Infrastructure
Capital Investment Plan
As part of the annual budget process, a 5-year capital investment plan is supposed to outline our city’s needs, priorities, and how we plan to fund them. Rarely is such a plan presented in Leominster. Instead, we seemingly jump from project to project without a clear direction, often chasing whatever state or federal dollars seem the easiest to acquire. While some would contend that’s a financially sound way to approach things, I believe that the lack of a planned approach is catching up to us in the form of deferred maintenance and delayed projects. While the capital investment plan is the responsibility of the Mayor’s Office, as a member of the City Council, I will demand that every year we have a publicly available capital investment plan, examine it for consistency and reasoning, and continue to put pressure on the Mayor’s Office to provide such a plan until it becomes a routine part of our annual budget process, as it’s supposed to be.
Capital Planning Fundamentals DLS Slides (hosted on MMA website): https://www.mma.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/MMA-webinar-DLS-Capital-Planning-Fundamentals9.24.24.pdf
Water Infrastructure
It is no secret that Leominster has dealt with a long-term and seemingly growing problem with brown water. To my knowledge, the water is safe for drinking, but it presents several issues that diminish the quality of life for residents who are frequently impacted. Unfortunately, given the age of our infrastructure and the cost of rapidly replacing it, this will continue to be an issue for some time; however, that doesn’t mean we can’t take actions to speed up the process. There are two actions that I want us to take as a city that will help.
First is to ensure we have a recent, comprehensive test of our water lines that identifies any potential leaks and breaks. Not only would these potential openings allow for sediment to enter the lines, but they also waste significant quantities of water that we’ve already treated, costing taxpayers money. By identifying leaks, we can address them, saving money and reducing foreign contaminants from entering the water supply.
Second, is to separate our sewer and water departments into an enterprise fund. An enterprise fund creates a separate fund specific to the service’s revenues and expenditures, so that they do not get mixed with other city activities. The benefits of an enterprise fund include increased transparency, retained revenues each year, clearer information for planning investments and setting user charges, and the ability to borrow against future revenues for capital projects. Having a capital improvement plan specific to our water infrastructure and the ability to borrow against its own future revenue would allow us to update and repair more rapidly. More than two-thirds of municipalities in Massachusetts have one or more enterprise accounts, and it’s time that we joined them (we have none).
2024 DLS Enterprise Funds Summary: https://www.mass.gov/doc/enterprise-funds/download
DLS Enterprise Funds Best Practices: https://www.mass.gov/doc/best-practices-of-enterprise-funds-mcwt/download
Roads
As I’ve gone door-to-door throughout Ward 4, it has come as no surprise that road conditions are often raised as a concern. While the annual budget to address roads is limited, there are a few things that I believe we can do to make those dollars go further and better communicate with residents.
The easiest thing we can do is maintain a street paving list so that residents, businesses, and utility companies can better plan for upcoming work. Currently, Leominster only lists the streets for the current fiscal year, but some communities publicly post planned paving and road maintenance a year in advance or maintain a running list with roads rated by priority (such as Gardner: https://gardner-ma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/11399/Updated-Road-Priority-List). While maintaining such a list wouldn’t in itself improve road conditions, it would help create a shared understanding of which roads should expect maintenance work next and how roads are being selected.
A more direct way to improve road quality is to implement a system where the city monitors and documents the work done by contractors so that we may penalize their ability to bid for future projects if they have a history of unsatisfactory workmanship. This would ensure that we are better spending our money as a community and reducing issues such as uneven pavement, humps, cracks, and other defects that create poor road conditions and allow for pavement to deteriorate faster than it should. Under state law, such a system is permissible for a municipality to enact.
Finally, I will advocate for increased Chapter 90 funding on the state level, and continue to work to address unaccepted streets within Ward 4. The specific reason a street is not accepted can vary, but often it’s the result of a developer who was not properly bonded and never brought the road up to the agreed-upon requirements with the city. I believe that the city needs to accept its responsibility in those cases for its lack of due diligence and help address the issues for each road, as we have the funds to do so. By addressing the root cause of why these streets have not been accepted and adding them to our total road mileage, we will increase the amount of Chapter 90 funding we receive each year and ensure that homeowners are not penalized for a situation that was not of their making.