A friend with a good eye for the rhythm of Island life once suggested that a good predictor of the local economy’s health is the level of landscaper and contractor truck traffic visible on Island roads in the spring season leading up to Memorial Day, defined by prevailing local custom on Martha’s Vineyard to be the third or fourth weekend in June. By that measure it looks like we’re off to a strong start, and that’s good news. Until we conjure up a better model, we need our hybrid year-round/seasonal economy to flourish, warts and all.
Vineyarder engagement with seasonal change is emphasized this year by the coincidence of the Motor Vessel Woods Hole joining the Steamship Authority’s fleet this week. The $40 million ferry has been planned and designed to meet several different needs: serving both island ports in the summer, the much longer Nantucket run in fall and winter, and carrying a mixture of cars and trucks on her freight deck, along with 384 passengers and crew.
There is something of an analogy here to the Vineyard’s pace, and the ecology of our economy. We are a finite place, richly endowed but also delicately balanced among conflicting priorities and demands. High levels of visitor traffic from now through fall support Island retailers, inns, and restaurants, at levels way beyond the norm for year-round communities our size. And of course there’s the real estate tax revenue and the philanthropy we are so comfortable with.
So we generally welcome the added vitality, and the revenue of the season, and we grimace over but tolerate the mandatory shift toward the needs of visitors and commerce and away from our steady-state small community. In some instances, the inconveniences are short-lived and relatively minor — traffic getting into Edgartown, parking shortages at town beaches, or perhaps just the offense we take at encountering a few more folks on a usually private-seeming Land Bank trail. In all, the upsides of patience are substantial — a rich mix of cultural and retail activities; a short-term expansion of our gene pool, bringing different and frequently fascinating lives and perspectives to share; and of course binding it all together, the commerce generated by our seasonal housing industry (not much different from the hotel business one might find elsewhere), and the retail, restaurant, nonprofit, and service businesses supporting and supported by Martha’s Vineyard’s June – September doppelgänger.
In some important ways, though, the requirements of accommodating our seasonal economy require greater systemic commitments on our part. For one thing, the quantum changes in pressure on critical environmental resources, such as water quality, are extremely expensive to mitigate, as well as controversial to design and implement. For another, a large workforce is needed for construction, maintenance, and landscaping work on the one hand, and retail and restaurant staff on the other. Seasonal demands on the public infrastructure also require more personnel. At a larger scale, the Steamship Authority needs to deploy its capital, and staff, in ways that get the summer’s passengers moved around, keep the truck traffic on which Island stores and services rely on the road, fulfill its lifeline obligation to year-round Islanders — and thread the policy and planning needle respecting our strong ambivalence about the toll our seasonal economy extracts.
For the foreseeable future, though, the problem of our seasonal economy which looms largest and most pervasively is housing. Even without factoring in the needs of seasonal businesses, the lack of supply of year-round owner and rental housing to meet the important, legitimate needs of Vineyarders will worsen, and in our opinion seriously diminish community life by excluding regular Islanders, young and old. Imagine the effect on the housing calculus when businesses and summer programs and organizations figure in the mix. It’s not just the heightened competition for scarce rentals at stake; businesses and nonprofit organizations are beginning to see no choice but to buy houses for seasonal staff. Frequently not as cost-sensitive as Island families, these special-purpose buyers further diminish the availability of Island homes — and though with good intentions, contribute to a market where more and more demand chases ever-diminishing supply.
We Vineyarders enjoy our prerogative to be smug regarding the satisfactions we take from our Island lives and at the same time cranky about the indignities the seasonal engine of our economic well-being visits upon us. Just as the MV Woods Hole exemplifies compromise and accommodation in its description and deployment, we and our public bodies need to make the conscious effort it will take to balance our seasonal opportunities with the well-being of the entire community.