Worcester Misses an Opportunity to Help Entrepreneurs

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Walter Bird Jr., GoLocalWorcester Reporter

Slight changes to a form required for new business applicants could help boost Worcester's economic development, but no one has taken the lead in city hall.

A GoLocalWorcester investigation revealed the city is not tracking new businesses and raised a question about why, unlike other cities of similar size, applicants for business certificates are not required to indicate whether their business is new.

No Changes

City Clerk David Rushford, who handles all business certificate requests and keeps them on file, said he is not allowed to make any changes to the business applications. That edict, he said, comes from City Solicitor David Moore.

“The city solicitor has not agreed to adding any information,” Rushford said. “I know we, at one time, wanted to put on something concerning zoning and that was frowned upon.”

Several attempts to reach Moore for comment over two days were unsuccessful.

Rushford initially told GoLocalWorcester the forms reflected what was required under state law and that he could not alter them. However, Rushford did add to the forms for "a couple weeks" recently, when Business Retention Manager Phil Niddrie asked him to note new businesses on the forms. After learning he could not alter them, Rushford said he stopped the practice.

“Why not do it?” asked Ravi Perry, an assistant professor of political science at Clark University who has also studied municipal government. “That’s a question they should answer.”

The answers at city hall, however, aren’t easy to find, even though it would seem a simple matter of amending the current business form to reflect those used by many other Massachusetts cities and towns. In Springfield, for example, the first thing you have to do when applying for a business certificate is indicate whether it is a new business, a renewal or a discontinuance.

'Valuable' Tool

Worcester Business Assistance Director Paul Morano said the information would be valuable to his department.

“Every year the Economic Development Office prepares an annual report and they always ask us how many new businesses there are,” said Morano. “It would be very helpful to be able to determine how many new businesses opened and who they are.”

Economic Development

Dr. Perry places the responsibility squarely in the lap of Economic Development Director Timothy McGourthy, saying, “That’s really a Tim issue. It really correlates with the House Republican leadership in congress right now trying to eliminate census information altogether. Why? What harm is it in collecting data? Especially in this case, we’re talking about data that can help the city.”

A woman answering the phone for McGourthy's said he was out of the office and would not return to work until the end of the month.

Morano said tracking new businesses on the certificates could be “useful,” adding: “You could look at the state of the economy of new business and also reach out and offer assistance. It’s certainly worth looking into.”

Other Certificates

If it changed its business certificate form, Worcester would be in line with cities like Springfield and Cambridge. Cambridge's form has boxes to check off for either a new or renewed certificate. Unlike Springfield, Cambridge does not have a space to indicate a discontinued business. There is a separate form for that. Worcester also has a separate form for discontinued businesses and changes of address. To view Springfield's form, click here. For Cambridge's form, click here.

State law is clear about what information must be included on a business certificate, but there is no language prohibiting communities from adding to them. Worcester, however, follows a format Rushford said was established many years ago.

“We came together with a couple other cities a long time ago and developed a uniform application,” Rushford said, citing Cambridge and Quincy. While Quincy’s form is similar to Worcester’s, Cambridge’s is not.

“We have to have a better system for tracking what’s going on with new business in the city, whether they leave or come,” City Councilor and former Mayor Konstantina Lukes said. “I don’t know what the legal prohibition is.”

There is none, according to interim Cambridge City Clerk Donna Lopez, who said, “Our assessor uses the certificates as part of assessing property values.”

While big businesses in Worcester are easy to spot, many new ones aren't being tracked

It's 'Surprising'

Not everyone in Worcester thinks the city should change its forms, including City Councilor and state representative candidate Kate Toomey, who said, “I’m not sure that’s the best way to do it. Maybe when (applicants) file, you can check in the system and see if it’s the first time they’ve filed. I think there’s a way to do that without changing (the form) and without reinventing the wheel.”

Perry doesn’t see it that way, saying, “The only reason I can think of for not doing it is you’re not proud of your record for attracting new business. I mean it can only help in terms of what types of businesses are coming. It helps the city establish its own goals. To me, it’s actually surprising the city does not collect this data. It says they’re not providing valuable information for the economic engine of the city, which is economic development.”

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