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So I looked to find out what New England's mayors had in mind, including my own. Manchester's population is slightly under 110,000 souls, making it New England's tenth most populous city. Massachusetts has 5 cities of comparable size. These are Lowell (105,000), Cambridge (101,000), Brockton (94, 000), New Bedford (93,000), and Fall River (91,000). Warwick is the Rhode Island city closest in size to Manchester at approximately 85,000 residents while Portland, ME (64,000) and Burlington, VT (39,000) are the largest cities in their respective states. As everyone in New Hampshire knows, Connecticut is not part of New England.
One of the surest ways to get in line first for Federal money is to have a plan in place for spending it. A city without a prioritized plan (as opposed to plans aka "stuff we could spend it on") is unlikely to get their projects funded first - if at all. This is, in fact, what the US Conference of Mayors was set up to do - their charter was signed in the weeks before FDR took office with a mandate for the New Deal and to help the cities.
The US Conference of Mayors understands this and now posts the priorities of many cities on their website. Brockton, for example, has identified over $330 million dollars in programs including over $40 million in road construction and improvements, over $30 million in improvements to their schools' physical plant, and $64 million in water and sewer improvements. That's a rate of return of over $3000 for every man, woman, and child in Brockton and would create an estimate 3200 jobs. Warwick identifies over $50 million in improvements that would create 250 jobs. This would represent a return of about $590 per citizen with over $48 million targeted to water and sewer related projects. Burlington is looking for over $3700 per citizen for programs costing over $145 million creating over 2700 jobs with improvements in the airport, streets, schools and significant investments in clean energy ($25+ million). Portland's plans are also pretty ambitious, costing over $113 million and employing 290. Portland would create fewer jobs because of a focus on existing government services (including substantial improvements in public safety) rather than improved infrastructure. Under this plan, the Federal government would return over $1700 in spending for every Portland Mainer.
What would Manchester improve, fix, update, fund or green with stimulus money? Who knows? Manchester has either not posted their priorities or (more likely) was unwilling to pay the $12,000 to be a member of the Conference. Search for 'stimulus' and 'us conference of mayors' on the city website came up empty. Perhaps, Pothole Frank is taking the initiative the faith-based way and praying for federal help.
In a state that saw only $0.71 of its money return in the form of spending for every $1.00 paid in federal taxes in 2008 - 47th out of 50 according to the right-wing Tax Foundation (www.taxfoundation.org) - there is no excuse for not being prepared when the feds want to help cities in need. If Frank Guinta isn't willing to do the necessary work, we deserve someone who does.
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