Mitigation the Way to Go in Overlay District

We wish to correct the impression  given in last week’s editorial that mitigation payments from companies wishing to build and to move their businesses into the overlay district created by the mayor and his planners at city hall is not a solid idea.

It is a solid idea and will prove to be a money maker for the city when developers finally and forever gobble up the empty land on the Mystic River where Everett meets Medford and fills it with commercial buildings and companies wishing to locate or to expand here or both.

We had mistakenly believed the overlay district included only the Route 16 commercial strip on both sides of the highway.

It includes much more than that.

The mayor is absolutely right and is absolutely within his rights to want a fair share of the wealth for the taxpayers of this city whenever a big company moves here, expands here, or develops here.

The mayor even understands the need for beginning the long-term effort to make Route 16 more aesthetic and less a jumble of disconnected but important businesses of every kind.

He is setting down policy initiatives with this overlay district that will result in the transformation of many sites as new businesses are required to have proper plantings and design requirements for their efforts along Route 16.

Above all, the mayor knows what he doing with this overlay initiative.

Had those that came before him made the suggestions and created the policy now being created Route 16 would be a far different looking place than it is today.

Any impression otherwise given by last week’s editorial was unintended.

Governing here is hard enough for the mayor without pouring gasoline on fires so easily set by those who take the mayor to task just for the sport of taking him to task.

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