Mayor Joseph C. O'Brien's long awaited Business Task Force got some news in the T&G yesterday: Task Force Eyes Business. Note the Mayor's list of local Shakers & Movers. LOL!
Been giving the issue about the Worcester tax rates fandango some thought and I’ve come to the conclusion that local businesses are the root of the problem. They're anti-competitive.
What I mean by that is, businesses demand handouts, and they usually get i.e. low commercial tax rates, abatements, and TIF's etc... (See Boston Globe: Tax Incentives article - Worcester businesses getting $51 million in tax breaks) and that they've lost sight of the fact that the only way to make money is to earn it. It’s gotten to the point that when any sign of competition appears on the horizon, the whiners run to City Hall to recruit councilors to nip it in the bud.
Boston Globe: Interactive map of tax breaks in MA:The fact is businesses in Worcester simply refuse to compete. It’s part of a mentality that’s solidly entrenched in the city bureaucracy and continually reinforced by a city council that stubbornly refuses to budge from its archaic socialist dogma. The most recent examples characterizing the city council’s anti-competition stance are the hotdog vendor and the limo service fiascoes. Follies of the worst sort.
It's roots are in the industrial era a hundred years ago when it was a boomtown with lots of competition, with well placed monied interests. Eventually they - history knows who they are, since laid out in Rural Cemetery - strong armed the City Fathers (it was quite easy in fact) to implement anti-competitive policies and practices - they being the beneficiaries. Competition thus was eradicated in Worcester once and for all.
What hath they wrought? Well, fast forward 100 years to the predicament we’re in now. A city filled to the brim with non-profits that don’t pay taxes, and a bunch of whiny businessmen, and women too, who don't want to pay taxes.
If you don’t already know this, the Worcester business community is comprised of a collection of rinky dink sole proprietors and LLC’s. Not savvy MBA's with big ideas and pockets full of venture capital. The reality is, any business who has an idea, fortitude, and capital to setup shop in Worcester has all the tools it needs with billions in city, state and federal largesse for the asking. Even a pliant city council.
To be continued...
