E D I T O R I A L
Sidetracked Despite their two-hour meeting limit, the members of the

Nantucket Planning & Economic Development Commission showed once again that for them, bickering and political posturing are more important for the good of Nantucket than their state-mandated mission of long-range planning.

The negative energy that prevailed during the May 2 and June 6 meetings continued to flow like a rip current through most of the commission’s discussion items at its July 7 meeting.

The meeting, unfortunately, was not taped for the viewing public, which could have substantiated the few attendees’ version of the meeting. The presence of a video camera, however, has yet to deter the commissioners from their counterproductive tangent of late.

At issue that evening were the election of officers and the appointment of two at-large members. Planning Commissioner Don Visco’s recommendation from the officer nominating subcommittee — comprised of himself, John McLaughlin and Sylvia Howard — that chairman Barry Rector and vice chairman Howard be the only nominees, smacked of exclusionary tactics.

The attempts of Howard and McLaughlin to keep Aaron Marcavitch from joining the commission appeared to stem from the same thought process. The ensuing arguments over nomination procedure and the nasty comments that surrounded each vote did not help the meeting’s true objective.

It is obvious that the root of the commission’s problems is tied to a power struggle over how much growth management the island needs. It surfaced last summer during the fourmonth deadlock over who should be chairman.

The issue split the 12-member commission — Visco, McLaughlin, Rector, Howard, Michael Glowacki and Tim Soverino in favor of Rector as chairman. Linda Williams, Jack Gardner, Debbie Bennett, Alvin Topham, Frank Spriggs and Christine Silverstein for the re-election of Topham.

Rector’s victory, combined with the commission’s vote to allow planning director candidates to possess only a bachelors in planning and 10 years experience — custom-tailored for applicant and former senior planner Andrew Vorce — and the subsequent hiring of Vorce as planning director, added to the brooding discontent on the board.

The poignant inevitability is that this immature, counterproductive behavior often permeates to the surface, erupting violently at the Planning Commission’s monthly meetings.

The July 7 meeting was not spared from this commissioners’ wrestling match. It continued with several commissioners trying to keep their ranks intact while preventing others who might dilute their efforts from getting onto the commission.

Regardless of the source of the angst among the 12 commissioners, the buck should stop at the chairman.

Rector should have enough experience on the commission and as a Planning Board member by now to tell the difference between the commission’s real duties and its distractions.

He should know how to reign in his fellow commissioners and keep them on track. He clearly is not doing that.

What it all comes down to is the NP&EDC’s mission — essentially, what it was created for, not what its members are trying to accomplish for personal gain and retaliation. Rector and the commission are there to serve the island public’s longterm development and economic planning needs, not his and each other’s own desires.

Newly anointed DPW representative Jeff Willett’s observation at the July 7 meeting that the acrimony in the room was “astounding” could not be closer to the truth.

Children behave this way. Adults should know better.

Once again, the lack of, in the words of former member Alvin Topham, “testicular fortitude” on the part of the chairman to control the meeting was severely lacking at the commission’s July 7 meeting.

In the absence of his leadership, other members of the commission, who have vastly more experience than the current chairman, should have helped remind Rector of his duties and steered the proceedings back on course.

The commissioners need to realize the importance of their critical role in shaping Nantucket’s future, and get back to work.

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