Culture and Tourism office reports 23 June event applications; staff warn of year-end workload pressures

Dina, a Culture and Tourism staff member, told the Nantucket Select Board that the office received 23 event applications for June; 21 require town permits and seven had been permitted as of the morning of the meeting.

Dina said the average expected attendance originally listed was about 250 but fell to 168 after the office added later applications. Eleven events were expected to draw more than 100 attendees; six of those are previously approved public assemblies, including the upcoming film festival. Eleven of the 23 events planned to serve alcohol; under ABCC practice cited by staff, nonprofits may serve all alcohol while for-profit events may serve beer and wine only.

Select Board member Tom urged tighter application deadlines, saying it had been “unfair to staff” when event load concentrated at the last minute. Dina and Amy, licensing staff, said they were already coordinating across departments and looking at longer lead times. Chantal, who sits on the town’s internal special events committee, said the committee reviewed a revised special events policy in June and planned to present it to the larger cabinet in July; if approved, the board would see a draft policy in August.

Tom said he wanted to track next year’s direction to assess the cumulative impact of additional events on town capacity. Amy and Chantal said they were working on a larger plan and would return to the Select Board with proposed process changes to reduce last-minute pressures on staff.

No formal vote or action was taken on the report; the Select Board received the update and discussed process improvements.