Worcester City Council: Bad for Business

Three stories today in the local news put a spotlight on the Worcester City Council's penchant for punishing business. The first is a 2007 zoning ordinance that makes it more difficult for rental property owners to rent living space for college students, groups of single professionals, and anyone else trying to form a group living arrangement to bring down the cost of having a place to live. Today's article in the T&G details how a number of rental property owners are suing the city on the grounds that the 2007 "lodging house" ordinance is unconstitutional.

Whether it's unconstitutional or not, it certainly is an example of how the city's elected councilors have a penchant for putting existing business out of business.

Another example is the street vendor ordinance that was passed last year. This next article in the T&G, along with my previous post, explains yet again how the City Council passed an ordinance, and the direct result was people going of out business.

Last, but by no means least, is the City Council's unmitigated self-interest for their own individual re-election campaigns every two years in refusing to consider addressing the dual tax rate. Yet another article in the paper this morning details the specifics of this issue. The City Council spent a whole six minutes on this issue at their weekly meeting two days ago, as detailed on Daily Worcesteria's liveblog (7:12 to 7:18).

As a homeowner in Worcester, I'm not opposed to a single tax rate. Obviously, I'd rather pay no taxes at all. But real estate taxes are the absolute least of my monthly budgetary concerns, and even if they go up by as much as another hundred bucks a month (that would be a very unlikely 50% increase in my case), I'm still not going to squawk. It's because I know that the business climate in this city has been quashed by the dual tax rate for far too long. And when you add in other examples of the City Council's penchant for punishing business in this city, you may begin to understand why it's time to read these eleven elected representatives the riot act.

During their re-election campaigns this season, it would be interesting to hear the candidates' views as to whether they want to make Worcester an exclusively residential town with as little business property as possible and as few small businesses as possible, or if they really do want to see a future for this city with thriving businesses. So far, it's clear that they have no interest in the latter.