What could we spend it on?
The power outage in the city last week reminds me that there was a time when undergrounding electric lines was a fond wish of local citizens. I seem to remember that it was very high on the list of things the citizens wanted out of the city's first redevelopment effort. Instead we got a conference center and Thomas Plaza. The plaza has still not been the gathering place the city envisioned on a daily basis. Frank's Franks has brought a few people to the park for lunch in the summer time and city events which bring people downtown anyway make use of the plaza, but it is not what I would call a hived of activity as it was advertised. Perhaps when there's shade .... And the conference center never fulfilled it's purpose either. I would be willing to be that the center still has not paid its mortgage without general fund help. The millions spent on those two facilities, nice, though they are, I think could have been better spent doing what the citizens' groups wanted - beautifying the State Street and Perkins Street corridors, something that could have included undergrounding lines. That would not only make the city prettier, it would, I presume eliminate the outages we get every year when a squirrel fries itself on the lines, or when storms bring live lines down into the street. Undergrounding lines now is an extraordinarily expensive proposition.
There's some talk of the city issuing more redevelopment bonds, since the 1990s bonds I believe are, or are largely paid off. That money could go to any number of things for the downtown. I'd be interested in hearing from people what they would like to see money spent on downtown if the city issued some new bonds and had several million in hand for projects. Ideas?