Athol Selectboard approves taxi license

Recorder Staff/Domenic Poli  Athol Town Hall.

Recorder Staff/Domenic Poli Athol Town Hall.

By GREG VINE

For the Athol Daily News

Published: 01-24-2025 2:38 PM

ATHOL – The Selectboard has approved a taxi/livery license for Baldwinville resident William Ladeau’s business, Central Area Transport.

Ladeau had previously been granted a license, but the pandemic halted his plans to begin operating in Athol.

“I was here in 2019, right before Covid broke out,” he told the board. “I have issues with COPD and it terrified me to think about transporting people, even with the mask. I just decided it would be best to hold off, let Covid pass, and the come back and see what you think.”

Ladeau explained that he recently filled out a second application and when posed with the question on whether his license had ever been suspended or revoked, he answered ‘no,’ only for information to surfaced that brought this response into question.

Ladeau explained that, while driving in Fitchburg, he was involved in a head-on collision with another driver and was hospitalized. He said a Fitchburg Police officer investigated the accident and determined that Ladeau was at fault. The officer, he said, went to Ladeau’s hospital bed in the ICU at UMass/Memorial and confiscated his driver’s license.

Ladeau ended up going to court and was ultimately found to not be at fault for the accident.

“The only revocation I had was from the City of Fitchburg,” Ladeau explained. “Both drivers were cited, so the City of Fitchburg revoked my taxi license until the matter was settled. It was dismissed, I was found not at fault. And the last thing the judge ordered was for (the officer) to go back to his office, get my license out of his desk drawer and give it back to me.

“So, I would have to say that my answer of ‘no’ to the question of whether I had ever lost my license was the correct answer,” said Ladeau. “The registry records indicate it has never been suspended or revoked.”

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Ladeau said he has spent the last four years driving for Westminster-based Ride Rite but has reached the age where he has decided “not to work for somebody else and start (my) own company.” Noting that other taxi licenses have been approved in or around Athol in recent years, Ladeau argued that competition can be good for the consumers.

“I’m concerned about why you would come to Athol to get a license,” said board member Rebecca Bialecki. “Why aren’t you licensed through Baldwinville, Templeton. Typically, a taxi kind of runs from the home address. So, why don’t you have a license through Baldwinville?”

“Baldwinville and Templeton have never had the capacity or the need to issue either a taxi or a limousine license,” said Ladeau.

He said his taxi service would be limited to Athol, while his livery service would run along the Route 2 corridor between Greenfield and Gardner and north-south from Belchertown to Athol and Orange.

Board Chair Stephen Raymond read from correspondence from Police Chief Craig Lundgren in which the chief said he had no concerns with the board approving the taxi license.

In the end, the board voted 4-1 to approve a taxi/livery license for Ladeau, with Bialecki casting the dissenting vote.

Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com.