On May 4, the island town of Nantucket in Massachusetts voted by 959-321 to support funding that will allow the only nursing home on the island to remain open.
Thanks to an 1199-member mobilization, the town agreed to a $137 million capital project to move Our Island Home to a new building at Sherburne Commons—reversing a previous decision defeating the plan last year.
The largest capital project to ever go before the Nantucket Town Meeting, the new Our Island Home is slated to keep the state’s only municipally owned skilled nursing facility open for the foreseeable future.
Paulett Brown, an 1199 CNA at the facility rallied to support the plan because:
“Our Island Home is a friendly place where people visit and can spend a lot of time with their family because they are living on the island.”
Otherwise, family members have to contend with infrequent ferry schedules to visit their loved ones.
