Nothing good can come from ignoring a federal mandate. But that does not mean those mandates are reasonable.
So the Haverhill City Council and Mayor James Fiorentini should respond in two ways to a looming deadline for the city to study its downtown flood wall and make any necessary repairs.
First, they should stop bickering over how to pay the $44,090 bill for it. The health of the downtown business climate depends on it.
A majority of the council wanted to use the so-called "water supply fund," an account funded by payments from developers of local projects, now worth about $1.5 million. The mayor and other city officials say most of that money is committed to other projects. Fiorentini also says two of the city's lawyers have told him that it would be illegal to use the water supply fund. He wants to borrow the money.
The council contends that the mayor solicited those legal opinions to try to force the council to go along with him, and has rejected his requests twice.
That is a petty turf battle. But it appears the logjam is breaking. The mayor and a council committee agreed last week on a compromise that would take money from a different place — a combined sewer overflow account in the Wastewater Department.
That agreement still needs the approval of the full council Tuesday night, however. And unless there is a major problem with it, the approval should be unanimous. The consequences of failing to meet the deadline are far more serious than where a relatively tiny amount of money comes from.
The feds have warned that they will decertify the flood wall, a 74-year-old barrier between the Merrimack River and the city center, if the city does not complete the study and make necessary repairs by May 2011. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, after a cursory look at the wall, estimated it will need repairs costing up to $300,000.
If the council appropriates the money for the study Tuesday, there is still a chance of meeting that deadline. If it waits until the next meeting, Sept. 21, it likely won't.
And if the wall is decertified, it could cause insurance premiums for about 40 property owners on the riverbank — most of them merchants — to spike as much as tenfold.
Is that the message city officials want to send to the business community? The city could lose much more than $44,000 in property tax revenue if it drives merchants away.
The second response should be to enlist the city's congressional delegation — Congresswoman Niki Tsongas and Sens. Scott Brown and John Kerry — to urge the federal government to lighten up on unfunded mandates like this. The city is also under mandates to cap its defunct landfill and eliminate sources of pollution to the river. Those projects collectively will cost dozens of millions of dollars that the city does not have.
Nobody wants the flood wall to fail, or for the ground and river to be polluted. But there is a limit to what the city can afford, and these projects go far beyond that. Haverhill needs advocates to lift the heavy hand of government. The feds should either provide money for such projects or give the city enough time to put them on a schedule it can afford.
