To the editor:
For those who understand the hows and whys of Tax Incremental Finance (TIF) monies, the funds aren’t collected to feed poor children or help your daughter afford a car. TIF district funds are tax revenues realized from the increased valuation of the district they are raised from due to infrastructural improvements made by the town. They do not include any property taxes collected outside that district. We have a pool of Greater Downtown TIF (GDTIF) monies already collected and in the bank. By law and according to the voter-approved Plan, those funds are to be used for the maintenance of and improvements to the GDTIF district for the benefit of its residents and businesses.
Many people have worked hard to establish Peterborough as the center of commerce for the Monadnock Region. Keene has had a publicly funded EV charging station in their Commercial Street parking lot since 2016. So has Nashua and other surrounding towns in Massachusetts. They understand the economic advantages. I personally know that EV owners are more likely to go to those other places because we don’t have EV chargers to assuage their charge-range anxieties.
EV chargers are like broadband Internet. Neither currently are feasible commercial ventures in sparsely populated rural areas. So if the public doesn’t act, the community suffers. So yes, EV chargers are a necessary improvement, just as wayfinding signs and planning for lower Main Street after the new bridge is completed are necessary improvements also recently approved for TIF funding by the GDTIF Advisory and the Economic Development Authority. Let’s spend some of our GDTIF funds on a project that will put Peterborough on the map. That’s what they’ve been collected to do and an EV charging station will do that, literally.
Bill Kennedy
Peterborough