The Only Thing More Discouraging Than The Vote On Our Island Home Was The Media's Coverage

To the editor: Just as discouraging as the Annual Town Meeting’s failure on Article 13 (building a new Our Island Home) by 38 short of the required 2/3 vote is the framing by the media. I propose a moratorium on the word “emotional.” Emotional has been used repeatedly in the media as the opposite of responsible, which it is not. Let’s find a better descriptor, and while at it, refrain from describing a speaker at ATM as “emotional…holding back tears.” Nor is it accurate to describe a loss by 38 votes with a majority of 450 votes to 283 a case of a “shoot-down.”

I was told today that Town Meeting itself is emotional, whereas the ballot vote is rational. We may face a test of that. Voters on May 20 are being urged to vote yes on ballot question #2 despite the narrow loss at Town Meeting in order to demonstrate a mandate for going ahead with the project. At the 2017 ATM voters were presented with an article that sought funds to build a facility between the back of Sherburne Commons and Miacomet Road. Because it did not fit the space available, the Town needed to purchase abutting land. No money was included in the appropriation for improving Miacomet Road for emergency vehicle access. Residents of Sherburne Commons and neighbors further down Miacomet Road were unhappy about the siting, and the “small house/green house” design was not only wasteful of space but was incompatible with the needs and wants of residents, families, and OIH staff.

The current design is not only up to current code for a medical facility (not “bedrooms”), but through consultation, it has taken into account the experience and requirements of residents and staff. I am personally unenthusiastic about the proposed location in front of Sherburne Commons on South Shore Road, but the promise of eventually relocating the non-residential Saltmarsh Senior Center to East Creek Road is some compensation, providing that it is honored.

Going back to square one after investing so much time and millions of our dollars in coming up with a design that meets all standards/mandates/codes and is appropriate to the Nantucket community is false economy. The cold unemotional fact is that Nantucket is the most remote inhabited island in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. For that reason, we have had to do things differently, and we have a record of setting good examples to the world beyond our shores.

We cannot export our fellow Nantucketers in need of residential care (long-term or short-term) and we cannot wish them away. In the blink of an eye any one of us might need Our Island Home. Expecting “the billionaires” or a for-profit corporation to step in and provide us with a skilled nursing facility for the future is pie-in-the-sky thinking. We have to do this ourselves.

Frances Karttunen

Editor's note: The phrase "holding back tears" and "shoot-down" were published in the Inquirer and Mirror, not the Current. We did, however, describe the debate as an "emotional" one.