State would help pay for parking
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
If the town were to build a parking garage for 200-300 cars on National Grid property on Candle Street, there is a pretty good chance state grants could help fund the new parking spaces.

The grants would come from state programs, or through a private economic development firm in Boston called MassDevelopment.

After a team of state officials and MassDevelopment officials toured several potential public benefit sites on the island last Thursday, the group shared some of the possible grant sources with the island's planners and managers at a special joint meeting of the Board of Selectmen and the Nantucket Planning & Economic Development Commission.

Other projects that may be suitable for this type of state funding are the renovation of the Dreamland Theater (see related story, page one), affordable housing on Miller's Lane and Surfside Road and the multi-use plan evolving for the town's 19.8-acre 2 Fairgrounds Road property.

"We're looking at what kind of resources might be available if we did those projects," said Planning Director Andrew Vorce. "We are making plans to make things happen."

As Bill Reyalt of the Department of Housing and Community Development explained, the state's District Improvement Financing (DIF) program could help pay for the renovation of the Dreamland Theater and the construction of a downtown parking garage. The DIF program requires that a specific area for improvement be physically defined. Then, through DIF, the town can issue a bond that is paid off through property taxes on the improved area.

For the parking garage, said Vorce, "It would be a way to finance it without having to go to Town Meeting to ask for overrides and all kinds of other stuff."

Reyalt said that for both prospective projects, he and the Department of Housing & Community Development would need to know more definitively what the town has in mind for each project. Given the recent development of Rick Ulmer's signing an agreement to buy the Dreamland, town-facilitated aid from the state might not be a possibility.

But for public housing projects, MassDevelopment could probably help Nantucket secure tax-exempt bonds and get four-percent Federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits that are available to developments in which 20 percent of the units are made affordable to renters that earn up to 50 percent of area median income, or 40 percent of the units are made affordable to renters earning up to 60 percent of area median income.

Another state program that could supply Nantucket with grant funds for municipal projects includes the Community Development Action Grant Program (CDAG), under the Department of Housing & Community Development. CDAG provides grants to town projects that stimulate economic development for low- to moderate-income workers, such as the construction or improvement of buildings, roadways and sidewalks, or the demolition or relocation of existing structures.

For bike paths, there is the Public Works Economic Development program of the state's Executive Office of Transportation. This grant program helps Bay State cities and towns with transportation projects that stimulate economic growth.

Should any of these projects receive special permits from the Planning Board, their construction would be expedited by the successful result of House Bill 4968, which former Governor Mitt Romney signed into law on Aug. 2, 2006. The new law streamlines the permitting process for all types of development projects, including 40B affordable housing subdivisions and commercial developments, allowing developers with special permits granted by the Planning Board to proceed with their projects despite any appeals of their developments that are filed by abutters.

This law does not protect developers who proceed with projects that have been appealed. If the appellants' claims are upheld, the judge can force the developer

to deconstruct what has been built. I