Peter Burke, a chamber representative who briefed the Visitor Services Advisory Committee, said the town’s December Christmas Stroll “by a lot of metrics was a success” but that a downtown power outage exposed gaps in emergency response and communications. “We saw upwards of 18,000 people that weekend on our cell phone tracking,” Burke said, adding that Main Street likely saw “5 to 6,000 people” at peak periods.

The outage affected businesses, hotels and public safety operations and limited cellphone service for some attendees, Burke and other participants said. Burke described difficulties coordinating National Grid equipment delivery to the island and said Steamship Authority scheduling constraints prevented an earlier equipment ferry run. “There was a lot of reason that the public had to be a little bit…perturbed,” he said.

Committee members and town staff highlighted three immediate concerns: (1) crowd management and public safety on narrow downtown streets; (2) reliable emergency communications when local power and cellular boosters are down; and (3) clearer, pre‑staged arrangements with utility and ferry operators for major events.

Chantal Bloyce Murphy, Director of Visitor Services, told the committee the town already maintains event-specific standard operating procedures and runs pre-event and post‑event meetings with public safety and other departments. “I have a standard operating procedure for every large scale event that I touch,” she said, describing routine after‑action meetings to update permitting and response checklists.

Still, committee members urged a formal after‑action report and a repeatable checklist for future large weekends. Member Mary Malvez called Burke’s summary “the perfect raw material” for an after‑action memo; another committee member suggested using automated transcription summaries or AI to accelerate drafting a concise list of lessons learned and assigned actions. Several speakers proposed that the town and event organizers require National Grid to pre‑stage additional crews or equipment during forecasted busy weekends.

Public‑safety concerns included a moment during Santa’s arrival when police and staff temporarily prevented Santa from disembarking due to overcrowding on the waterfront. Burke and others said the town increased the number of portable restrooms downtown (from four the previous year to nine), a change attendees appreciated, but that restroom placement and other logistics still need refinement to reduce mid-event congestion.

Town staff described the coordination that kept guests from being stranded overnight: hotels moved affected guests between properties within minutes and Steamship Authority and event organizers worked to reserve boat space for departures. Chantal Bloyce Murphy said some logistical efforts worked well — for example, hotels moved about 60 guests quickly — but business losses from the outage were concentrated among restaurants and retail that could not operate without power.

Committee members also raised safety hardware questions, including whether more durable barriers (for example, Jersey barriers) should be used instead of temporary wooden planks for crowd control. The committee’s special-events subgroup will take that up in its regular monthly meetings.

The committee agreed to pursue an after‑action review and to press utility and ferry partners for defined contingency staging during major events. Staff said planning for spring events (notably the Daffodil Festival) will incorporate lessons from the Stroll review and that the events committee will meet monthly to coordinate permitting, public safety and communications.