The Island’s regional regulatory board, born out of concern that development was running rampant on the Island in the early 1970s, is celebrating a major milestone.
The Martha’s Vineyard Commission — which has been credited with helping preserve and shaping the Island into what it is today — is turning 50.
The Commission is kicking off the celebrations with an exhibit at Featherstone depicting the history of the institution and telling the story of how it came to be. An opening reception will be held March 10 and a separate public gathering will be held on March 14 to honor the people who have participated in the MVC’s mission.
As current and prior members explain it, in the early 70s, dozens of subdivisions and hundreds of new houses were going into the Island each year. There were fears that the very character of the Island was in jeopardy, and that the environment was facing an existential threat.
“It was kind of the Wild West out here,” says current commission chair Fred Hancock.
A Boston consulting firm contracted through Island officials in the early 1970s took a more drastic tone. The report, from a group called Metcalf and Eddy, warned that the Vineyard would contract “terminal environmental cancer” by 1975, unless appropriate action was taken.
The arc of the story following the report that led to the creation of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission ended with legislation passed by state lawmakers and was signed by the governor. But along the way, one proposal almost turned the Island into a protected, national park.
As Hancock tells it, there were limited regulations in place. A particular worry, developers had purchased a chunk of land bordering much of Sengekontacket on the west side and were looking to build over 800 lots on 500 acres of land.
The threat of the development landed on the desk of Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, and in 1972, Kennedy proposed his Nantucket Sound Islands Trust Bill. The legislation would have turned much of the Vineyard and Nantucket into a national land trust, similar to the Cape Cod National Seashore — a popular stretch of coastal land that covers much of the Outer Cape.
There was significant hesitation from Islanders, with many believing the senator was going a step too far. Many worried the legislation would stop the construction of single-family homes.
“There were Islanders who said, ‘You know, I bet we can come up with a mechanism to pretty much do everything in a national park… but it’s not that of an extreme measure,” Hankcock says. “The people who might not have been so environmentally conscious realized, ‘Wait, we can’t have this… we better join forces with the environmentalists in place.’”
Brought on by Kennedy’s proposal, Island towns and residents pushed for more local control.
“For the most part, the Island was generally against the Kennedy bill because it would have taken so much control away from the towns and limited people’s ability to build housing,” Alex Elvin, research and communications manager at the Commission told The Times.
Elvin explains that a group that was formed in the 1960s called the Dukes County Planning and Economic Commission, led at the time by Alex Fittinghoff, started organizing meetings of residents on both sides of the Kennedy bill, trying to come up with an alternative.
Eventually, then Massachusetts Governor Francis Sargent appointed one of his staffers to come to the Vineyard and work with the commission and Island select boards to develop an alternative state bill that would leave decisions up to the Island itself.
The motivation behind the meetings was to reach a compromise and the group took about two years to craft proposed legislation.
On March 14, 1974, in a lopsided margin, Island voters passed a nonbinding referendum to demonstrate local support for legislation creating the commission. While current staff don’t have the exact tally of the vote, Elvin says that news coverage at the time put the vote at 2 – 1 in favor; a much starker tally found in an analysis of the commission in the 1980s found the vote was more like 20 – 1. Regardless, Islanders were overwhelmingly in support.
The idea was to have a regional land and water entity that was both a planning agency but also an authority with extensive regulatory authority.
And on July 27, 1974, after support from the state legislature, Governor Sargent came to the Island and signed the landmark legislation, transforming the economic development commission into today’s Martha’s Vineyard Commission.
“There is not one inch of available land on the Islands that is not being eyed by developers today,” the governor was quoted in a Vineyard Gazette article during a signing ceremony held on the Island. “Let me say again… there are developers looking at every single inch of available land in the Commonwealth, particularly land near the water…If the developers do the planning, we’re the losers.”
With the new legislation, the MVC held its first meeting on Dec. 5, 1974. And the rest is history.
Current members reflecting on the history say that the role of the agency is not to stop development completely on the Island, but to help make it better and more responsible.
“I think that developers have learned to look more carefully at their projects, and they bring us better plans than if there was no Commission,” said Linda Sibley, a commissioner for 35 years. “We are here to help people make projects better, not to say no to things. I think that what the Commission does more than anything else is to make people think about the impacts of their developments and take them into consideration.”
While credited with helping to preserve the Island, the Commission isn’t without its controversy, as any regional regulatory board would.
The first of the two primary thrusts of the MVC is Districts of Critical Planning Concern (DCPC), which designate specific areas where development must be regulated by the towns based on Commission guidelines.
Early DCPCs protected most of the coastline, protected the character of the Island roads and some of the original cart paths and ancient ways, and special places districts such as Waskosim’s Rock. There are currently 21 DCPCs covering almost all of the shoreline and many inland areas.
Developments of Regional Impact (DRI) are the Commission’s second major thrust, which is looking at projects through a regulatory and planning lens. DRIs are those that are large enough that they can have a significant impact on more than one town. There have been roughly 1,300 DRIs since the Commission’s inception.
A particular lightning rod DRI was the 1987 MVY Realty Trust Nobnocket, near the Tashmoo overlook. A former bank owner wanted to build space for a mall, grocery store, and bank that involved some 65,000 square feet of new construction and over 30 parking spaces. The project would receive Commission approval, but developers ultimately withdrew in 1991 after pushback from voters.
Island officials have also periodically discussed the idea of withdrawing from the Commission. As recently as last year, Edgartown officials mulled the idea, citing a swelling Commission budget, particularly in its legal line. The Commission had been hit with a number of lawsuits from disgruntled developers, including a proposal to develop nearly 30, single-family homes off of Meetinghouse Way. The town ultimately tabled the idea, but Edgartown officials have expressed frustration for paying about 40 percent of the Commission’s budget, especially as the Commission faces pushback from developers and growing lawsuits.
In Oak Bluffs, some town officials also pushed to withdraw from the Commission, also over concern about a swelling legal budget.
Brian Packish, a former select board member and former commissioner, has been critical to certain aspects of the regional commission. But when the select board discussed getting out of the Commission, he advised against the idea.
Packish says that the Commission is a great planning agency, whether it’s helping towns plan for water quality issues, housing, traffic or applying for grant funding.
But Packish has issues with the finer details of the DRI review process, saying that it is too easy for towns to pass projects — big or small — to the Commission for extra review. The Commission’s regulatory process can be costly and timely and potentially too much for a small developer.
As a recent example of Packish’s point, Harbor Homes last year proposed creating a homeless shelter in an Oak Bluffs neighborhood. While also citing the concerns of residents near the proposed shelter, organizers of Harbor Homes withdrew plans when the local zoning board voted to send the project to the Commission for review. Organizers cited additional permitting requirements in its decision to give up on the project. Today, Harbor Homes still operates in a temporary space.
Packish also says that the Commission’s review has become too narrowly focused, rather than reviewing projects that could have consequences across the Island. “The driver process is broken, and that’s where we need the most work,” Packish said. “Applicants don’t have clarity or clear expectations even if they are doing the right thing.”
But overall, Packish says that the Commission is a great planning organization for the Island, providing resources to towns.
Current commissioners also point to these services as a benefit for the Island.
“These people do planning for the Island and are on staff because the towns can’t afford to hire all these people individually,” Hancock said. “We do this as a service for the Island, but we also rely on the staff to inform us about any issue that might come into play with the DCPCs and DRIs so that we don’t inadvertently compromise anything.”
Staff at the Commission share the same view.
“It’s a very interesting community and job,” senior planner Bill Veno says about his work. “The staff is working with the towns on a variety of things. With planning there are so many different issues. It’s like a big puzzle with dynamic pieces.”
Veno has worked at the MVC for a quarter century. “You still see a lot of the same issues,” he reflects. “They are of different magnitudes now, and there are some new issues. Climate was a big thing back then. Water quality, housing, and transportation take different forms.”
Elvin added on his tenure on staff, “It’s a great way to learn about the Island from different perspectives. It’s a sort of fascinating case in terms of one Island with six towns and what factors shape the present and the future and those factors are always changing. It’s important to keep up with that … and to share it with the public so that they can make better decisions. That’s essentially what we’re all doing on some level.”
MVC@50 will be on view at Featherstone March 10 – 30 from noon to 4 pm daily. Opening Reception: Sunday, March 10, 4 to 6 pm, and a public gathering on March 14 to honor the people who have participated in the MVC mission over the years with guest speakers of former commissioners and staff.
There are two features of the founding documents for the Commission which have helped it weather the storms through the past fifty years.
The first is its funding formula. Every single property on Martha’s Vineyard pays into the Commission’s coffers at the same rate. This is a very powerful way to say, “We are all in this together.”
The second feature is its manner of electing commissioners. Every year there are elections to the Commission which require candidates to be on the ballot in all six towns. This, too, is a community-building feature.
The Regional High School Committee recently agreed to periodically review its own founding documents. When this review process begins next I hope MVRHS will consider the example of the Commission. For MVRHS board members to best do their jobs it would help if each one could say, “I was put here by voters Island-wide,” and “We’re all in this together.”
We are lucky to have Fred Hancock, Linda Sibley, Christina Brown, Brian Packish, Richard Toole, and the many other individuals who have served us so well on the Commission. But these specific features of the way the commission lives as an organization are important, too.
If the MVC could only focus on Regional development, that effects more than one town on a large scale, it would have more respect and relevance. When it tries to involve itself as a political sheriff, it creates resentment within local town planning agencies and with Island residents. If it continues to abuse it’s broad powers, it will cease to be funded. It is important for any director of the MVC to understand this.
The MVC has lost its way and has made many mistakes as well. Going all the way back to the Nobnocket development that would have been great for the island. Imagine keeping traffic out of the downtowns. Imagine having a traffic way from Edgartown Vineyard Haven Rd. to State Road? To the most recent killing of an affordable house project in Edgartown that is still in litigation and costing the towns hundreds of thousands of dollars. This once small little commission now has a budget of over 2 million taxpayer dollars and is not as needed as we have plenty of new regulations throughout the island. Like any governmental body they keep trying to invent new ways to be relevant to keep themselves going. I do not blame them for wanting to keep their huge salaries and great benefits, but the island cannot afford this 50 year old outdated administration. The whole country needs term limits everywhere and the commission is no different.
The Commission has term limits.
The whole country has term limits
We the people determine term limits.
At the ballot box.
It’s called democracy.
When will Bob step up and limit the terms of these overpaid, overbenefited MVC miscreants?
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