Select Board To Award Eight Rental Car Medallions On Monday

The Select Board is set to distribute eight rental car medallions today after a year-long wait. The town’s slow-moving attempts to regulate the online car-sharing platform Turo may resurface during the meeting.

Last July, the Select Board voted 3-2 to award the medallions to agencies that are not already operating on Nantucket, excluding potential operators who use Turo.

There are four applicants for the eight medallions. In order of application, they are Enterprise Rent-A-Car, an off-island car rental giant represented by Tom Walling; Grey Lady Jeeps, a local Jeep rental agency represented by Nicholas Amendolare that currently uses Turo; Compass Pointe Rentals, represented by Pat Tully and Daniel Walsh; and G. J. Smith, represented by Geoff Smith.

At last year’s meeting, Select Board members disagreed about the potential impacts of the decision for long-term attempts to regulate Turo, making this the next step in a lengthy and convoluted series of debates over the San Francisco-based company often referred to as Airbnb for cars. Select Board member Matt Fee worried that excluding Turo operators from receiving medallions would tacitly suggest that Turo was allowed to continue operating, but the majority of the Board determined that Turo was a separate issue and there was no reason not to exclude Turo operators.

The Select Board also has the option to defer awarding the medallions or retire them completely. There is still a broader issue: many rental car medallions remain unused on Nantucket.

Chapter 58 of Nantucket's town code governs rental cars on the island through a medallion system and caps the number of rentals at 700 for the entire island. The regulations require companies to obtain a medallion from the town for each rental car they operate and establish a fine of $300 per day for any violations. Only six licensed car rental agencies on Nantucket control the 700 medallions, preventing others from entering the market.

The town has cracked down on rental car companies operating without a permit, but has not enforced its regulations on Turo operators. A lawsuit over the system was dismissed last March.

State regulations on companies like Turo are currently pending at the legislature.