Cheryl Bartlett leaving SBPF
Pursues job in Boston
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
Cheryl Bartlett, Siasconset Beach Preservation Fund's executive director, is reducing her workload - helping east-end islanders protect their property from erosion - to take a job with Boston's Department of Public Health.

As Siasconset Beach Preservation Fund (SBPF) lost its battle with voters this April to mine 1.9 million cubic yards of sand three miles off of Sankaty and rebuild the beach from the lighthouse to Codfish Park, SBPF conceded Bartlett's services are no longer needed in a full-time capacity.

"I think we're going to be much, much less active than we were presenting materials before the ConCom (Conservation Commission) with the exception of continuing our terracing," said SBPF board member Helmut Weymar. "Jenny Garneau has been handling our administration for a decade and she will continue in that capacity."

Bartlett will be working for Boston Public Health's Bureau of Community Health Access and Promotion as its deputy director, managing the community health program, disease management, women's health network and domestic violence program.

Before working as SBPF's executive director, Bartlett served Nantucket as a selectman, nurse at Nantucket Cottage Hospital and as a co-founder of the Nantucket Aids Network.

For the past two years, Bartlett has been part of a delegation of nurses and doctors from Massachusetts, sponsored by Rotary International, who volunteer their services in Russia, working to improve hospital care.

"I'm going to be working with them (SBPF) on a much more limited basis to work basically in an advisory and advocacy role related to the creating of a coastal management plan on Nantucket; very part time." Bartlett confirmed. "I think because a lot of my role was related to the coordination of the beach management plan and we pulled that application until there is a coastal management plan, there is no beach nourishment to work on."

The adoption of Catherine Flanagan Stover's Town Meeting article, Article 67, in April, calls for the town to complete a coastal management plan by the end of 2010 and to enact a temporary moratorium on all erosion control projects, including dredging offshore sand and beach nourishment on shore. This effectively shut the door on SBPF's project through 2010.

In addition to the adoption of Article 67, 85 percent of the voters said, "no" to the nonbinding Question 5 on the April 15 election ballot, which asked voters to allow the beach nourishment project to take place on town owned land. Both Article 67 and the defeat of Question 5 convinced SBPF to withdraw its Notice of Intent from the Conservation Commission.

SBPF's current focus is to work with the town on the coastal management plan.

"I think that there's no doubt that everybody engaged in this has been extremely disappointed in what happened, particularly in what happened on the ballot. There's a lot of room for skepticism that the island will address its erosion issues before a lot more properties are lost," said Weymar.

Bartlett's continued involvement with SBPF will be in pressing its erosion control interests during the town's coastal management plan process.

"Our hope is that through the process of the coastal management plan, we can figure out through the Board of Selectmen, whatever the Board of Selectmen comes up with, and with our opponents, some way of addressing erosion in 'Sconset. So, Cheryl with along with us, will be working on the coastal management plan," said Weymar. "Certainly from everything people said, erosion will be an issue that the coastal management plan addresses."

At last week selectmen's meeting, Marine Superintendent Dave Fronzuto told the board that it should consider narrowing the focus of its coastal management plan to shellfish, erosion and beach nourishment.

The board has yet to choose a specific direction for the plan, opting instead to defer that job to a consultant, it is likely to hire sometime this summer, said Selectmen Chairman Michael Kopko.

"I would say that it's going to be very much along the lines of the harbor plan process," said Kopko.

This will likely work for Weymar and SBPF, as they will try to sit on whatever advisory committee is formed to help guide the town's consultant.

"If you take the 50- or 100-year view, Nantucket's a sand pile in the middle of the ocean and liable to go away. It's logical that we'll be on the coastal management plan [committee]," said Weymar. "It's hard to look at the data and not think that 'Sconset is going to

wash away in a period of time." I