We are writing to correct a misstatement in Gazette reporter Sam Ferland’s otherwise excellent March 26 article headlined “Northampton’s Picture Main Street cost climbs to $37M.” The article states: “Plans still call for the project to be funded fully by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT), along with federal money, which is overseen by PVPC.”
This is not the case. Even city officials acknowledge that the proposed project calls for the city to spend additional costs beyond aspects of the project that are purportedly funded. Design costs are not covered and a currently undisclosed amount for infrastructure repair is also not covered. There continues to be more questions than answers.
Which elements will not be funded and what will those costs be? Repairing or backfilling the 19 vaults under the sidewalks? The legal costs and compensation to landowners for rights of way? Additional design costs related to these repairs? Are these amounts over the contingency the city alluded to? It is a fair assumption that a possible mid-project drop in state and federal funding (the proposed project is scheduled to take at least three years to complete), and possible additional costs encountered in the project could lead to further expenditure of city funds.
Given these facts, and, given the ways that the proposed project would affect key elements of Northampton’s public life, (a vibrant Main Street business center, loss of public parking spaces — the Gazette said multiple parking spaces, but it would actually be 57 parking spaces, a third of the existing Main Street parking spaces, as well as removal of otherwise healthy shade trees), and additional issues, such as the impact on emergency vehicle runs from a narrowed street, displacement of the current second-lane traffic to side streets, to say nothing of the possible need to use even more city tax funds that would otherwise go to supporting an excellent school system. The call of City Councilors Meg Robbins and Christopher Caleb Stratton for a detailed review of the proposed project is more than reasonable and, in fact, essential.
Two ways to do that are to have Mayor Sciarra and her administration respond to Councilor Robbins’ and Stratton’s questions and to conduct a comprehensive trial run, as other commonwealth communities, ranging from Pittsfield to Ipswich to Newton have done in the face of similar major disruptive proposed projects. What would it cost to do the needed work without the Picture Main Street (“PMS”) project? What if the cost savings is $5 million but it costs the city $10 million above funding to complete PMS?
Karen Bierwert, Richard Chu and Fred Zimnoch live in Northampton.