Littleton's Corporate Freeloaders
In January 2021, the Littleton Select Board entered into a Host Community Agreement with a Delaware LLC that allowed for the construction of a 143,640-square-foot Amazon Distribution Center at 151-153 Taylor Street.
In the last couple of years, a constant stream of Amazon-branded delivery vans either painted dark blue with pithy ad lines like "Warning: Contents may cause happiness” or white Dodge 2500 ProMasters with stick-on branding exit the driveway onto Littleton’s roads.
If you look closely, you will see that the one on the left has New Jersey plates, the one on the right, Florida.
Here, you have a Wisconsin plate and another New Jersey plate.
The last two vans in this row of six are both have New Jersey plates.
In perusing the parking lot at 151-153 Taylor Street the other day, I not only saw those six vans but also:
Nine more delivery vans with Florida plates
Eight more with New Jersey plates
One with Colorado plates
One with Ohio plates
This year, Littleton’s tax collector sent sixty-seven excise tax bills to Amazon Logistics, Inc for the sixty-seven delivery vans “principally garaged” at the 151-153 Taylor Street distribution center. The majority of these delivery vans are either 2021 or 2022 Dodge 2500 ProMasters, some blue and some white.
In Massachusetts, excise tax is calculated by starting with the original MSRP of the vehicle: not the purchase price or the “book value.”
Using a middle-of-the-range $45,000.00 as the MSRP for a 2022 model of the Dodge 2500 ProMaster (as the range in MSRP was $38,965–$51,380) and applying the excise-tax calculation formula, Amazon Logistics, Inc. would receive a bill from Littleton for $281.25 in local excise tax. Multiply that by sixty-seven, and you get close to nineteen thousand dollars in excise tax to Littleton.
But what about all the other delivery vans, specifically, the twenty-five “out-of-staters?” Note: there are likely dozens more of these, which at the time of my visit were out on the road.
These vans don’t pay a penny in excise tax to Littleton, yet they drive on Littleton roads. Unsurprisingly, every “out-of-state” delivery van comes from a state where there is no state-wide excise tax. It seems Amazon Logistics, Inc. found a loophole.
There was an opportunity to deal with this corporate loophole in January 2021 when the Select Board entered into that HCA had the Select Board taken the time to fully consider what it would mean to have an Amazon distribution center in town.
The Select Board could have required that all delivery vans have Massachusetts plates and use 151-153 Taylor Street as the place of “principal garaging,” thereby ensuring that Littleton would receive the excise tax from the all the delivery vans.
Had the Select Board considered public health effects from these scores of delivery vans on Littleton roads, the board could have required that the delivery vans be electrically powered and not gas-run, and Amazon likely would’ve been amenable to this, given that since 2019, Amazon has partnered with Rivian to make tens of thousands of electric-powered delivery vans.
Instead, in the HCA, there was no mention of excise tax or air pollution, no indication that any consideration was given to the long-term effects that this distribution center would have on Littleton’s roads, Littleton residents who live near Taylor Street, and Littleton residents who breathe Littleton’s air.
The absence of this forethought—of any critical thinking whatsoever—allows one of the largest corporations in the world to take advantage of Littleton for the benefit of Amazon and to the detriment of Littletonians.
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My name will appear on the ballot for a seat on Littleton’s Select Board.
Election Day is May 10, 2025.
My third policy objective: Bring that Delaware LLC back to the negotiating table to close the loophole so that Littleton can receive the excise tax it rightfully deserves and to insist that the fleet move to electrically-powered delivery vans.