Despite Majority Vote, $125 Million Funding Proposal For New Our Island Home Is Defeated

Most people in attendance at Saturday's Annual Town Meeting wanted to see the new Our Island Home skilled nursing facility get built. But it wasn't to be.

Despite a strong majority in favor of the project, the proposed $125 million appropriation to build the new Our Island Home was defeated when it fell just short of the required two-thirds threshold following an emotional debate on Town Meeting floor.

The final vote was:

• Yes: 450
• No: 283

Since the spending would require a debt exclusion override, Article 13 needed a two-thirds majority for passage, meaning it failed by just 38 votes. Many among the several hundred island residents in attendance voiced their desire to have a new facility to care for Nantucket's elderly, while others expressed deep reservations over the $125 million price tag, which would have made it the largest and most expensive municipal project ever undertaken by the town.

Saturday's vote was the culmination of nearly a decade of debate and planning for the future of Our Island Home by the town and residents. More than $8 million had already been spent on consultants and the design of the new facility just to get it to the point where it could be presented to voters with a guaranteed maximum price, or GMP, from the town's chosen general contractor, Consigli Construction. 

As the debate unfolded, it was clear that many in the auditorium favored the project despite the steep price tag. John Copenhaver, the president of the Nantucket Center for Elder Affairs, told voters that while no one could argue the new facility would be a bargain, the island should still strongly consider voting in favor of the project.



“As I look around the room here I see a lot of gray hair and shiny heads,” Copenhaver said. “We are all one blood clot, one trip and fall away from being a new resident of Our Island Home. We really need to have, as our community has said many times, the kind of care we have at Our Island Home is key to keeping our families close and our friends close at times of stress and medical emergencies. We are the only community in Massachusetts with a community-funded center, why is that? Well, we have a 30-mile-wide moat. We don’t have the luxury of accessing our neighbor’s facilities. All we have is what we have on the island. We really need this.”

Diana Graves, a long-time island school teacher, said her mother is a resident at Our Island Home. It is her mother’s third nursing home, and she is deaf, which forces her to communicate in sign language. Graves said they went to the only other facility in the state that had sign language, but it didn’t work well for her mother. They moved her back to the island, where they are able to accommodate her need for caregivers who use sign language.

“I am in there every day," Graves said. "Our Island Home is a family. The quality of care, you can’t get anywhere else. Is the building tired and inadequate? Yes. It doesn’t meet the Department of Health requirements. Equipment is in the hallway. There is not enough room in the rooms for the walkers, the wheelchairs, etc. It is a community within the community on Nantucket. In Our Island Home, a lot of the residents know each other, they have gotten to know my mom, and I have gotten to know them. If we lose Our Island Home, we will have lost a fabric we cannot replace. I’ve heard a quote ‘the measure of a civilization is how they take care of their vulnerable.’ Please vote yes.”

Despite that support, the cost of the project weighed heavily in the debate on Saturday. Less than two days before the start of the Annual Town Meeting, the Finance Committee balked at the increased price tag for the facility. The Finance Committee originally voted 6-3 in mid-February to endorse the project at a then-estimated cost of $105 million, and its positive motion is printed in the Annual Town Meeting warrant. But the town discovered in April that the final bid for the new 45-bed facility came in 20 percent higher than expected at $125 million.

On Thursday afternoon, the Finance Committee gathered to consider a technical amendment to its original motion to reflect the increased price tag for the project. Following a brief deliberation, two FinCom members who had originally supported the appropriation - Joanna Roche and Jeremy Bloomer - flipped and voted against the motion, resulting in a 5-4 decision in opposition to the technical amendment for the $125 million price tag.

That required the Select Board to put forward a positive motion for the full cost of the project at Town Meeting on Saturday. Strangely, the vote to amend Article 13 with the increased price tag passed easily - 529 to 219 - but during the vote on the main motion, the support fell by 75 votes. 

Andrew Tapley, who said he works for a commercial real estate company that finances and sells skilled nursing facilities, was among the voices raising concern about the cost of the facility. He said he is in full support of a new Our Island Home, but couldn't support the funding request as constituted.

“I can’t support these numbers. These numbers are so astronomical and so off-market,” Tapley said. “I know we have said we have done our research, but I have spoken with clients, one who just built three state-of-the-art skilled nursing facilities in Illinois for $400,000 per bed. One in California for $500,000 per bed. We are talking about $3 million per bed. That is not anywhere close. I understand we are on an island. It costs more to build, but this is just an astronomical number. It is really insane. What we should really look into is if we want to keep the land, set up a ground lease that is affordable for an off-island developer to build this as a third-party skilled nursing facility. We have plenty of groups out there willing to do that. Then you control the land and get the land back, whether it is a 50-year ground lease, 90-year ground lease. It will come back to the town. I get why everyone is in support of it. I am in support of it too. But not at these numbers. It’s crazy.”

Select Board member Dawn Hill Holdgate, who has worked in support of the Our Island Home project for more than a decade, said she was extremely disappointed in the result, as well as what she described as "misstatements" about the cost of the project.  

"It's not the best forum to have a public hearing and try to answer people's questions at Town Meeting," Hill-Holdgate said. "I thought that people were receptive to it, and I'm not sure what happened in those final pieces of the debate...What makes it difficult for me, is if it was a very clear failure and it lost by a majority, that would be one thing. But it had a majority and it was short by just 38 votes. If every resident of Our Island Home was there, it would have passed. That's what breaks my heart."

Still, Hill-Holdgate said she is not giving up. On Sunday, she was urging people to vote for the project at the upcoming town election, as it will still be on the ballot. If it receives a strong majority vote at the polls, the Select Board could, in theory, call a Special Town Meeting to have another vote on the project in the near term.

"It's tricky," she said. "The bids are only good for a few weeks. But if people really started to understand what's happening, I'm hopeful it will pass at the ballot. If it passes by a big margin, maybe we could call a special (town meeting) to see if people want to revisit, but we, of course, haven't talked about that as a board yet."

The more likely scenario, however, is that the town will now seriously look at closing the aging facility at some point in the future. Town manager Libby Gibson and Hill-Holdgate have previously warned about that potential outcome if the funding proposal were defeated.

Nantucket’s geography and the cost of land make it difficult, if not impossible, for a private organization to operate a nursing home on the island, meaning that without a town-run facility, it is likely that those in need of advanced, specialized nursing care would have to move to the mainland for support.