Select Board retreat presses reset on strategic plan, signals priority for municipal facilities and employee housing

The Nantucket Select Board met in a facilitated strategic-planning retreat on Oct. 21 to reassess the town's 2018 strategic plan in light of population, cost and operational changes since adoption. Facilitators Michelle (consultant) and Maddie opened the session, and board members, the town manager and senior staff spent the day reviewing five focus areas and the list of capital and programmatic projects the plan has generated.

Board members and staff emerged from the session with a recurring theme: the need to narrow priorities so the town can show measurable progress. "We need to take a step back," said Matt (Select Board member), summing up remarks many others made about capacity and trade-offs between competing projects.

That was echoed by Libby (Town manager), who told the board, "we need clarity from the board on projects, initiatives, programs." Libby said staff needs explicit direction and consistent board support to follow through on expensive, multi-year initiatives.

What the board discussed and where it landed

The retreat revisited the five focus areas in the existing strategic plan (housing; transportation; environmental leadership; effective and efficient town operations; and healthy and vibrant communities) and the dashboard staff uses to track progress. The packet reviewed at the meeting showed roughly $98,000,000 committed across initiatives and reported that initiatives are about 52% complete while individual strategic goals remain largely multi-year (staff reported "less than 10%" of goals completed because of the time and scale involved).

After wide-ranging discussion about what has changed since 2018 ' including COVID-driven population shifts, higher project costs, staffing and recruitment…