By Arthur Moore

Once again Somerville holds back local businesses from having any chance of competing with surrounding cities which get more help.

Why would anyone want to hold back one city in the state? People just hop in their cars and head over to Medford or Cambridge or wherever. So this accomplishes what? Punishment for having a small business in Somerville? Have we not done enough to cripple them? We take away their chance of having as much business coming in as the next town. Granted it is not a lot still but maybe the little extra will keep them afloat. It is bad enough the city is screwing over small businesses by taking way parking but this just shows that they want small businesses to fold up and go home. The owners of these places are working harder than ever to do a good job and yet we punish them. Many of us are supporting these places of business and would not go in or go back if we saw they were doing a bad job of it. The vaccine is just getting going and it seems it will take a while for people to get it. In the meantime since the cities around us are showing having 25% capacity is working makes no sense to penalize our small businesses. Clearly a great lack of leadership here which desperately needs to be changed. It is just not right to run these places into the ground. I do not go out much but when we do it is usually the Mt Vernon. I can see that they are doing a great job so I feel comfortable there. So let’s not have Somerville lagging behind the rest of the state. The governing body here is no longer working. Time to change it and it will not be soon enough.