My View
VOTE NO ON ARTICLE 1
By Linda Williams
Voters should be concerned about heading down that same slippery slope as the Great Harbor Yacht Club-taking debacle with Article One potentially embroiling the town in a quagmire of protracted, expensive legal wrangling without any guarantee of success. A positive vote does not allow the town to immediately control the property. Reality check: Mr. Z, owner of the Dreamland, will not go gently into that good night.

The Article is without focus, direction or specifics, imposes no monetary constraints and does not indicate the impact on the taxpayers should an override pass. Does the taking of the Dreamland property for nebulous "municipal purposes" meet the threshold for such takings? There are too many questions to be answered. Do we have $20 million to purchase and renovate the structure? Who manages this project for the town, and at what cost? Does a costly new municipal hierarchy need to be established? How is the structure going to sustain itself once renovated?

Sandbagging voters in the summer, particularly in light of a unanimous Fin Com negative vote, and a negative vote of four of the five Selectmen to bring this to a costly special town meeting, is fiscally and politically irresponsible. Doing an end run when someone does not get his way is abuse of process for a feel-good article that massages political egos. Elected officials are charged with representing all the residents of Nantucket and should not be so quick to subject the majority to an expensive whim. It is troublesome that most people I talked to outside of work do not know there is a special meeting or what it concerns.

The community has too many other important priorities impacting island quality of life such as infrastructure improvements, the new sewer plant, a failing school system and insufficient space to adequately teach students, budget constraints that have a chokehold over departments' abilities to function with increased demand for services … the list is endless. This could prove to be a great financial drain on the town. As a past active participant in several Theater Workshop productions on stage and behind the scenes, and a Dreamland lover, I support and applaud those who would want to preserve it. The Dreamland is vital to sustaining downtown businesses that have suffered this summer without it. However, I do not feel the town should pay for, operate, or try to take the Dreamland by eminent domain when the town is faced with so many pressing issues.

In the 2006 census Master Plan questionnaire, an overwhelming majority of responders did not feel it appropriate for the town to "be involved in the creation of a Community Arts Center." The largest number supported the town's provision of "incentives such as zoning changes or tax relief for private developers to create a facility," followed closely by "the town should not be involved in the creation of a facility." The will of the majority is what any elected official should be mindful of when considering strapping the next generations.

While we should support private attempts to permanently preserve the theater by a voluntary deed restriction, we cannot lose sight of fiscal constraints. If Mr. Z and savvy businessman Rick Ulmer could not make it work, then who in his right mind would think the town could? Instead of trying to help a private entity make the project work, the proponents of this article stuck their noses in the middle of a possible sale of the property, making it harder for people to commit the funds necessary with the threat of the eminent domain taking looming.

The group promoting this article admittedly has no plan, no real organized structure, could not afford to buy it when it was on the market either time, and is now trying to get the rest of us to buy it for them, appealing to our emotions, again a bad precedent to set. If a group cannot afford to buy something, go to Town Meeting, stack it with a small special interest group, and force the majority to be dragged along. If this happens, we have no one to blame but ourselves for not showing up to voice our objections. It is one of those "be there or be square" moments that every voter should heed.

Signing a petition in support of an arts center is one thing. Paying for it is another. Hopefully, reality and fiscal responsibility will set in before we vote and we do not allow a fraction of the electorate to ensnare the majority of voters in a boondoggle

of a project. I