in the past, it felt like there wasn’t anybody owning any of [the projects] so much.”