Our Island Home - Let’s Learn From Martha’s Vineyard

To the editor: Our neighboring island is completing the construction of a $70-mm, 70 bed nursing home (Navigator Homes) which is being financed and overseen by a private, not-for-profit organization. The facility which is scheduled to open this year will replace an old, outdated facility (sound familiar) located at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital (MVH).

MVH donated the land on which Navigator Homes is being built so that the current nursing home, which is an affiliate and on the same site as MVH, can be repurposed for hospital use. The new facility is being financed by charitable donations, naming opportunities, plus a $30-mm low interest loan from the US Dept of Agriculture under a program for rural communities (which Nantucket probably would be eligible).

MVH will be constructing housing for hospital and nursing home staff on property adjacent to Navigator Homes.

The Community Foundation for Nantucket (CFN) just announced a partnership with Friends of Our Island Home (FOIH) to raise funds to support the construction of a new nursing home. This sounds like Martha’s Vineyard’s successful program. Done WITHOUT TAXPAYER $$ and at considerably lower cost ($1-mm/bed in MV; ~$1.5-mm/bed in ACK -assuming staff housing will cost 25% of the $105-mm total construction budget).

Before we set off on a $105-mm construction adventure that will cost our TAXPAYERS close to $300-mm including financing costs and operating losses, I suggest the Town works with CFN and FOIH to carefully evaluate the possibility of privately financing the new OIH (including learning from the folks on Martha’s Vineyard).

Gene Briskman