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 funds can become a barrier: “I’ve never been a really big supporter of special purpose stabilization funds because I think they create barriers, potential barriers to completion of projects.”

Committee members and staff discussed alternatives:

- Betterments/special assessments for property owners who directly benefit — already used on projects such as Sheep Pond Road and Baxter Road alternative access — would spread cost over 20–30 years but require the town to borrow up front. Gibson noted such projects are large: “Baxter Road…that’s a $30.35, $40,000,000 project.”

- A dedicated coastal-sticker or small percentage of an existing tax (for example, room-occupancy tax) was discussed, but Turbot said a 1% share of room-occupancy collections would generate too little to be a major source (about $136,000 based on 2024 collections) and that current room-tax receipts are largely integrated into the town’s operating budget.

- Amending an existing revolving fund — specifically the Beach Improvement Fund established under chapter 56, section 7A of the town code — to permit coastal-resiliency expenditures was presented as a practical next step. Gibson and Turbot said the town already has a beach revolving fund used for lifeguards, ATV replacement, fencing and endangered-species work and that the fund’s purpose could be broadened and its internal allocation clarified at an annual town meeting.

Town staff sketched the revenue implications of one concrete option: a $50 increase to both the on-island and off-island beach sticker tiers. Brian Turbot provided selling numbers from fiscal 2024: “Last year, there was 6,182 beach stickers sold for fiscal 24. … It would bring in a little over $300,000 in additional income or revenue” based on current sales, but he warned that higher fees could reduce purchases and therefore revenue.

Committee members pressed the town on whether the Article 10 allocation could be raised over time. Gibson said routine review and adjustment is possible: “I don’t see why not…that’s probably something we should evaluate every, I don’t know, 3 to 5 years.” Several members recommended indexing or otherwise increasing the line item as sea-level risk grows.

Grant strategy and matching funds also featured. Leah Hill, listed in the meeting as staff, asked how the town could muster a large local match if a federal grant required, for example, 20% of a $100 million construction grant. Turbot said a match of that magnitude would almost certainly require a debt exclusion and town-meeting approval and that the town could not realistically pre-commit that scale of funds without a specific project already defined: “There is no way for us to cobble together a 20% match on something that large.”

Vince Murphy, the town’s former coastal resiliency coordinator, urged caution about creating funds that are hard to spend: “Special purpose stabilization funds…create hurdles to get the money out,” he said, and noted that Article 10 funds, by contrast, remain available year to year and have allowed the town to demonstrate an ongoing local commitment when applying for grants.

Committee members emphasized implementation capacity as a limit as well as money: several speakers, including committee member Jen Carberg, warned that the town’s staffing and permitting capacity constrains how many projects can move from concept to construction, which affects timing for grant applications and debt votes.

No formal motion or vote on a new funding mechanism was taken. Town leaders invited the committee to refine recommendations and suggested short-term steps such as amending the Beach Improvement Fund’s stated purposes at the next annual town meeting and further refining revenue and economic-impact estimates for any fee changes.

What’s next: staff agreed to follow up with detailed revenue and impact estimates for the beach-sticker scenarios and to brief the select board and finance committee as the committee prepares a letter or recommendation. Committee members proposed forming a small work group to model funding mixes (grants, betterments, town-wide taxes) and public messaging for voters.

Ending note: both town staff and committee members repeatedly stressed that legal constraints, permitting timelines and political acceptance on the island will shape what funding path is feasible and that a mix of tools — steady Article 10 allocations, targeted betterments, amended revolving funds and selective grant-seeking — is more plausible than a single large, permanent funding vehicle at this time.