Town Committee Recommends Against New Nursing Facility, Town Employee Housing, And Sewer Expansion

The Capital Program Committee, an advisory committee charged with reviewing proposed municipal capital spending, is recommending against the construction of a new Our Island Home facility, proposed town employee housing, and a sewer expansion slated for the Somerset area.

If the recommendations are endorsed by the Finance Committee and Select Board, it would slash the amount of money in tax overrides that Nantucket voters are asked to approve at the 2026 Annual Town Meeting by roughly $176 million. Opting against a new Our Island Home facility alone would shave around $126 million off the override bill.

“CapCom does not recommend this capital request. We question the financial prudence of burdening the taxpayers with such a large capital commitment for a project that will benefit a very small subset (45 beds) of the Nantucket population,” a portion of CapCom’s annual report focused on Our Island Home reads in part. “The Town currently subsidizes the operations of the existing OIH with a $5.5 million annual budget override (about $122,000 per resident for the 2026 FY if all 45 beds are occupied). At this time, it is also unknown what additional annual override will be required to support operating shortfalls of the proposed OIH, especially when accounting for potential reductions in federal Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements that subsidize many residents’ cost of living at OIH.”

CapCom’s recommendations exacerbate the existing divide in town leadership over whether to support the costly project.

The Select Board almost didn’t include the new facility on the warrant, but ultimately decided to do so, emphasizing that this would be the island’s last chance to continue operating a skilled nursing facility. Should the proposal fail again, it won’t return. This was one point where CapCom and the Select Board concurred.

In the past, the Finance Committee, another town board that CapCom advises, has waffled on whether to support the project. It received majority support at both Town Meeting and the ballot box last spring, but fell short of the two-thirds it needed to pass at Town Meeting.

While CapCom is poised to recommend against the facility, its report says that “the members of CapCom understand and sympathize with the deteriorating condition of the existing facility and the Town’s moral responsibility to preserve the cultural legacy that OIH represents. For that reason, we do support the right for the voters of Nantucket to have the opportunity to further consider this request at Town Meeting.”

Proponents of the new facility have framed the vote as a moral issue, pointing to the fact that without a municipally-operated nursing facility, Nantucket’s seniors in need of skilled care would likely have to leave the island, forcing them far from home and depriving the island of a portion of its elderly population.

CapCom makes its recommendations using a formulaic ranked weighting system that allows each member to prioritize proposed capital projects individually. Then, all projects with a score greater than one standard deviation below the mean score are recommended by the Committee, and those below that cutoff are not recommended.

Our Island Home, it appears, fell below the threshold.

In addition to recommending against Our Island Home, CapCom is also recommending against $7 million for a town employee housing project that, similarly to Our Island Home, failed to garner the two-thirds support needed to pass at last year’s Annual Town Meeting.

In its report, CapCom urges the town to pursue alternative strategies for employee housing, perhaps focusing on private sector development.

“The Committee understands the critical impact that a lack of stable, affordable employee housing has on the ability of Town departments to deliver their necessary services to the people of Nantucket,” the report reads. “However, it is the opinion of CapCom that the private sector is better suited to develop housing given the materially negative cost implications of publicly developed real estate development. As such, CapCom strongly urges the Town to explore alternate methods of developing, constructing and operating the housing that it so desperately needs for employees across all departments.”

While Nantucket’s voters have largely backed funding requests related to housing, a sizeable portion of the electorate balked at the town employee housing project last spring, blocking the plan for 15 municipal housing units on Waitt Drive. But a majority of those in attendance at Annual Town Meeting supported the project.

“The bottom line: without immediate action to house our workforce, Nantucket risks losing the teachers, police officers, firefighters, DPW crews, and municipal staff who keep our island functioning,” a prepared summary reads in part. “This project provides a sustainable, long-term solution while protecting taxpayers from volatile rental market costs.”

CapCom’s report also recommends allocating no funding for a sizeable sewer expansion in the Somerset area. At CapCom’s most recent meeting, chair Jill Vieth suggested that the issue was one of timing. The Select Board almost didn’t include the sewer expansion on the warrant, but reversed course after a sewer master plan workshop. Vieth suggested that CapCom had submitted its rankings before the masterplan workshop occurred.

The Select Board included Our Island Home, town employee housing, and the Somerset sewer needs area expansion on the warrant, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Select Board supports the projects, just that it believes voters should make the final decision.

CapCom is set to recommend in favor of the large majority of the other capital requests on the warrant, including supplemental funding to design a new department of public works facility, $8 million for Tom Nevers debris removal and a little over $1 million to reconstruct the roller hockey rink in the area, $5.4 million for the next phase of improvements at the LORAN barracks, and $25.5 million for a public school athletics facility upgrade that has been the cause of significant controversy over the inclusion of an artificial turf playing field.

“These improvements have been included in the NPS master plan since 2013 and are long overdue to be completed,” the section of the report dedicated to the athletic complex renovations reads. “This request is strongly supported by CapCom and received a high score.”

These recommendations total to a figure far smaller than the projects CapCom is recommending against.

The report will be reviewed and consulted by both the Select Board and the Finance Committee.