So, What Should Concord Do?

In these continuing difficult economic times where should the city be spending our tax dollars? On a $20 million dollar library, how about $8 million to gussy up Main Street? Say a million or so for a turf field at Terrill Park? OK, let’s just build one more leg of the Langley Parkway for $8 million or so.

Or do we spend our money on eliminating the stench that comes from Hall Street. Or catching up on deferred street maintenance, estimated in the 10’s of millions of dollars. What about the multiple millions needed to bring Memorial Field back as a focal point and center of pride for our city? 

If you defer repairing your roof so you can go on a tropical cruise and it rains while you’re away, when you get home the ceiling will also need to be repaired. Wait a little longer because you ‘need’ that new iphone and now you’re looking at moldy walls. You get the picture. Fix it now or pay a lot more later

It is no different for our city. Deferring and delaying needed infrastructure repairs while pushing ahead with new projects will only have our city looking for more and more revenues while playing an unending game of never catching up. 

Even in our "I have to have it now society," there is a difference between needs and wants. We need to have police and fire protection. We need clean water and effective waste treatment. We need to maintain our roads, city buildings and parks. Deferring todays maintenance for tomorrow only escalates the cost. More money and less bang for our bucks is not the road I want to travel.

The city has improved many of our parks and we have moved forward on some big ticket items (the Route 3 corridor project comes to mind). We continue to maintain excellent police, fire and rescue services. Yet there are many items we have neglected. The year to year road maintenance. The parking lot at Memorial Field. Increased hours and improvements to our library and community centers. 

While I’m reluctant to use city to city comparisons, if we look to our south, Manchester over the years has made a series of good decisions to maintain and improve existing infrastructure while preparing their city to move forward as economic conditions allow. Renovating their Mills in the 1970s, improving infrastructure and roadwork on Canal and Commercial Streets in the 1980s. Moving ahead with the Verizon, the ballpark and high end condos and apartments. Reinventing Elm Street after the mall all but turned their downtown into a ghost town. 

Today, their downtown is a mix of business, entertainments and retail. When Manchester decided to move forward with improvements to their streetscape, the success of their revitalized Elm Street gave the city the opportunity to charge downtown landlords a surcharge on their property taxes to pay for the improvements.

If we want to utilize our tax dollars efficiently I think we need to be poised to move forward when the economy improves. Keep up with repairs and maintenance. Improve the infrastructure to prepare for future growth. Make sure new projects generate enough in tax revenue to pay for services that will be needed to support the new growth and to sustain current services. 

New libraries, new community centers, new athletic facilities and new roads are all wonderful projects. But if we can’t pay for what we have and we aren’t generating the revenue necessary to repair and maintain what we have, perhaps we don’t need what we want until we can pay for what we have. That’s what I think.