Business fee may go back to voters
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By David Delcore Times Argus Staff - Published: January 8, 2009
BARRE – Granite City voters may be given a second chance to approve the controversial business registration fee that they handily rejected in November.
City councilors opened the door to that possibility during a special meeting late last week by warning a pair of public hearings on the once-proposed-and-not-quite-yet-revived charter change that was defeated on a vote of 1,614 to 1,924 on Election Day.
Although councilors haven't yet agreed to include the charter change on the city's Town Meeting Day ballot in March, that remains a real option given their decision to schedule the public hearings later this month, even as the statutory deadline for doing so was about to lapse.
Mayor Thomas Lauzon said the council's decision was driven by a conversation he had with Darren Winham, executive director of Barre Area Development Corporation.
According to Lauzon, Winham has expressed some interest in the possibility of reviving a charter change that would pave the way for an annual business registration fee – a fee the mayor had hoped would provide a stable source of revenue to support economic and community development initiatives in Barre.
Winham confirmed his conversation with Lauzon and said he planned to ask the BADC executive committee to take a public position on the idea when it meets today.
A favorable opinion from the committee could go a long way toward persuading the council to unilaterally warn a vote on the defeated charter change, according to Lauzon. Although he remains supportive of the registration fee and believes opponents were "shortsighted," he said a show of support from the business community was needed.
"I'm not going to take the lead on this again," he said. "Somebody else is going to have to step up."With BADC and the Barre Partnership both requesting a significant increases in city funding for their efforts this year, Lauzon said members of those organizations might have an incentive to support a registration fee. "It's a palatable way to raise revenue," he said of the fee that, as previously proposed, would have been charged to those doing business in Barre.
Although Lauzon has long suggested Barre should be spending more on economic and community development, he said the $14,000 increase requested by BADC and the $10,000 increase being sought by the partnership would be difficult to justify absent a new source of revenue to cover the increased expense.
"Those are numbers that aren't going to work," he said, holding out the possibility that concerns that led to the defeat of the charter change in November could be addressed in the run-up to the city's Town Meeting Day elections.
Critics of the earlier proposal complained it was disturbingly vague and represented an extra expense for businesses at a time when many were struggling to get by. Although Lauzon sought to allay those concerns by outlining his vision for an annual fee that would have ranged from $50 to $250 depending on the gross receipts reported by the business, voters ultimately rejected the charter change.
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