Select Board Peppered With Questions At Annual Civic League Forum

The Select Board fielded questions on a variety of topics, including traffic, long-range planning, and upcoming capital expenses, at the Nantucket Civic League’s annual summer forum on Monday.

Several of the questions asked by attendees at the forum related to traffic and parking, topics that have repeatedly cropped up for the Select Board over the last few months as the Board weighs how to handle increasing demand for a decreasing number of parking spots on-island and ever-busier roads. Little new information was learned on Monday, but Select Board members reiterated many of the concerns they have raised at past meetings.

“The whole traffic thing, it’s the one thing that cuts across all of us,” Select Board member Matt Fee said. “This island wasn’t built for the size of the vehicles, the amount of the vehicles, the amount of work. We have limitations.”

Fee is often the member of the Select Board quickest to raise concerns about traffic and parking, but he wasn’t the only member of the Select Board to speak about those difficulties on Monday.

“We’ve had a spokes of the wheel transportation plan forever. You start at Milestone rotary, and you go out one way, and you come back and go out another way. It’s like I-95 or Route 128 in Boston, right? Any city has built circles so that you can get out of the spoke mentality. We’ve had great resistance to that,” Select Board vice chair Brooke Mohr said, speaking in favor of roundabouts and other traffic flow improvements. “No public will, as yet…at some point, the pain has to be enough for people to say ‘I’m willing to accept change that has so far been unacceptable to me, as a voter.’”

Multiple questioners asked about the town’s upcoming master plan, which will guide its future planning efforts after it is adopted. Town staff confirmed that there will be many opportunities for comment after the draft of the plan is revealed, both for local boards and for members of the public.

Select Board members also emphasized the importance of prioritizing the town’s many expensive upcoming capital projects, a recurring topic of discussion at the Board’s recent meetings.

Select Board member Brooke Mohr acknowledged the town’s new year-round deed restriction pilot program, which would pay homeowners to guarantee that their homes remain year-round residences, has “turned out to be a little more complicated than the idea is in and of itself.” The program has generated muted results, with the town only moving toward restricting two homes, but Mohr said that it is “a start,” suggesting that changes could be coming that could help the program pick up steam in the future.

During the meeting, Select Board member Matt Fee also appeared to confirm the existence of a closed-door meeting on the future of the Sconset Bluff geotube installation previously reported by the Current.

“We are meeting with some of the people that have been at odds on this, hoping that we can find a way forward that makes sense,” he said.

The private meeting comes after an expansion proposal failed at Annual Town Meeting last spring. On the topic of Town Meeting, Town Manager Libby Gibson said that the town is not planning a Special Town Meeting this fall “at present,” but added that “you never know.”

The forum can be viewed in full here.