Martha's Vineyard is a wonderful place, but it is on a course that will lead to deterioration of many of the features we treasure most, unless we act. This section outlines the key challenges that the Vineyard today, or will face in the future as a result of continuing trends and off-Island forces. Many are related to continued development and changing population.
The remainder of the Island Plan will describe how we can deal effectively with these challenges, by working together on a clear new course of action.
Challenge 1: Growth is unsustainable. Over the past forty years, the Vineyard has faced massive growth, with the population increasing from 6,034 in 1970 to about 15,444 today. Though we’ve managed this growth better than most places, it has significantly changed the Island and our way of life. However, this amount of development cannot be sustained, because this growth is the fundamental cause of many of our other challenges listed below, such as traffic congestion and pollution in ponds. Also, since the Island is of limited size, we have to face the fact that we simply cannot grow indefinitely.
Challenge 2: Character and scenic values are deteriorating.
The Island’s visual character – a combination of scenic roads, exquisitely beautiful natural areas, and small town New England architecture – is both at the core of our sense of ourselves and is key to attracting visitors. The addition of many small changes – a large new house here, a roadside stockade fence there –continue to undermine this character.
Challenge 3: Suburban sprawl is consuming the countryside.
Development is taking large amounts of land, fragmenting habitat, and increasingly forcing residents to drive to get to work, store, or school. Commercial development on the outskirts of town – notably Upper State Road in Tisbury, Upper Main Street in Edgartown, and the West Tisbury Business District – has allowed for larger-scale businesses without destroying historic downtowns. Yet these are essentially car-oriented, commercial strips that are both poor environments for pedestrians and undermine the Vineyard’s character. Downtowns are increasingly being turned over to seasonal shops, empty in winter.
Challenge 4: It is getting harder to get around.
Traffic jams at key intersections are already problematic in the summertime. However, since we have reached the capacity of much of our road network, future growth threatens to lead to serious gridlock for much of the year. We have successfully avoided widening roads (other than the widening of the Edgartown-Vineyard-Haven and Edgartown-West-Tisbury Roads in the 70’s) or putting in traffic lights that would undermine the Island’s character, though increased traffic will increase pressure to make these kinds of road “improvements”. Growth in the bus system is constrained by financial limitations. We have 37 miles of off-road bike paths, but there are many gaps at critical places in the network and on-road bicycle accommodation is deficient in many locations.
Challenge 5: Public access is limited.
Property owners are increasingly resistant to allowing public access to private lands, ending the traditional informal access to land and beaches. This is turning us into an island where we cannot get to the water, though public control of some large beaches, such as State and South Beaches, has been secured.
Challenge 6: Zoning is outdated.
In an attempt to deal with increased development in the early 1970s, towns adopted zoning regulations using standard zoning formulas from off-Island (e.g. large single-use areas with uniform lot sizes and setbacks). In retrospect, much of our zoning has many important flaws, forcing development to sprawl into rural areas and prohibiting traditional settlement patterns by banning small lot sizes in town while allowing new buildings that are out of scale with their neighborhood.
Environment
Challenge 7: Wastewater is polluting coastal ponds.
Nitrogen pollution, largely the result of wastewater coming from septic systems, is already polluting many of our coastal ponds. We have not yet seen the full effects from the existing buildings, let alone from future growth. This undermines our commercial and recreational fishing industries, limits recreational uses of ponds, deteriorates the quality of the environment, and undermines property values. We also need to deal with other sources of excess nitrogen, such as landscaping.
Challenge 8: Climate change will modify our climate, coastline, and habitats.
It is now clear that the Earth has entered a period of considerable climate change. For the Vineyard, we will see a greater frequency of hurricanes and major storms, and sea level rise will threaten low-lying areas, such as the Vineyard Haven waterfront and much of downtown Edgartown. We are projected to have a generally warmer climate that will translate into changing plant and animal species. Our warmer, dryer summers will likely lead to lower water levels in non-tidal ponds, further concentrating nitrogen pollution.
Challenge 9: Energy will be more expensive and scarce.
A growing shortage of oil and concerns about carbon emissions will make fossil fuel-based energy much more expensive in the future. For the Vineyard, this will mean the cost of imported food and other products will go up (making local food and products more competitive.) We are especially vulnerable to rising energy costs, since the Vineyard is inherently energy-inefficient, mainly because our detached, single-family houses are hard to heat and our spread-out settlement makes us car dependent. On the other hand, we have great potential for generating renewable energy, especially through wind resources.
Challenge 10: Globally rare habitat is being fragmented or destroyed.
Over half the Vineyard is habitat for rare and endangered species. While there are somewhat better controls than in previous decades, development and landscaping practices continue to fragment this habitat with buildings and roads or the replacement of native vegetation with large manicured lawns that have little ecological value.
Challenge 11: We’re wasting our waste.
Every year, we ship 40,000 tons of solid waste off-Island. We have basic recycling, but no community composting as is done in Nantucket. We are not equipped to reuse building materials. The fact that we are a small community makes it more difficult to set up sophisticated ways of dealing with solid waste. This is exacerbated by the fact that the Island’s towns are split into two waste management districts, though there have been recent discussions about recombining them.
Economy
Challenge 12: The economy is “leaking” off-Island.
A considerable portion of our spending, estimated at two thirds of expenditures by year-round residents, is off-Island, meaning these funds are not available to support local businesses and jobs. We import almost all our needs: food, energy, and manufactured goods. A high proportion of our businesses are small and locally owned, but this is threatened from off-Island competition through the Internet, off-Island big-box stores, and the arrival of chain stores on-Island. Recent programs to “buy local” and promote “Island grown” indicate new interest in dealing with this.
Challenge 13: There is a lack of economic diversity.
We have a visitor-based economy (it has been said that our main export is happy visitors). Almost all activity is directly or indirectly related to servicing seasonal residents and visitors through shops and restaurants, real estate, construction, and landscaping. Many of these are service jobs at the low end of the pay spectrum, though wages are somewhat better than off-Island (although this is often offset by the high cost of living.) For the Vineyard, being so dependent on one cluster of industries means our economy is less resilient to economic ups and downs. The fact that this cluster is so seasonal makes it difficult for our non-seasonal businesses to remain viable. Compared to the rest of the Commonwealth, we have relatively few jobs in the most high-paying or fast-growing fields: professional, technical, health, or education.
Challenge 14: Fishing and farming are threatened.
These traditional industries, once central to our economy and lifestyle, have seriously declined. In the 19th century, most of the Island was farmland. Now there are only about 1,000 acres left, only a third of which is permanently protected. This translates into a loss of jobs and availability of local foods. It also undermines the rural character of the Island represented, in part, by the presence of farms along roadsides, the Farmers Market and the Ag Fair. Similarly, fishing has substantially declined. Menemsha is the last vestige of a fishing industry once central to the Vineyard’s economy and community.
Community
Challenge 15: There is a shortage of affordable, year-round housing.
The attractiveness of the Vineyard to wealthy seasonal residents has driven up the cost of housing dramatically in recent years. In the past decade, the median home price has more than tripled to $650,000 (in 2008), which is considered affordable to an individual or family earning $132,000 a year, about three times the Island’s median household income of $57,355. Ninety one percent of dwellings are owner-occupied, detached, single-family homes, creating a shortage of rental housing and of multi-unit housing to serve other needs such as younger people starting out and older people who no longer want to maintain a home. The Island's year-round housing issues are now engaged by an array of organizations acting in collaboration with each other and all six Towns to offer increased rental and ownership opportunities to Island residents. However much more must be done to maintain a viable, year-round community.
Challenge 16: The cost of living is very high.
Due mainly to the high cost of housing, the overall cost of living is approximately 57% higher than the national average and 12% higher than Boston. This is partly due to higher transportation costs, and the higher cost of doing business here because of the seasonal economy and the high cost of labor.
Challenge 17: There is a widening gap between groups.
The Vineyard has a diverse population, but there is concern that we are increasingly becoming a collection of separate communities based on income, seasonality, and ethnicity. Seasonal residents are a vital part of the community. Many take an active role in Vineyard life, supporting local businesses and non-profits and financially supporting the Island by paying a very large portion of property taxes (though they make fewer demands on services, especially schools, and have no vote). Most seasonal owners and even short-term visitors have a long-lasting relation to Vineyard. Many have been coming for years and feel they are Islanders. Yet, although our community is largely defined by the relation between the seasonal and year-round community, there is a sense of a widening gap between them. Additionally, there are new pressures from a recent influx of a large immigrant, mostly Brazilian population, now estimated at 20% of the year-round population and including a large number of undocumented immigrants. While this new population provides vital services on the Vineyard and adds to our cultural diversity, many of the immigrants have limited communication and involvement with the rest of community.
Challenge 18: The population is aging, and there is a loss of young families.
The Vineyard’s population is already considerably older than the average for the Commonwealth and is projected to get much older as Island baby-boomers reach their retirement years and seasonal residents move here to retire. The number of people over the age of 70 could more than triple in the next ten years, greatly increasing the need for health and human services. On the other hand, we have a somewhat smaller proportion of young people. The Vineyard is a great place to raise a family, but many young people are finding there is not enough reason to remain or return here, given limited job opportunities and the high cost of housing and living.
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