Nantucket advisory committee hears limits and trade-offs of funding options for coastal projects

The Coastal Resilience Advisory Committee on May 27 heard detailed town staff guidance on how Nantucket might increase long-term funding for coastal resilience projects and the legal and political limits of each option.

The discussion, led by Joanna Roach, a committee member and the letter author, brought answers from Brian Turbot, Finance Director for the Town of Nantucket, and Libby Gibson, Town Manager, who described how existing Article 10 capital funds and other mechanisms work and warned that some ideas would create practical or legal hurdles.

Why it matters: committee members said the one-time and annual projects identified in the Coastal Resiliency Plan will require far more than the town’s current steady allocation and that the town needs predictable capital to qualify for some grants or move quickly when emergencies occur.

Turbot and Gibson said the town currently allocates about $1 million per year under Article 10 for coastal resiliency work and that money “never goes away” between budget years: “That money, if it’s not fully expended in a year, whatever is left can roll over and is continuously available,” Turbot said. But they cautioned that other proposals have trade-offs.

A special-purpose stabilization fund — a dedicated reserve voters create at town meeting and from which spending requires another town-meeting action — “would not ensure that funds actually go into that fund,” Gibson said, and would add steps to access money. Turbot added that special stabilization…