Kevin Porter lives in Concord.

If there is any doubt about how the disparities in our community are exacerbated by city spending (or lack thereof), look at the recent conversations around recreation spending within the city of Concord. Proposing that lights for Keach Park be put off until 2031 while the gravy flows for pet projects is offensive and backward and illustrative of larger issues around inequities, governance and representation at the city level.

For years Beaver Meadow Golf Course operated at a loss, with recent relief coming from a pandemic-driven surge in demand. Unsatisfied that this business was actually breaking even (or maybe not if you look at the actual all-in costs, need to fund capital reserves, long-term fund transfers, and the lost property tax revenue of the business being city-owned), the city recently launched into a process of planning a multimillion-dollar clubhouse, hellbent, apparently, on getting it back in the red.

If the city insists on being in the golf business, then the taxpayers of Concord deserve to know how much the golf course is costing to operate, including irrigation, tree removal, long-term capital needs, and all other costs, so that this can be weighed against other spending needs.

Similarly, the Conservation Commission has sadly become a de facto recreation organization, using taxpayer money to keep buying land that they don’t have the resources to manage (with little, if any, green space initiatives or inclusion efforts for underserved communities in Concord). This has come at the expense of forest stewardship and resiliency and the development of the local forest products sector as a means to displace fossil fuels, both of which matter now more than ever. 

Concord is striving to be seen as a vibrant, urban community but in so many ways it is a backwater where the old boy network still rules the day. Half of the Conservation Commission has been on this body for twenty years while other highly qualified residents apply to serve and are told “thanks but no thanks.” Need to save room for more cronies, you see.  And this is the model in a nutshell— pack city committees that direct huge amounts of public spending with people that look like you and share the same hobbies, so as to subsidize a certain lifestyle. It’s a good gig if you can get it. But this is not what a healthy democracy with an engaged citizenry looks like.

What the spending at Beaver Meadow and by the Conservation Commission have in common is that they benefit a relative few at the expense of the greater good. The recreational amenities that come from public spending in these areas are not accessible to many in our community, and governance is a key missing piece here – term limits seem to be nonexistent across city committees, and the Board of Ethics remains either unstaffed or nonfunctioning. But there was no problem filling the golf committees in short order. The city continues to demonstrate it is completely tone-deaf when priorities are this misplaced.

The city government has become a caricature of itself, bulging through their pinstripes at the midriff from a surfeit of taxpayer money while telling the rest of us to go hold a bake sale if we want funding for pool lifeguards or playing field lights. Enough is enough. Please call or write your councilor and let them know this is not okay, and not reflective of the needs of our city as a whole. We are better than this as a community.

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