Picture Main Street, the coming downtown catastrophe, has not begun and the mayor is already hiring consultants to try to figure out how to make what will surely be a five-year disaster somehow less disastrous [“Northampton lands grant to help mitigate disruption by Picture Main Street construction,” Gazette, Oct. 19.]

The $25,000 grant from the state’s Downtown Initiative Program will attempt to mitigate years of torn up unwelcoming streets and sidewalks just as Northampton is attempting to reinvigorate itself. Undoubtedly, the $25,000 will be the down payment. It’s hard to imagine that the consultants will come up with a mitigation scheme that will not cost Northampton taxpayers money to find a solution to a problem that didn’t exist.

Lois Ahrens

Northampton