Worcester Business Journal

www.wbjournal.com July 18, 2016 • Worcester Business Journal 21 Time to reinvest in Worcester's municipal parking E D I T O R I A L The Worcester Business Journal welcomes letters to the editor and commentary submissions. Please send submissions to Brad Kane, editor, at bkane@wbjournal.com. T his year has brought some unpredictable election stories, and as the months tick closer to Election Day in November, voters will be focused on major issues of interest and concern. For the sake of our state's future economy, let's hope that manufacturing and its growth get attention from voters and candidates. When deciding for whom to vote, whether for president or city council, we need to keep in mind a range of topics that will impact job growth in manufacturing in Central Massachusetts and beyond. As Baby Boomers retire, they leave a gaping hole in the workforce, particularly for manufacturing. Over the next decade, nearly 3.5 million manufacturing jobs in the nation will likely need to be filled, a proportionate number here in the Worcester area and statewide. This high number is due to both the gap caused by Baby Boomers exiting the workforce, as well as anticipated growth in manufacturing. Finding new workers for the industry is challenging due a long- standing negative perception of manufacturing work environments. Manufacturing jobs were once seen as dirty, dangerous and physically demanding. But today's advanced medical device manufacturing facilities, for example, are high-tech clean rooms, making everything from cardiovascular stents to an artificial pancreas. One avenue for bringing in new workers to the industry is to expose young people and their parents to career opportunities available. Supporting vocational schools is a very important step in increasing the availability of new workers into the industry. Vocational school graduates can fill the pipeline of potential workers if curriculum on manufacturing is integrated into their programs of study. It takes a lot of effort and work to change the perception of manufacturing for the Millennial generation and younger generations to come. It will save hundreds of local manufacturing jobs from going overseas, if we can! Another topic to keep in mind when voting for your chosen candidate is his or her plan for public transportation. A growing number of people are unemployed or underemployed due to the lack of available transportation to commute to and from work on a daily basis. Owning a car is expensive, so we need better public transportation options in order to move workers from where they live to where the jobs are. According to the American Public Transportation Association, every $1 invested in public transportation generates approximately $4 in economic returns, and every $1 billion invested in public transportation supports and creates more than 50,000 jobs. Some communities are getting creative with their transportation solutions, such as pooling money from companies for shuttle buses to transfer employees from train or bus stations to the companies' job sites. If we want to keep the manufacturing industry growing in our region, we need our workforce to be able to easily commute to manufacturing facilities, which are not always close to commuter rail stations and bus stops. Voters have limited time and focus, and there are other issues that can seem a priority. If we want to keep manufacturing a viable industry in Central Massachusetts, we need advocates at every level of government. n Steve Sawin os the CEO of Clinton staffing provider Operon Resource Management. Casting your ballot for the manufacturing industry BY STEVE SAWIN Special to the Worcester Business Journal V I E W P O I N T Steve S awin A s New England's second largest city, Worcester has a leg up on the big city to the east. Worcester has an urban core with a lot of positive development, a slew of colleges, a growing number of cultural resources, a rich housing stock. Plus – it's affordable. Travel a half hour west of the booming greater Boston metropolis, and you'll find plenty of office space, large warehouses and retail opportunities at a fraction of the cost for similar space inside of Route 128. Worcester is finally delivering on giving those hard-to-attract Millennials the urban experience they crave, without them forking over their whole paycheck for a small apartment. This is why the movement of raising the prices on any of the basic costs of living in Worcester – from taxes to water to mortgages – needs to be approached with great care. Yet, with certain amenities – in this case, parking – the time has come where the city should be less concerned with being the affordable option and more concerned with having nice options. As you can read in this issue's cover story, "The Price of Parking" from Staff Writer John McIntyre, Worcester's various parking authorities have kept the rates at the city-owned garages, surface lots and on-street spaces artificially low at less than $10 per day, in order to entice residents and businesses to come downtown. Furthermore, the city has negotiated special discounted rates with large employers like the U.S. Postal Service and the Hilton Garden Inn to bring rates down to a fraction of the private market. Largely, this strategy has worked, as the downtown is filling up with retail and commercial businesses and new apartments and hotels are coming online within the next few years. These incentives, though, have come at the expense of the parking facilities, of which many are becoming dilapidated. Those garages have little to no budget for maintenance and need $17.7 million in repairs. Those parking rates should be allowed to rise to a reasonable level, and the large-user discount deals should be reworked to generate a little more of the needed cash for repairs. The city Department of Public Works & Parks already has received approval for the first year of a five-year plan to raise rates at city parking garages roughly $1 per day. We side with the Worcester Regional Research Bureau's findings in its June study on parking that the city should move to implement the rest of that pricing plan. Worcester's downtown affordability can take a modest, incremental hit if it means the parking facilities will have a modern, clean and safe feel. For visitors driving in from out-of-town, parking often will be the first aspect of Worcester they experience. A 67-year-old garage that is crumbling and offers poor signage on where visitors should enter and exit leaves an unmistakable bad first impression. The economic revitalization of Worcester, especially its downtown, has been slowly rolling forward for decades. Today, there is tangible momentum, with more and more businesses and residents wanting to be downtown. The progress has been steady, and we have reached a tipping point for the city. That tipping point means city officials shouldn't feel so insecure about the appeal of downtown that they must continue to subsidize the low parking rates. Downtown is at a point where the quality of the parking facilities is more important. We don't relish the idea of anyone paying more, and all those businesses with discount deals will have to stomach an increase in their parking fees. Yet, if it means Worcester municipal parking facilities get a tangible upgrade, it's a worthy investment. For the city to cash in on its current momentum, improving those facilities is more important than subsidizing them with zero reinvestment. n O nce again, I write to suggest the time has come for Massachusetts to join the rest of the country and legalize the use of consumer fireworks for its citizens. This is the second year New York is permitting the sale and use of consumer fireworks, and the results have been very successful. There has been a dramatic increase in the use of fireworks in America since 1994, when we imported and used 117 million pounds of fireworks. In 2015, that figure rose to 285.3 million pounds, an unbelievable increase from 1994 to 2015 of more than 143 percent, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission. Consider during the same period, the rate of fireworks-related injuries, based on 100,000 pounds of fireworks used, has gone from 10.7 to 4.2, a reduction exceeding 60 percent, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Imagine, an increase in use of more than 143 percent and a reduction in injuries of more than 60 percent. This is truly a phenomenal safety record of which the fireworks industry and the 47 states that permit the use of some level of consumer fireworks can be very proud. The reduction in the number of fireworks- related injuries is even more impressive, when you consider the CPSC injury statistics include injuries related to professional display fireworks, illegal explosives, homemade fireworks and altered fireworks – none of which are consumer fireworks. The following states have liberalized their consumer fireworks laws in recent years: Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Utah and West Virginia. One of Massachusetts' favorite sons, second U.S. President John Adams, in a now famous July 3, 1776, letter to his wife, Abigail, expressed that Independence Day, "ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, bonfires and illuminations (fireworks) from one end of this continent to the other, from this day forward forevermore." The time has come for Massachusetts to join 47 other states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico in legalizing the sale and use of some level of consumer fireworks. n William A. Weimer vice president, Phantom Fireworks Legalize fireworks in Massachusetts L E T T E R

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