Fitchburg Businesses Weigh Bad Roads Vs. Higher Taxes
For Lisa Bramante, president of City Cab Co. Inc. in Fitchburg, the state of the city’s roads is a serious business consideration.
“We’ve blown tires, bent rims, front-end alignments. It’s a major expense,” she said. “We’re just subjected to it 24 hours a day.”
Among residents and businesses that use Fitchburg’s streets, there’s a general consensus that the pothole situation is bad. But the city council recently scrapped a planned $5- million debt-exclusion ballot measure that could have raised city taxes to fix the streets. And even businesses that depend on the roads say it would have been hard to justify the higher taxes.
Bramante said the roads have been markedly worse since 2008 as the city budget has been hit by the troubled economy. And at $72 a tire, bad roads quickly add up to thousands of dollars from City Cab’s budget.
“We try to enforce policies to try to go around them, try to miss the potholes,” Bramante said.
She said the city’s decision in 2009 to save money by turning off many streetlights has also hurt her company.
“We’re actually thinking of putting in brighter bulbs because of that,” she said. “Even the downtown area, it’s just pitch black. You can’t see pedestrians walking between cars.”
Bramante said the darkness contributed to a company decision not to stay open past 2 a.m., and not to go to some areas of downtown late at night at all.
Slower Going For Truckers
At Cleghorn Oil Inc., a Fitchburg-based company that transports heating oil around the area, manager Richard Tenney said the trucks are big and tough enough that they’re unlikely to be hurt by potholes. But he said the company still has drivers take it easier than they would on clear pavement.
“It can slow you down a little bit labor-wise,” he said.
Tenney said he’s more concerned about ice and snow being cleared properly in the winter, and about the lack of streetlights.
“It would be nothing for somebody to step (onto) the street and get hit by a car, or, in my case, an oil truck,” he said.
Tenney can clearly imagine that scenario — not just the blame being thrown around and insurance premiums rising— but also the trauma for the driver at the wheel.
Against Tax Hike
Despite their expenses and worries, though, neither Bramante nor Tenney is speaking out in favor of raising taxes to improve the roads or turn on the lights. Bramante said she tries to steer clear of the politics of the situation, and Tenney said he’d rather see cuts elsewhere in the budget than increased property taxes.
David McKeehan, president of the North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce, said the situation in Fitchburg isn’t all that different from elsewhere in the state and the nation.
“The deferred maintenance on much of the infrastructure is a significant problem, and of course it’s not going to get any better going forward,” he said.
But McKeehan said it’s always difficult to balance the importance of good transportation against the impact of higher taxes.
Fitchburg’s problem is like a tiny version of the dilemma posed by nationwide infrastructure programs that are being proposed by President Obama and others. Like the roads and bridges portions of the 2009 federal stimulus package, the actual projects to be funded are uncontroversial, but some people distrust the idea of so much government spending.
McKeehan said there are a variety of options to pay for infrastructure, from letting private companies build their own toll lanes on highways to tracking cars with smart chips and charging drivers for their use of the roads. There are problems with any plan, he said, but something will have to be done to raise more money, particularly as cars reduce their use of gasoline.
“The simple solution — we’ll just raise the gas tax — will be broadly opposed,” he said.
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