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portation and other environmental related topics. “And they shook us by the shoulders,” Mr. Klein recalled.
Next, a series of 24 public hearings gave the islanders a chance to tell their elected and appointed officials their ideas. Planning commissioners traveled Nantucket’s “rubber chicken circuit,” talking to md listening to Rotary Clubs and chambers of commerce.
The proposals that came out of these meetings went through draft after draft after draft before being gathered into a 28-page booklet, Goals and Objectives for Balanced Growth, “a vision, a blueprint for Nantucket 20 years from now,” Mr. Klein explained. A copy was mailed to every postal patron on the island with the question: “Is this what you want the island to be? Come to the town meeting in two weeks and tell us.”
The booklet was “short, succinct, easy to understand,” he said.
Its theme? “We weren’t saying no growth. We weren’t talking about torpedoing the ferry. We were saying yes, there can be growth . . . but we want to stop it dead at the moors. We want to keep growth around the villages. We were promoting the village concept.”
At the town meeting — where the people of every Massachusetts locality decide all questions, from the annual budget to whether “the lifeguards will wear sunshades” — the plan for balanced growth passed unanimously, 450 to 0, Mr. Klein reported.
Then came the vote on the means to achieve the balance: a land bank. With only a single voter opposed, the islanders endorsed a 2 percent real estate transfer tax with the money to be controlled by elected land grant commissions and spent to buy the threatened heaths, moors, shoreline and other undeveloped land.
Nantucket then petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for the enabling law necessary to establish the land bank and enact the transfer tax. Thanks to the unanimity of the islanders’ support, Mr. Klein said, the legislation was passed that first year.
The tax is levied against all real estate purchases. Paid by the purchaser, it is due moments before the deed is recorded. The typical tax pei transfer runs between $2,000 anc $3,000, Mr. Klein said.
For the next two months, th<
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