YACK On Patrol.

Here's my column from this week's Nantucket Independent.


This week, YACK On is being written by two columnists. The usual writer, Grant Sanders, and Detective Steve Tornovish of the Nantucket Police Department. The subject: The events of a cool evening on October over a week ago.

Grant: A week ago on Saturday, at 9 pm, I got into a green Ford Expedition, and went for a ride. A friend of mine, Detective Steve Tornovish (A.K.A Tuna. Or SteveTuna on yackon.com) of the Nantucket Police Department offered to show me the dark, seedy underbelly of the Nantucket community.

Steve: Grant and I have always had an interesting relationship since the beginning of YACK. We tend to be polar opposites in many ways, particularly in our political views. Grant manages YACK and, thus, has a responsibility to keep people in line. My role on YACK has been to explore exactly where that line is drawn.

Grant: Steve is one of my favorite posters on YACK. I’ve only had to put him on double secret probation twice.

Steve: It seemed to be a karmic necessity that Grant would go out on patrol with me for a night. We talked about this for a couple of weeks in advance. I had to obtain the approval of Chief Pittman. The Chief was all for it – he wants the people of Nantucket to have a greater understanding of what it is that the Nantucket Police officers deal with on a patrol shift. He told me to enforce several basic ground rules that apply to all ride-along situations. Grant wasn’t to go into any houses or buildings if we were on a call that brought us there. Also, Grant was to remain in the cruiser if I was involved in a motor vehicle stop. These were good rules to keep things safe. Grant had no problem with them. Good enough.

Grant: I also got to wear a Kevlar vest. Adjustable. Lots of Velcro. Armor plating. It fit comfortably under my sweatshirt in exactly the way a freshly laundered T-shirt doesn’t.

Steve: Our first call of the night involved assisting a citizen who had somehow lost her car keys. We weren’t dispatched to this call by police radio, however. It came in via Grant’s cell phone. So off we went to give assistance to Grant’s wife and son. It was a hoot – Grant and I got to poke a little fun at Barrie, his wife — and my old Academy Hill School classmate. Grant’s son, Owen and I got to discuss the wit and wisdom of Cheese, a character on “Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends” (a cartoon my daughters make me watch with them). In many ways, this call is what being a cop in a small town is all about: Someone has a problem, we respond, we assess the situation and then try to do what we can to set things right.

Grant: Who locks three sets of keys in a car and then loses the fourth? Yeesh.

Steve: Once that crisis was averted, we stopped at the station. Grant got to get a quick glimpse of the detective’s office, an ultra-classified space the contents of which he had to pinkie-swear not to reveal. (Grant, no threat implied, but I checked the rule book — a violation of a pinkie-swear promise is, indeed, an atomic wedgie. FYI.)

Grant: Would I be risking the atomic wedgie if I revealed that by the looks of your desk, it appeared to be the cleaning lady’s year off?

Steve: Finally, we got on the road and it was time for business. When things were slow, I droned on about calls that I’d been on and the goofy things that we cops see.

Grant: Very different than what ad guys see. Very.

Steve: Just as Grant’s eyes began to glaze over, business picked up. We went to a noise complaint with another officer. My partner was out of his cruiser ahead of me and was soon heard shouting at someone. He had come upon a group of young men fighting in a driveway.

Grant: “Bad Boys.. Bad Boys.. Whatcha gonna do?” It was just like that show, Cops. I wish I had a video camera.

Steve: Things were interesting for the next twenty minutes or so as other officers came to help break up this party that was threatening to get out of hand.

Grant: I had to stay in the car and listen to the police radio. I wished I had brought along some stuff to make sandwiches. I resisted the urge to press all of the buttons on the radio to see what they did.

Steve: Shortly after we cleared, we were called to assist another officer on a motor vehicle stop. We quickly saw the reason for the stop – nine guys were piled into a little hatchback like so many circus clowns. This was truly something that had to be seen to be believed.

Grant: Pretty “funny” stuff. A bunch of goofball kids in an unsafe situation. Reminded me of my youth. The NPD handled it well, though. The young men were kept safe, they gained some understanding of what was wrong with what they were doing and, finally, there was an appropriate measure of accountability doled out.

Steve: The night ended with a bang – literally. I had just initiated a car stop of a vehicle that was being driven in a less than stellar manner. I went to speak with the driver and obtain a driver’s license and vehicle registration. When I returned to the cruiser, Grant told me that dispatch had just put out a call for a roll-over motor vehicle crash with unknown injuries. The crash was reported to be about a half mile from where we were. So much for this car stop – I quickly returned the documents to the driver and sent them off with a brief admonishment. Then it was off to the scene of the accident.

Grant: Folks, do not drive as fast as the Tuna did on Sparks Ave. He’s a professional.

Steve: Upon our arrival, we learned that the driver was nowhere to be found. The crash looked like someone in the vehicle could have been injured. Thus, our job was to search the area and find the driver. Grant got to see the confusion that police officers have to try to make sense out of when you arrive on such a scene.

Grant: Here’s what had happened. The driver had been exiting the new roundabout and ended up flipped over on the front lawn of a nearby house. I believe I predicted as much in my column two weeks ago! Roundabout-induced vertigo! You heard it here!

Steve: Fortunately, this story had a happy ending and the driver was located. He was shaken up but not seriously injured. It was now about 1:45 in the morning – time to call it quits. I once read that police officers are the folks who get to share the worst fifteen minutes of a person’s life with them. Sadly, I have experienced how true that adage is. What people don’t often get to see are the little victories that make being a cop the greatest job there is.

Grant: I have to say that after that night, I have added respect on top of the immeasurable respect and gratitude I previously felt for the work the Nantucket Police Department does to keep our island safe.

Even without the possibility of an atomic wedgie.

YACK on.

Grant Sanders is the Host of YACK the Nantucket Online Community at yackon.com and Steve Tornovish is a Detective with the Nantucket Police Department. They are contemplating becoming a crime-fighting duo, Adman and Tuna, but neither one wants to be the sidekick. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of The Nantucket Independent.

Our Dysfunctional Planning Board.

What do you call a planning board that does not believe in planning? What do you call a planning board that continually goes against the wishes of the island to slow growth and curb development? What do you call a Planning Board with several members who have and will benefit financially from development? What do you call a planning board that appears to be attempting to turn Nantucket into downtown Hyannis? What do you call a planning board that attacks its appointed alternates and values politics over policy?

Dysfunctional. Backward. Broken.

Of course, Nantucket, we have no one to blame but ourselves. That’s right. You and me. We continually elect and re-elect the same people to five year terms on the board.

Five years. That’s a long time. In fact, when you take a look at the current board and count up their successive terms and do the math, we have a planning board with well over 60 years on the board. That’s a scary thought. This longevity has allowed the current board to burrow into the fabric of the community like a giant nasty tick, and release their venom slowly over time, largely unnoticed by the general population of the island. A population that is far too busy trying to pay the mortgage and the weekly grocery bill to pay much attention.

Let’s shine a light on a few things, then, for the sake of an informed electorate.

The 41-81d Master Plan

Interestingly, many people do not know that the 41-81d Master Plan is a requirement of the state of all municipalities. The enabling legislation defines a Master Plan under Chapter 41, section 81d as “a statement, through text, maps, illustrations or other forms of communication, that is designed to provide a basis for decision making regarding the long-term physical development of the municipality.” It goes on to say that the plan is broken into nine sections:

Goals and policies
Land use
Housing
Economic development
Natural and cultural resources
Open space and recreation
Services and facilities
Circulation
Implementation program

You can read the rest of the enabling legislation here.

Golly. That would be useful. A plan for how we want the island to be developed. An idea for how the whole island should grow and change over time. Goals. Maps. Plans for services and space and housing. We could really USE that right now. So where is it? The Planning Board and staff announced that it was in the works 18+ months ago. They launched a web site. They spent a pile of money on really bad ads (I’m an expert on ads, folks) and they even vowed to have a special town meeting this fall to go over the plan.

Unfortunately, when you have a planning board that eschews planning the last thing they want to work on is an actual plan! They are, in fact, Anti-Planners. You’d think that with 60 years on the board one of the five could find the time to write a plan.

In fact, someone else had to write it! A very large group of concerned citizens who wanted to have a plan got together a while back and in 2000 released the Nantucket Comprehensive Plan. The ratification of which was approved at a special town meeting and weakened at a subsequent town meeting. This could have served as a basis for the actual Master Plan. In fact, it could easily be the Master Plan with a few alterations and a vote of the Planning Board.

The Comprehensive Plan has (strangely, mysteriously) disappeared from the town web site (there’s a link, but it’s dead…), but I managed to find a copy, inexplicably, on a Chinese-language site. I’ve transferred a .pdf copy to the YACK servers for those who wish to read it here.

The NP&EDC

NP&EDC stands for Nantucket Planning and Economic Development Commission. It’s an important body. Or at least it should be. The problem is, the NP&EDC is controlled by the Planning Board and, as we’ve already established, a Planning Board that is dead-set against planning, is not the best body to run a commission which is supposed to be charged with mapping out the future of the community. The Commission is made up of the five planning board members, three at-large “citizens,” and representatives form the Conservation Commission, Housing Authority, DPW and County Commissioners (BOS).

They have a number of things they could be working on. Not the least of which is a draft of the 41-81d Master Plan, a review of the Sconset Beach Preservation Fund Project, Economic Development projects, Affordable Housing initiatives, proposed changes to zoning, and a number of other issues. The problem is, this commission only meets six times a year. Once majority control of the NP&EDC was wrestled away from a group of citizens who actually liked the idea of planning our future, after several respected members resigned out of disgust for the petty politics of the boardand the hiring of the current Planning Director, the controlling interesting of the commission voted to reduce the number of meetings each year from twelve to six.

Score another one for the Anti-Planners.

The Alternates Brouhaha

The Planning Board appoints three alternates who sit on special permit sessions and fill in for PB members if they go missing. The three planning alternates, Charity Benz, Jason Flanagan and John Wagley have also been publicly vocal against several of the policies of the current board so the Planning Board has mounted a smear campaign against the alternates and in a public letter have accused them of being disruptive, unreliable, drunk, unruly racists who are not team players. Painting these three very honorable and selfless people with such a broad brush is the worst kind of political bovine poo. My head almost exploded when I read the letter. Especially since, it appears to egregiously violate their First Amendment rights of free speech by essentially instructing them to keep their opinions to themselves and not publish them on YACK the Nantucket Online Community. (By the way, Planning Board Member John McLaughlin has been banned from YACKon.com for two months for violating a long-held rule of only distributing information on YACK with the permission of the author and the site owner — me — which he did not do before copying and pasting alternates’ posts into the public record.)

You can read the letter sent by board member Frank Spriggs, admonishing the three alternates here. Hopefully your head will not explode either.

Time for a change

What do you do with something that’s broken, as the Planning Board so assuredly is? You fix it. The Nantucket Government Study Committee is looking at the possibility of making the Planning Board an appointed board rather than an elected one. This would eliminate the long five-year elected terms and replace the current popularity contest we use to choose Planning Board members with a system that values qualifications and vision.

I have heard that this proposal will be brought before the Town at Annual Town Meeting this Spring. I’ll be supporting it, and I hope everyone else will, too.

Because Nantucket cannot afford to have a Planning Board that does not believe in planning for much longer.

Nantucket First!