A Zoom-based Mariner House Board of Directors (BOD) meeting was held on Tuesday, March 18, 2025, using the Mariner House Zoom account and recorded by the Zoom host, which is Tracy Canty, and which constitutes the official and approved recording of this meeting.
Attending the meeting were Board members: Ranelle Brew, Kerric Harvey, Tammy Rausch, Mark Thurston, Bob Vanasse, and Property Manager Tracy Canty. Ex Officio Board member and past president Bill Hathaway was also present. Absent was Pat Catchpole.
A quorum of the voting members having been reached and president Bob Vanasse still being en route, in accordance with procedure Treasurer Tammy Rausch called the meeting to order at 7:02 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST). Bob arrived shortly to chair the rest of the meeting.
Tammy called for a motion to accept the minutes from last month’s Board of Directors (BOD) meeting. A motion was made and seconded, and the February 2025 minutes were thus approved.
PROPERTY MANAGER’S REPORT
Island News
February was a quiet month on the island, with lots of boat cancellations and much wind and snow.
Steamship Authority reservations for the 2025 summer season have opened. This, historically, sets off a landslide of activity since the demand for boat space far exceeds the availability. Early action is suggested if people want to make sure that they and their vehicles come over together, and at the desired time and date. The efficiency of the Authority’s system for handling reservations seems to be rather uneven, with some of the meeting members having good experiences recently, and others less so.
The Town of Nantucket has started construction for the seasonal workers’ housing site. More on that to come as events unfold.
The saga of short-term rentals on-island continues. The Town’s latest approach is a much more generalized one than some earlier iterations, the upshot of which is that it seems to be permissible for individuals to continue with short-term rentals of their own property, but that companies and corporate entities are prohibited from doing so. The Nantucket town leaders plan to resume this conversation during the April Town Meeting.
It appears that the same wind turbine that collapsed into the water last summer, littering island beaches with a carpet of fibre-glass debris and closing several of the most popular South Shore beaches for several days, has also been struck recently by lightening.
A relief fund has opened up for island businesses that lost money from the electrical outages which happened during the 2024 Nantucket Stroll.
Less inspiring: Automobile inspection this year has turned into its own kind of nightmare.
Even less pleasant than that: Nantucket is experiencing an unusually high number of dead birds showing up this spring, especially shore birds, and especially although not exclusively on island beaches. Both Kerric and Tammy, who were on-island recently, shared their own startled observations on this situation (Tammy having been on pretty much every beach around the island in her recent stay), which was reinforced by Tracy reporting that island residents had been noticing this sad situation all late winter and into the early spring, with many of the corpses showing up at Tom Nevers and Sconset. Bob asked if anyone was monitoring the issue. Tracy reported that there had been testing by an off-island group to see if “bird flu” might be the culprit, but that the full results have not yet been been passed on to islanders. Ranelle shared a link to a story on this subject from a recent issue of the Nantucket Current. It can be found at: https://nantucketcurrent.com/news/island-health-and-wildlife-officials-wary-of-bird-flu-but-no-cases-so-far \
Mariner House Updates
* Mariner House occupancy during February 2025 was 29%, more than double that of January’s usage.
* Photographer Laurie Richards will be coming in April to take both interior and exterior shots for our updated Web page and any other outreach materials.
* Tracy has put in a call to T’N’T (contractors) to start on doing the next round of gutter replacement/repair and painting. Some carpet cleaning is also in the works for April.
* Tracy also continues to work with Mariner House lawyer Joe Guay to move along several somewhat tricky foreclosures on, essentially, abandoned units that are held by defunct shell corporations. This is an ongoing process.
* Since Joe is moving towards full retirement, the Board returned to the issue of finding a replacement attorney for Mariner House. All are encouraged to join the hunt for a new MHA lawyer! Bob found out that The Brotherhood uses a lawyer based in New Bedford; he’s asked the owner of the D.C. branch of Madaket Millie’s for suggestion as well. Kerric ‘s first contact no longer practices law on-island, so she’s now reaching out to other sources. Tracy continues the search among her many island resources, too. The problem is that Mariner House is both unique as a legal category and “small potatoes” compared to other shared housing properties on Nantucket.
There being no further business at this time, Bob ended the meeting at 7:19 p.m.
The next Board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, April 15, 2025, at 7:00 p.m. EDT, on the Mariner House Zoom site.
Minutes submitted by:
Kerric Harvey,
ACK MHA BOD Secretary,
April 9, 2025