Merrimack Urged to Pick Toll Booth Battles

Pick the battles you can win. That was the advice state Sen. Ray White had for a fired up group of state representatives and the Town Council at Thursday night's Council meeting.

White's advice came just a week before three bill hearings scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 2,  each related to the future of the tollbooths on the F.E. Everett Turnpike in Bedford and Merrimack.

Two of Thursday's bills are sponsored by Merrimack representatives in an attempt to provide Merrimack residents some relief from the daily tolls many pay to travel in and out of town. The third, sponsored by Rep. David Campbell, D-Nashua, calls for the Bedford tollbooth to be moved to the area of Exit 10, while removing the booths on Exit 11 and 12. This option would mean any Merrimack resident traveling south on the turnpike would pay a dollar to get in and out, rather than the 50 cents they are currently paying.

“Anytime I talk to people up in Concord I say, 'I say hi I live in toll town yeah, that's right, we pay for your roads,” said Merrimack Rep. Jeanine Notter. “And sometimes I call them the slave owners in that town south of us, and we're the slaves.”

Notter said Campbell's bill “Really sticks it to Merrimack.”

“Those slave owners are really going to make those slaves work harder and make us pay double now to go south,” Notter said.

White and Notter were among seven of Merrimack's delegation who attended the Thursday meeting to discuss the bills and the ways in which town officials can stick up for Merrimack when it comes to proposed toll booth legislation.

They were joined by Merrimack Reps. Dick Hinch, Christ Christensen, Dick Barry, Tony Pellegrino and Joe Thomas.

The bills call for three drastically different scenarios for the F.E. Everett Turnpike and the one that has Merrimack officials most fired up is Campbell's HB 1369.

Hinch said the HB 1369 was brought forward because of the anticipated revenue loss of more than $6 million a year thanks to the number of vehicles traveling to the airport on the new, toll-free access road, and the ones who simply skirt the $1 per trip toll by hopping off the turnpike before the toll and getting right back on just beyond the toll.

HB 1192, sponsored by Barry and cosponsored by White and Christensen, recommends a deep discount at the tolls to drivers from Merrimack, giving them the typical 30 percent EZ Pass discount and then free trips through the tolls after the 16th run through.

HB 1257 simply calls for the removal of all of the ramp tollbooths in Merrimack.

Hinch said he will not support Campbell's bill, and that he is “vehemently against it.”

“There are a number of things wrong with HB 1369 other than that I hate the bill,” Hinch said.

According to Hinch, feasibility studies that have been done say it would cost more than $20 million to remove the booth in Bedford and install the new tolling system in Merrimack. Plus, there's the cost of removing the booths from exits 11 and 12, Hinch said. Hinch said the figure for removing those booths adds to the overall expense – though he surmised there are residents of Merrimack who would be perfectly happy to “fire up the backhoes and take the toll booths down.”

It is an argument Merrimack has been on the losing side of for years, the desire for some form of relief for residents who must pay a toll to get off the highway in Merrimack if they are headed north and to get on in Merrimack if headed south.

Town Councilor Tom Mahon, who requested the agenda item be put on the agenda for Thursday's meeting, said he has invited the bill's sponsor, Campbell, to come talk to Merrimack about the bill and explain his reasoning for this proposed legislation, but Campbell hasn't bitten.

The town office contacted Campbell in advance of the meeting, also inviting him to attend at that time, but Campbell has not and did not visit with the Council.

Mahon suggested Campbell may have thought he was being set up.

“It would have been very nice to have heard it from him first hand and more courageous for him to have shown up,” Mahon said.

Further reasons Merrimack's representatives say they are against this bill include the potential to hamper commercial development in town and the likelihood of increasing traffic exponentially at the southern end of Daniel Webster Highway, according to Christensen and Thomas, respectively.

Additionally, Thomas said they would look foolish to come back to Merrimack, which is counting on their representatives to help relieve them of tollbooth expenses, to come back and say it instead going to cost them double.

“If we can't do anything better, leave it alone, don't make it worse,” Thomas said.

White, however, suggests the best way for Merrimack to make some headway is to fight for the things they might have some traction on, like HB 1192 to negotiate a discount for residents who pay the tolls.

Technology is on Merrimack's side, for this one, he said, in that transponders contain personal information including the town where the transponder is registered.

He thinks it is unlikely Merrimack will win the fight to eradicate the booths from Merrimack completely, but middle ground might be able to be found. And their most winning argument may be to concede to that fact and push for the toll-fare reduction.

“Your better bet is to bend that situation in your favor because I don't think you're going to win,” White said. “... That's my reality check for you. I hate to be the prophet of doom to some degree but I think you have some winnable arguments.”

The one thing it appeared most everyone could agree on at the meeting is that the state should further consider increasing the gas tax by a penny or two, making the cost of repair and maintenance of the state's highway systems the burden of all who travel it, rather than a small portion of people in the lower part of the state.

Council Chairman Finlay Rothhaus said, for him, it's not a matter of how much he pays in tolls, which has at times been $60 a month, but rather it's an issue of equity.

He said he agrees with taking the winnable ground.

On Thursday, in Room 201 at the Legislative Office Building behind the Statehouse, HB 1192 and HB1257 will be heard in the morning, starting at 9:30 and 10:45 a.m. HB 1369 will be heard at 1:15 p.m.

Councilors Bill Boyd and Mahon offered to attend the hearings along with Town Manager Eileen Cabanel.