Capital committee simplifies project-prioritization rubric, drops preweighting step

The committee overseeing Nantucket's capital project prioritization agreed to simplify its scoring rubric, remove a preweighting column and ask members to rate each criterion on the same scale, members said during a virtual meeting.

The change came after debate over wording and whether some line items produced binary answers rather than gradated scores. Committee member John said, "If it's imminent, it it's gonna be done," explaining why he had changed the label from "imminent issue" to "serious issue." The group also approved rewording items such as "employee count" to "staff count" and replacing the single word "redundancy" with "create redundancy/overlap" to clarify intent.

Committee members said the previous process — which asked each member to distribute percentage weights across categories before scoring items — had confused newer participants and sometimes skewed results. "I like the simplicity," Committee member Howard said, describing the proposed change to let each line item be scored independently on a 0–100 scale by each reviewer.

Under the simplified approach discussed, every criterion line will accept a direct percentage or points from each reviewer; the transcript records committee members counting 15 lines, meaning an individual reviewer could produce a cumulative score measured across those lines ("15 is what I counted when I..."), and the group noted that the summed total will be an aggregate reflection of individual priorities rather than a preweighted composite.

The committee also debated and removed a separate criterion labeled "staff available to oversee projects" from the public rubric because members said that question will be addressed in interviews with department heads rather than as a scored, yes/no line on the form. One member said, "I would just omit it, and we would just be, we would put it on our list of questions that we all have."

Members asked staff to standardize language across the rubric (for example, moving "support select board strategic plan" ahead of an "available staff" question) and to add short examples on certain lines so reviewers understand what to consider when scoring (for example, listing energy use or maintenance implications alongside "staff count").

On implementation, staff member Sue said she had contacted the Plum/Plumb vendor and warned that changes to categories or the weighting approach could "impact things you've worried in the past." The committee agreed to pick a standard, single default value for the preweighting column in the Plum system (for example, setting the field to a single value so it no longer affects scores) rather than remove the field from the software immediately. "They need to see what you want changed before they can say for sure that it's not gonna impact anything else," Sue said.

The group agreed to test the simplified rubric with a dummy project (suggested: a DPW facility) in the Plum system before applying it to live requests, and to forward a cleaned spreadsheet of the new line items and the agreed default values to the vendor so the vendor can implement the change without misunderstanding.

Committee members emphasized the change was intended to make the process more transparent and easier for new members to apply consistently. "If we all do this the same way when we fill these out...the relative answer will be what we want to see," one member said, describing the expected effect of consistent application.

The committee did not take a formal recorded vote during the segment transcribed; instead, members reached agreement during discussion and directed staff to update the rubric, coordinate with Plum, and run a test project in the system.

Looking ahead, the committee asked staff to circulate the revised rubric and the agreed standard values to the Plum vendor promptly so the vendor can confirm any downstream reporting effects and implement the change before live scoring begins.