The Good and the Bad

First, the good:

A new apartment redevelopment is slated for the TD Banknorth Building on Main Street. Over 30 new apartments, most at market rate with others set aside for moderate income, is a welcome addition to downtown. The developer hopes to maintain as much of the turn-of-the-century charm of the building as possible.

First of all, this is some good news for downtown. More people living downtown creates more demand for quality services, restaurants and shops. It brings additional life and vitality to downtown.

Second, this is a good sign of a lot of teamwork helping Fitchburg out. The city is supportive, a regional group is involved, and even U.S. Rep. John Olver got involved. It's going to take that kind of teamwork to get Fitchburg moving forward downtown, and this has to be viewed as a good sign.

Interestingly, in the photo online, Rep. Jennifer Flanagan of Leominster is featured in the photo. Nowhere to be found is, you know, the guy from Fitchburg, Rep. Emile Goguen. This creates a nice segue to...

The bad.

While Flanagan was touting Fitchburg's new project, Goguen was on Beacon Hill fighting gay marriage. Again. Leaving personal politics aside (we favor gay marriage but won't quibble at this point if you don't), Goguen's pet project is just killing the city.

That leads us to this rant:

Where the hell is Goguen, the mayor, the City Council, the School Committee, the superintendent, someone, anyone, to rail against the House budget's reduction of the governor's Chapter 70 allocation?

The Sentinel wrote one story on it, and didn't quote anyone from Fitchburg. There are a million reasons why that might be the case: No one was called. No one called back. It got cut. No one said anything interesting. That's disappointing, but there's more than that. Why isn't Fitchburg being publicly proactive on this? Why isn't anyone publicly calling out Goguen? Goguen sits on the damn Ways and Means Committee. Sure, he doesn't really do much there, but call him out. The media loves a good political bashing story. Trust us on this.

Why aren't city officials lining up to criticize the House budget publicly? Where's the phone calls to reporters or the press conference? Where's the publicized letter to leadership? Simply, where's the outrage?

Sadly, where's the leadership?

Fitchburg needs someone to fight for it all the time, even when the battles are uphill. And those battles need to made publicly a lot of time. We need to know our leaders are fighting these battles, and working to get results. What we've since Monday is nothing. There's been more outrage on local blogs than out of City Hall. That has gotta change.