Making Haverhill Best

Fixing Our Schools

Today, it's time to fix our schools.   We won't delay: we'll start tomorrow night [January 3] when I will ask the city Council to allow me to allow the city to join the State green schools program to make repairs to the Consentino, the John Greenleaf Whittier, the Tilton and the Walnut Square schools.   Preserving school buildings is preserving our future.

But not everything is worth preserving.

One school, the Hunking School, has reached the end of the line.   A decade ago, taxpayers from throughout the city paid for a brand-new Nettle school in Riverside.

Now it is time for to do the same thing in Bradford.   This will be our biggest challenge in 2012, and it is one we must now shrink from, it is one we must meet: bulding a new school at a cost we can afford.

Improving What Happens Inside Our Schools

Keeping our schools fixed on the outside sends a message that schools matter.

But if we're going to make Haverhill best, then we have to fix what is inside the schools and tackle the education gap.

Educators refer to that gap between how the middle class kids do and how poor kids do, as the education gap and it leads directly to another gap: the achievement gap.

Last year, Governor Patrick challenged us to come up with ways to narrow that gap.

Along with the challenge, the Governor gave us a new tool to help close the gap, called innovation schools.

Later this year, I will work with our superintendent and our with School Committee, to apply for a grant to put in an innovation school at the Tilton School, and to model that innovation school on the best practices that we know work from other cities.

Expanding Our Downtown Progress

Merrimack Street has a great past, but it would be a mistake to try to create there the downtown of the past.   On Merrimack Street, we need to create the downtown of the future.

The key is private capital.   We need to copy the best practices that we already know work: changing zoning laws to allow for mixed use and artists' lofts as a matter of right and reducing parking requirements.   This worked in Lowell, and it worked right here on Locke Street, and it can work on Merrimack Street.

A Stroll Along the Waterfront

We need to spark a second renaissance, a renaissance along the river, so that someday, we will have, our own series of parks and walkways along the waterfront our own emerald necklace along the water.

The key is to attract private investors and to work with those private investors to build together a series of parks and walkways along the waterfront.

This will not be easy, it will involve a series of new ordinances that will encourage growth and investment, provided we get what we want, a guarantee that the public will always have access to the water.   The river belongs to all of us, not just to those with the money to build along the waterfront.

Later this year, I will ask the city council to join with me to take the first steps: to develop a waterfront master plan and then to rezone the waterfront so that someday, our vision of a series of parks and walkways a reality.

Keeping Haverhill Affordable: Tough Decisions Today to Keep Our City Fiscally Solvent

Back when I first became Mayor, many people thought that Haverhill would go into receivership.

I made a vow then that I would make the tough fiscal calls to keep our city solvent and I would not allow us to go into receivership.

One of the toughest calls is to have to veto items that we would all like to do, but simply cannot afford to do.

Recently the city council voted to adopt a new State law concerning the way we would calculate future cost of living increases for retirees.  It was not a cost of living increase.  It changed how future cost of living increases would be calculated.

Right now, our retirees receive cost of living increases, usually 3%, based upon the first $12,000 of their pensions.  This legislation would change that over a three year period, and would base the cost of living increase on the first $15,0000 of the pension.

This "COLA adjustment" will cost us $171,000 in next year's budget, where we already face a projected $3 million deficit.   In three years, it adds $550,000 to the budget deficit.   In about a decade, the costs ramp up to $1 million per year adding up to a staggering $14 million cost over the next twenty years.

Adopting this law at this time would force us to either raise taxes, or make painful cuts somewhere else.   We all want to help retirees, but the most important thing we can do for them is to keep our system fiscally solvent.

That does not mean we can not do something at some time.   I have asked for further actuarial study to determine the effects of the recent pension reform legislation to see what we can afford and we can revisit this matter at that time.

For right now, we simply can not afford this.   I wish we could.