To the Editor:
Today, two voting members of the Steamship Authority board, representing Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, control 70 percent of the Steamship Authority board vote.
When the two islands vote together, the votes of Falmouth, Barnstable, and New Bedford, that is the other three voting members of the Authority (representing together 30 percent of the board vote), are meaningless. Here are some examples of problems that mainland port towns cannot solve without a restructuring of the authority voting system because of the mainland towns’ voting status.
In the case of Falmouth and Barnstable, the Steamship Authority regularly dismisses local zoning and traffic concerns in Falmouth and Barnstable as the Steamship expands its physical footprint with larger and larger freight operations and without consultation with mainland port town officials or residents.
Expansion of freight operations are today overwhelming Barnstable and Falmouth. Absent is SSA island board member acceptance for launching an off-Cape freight port as the islands continue to grow. We see no interest or action on the part of island board members to address this problem.
The Steamship freight scheduling today deprives mainland port town residents of a reasonable night’s sleep as the Steamship Authority schedules its heaviest freight trucks through our residential neighborhoods as early as 4:30 a.m. The health impact of sleep deprivation is well documented. The Steamship Authority board’s voting structure allows the island board members to ignore that harmful impact.
Senator Susan Moran’s bill “An Act Relative to Municipal Equity in Steamship Authority (SSA) Operations,” S.1315, seeks to promote negotiation and compromise to ensure that the island and mainland port communities can work together to solve problems. S.1315 does so by requiring a broader consensus of votes by the Authority in the form of a vote by the islands and of a vote from at least one mainland port town.
So long as the islands can control Steamship Authority decision-making by voting together, pursuant to their 70 percent voting share, cooperation and regional planning will be blocked, and tensions between the islands and the mainland will continue to intensify. That is not good public policy.
Nathaniel Trumbull
Falmouth