The Lighthouse Keeper
BY DANIEL W. DRAKE
The Town Government Study Committee ("TGSC") has labored for many months and has come forward with nine specific recommendations which have been incorporated in Warrant articles submitted for consideration by the 2007 Annual Town Meeting. In addition, it continues to mull over almost thirty "advisory recommendations," some of which will be incorporated in the TGSC's final report to be submitted to the 2007 Annual Town Meeting.

Through its 47 meetings, mostly within the last 12 months, the TGSC has devoted an astounding amount of time to its deliberations. The members of the committee, and particularly the Chairman, Alan Reinhard, have been as dedicated to their effort as any gaggle of taxpayers, gathered at any watering hole in the town, could possibly imagine or desire.

Since this is not the forum to discuss what happens when gaggles gather, to use another analogy, the TGSC scoured the roadbed of the town's government seeking a way to return the train to the tracks. The committee, to its credit, considered many disparate views as to what was wrong and how the wreck that is Nantucket's town governance process today might be fixed. Why, then, after all this effort, will the train of the Nantucket government railroad continue to lie on its side next to the tracks, creaking and smoking? Why is there little reason for hope that the train will be running again any time soon?

If nothing else, one would have thought that the near-failure to get a quorum at the October Special Town Meeting might have spurred the TGSC into the realization that existing processes are inadequate; both too slow and cumbersome. (If that quorum had not shown its face so that the Surfside waste water treatment plant article, on which there was no discussion, could be voted upon, the cost of the new facility would, most likely, have risen another $1 million, or three.)

Again, one might have thought that the process whereby the TGSC was forced to ask the Board of Selectman for an extension of the time to file its Warrant articles (a request it later withdrew) would have also given it food for thought. The time allotted for filing citizen's articles is so far ahead of Town Meeting that the petitioner risks freezing while waiting for the Town Meeting train to arrive at the station. That time frame effectively took a two months away from the committee's deliberations. Nonetheless, Town Meeting is a subject that the TGSC apparently will only address by recommending that the Board of Selectmen ("BOS") consider changing the time of the ATM, in an attempt to get better attendance.

If the TGSC had known that the Town would lose the Waste Options arbitration so completely, could it have demonstrated the same faith in the existing form of government?

The topics covered by the nine articles are diverse, ranging from changing the title of the Town Administrator to Town Manager to approval of home rule petitions which seek to change the manner of populating the Planning Board, the Historic District Commission and Harbor and Shellfish Advisory Board (SHAB) by having their members appointed by the BOS instead of elected by the voters.

One or two of the articles have real merit, but, regrettably, most of them do nothing to further the process of making the town's government work better.

The article prohibiting BOS members from being town employees is good and long-overdue. The definition, for this purpose, of a town employee as someone working in excess of twenty hours and eligible for benefits, is a reasonable compromise.

The codification of an audit committee in the Town Charter is a good idea, even though there already is one. While the Committee may offer additional recommendations on the structure of the Committee, wouldn't it have made sense that the new charter provision require that some members of the audit committee be from outside government, just as the Finance Committee is comprised of people holding no other government office? Fiscal prudence dictates that outsiders be involved in the audit process. If the presence of outsiders isn't required by the charter, but merely adopted as an advisory recommendation from the Committee - well, somehow the BOS, at least of late, has been treating advisory recommendations from Town Meeting quite cavalierly.

Adiscussion of the merits of changing of the manner of populating the elected boards is best reserved for another time, but that it came up to the TGSC as an issue may be more reflective of a political vendetta than of any consideration of good government. In spending so much time on that issue, the TGSC did little to advance the cause of good government.

Two of the articles submitted by the TGSC go to the heart of what, in the end, it has not accomplished. The first is the one changing the name of the Town Administrator to Town Manager. To what purpose? Certainly it's nice, and perhaps even helpful, for the senior town official to have the town manager title when dealing with people outside of the town, but the change in name does nothing to deal with the structural inadequacies inherent in the government today. If nothing else, the members of the Board of Selectman will have continue to have just as much latitude to meddle in the details of town affairs as they do today.

The other article institutionalizes a government review committee to report to Town Meeting every five years beginning in 2010. What happens between now and then? Are we done? Is this the end of the process for now? Are the people of Nantucket stuck with the structure we have for five more years, at least? It was suggested to the TGSC that it submit an article extending its life. Apparently that idea fell on deaf ears, perhaps not surprisingly, given the time already spent by the members. Maybe this article is a compromise, but it doesn't bode well for how things will work in the next few years.

Why did things turn out this way? It's hard to say. It could have been that the make-up of the Committee as appointed by the BOS made the outcome a foregone conclusion. It could have been the Committee's assessment that the will of the voters made the actual accomplishment of substantive change impossible. It also could have been that those calling for change were a dim voice in the wilderness compared to the voices of those wanting to maintain the status quo, whether out of self-interest or for sentimental reasons.

In all likelihood, there is no simple answer. No doubt many factors came into play. The unfortunate fact is that the TGSC should have and could have made it to the top of the hill, like the little engine, but it didn't. Instead, somewhere in its journey, the TGSC, too, came off the tracks.

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The "Lighthouse Keeper" reflects the views of the author and does not necessarily represent the editorial position of The Nantucket Independent. Please send any comments to drake@nantucketindependent. com.