Select Board Considers Changes To HDC Appeal Process

Appeals of Historic District Commission (HDC) decisions may soon no longer go to the Select Board.

After the Select Board rejected an appeal of a controversial HDC decision permitting the demolition of the old Nantucket Electric Company building on New Whale Street, Select Board member Brooke Mohr, who voted in the majority on the appeal, sent an email to Town Manager Libby Gibson requesting a review of the HDC appeals process that could see appeals sent directly to Superior Court.

“I just think we should have a conversation about whether it makes sense or not,” Mohr said. “I feel sometimes like we got lost in what we can and can't do, and what the threshold is, and so on and so forth. I always end up feeling fuzzy after we make those decisions, as much as I'm confident in my vote at the time, based on the information we have. We're not experts on this, and we're not experts on the law.”

In many communities, appeals of decisions by historical boards and commissions already go directly to Superior Court, as noted in a 2013 memo from the Nantucket Preservation Trust, the appellant in the recent New Whale Street case.

“In most communities, applicants appeal disputed decisions directly to Superior Court,” the Nantucket Preservation Trust wrote in the memo. “Nantucket’s situation places two town agencies - the [Select Board] and the Historic District Commission - in potentially adversarial roles.”

But before making any changes to the HDC’s enabling legislation, which would require a home rule petition to be sent to the state from Town Meeting, the Select Board wants to meet with the HDC.

“I do feel like it should be more of a court appeal process where new information can be introduced and it's not necessarily just arbitrary and capricious or procedural defect, but I would want that to be supported by the HDC and the community,” Select Board chair Dawn Hill said.

Several Select Board members said at a meeting last Wednesday that the conference with the HDC should involve a review of recommendations from a recent, somewhat controversial, report on the HDC’s procedures that some Select Board members believe could solve many of the existing problems.

“I'd like to go back to that review because I think some elements of this were in there,” Mohr said. “I think I'm okay with it not being anything we push forward to this year's town meeting, but I would like to see it on the agenda as another conversation with the HDC.”

The Select Board voted 3-2 to permit the demolition of the Nantucket Electric Company building last week, but the members who voted against allowing the demolition largely agreed with the other members of the Board on the next steps.

“I think we should start with [the report], and then, as said, schedule a meeting, review that, and hear what the HDC has to say,” Select Board member Malcolm MacNab, who voted in the minority last week, said.

Select Board members also suggested that a meeting could allow for all necessary changes to the HDC’s legislation to be made simultaneously in a single home rule petition, rather than piecemeal over the next several years.

“I would like to wrap it all up once,” Select Board member Matt Fee, who voted with MacNab last week, said. “There could be things like splitting it up into two boards, one that deals with fully historic [buildings] and one that deals with everything else, or doing some other things so that the [applications] that need the time and attention can get the time and the attention that they need.”

Fee and Hill suggested that the Select Board will soon hear at least two more appeals of HDC rulings.