No Confusion Or Compromise On Legality

To the editor: This upcoming Special Town Meeting on short-term rentals (STRs) is set to be the shortest one in recent memory, with only two articles on the warrant. The best way to predict how it will go is to look at the last Town Meeting in May. All three articles proposing restrictions were soundly voted down, whereas the simple zoning restoration, Article 66, came 58 votes shy of the two-thirds needed to fix Nantucket’s zoning emergency.

Article 1 is trying to answer the same emergency, now made more dire with the Land Court’s final judgment passed in June. Unfortunately, what many people don’t realize is that with this judgment, the permitted right to rent and lease is actually already gone, island-wide. Why? It’s not because of the lawsuits per se, it’s because the Court discovered that the town deleted the legal code for all renting (short- and long-term) unintentionally, 10 years ago. Ack Now may have discovered this fact five years before the rest of us because the resulting loophole has been the basis of the neighbor vs. neighbor lawsuits they’re paying for.

The town is calling their alternative Article 2 the “Compromise” article. As the former sponsor of the article that came the closest to passing just five months ago, I can say that none of the drafters of Article 2 involved me - or anyone I worked with - to help keep Nantucket’s economic engine and its hospitality tradition healthy. With that said, I hope we can be honest now and say the so-called “compromise” is really between factions of the same anti-tourism movement, those who would overreach for unnecessary restrictions at Town Meeting.

It’s become clear that those anti-tourism factions certainly don’t represent the broader community that needs a balanced and legally stable solution. The pandemic surge of visitors that caused problems a few years ago is long gone, so the citizens behind Capt. Borgeson’s Article 1 weren’t looking to introduce bans and caps because they will surely distract us from fixing this zoning emergency.

Besides calling their town-sponsored article “a compromise,” unfortunately, some members of our boards and commissions also seem confused about the fact that we actually have general bylaws governing short-term rentals— like local registration, health, and safety rules, additional taxation, and bans on corporate and investor REIT ownership. Indeed, these general bylaws are the excellent insurance policies we’ve placed around our landmark-protected hospitality model, one that’s been created and refined by Nantucket residents over generations. Article 1 doesn’t disturb these bylaws; on the contrary it gives them the required lawful base that’s missing (a restored definition in zoning).

So the judge’s decision that Nantucket does not permit “renting and leasing” remains on record and the clock is ticking for us to do something about it on Nov. 4th at 5 p.m. While the town’s appeal may operate as a temporary “stay”, it does not reverse or nullify the ruling against Nantucket. The temporary stay merely delays enforcement so voters can take a last opportunity to correct the bylaw at the first citizens-led Town Meeting in 40 years. If Article 1 does fail to reach two-thirds, Nantucket will be signaling to the court that we don’t want or need to permit short- and long-term “renting and leasing” on Nantucket. But last I checked, Nantucket is still a working island, though maybe we’re hoping philanthropy can replace the history, culture, shops, and restaurants —all threatened by the anti-tourism Article 2.

While such dire legal circumstances should have granted us much-needed clarity, the waters were quickly muddied once again when the Planning Board Chair sponsored Article 2, taking us all back to Groundhog Day. But I will be voting for the citizens’ Article 1 as sponsored by Capt. Brian Borgeson. It doesn’t rewrite anything, hurt anyone, or send what remains of the middle classes and their small-scale cottages packing forever; it simply restores the missing “renting and leasing” language to bring our zoning back into legal, historical, and financial alignment. That will make it easier to enforce the current STR bylaws, and also to add future STR bylaws if they are ever truly needed. What American town do you know that has no permitted rights to rent or lease long- or short-term? Maybe that’s what happens when a town’s rate of billionaire residents rises to the highest per capita.

Let’s respect each other’s time, our Town Meeting form of governance, and prize true collaboration over false compromises. It will be valuable to every one of us who lives on Nantucket to keep it real.

Caroline Robinson Baltzer