(The following column by Nick Kotsopoulos appeared on the Worcester Telegram website on May 16, 2010.)
WORCESTER, Mass. — Now that the Worcester City Council has put the Arizona immigration law issue behind it, hopefully it can reset its focus on local issues, starting with CSX Corp.’s plans to expand its freight yard and make the city its new rail freight hub for New England.
Heck, it’s been almost three months since the $100 million CSX plans were presented to the City Council and it’s getting time for the council to make a decision on it. While everybody and their brother have said how much they want to see CSX expand in Worcester, many of those same people have also found flaws with the plan; not that there is anything wrong with that.
In fact, some of the concerns that had been raised and subsequently addressed have made the original plans that much better, and the council deserves credit for that.
For instance, at the request of city councilors, word has it that CSX will create a mitigation fund for abutting neighborhoods to finance improvement projects there. It is expected that CSX will agree upon a fee per container, for each one shipped to and from the Worcester freight terminal, to provide the annual revenue for that mitigation fund.
But there is some question about whether all the issues can be worked out; specifically finding a new connection from Shrewsbury Street to Franklin Street to replace Putnam Lane, which has to be closed to accommodate the freight yard expansion, and finding alternative access to the new CSX maintenance facility that will be built so Atlanta Street does not have to be used for access to the building.
“There remain significant challenges on two of the issues that we are working to overcome,” City Manager Michael V. O’Brien said last week. “Skilled engineers have developed and evaluated nearly 15 options to solve these safely and effectively.”
Those options are expected to be presented tomorrow night at the joint meeting of the City Council Public Works and Public Service and Transportation committees. But just how feasible some of these options are or what price tag is associated with them remains to be seen.
Word has it that the requested changes could potentially add tens of millions of dollars to the cost of the project — a cost that everyone would be expecting CSX to pick up.
“The city and state have made honest and fair efforts to address the community’s concerns and now it comes down to what CSX wants to do,” said state Rep. Vincent A. Pedone, D-Worcester, who has been participating in high-level negotiations with CSX executives, along with Lt. Gov. Timothy P. Murray and several city officials.
But what if CSX feels the cost to create a new connection from Shrewsbury Street to Franklin Street is too prohibitive, or that no alternative can be found to siting its new maintenance facility off Atlanta Street, what happens then?
Does the council simply reach the point where it feels it has gotten as many changes to the plan as possible and move forward with it, or does it hold it longer so it can continue pursuing a resolution to all the issues that have been raised?
Councilor-at-Large Joseph M. Petty and District 3 Councilor Paul P. Clancy Jr., co-chairs of the joint council committee, said they do not expect a final vote to be taken by their committee tomorrow night. They said the committee will likely want to take some time to review all the information CSX presents at the meeting, and then hold another meeting in two to three weeks. It is then that a recommendation could emerge.
“No one is rushing this through, but we have to make a decision on this at some point,” Mr. Clancy said. “We can’t let this continue to drag on and on because I’m not sure every issue can be resolved in a way that makes everyone happy.”