Overlay articles get negative recommendations
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
Four articles tied to the island's harbor planning effort got negative recommendations from the Planning Board at a special meeting Monday night.

The negative recommendation for Articles 25, 26 and 27 - that dealt with the creation of harbor overlay districts for Nantucket Harbor and Hither Creek - and Article 28 - making the moratorium on docks, wharves and piers permanent - arose when the board reached a deadlock on the articles.

Planning Board members Barry Rector and acting chairman Frank Spriggs - Chairman Don Visco is in Florida - voted for positive recommendations, while Sylvia Howard and John McLaughlin voted in the negative because they said the articles needed more work. The resulting tie, according to Roberts Rules of Order, means each article gets a negative recommendation from the Planning Board in this year's Town Meeting warrant, which goes to the printer on March 16.

However, because Howard was on the fence about turning down the articles, and Rector had reservations about granting his blessings, the negative recommendations will be accompanied by an addendum of all the articles' revisions from their original form to date.

The articles can all still be called, discussed, amended and voted on at Town Meeting.

Articles 25 and 27 would establish an overlay district on top of the existing Residential/Commercial zoning that seeks to preserve the commercial, water-dependent uses along Nantucket's urban waterfronts by recommending that there be no conversion of commercial uses to residential and that no new residential structures be built within 25 feet of the harbor. Additionally, existing residential property owners wishing to modify their residential space in the district would have to provide public water-dependent benefits. Article 26 generates the maps for these districts.

Support for the articles was pretty much split, with fishermen and those who rely on the harbor for their incomes on one side, and the other side represented by harborfront residential property owners and the Hither Creek Boatyard, which wants to be removed from the overlay or have Article 27 tabled for a year.

"You cannot support a commercial fishing fleet without infrastructure," said scalloper Frank Dutra, vice chairman of the Nantucket Shellfish Association. "I'm definitely in favor of these articles as a way to preserve the usage for the commercial fishermen."

Of the 134 parcels in the overlay district in both locations, 70 of them are residential, said Harbor Planning Advisory Committee Member Sarah Oktay.

To the committee, that means Nantucket is incrementally losing its traditional water-dependent uses on the waterfront. Marine Superintendent Dave Fronzuto fears losing the island's last waterfront boatyard, Madaket Marine, which is the reason for Article 27.

Article 28 drew less criticism, but some still decried the potential loss of their ability to construct private docks and piers. Tuckernuck and Muskeget property owners would be allowed to construct community docks and piers to replace those recently deemed illegal by the state's Department of

Environmental Protection. I