The Lighthouse Keeper
BY DANIEL W. DRAKE ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

POLITICS, ONCE AGAIN

It was suggested last week, at the end of the first selectmen's meeting I had attended in quite a while, that this column go back to politics. The implication was there had been enough lollygagging, what with trips, digressions with Hawkeye, musings on tip jars and bashing the service provided by large, faceless corporations. My attendance hiatus was self-imposed, brought about partly by ennui derived from the Town Meeting process and because there was little on the weekly agendas that, to my mind, justified getting home to a reheated dinner.

Besides, interesting things happen away from the political arena. To wit, early last Wednesday morning, very shortly after the newspaper was posted on the Web site, I received an email from someone at pb.com, i.e. Pitney Bowes. Normally, I delete such communications because somehow I got onto a list from which I have gotten literally thousand of emails containing refusable offers from major companies. My spam filter literally went belly up for awhile under the onslaught. This time, however, I was curious, because I had just bashed Pitney Bowes' service in this column.

The email was from the "Director of Customer Experience Management" in the Office of the President of Pitney Bowes. The writer related how much she liked my column and how sorry she was that I had had a bad experience with that company. She went on to say that she had directed that the offending instructions, which I had criticized for omitting a step, be rewritten. I responded, thanking her and asking how she picked up on my comment, as I suspected she was not a regular reader.

She acknowledged that the company uses a search engine to check the Internet for any reference to Pitney Bowes. There is obviously no place to hide any more!

I later realized that, in my excitement, I never pointed out to her that she had never asked me where the omission was in the instructions or, indeed, even which instructions they were. The outcome of the revision should be interesting.

Now we can go back to politics.

I was moved to go to last week's selectmen's meeting because one agenda item was the final discussion of the Nantucket and Madaket Harbors Plan which is ready for submission to the state. I have a vested interest in that plan as an officer of the Nantucket Shellfish Association and spent a fair amount of time watching the process and participating in the public comment aspect of it.

The Marine Superintendent, Dave Fronzuto, the Urban Harbors Institute from UMass-Boston, and the committee appointed to oversee the making of the plan all did a great job in putting together a plan that reflects well the needs of the interests which compete for the use of Nantucket's harbors. A handful of property owners see themselves as being gored by the related zoning proposals, but the process participants went to considerable pains to minimize the blood in trying to balance those individual interests against their perception (buttressed by significant public comment) of the overall public need.

Once again, as with other matters, Nantucket has waited much too long to take action to protect its harbor and keep some portion of the waterfront available for mixed public use. It remains to be seen whether, with the new plan, town government has the will to do what it should going forward without being heavy-handed or totally reactive. The implementation challenges are significant. (Not the least of these is keeping the Board of Selectman from micromanaging the implementation.) One suggestion in the harbor plan to providing incentives - presumably financial - to property owners to improve public access to the harbor front is well worth pursuing.

After approving the Harbors Plan, which will now be sent to the state for review, the board turned its attention to other weighty matters.

The board voted to raise sewer user fees by 41 percent in the face of the costs of the new waste water treatment facility. No matter that none of the selectmen could lucidly explain the arrangement under which the sewer costs are divided between the taxpayers and sewer users, with some undeterminable portion being paid in connection fees by new sewer users. And of greater no matter was that there is still no sign of a decision (How many years later?) as to the criteria to be used in determining the eligibility of applicants for new sewer connections.

The selectmen decided to postpone for another week any action on whether to hold a Special Town Meeting in the fall to get more advice. The Planning Department would like an STM to move forward its Master Plan-related zoning agenda, as might some others for their own reasons, but unless there are compelling financial reasons, there should not be one this October. STMs are expensive in terms of both financial and human resources and, if they become a habit, the risk of further alienating the voters from the process is significant.

And then there were the HDC appeals. At these appeal hearings, the HDC comes across as its own worst enemy on such occasions; defensive and poorly prepared (as, in this case, were the appellants.) The only thing that saves the process for the HDC is the apparently strong (and untenable) predisposition - over and above the presumption provided by law - on the part of the selectmen to find that the HDC has not acted arbitrarily and capriciously.

At the outset of the appeals, Ms. Roggeveen announced that she would not recuse herself from appeals to the board involving the HDC, because the state ethics board had advised her it was not necessary - there is no financial conflict. Financial conflict is irrelevant!

Her husband is the chairman of the HDC. Human nature creates the intellectual and emotional conflict in this instance, casting a large shadow over her impartiality. She was quick to jump in to explain how the HDC works, implicitly defending its practices. That is not the role of an impartial adjudicator. If the appeal system is to work as it should, with absolute fairness in perception and in fact, Ms. Roggeveen must recuse herself from participating in any appeal to the Board from an HDC decision.

Is politics really more fun than all of those other subjects that kept us so happily occupied for the

past few weeks? I

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