The Main Street Project - Moving Down the Road

In Monday’s Concord Monitor there is a public notice for the July 8, city council meeting. Two items of interest are the hiring of Louis Karno & Company, LLC and the authorization for appropriating $2.5 million to bury power lines on South Main Street.

Louis Karno & Company, LLC is the administration’s pick for handling promotions and keeping the public informed during the Complete Streets construction process. Before I get into the cost I need to state that while I oppose the current plan to redesign Main Street I have advocated for information that will keep the public updated during construction activities and promotions that will keep folks coming downtown during construction.

It’s always good to have a Plan B. The chances of stopping the steam roller that is the Complete Streets project has always been slim to none. But having a plan to minimize the negative economic impact this project will have has always been Plan A. Having visited Barre, Vermont which is just finishing up a four year infrastructure Main Street project, it became clear that public relations needed to be an integral part of the construction project. 

Barre, has kept the community informed of constructions detours, alternate routes and parking availability throughout the project. They have also been very aggressive with a promotions campaign whose goal was to keep folks coming downtown and getting people through the front door. Their, We Dig Barre campaign had local elementary students at the ribbon cutting ceremony at the start of construction and all students receiving a shovel and hard hat with the We Dig Barre logo on them. 

To keep folks coming downtown they had weekly and season ending drawings for gift certificates. To enter the drawing they sent you on a bit of a treasure hunt and each week the merchants that you visited to fill out the entry changed. If I remember correctly the weekly drawings were for $100 and the end of the season drawing was for $1500. 

The goal of the promotion was to keep folks coming downtown and get them thorough the front door. The feeling was that once folks were in the stores it was up to the merchants to sell their products. 

The cost for this will be $190,400. It is my understanding, Barre was able to use grants and state monies to fund their promotions. I believe, as I have stated above, that in order to have merchants still on Main Street after the construction, promotional activities must be a part of the construction project. I hope that the TIGER grant will cover 60% of the promotions with the rest coming from grants and other sources of funding rather then out of our general fund.

The $2.5 million to bury the power lines is a bit more problematic. First, the Complete Streets Advisory Committee recommended against this option. Second, to pay for this the city will use money from the 21 acre downtown TIF district. Third, there are currently two new downtown properties that will not be paying any taxes on the new value of their projects for 5, 7 & 9 years. That’s zero. None to the TIF district and none to the city. Fourth, the more money you sequester from the community and funnel to the TIF district to pay for improvements to the TF district, the longer it is before those tax funds will be available to pay for city, school and county services.

 And what happened to the promise at the last city council meeting that they would be looking at alternatives to burying the power lines? Is it possible they can decide that there is no viable alternative to burying the power lines more quickly then they can respond to a right to know request for information related to $400,000 worth of improvements at Memorial Field. Yes, they can analyze whether or not it is feasible to bring in lines from the backs of the buildings rather then bury them more quickly then they can get a file for me that shows the details for the upgrades at Memorial Field. Amazing.

And while all this is going on there is still no consensus on how the costs for the project will be distributed and who will be paying for the maintenance costs. If you think it’s going to be hot outside this week, imagine how hot it is going to be in the city council chambers  as they cram the final details of this project down our collective throats.

And anyone who still thinks this city council gives a rats behind about what the public thinks, only needs to look to the Memorial Field project. You have to ask how it was possible for the contractor to bring in his machinery and store materials on sight before the public hearing and vote to approve funding took place. Like I said above; Amazing.