Attention DIYers!

Worcester has a new proposal on the horizon...

Do-it-yourself sidewalk and street repair.

Dear Worcester home owners: Thanks for your recent home purchase and continuing tax payments – BTW, sidewalk repair was not included in that assessment.


From today’s T&G
http://www.telegram.com/article/20080311/NEWS/803110618

“With insufficient municipal money available for sidewalk construction or repair, a proposal is being broached that would allow (my emphasis) homeowners to take the matter into their own hands and then receive some property tax relief from the city.”

My translation:

Since Worcester has no money to fix (never mind build) sidewalks, some of the City Councilors have been persuaded to let you fix your own crumbling eyesore. As an incentive, the proposal is that that the City will offer a tax rebate of 50% of the cost of the sidewalk work, which will then be proportioned over five years. Are you getting this?! You pay to fix it now (using one of the city’s approved contractors ha! ha! offering you the same great deals they offer the city – I am sure those are some super bargains) and they will give you HALF what you paid back over next five years in the form of tax rebate. How exactly does this qualify as tax relief? They’ll give you back half of an additional sum YOU paid out to fix what they’ve left broken.

Now I hate to criticize a citizen activist and fellow Westsider Joseph Pagano who is going out on a limb to try and make Worcester a better place, a place where parents with strollers can actually use the sidewalks apparently, but I doubt this proposal is going to do much to “attract and retain young families.”

I agree with him that the city does need to make young families and Westsiders more of a priority though. Westsiders bear the brunt of the tax burden already, with property values here the highest in the city. Young families are what once made this area great and that’s who is leaving in droves. [Households headed by an individual aged 34 to 44 increased by only 3% in the West Side between 1990 and 2000. Furthermore, those households headed by an individual who was 55 to 64 years of age increased by 12.5% in the West Side as compared to a decline of 5% throughout the City. –2002 report commissioned by the City of Worcester’s Executive Office of Neighborhood Services.]

But asking Westsiders to step in and DYI in another area isn’t the answer to anything.
We are already DYIing our children’s educations and recreation, our garbage disposal, and even filling potholes ourselves on some streets. Until some of our own tax dollars actually flow back our way in the form of services on this side of the city, the Westside will continue to slide. Worcester needs Westsiders (our property values and subsequent financial contributions to this city) just to keep it’s head above water.