The Nantucket County Capital Program Committee on Jan. 14, 2025, voted to remove the Our Island Home capital request from the report’s headline totals but to retain narrative notes about the project in the committee’s final text.

Committee members described the series of meetings that produced public comment and said the majority of CAPCOM members are not proponents of the proposal because of its long‑term costs, but several members also said voters should have the chance to consider the request at town meeting. After discussion, members made a motion to reconsider the item’s inclusion and then a subsequent motion to remove the project from the numerical totals while keeping the descriptive narrative in the report.

Committee members and staff reviewed high‑level capital totals during the meeting. The chair summarized the report’s rollup: when the request list began the total was about $274,800,000 across 60 requests; the committee’s recommendation covers 53 projects at approximately $257,500,000 before adjusting for debt exclusions and other large items. Members noted that subtracting large debt exclusions (for example, an Ireland Home request and an $80,000,000 DPW debt exclusion mentioned in the discussion) significantly changes year‑to‑year comparisons.

Several members asked for stronger language in the report to make the committee’s financial concerns explicit. Committee member Christy Kickham and others said the project carries an emotional and historical component for some voters, but that the capital committee’s duty is to weigh long‑term fiscal stewardship. “The majority of CAPCOM members are not proponents of the project due to its unsustainable costs,” a committee member summarized of the discussion; members agreed to preserve that language and to show the decision separately from the report’s headline dollar totals.

The committee scheduled additional follow‑up editing and agreed to meet later in the week to finalize report text for submission to the Select Board. Staff agreed to circulate financial slides and prior presentations used to analyze the project’s multi‑year impact.

The committee’s procedural actions changed the published totals in the report appendices: after the vote to remove the Our Island Home item from aggregated totals, staff noted the committee’s recommended capital total would be reduced by the project’s requested sum (the transcript and staff said exact ballot amounts would be updated in the appendices prior to final publication).