Mayor Jared Nicholson delivered his State of the City Address Jan. 30 in the City Council Chambers.
Nicholson spoke about his many accomplishments in office to-date and outlined his goals for the future of the city. Nicholson, a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, received standing ovations from the audience throughout his speech and at its conclusion.
Following is the text of his State of the City Address:
Thank you, Madam Vice President. Good evening Councilors, School Committee members, Legislators, and guests. I want to start by sharing my condolences to Council President Walsh and his family on the loss of his mother Laurie Walsh, former Chair of the Lynn Housing Authority, co-founder of the Lynn Christmas Parade, and outstanding Lynn citizen who will be deeply missed.
Thank you all for being here.
I want to especially thank my wife, Katherine, my sons Henry and Benjamin, and my parents. I’d also like to thank my staff and the entire team working for Lynn for all that you do.
The state of the city is resolved.
Fiercely and with urgency, unevenly but steadily, we are making progress.
Progress doesn’t shield us from difficult moments. It also doesn’t happen without us coming together in those difficult moments with common purpose and collaboration.
I am hoping that as we face of our challenges and setbacks, we find strength, consolation, joy, and community in one another’s resolve. That it courses through the City and helps us make connections with each other and across different issues, driving cross-cutting solutions to our interrelated challenges.
The solutions will come from us. The great work that is happening. The great people who are here and who care about this community. We will need to look at problems from different perspectives and try new ideas. But it is the resolve of our own people that is our greatest asset that we need to continue to build, aggregate, and marshal to bring us forward.
Peace
Our most painful challenge is the toll of community violence. I extend my condolences to the families who have been devastated by the loss of a loved one as a result of recent violence. We are doing everything we can to put a stop to it.
The challenge also illustrates the importance of the connections we make with one another and across issues.
Community violence requires attention from law enforcement. It also requires attention from educators and healthcare providers. From parents, friends, and neighbors. From civil rights leaders and clergy.
In an effort to help strengthen those connections, we hosted a powerful community conversation with almost 200 community members last fall at Ingalls Elementary. As a next step after that conversation, we hosted just last night the City’s first ever mentor spotlight event to recruit more mentors for our City’s youth.
We plan to follow up this fall’s successful community canvass with another door-to-door visit from City officials this time around Commercial Street in West Lynn in the coming weeks.
Our police force continues to grow and evolve, with 17 new officers sworn in over the last year, bringing an unprecedented level of diversity and generational change. Thank you to our retiring officers and to the new recruits for stepping up to help keep us safe.
The Police Department has an important role to play through law enforcement for gang suppression. They are tirelessly doing that work, coordinating with different agencies and building their capabilities, adding a data analyst and grant writer last year and increasing home visits with families of at-risk youth.
Other departments also play an important role. Last year, we launched a workforce development partnership with ROCA and the Department of Public Works, funded by our American Rescue Plan Act funds, which has created 6 job slots for at-risk young people transitioning into the workforce. The team has worked on projects throughout the City, from clearing sidewalks after a storm to cleaning litter in a municipal lot. Four of the initial participants have already gone on to transition into a permanent job placement.
We are also looking forward to the City’s exciting addition to our public safety team, the Lynn Calm Team, an independent unarmed response for mental health, quality of life, community mediation, and post-incident follow-up dedicated to furthering racial justice. Thank you to all our community partners, including the Lynn Racial Justice Coalition, Eliot Community Health, My Brother’s Table, and others for their help in creating this new program, which will be launching soon.
We are also making sure we can reach and communicate with our residents in order to establish the connections we need and effectively deliver City services, sharing information in multiple languages and working with our Language Access Coordinator and team of interpreters to reach our multilingual community.
Jobs
Our city and our residents deserve good jobs. A path to stable employment is critical for the economic mobility we seek to help us overcome intertwining disinvestment and discrimination as well as the most compelling counter we have to a path to negative behavior with harmful consequences.
That’s one of the reasons we offered to pay for our residents to get their commercial driver’s license, a new program that 11 Lynners are participating in.
The goal of finding good jobs for all is why Lynn Tech got a grant to offer new adult education evening programing with 20 slots in the welding and auto tech shops. This is in line with a forward-thinking vision we share with the schools, nonprofits, businesses, and labor to expand capacity at Lynn Tech to prepare adult learners to move into better paying careers. To give you a sense of the level of interest and ambition our residents have for these opportunities and the work we have before us to meet this need, there were more than 150 applications submitted for the 20 slots.
Our goal of connecting residents with good jobs is one of the reasons why we’re proud to say we’ve been able to diversify our City workforce, increasing the percentage of City employees of color from 1 in 10 in 2018 to 1 in 3 this year.
We’re also working to harness private investment to create job opportunities for our residents.
A great example of that is the project that the Council approved several weeks ago at the South Harbor site on the Lynnway, which at over $450 million is the largest private investment in the City’s history. The project will create much needed housing, including affordable housing. It will create new opportunities for small businesses and a new public park, both of which will draw in residents from all over the City. And it will create jobs, with 15% of the subcontractors required to have a registered apprenticeship program that creates good new jobs and goals for hiring 30% Lynn residents, 25% people of color, and 10% women.
That project is exciting and it is a sign of more to come for our waterfront. We are making progress on a South Harbor Implementation Plan for that entire neighborhood, creating a street network to connect our neighborhoods to the waterfront and unlock its potential. Its potential for development, new and expanded transit connections, open space, water access, jobs, and housing. You’ll see a great example of this concept later this year when the extension of Blossom Street across the Lynnway opens. It will add another opportunity to cross the Lynnway, turning a barrier between the downtown and the waterfront into a connection.
We’re continuing our long-term push to plug Lynn into Greater Boston’s innovation economy. Lynn Tech is adding a biotechnology shop, opening a pathway to some of the best-paying and fastest-growing jobs in the region. Next week, we are visiting Greentown Labs to pitch Lynn to clean energy and climate tech startups. That effort is supported by our long-time partners at General Electric, who contributed to our pitch to companies saying, “The City has been a valued partner that welcomes innovation and collaboration. We would strongly endorse Lynn as a place to do business for any company looking to relocate or establish a presence.”
Attracting positive investment will not only create jobs, but also improve the City’s ability to invest in ourselves through the tax base that commercial growth yields.
Housing
The cost of housing continues to be one of the biggest challenges for our residents. It’s a growth inhibitor in that it makes it harder to retain our workforce and overwhelms our residents’ income and it’s a destabilizing force on exactly the kind of supportive, caring networks that we are trying to create for our youth to combat community violence. A marker of the legacy of racial discrimination and a contributor to current day racial disparities, housing inequality and the opportunity inequality it gives rise to must be addressed.
The work we do towards the goal of affordable housing for all will help us towards our goal for safe and prosperous futures for all, regardless of race, class, or other differences. And we’re doing that work.
We created an Affordable Housing Trust Fund, seeded it with an American Rescue Plan Act investment, and are now funding great projects to create more affordable units.
One example: the fund awarded $1.25 million to Preservation of Affordable Housing to help preserve affordability of the Olympia Square Apartments downtown and create 30-40 new units of affordable housing next door. Another example: the fund supported a project from the Commonwealth Land Trust and Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless that’s creating almost 40 new, deeply affordable units on Buffum Street with wraparound services for tenants to help provide a stable housing environment.
We also directly funded legal help for tenants to prevent evictions, funding a partnership with Northeast Legal Aid using American Rescue Plan Act funds called the Eviction Prevention Project that has assisted more than 160 tenants.
The next step we are undertaking from the Housing Production Plan is a proposal to implement an anti-harassment policy to help the City protect tenants from unlawful harassment. The City would have a tool to address complaints about bad behavior that too often come to Inspectional Services and must then be referred out as a private matter, although clearly wrong and illegal.
The Trust Fund is also currently evaluating a groundbreaking proposal from Harborlight Homes for a transaction to preserve more than 100 units of naturally occurring affordable housing.
That’s housing that’s currently affordable but privately held, which, if sold, could overnight become unaffordable for the many people who live there. We look forward to reviewing this innovative proposal.
In addition to shelter, food is another basic need our residents must be able to access. This year we marked one year of a trailblazing initiative to combat hunger, appointing a newly created
Food Policy Council in January to help steer the Phoenix Food Hub, a partnership hosted by Greater Lynn Senior Services. Last year the project served more than 1500 unique consumers and received statewide recognition for innovation from the Massachusetts Municipal Association. Its programming includes making connections for residents across different needs, from making healthcare referrals to a program that links nutrition and mental health through training and conversation.
Infrastructure
Everything the City does is an opportunity to earn trust with our residents, which ultimately supports us in our work to create the world we all want to live in. From a filled pothole to a certified birth certificate, every interaction gives us a chance in government to show folks that they are right to put their faith in public work.
We are making great strides in creating public services and assets that make the most of those opportunities.
We paid off $8.1 million in state deficit bonds, successfully retiring the state’s financial bailout from 2018. The last couple of years, the City has worked hard to balance the budget in challenging financial times for the City. That work will continue this year, in financial times that are still challenging for the City but also now the State. Mindful of that context, we will continue to make smart fiscal decisions.
Last year, we approved City’s first ever comprehensive plan, Vision Lynn, which won a regional planning award.
We launched a new, more accessible, dynamic, and informative City website.
We rolled out almost 100 Bigbelly trash receptacles at parks and public lots around the City with decorative resident art, and 50 new barrels on City streets to help make the City cleaner.
We permanently preserved Lynn Woods working with the Lynn Water & Sewer Commission, Department of Conservation and Recreation, Greenbelt Conservancy and Friends of Lynn Woods. Lynn Woods is a centerpiece of a parks system that we are growing with the addition of the signature waterfront Harbor Park, scheduled to open next year, and upgrading with significant ARPA investments in several neighborhood parks, from adding turf surfaces at McManus Field to irrigation at Keaney Park, which will culminate over the next year.
Our next step to better reach, communicate with and ultimately serve our residents most effectively will be a mobile application first brought to us by an 8th grade class from Marshall Middle School called See-Click-Fix to better report and track the resolution of constituent issues.
We will finish a study to measure the availability of parking downtown and propose ways to improve access and convenience.
We will continue to make an unparalleled investment in the City’s roads, with $11 million coming from the state to extend the Northern Strand Community Path and repave South Common and Market Streets, $6 million to improve two dangerous intersections on Broadway, and an additional $3 million that we have put into repaving streets with ARPA funds, double our normal annual budget for paving.
The Senior Center renovation project will start this summer, work we are excited to do to give our seniors the space they deserve.
A much-needed upgrade of the Fayette Street Fire Station is also scheduled to start this summer, a step towards achieving the public safety facilities that live up to the high standards of the great work done every day by our Lynn firefighters.
We’ll continue to push for federal Veterans Affairs to sign a lease to keep its care here in Lynn after our EDIC stepped up to buy the building last year, an example of the important work we owe our veterans in gratitude for their service and sacrifice.
We’ll continue our push to finally clean King’s Beach. Many coastal communities enjoy access to safe, clean beaches, a basic coastal amenity that we lack but that we deserve and that we are fighting for with urgency. That work is a prominent example our broader efforts to make sure that the City is protecting the environment and ourselves from pollution and responding appropriately to the changing climate.
Next year, on Friday May 14th 2025, when the City turns 175, we hope to be able to turn on the historic fountain on the Commons through a grant that Community Development received.
Whether it’s decorating bus stops with custom art like we did last year or restoring a fountain on ancient grounds, these improvements to our shared spaces demonstrate for all in our daily lives our interest in one another and resolve for the common good.
Schools
The connection between schools and violence prevention is obvious to everyone. I think most of us have had a teacher in their lives who made a connection that influenced our choices.
It’s important in non-obvious ways as well. As the schools have expanded their role in shaping youth and viewing students holistically by explicitly delving into social-emotional skills, we’ve added an entire education workforce devoted to mental and behavioral health. Our schools do not yet have sufficient spaces for that work to be performed as it should be, one example of the many gaps in our school facilities.
Addressing that gap has been a priority for us all and the signature effort to do so is building a new middle school. Last year, we set the budget for the new Pickering, which only became feasible after a $30 million increase in MSBA funding that the City advocated for with partners, especially our state delegation. Thanks to this collaborative effort, I am thrilled to be able to say that this June we will break ground on a new Pickering Middle School. From there we will continue our leadership in the statewide push for school construction reform and plans for the elementary schools here in Lynn.
We know that pre-K education sets the stage for lifelong learning and that we need to get more of our children into pre-K. Last year, Lynn Public Schools added 90 new pre-K seats. We hope next year through a state funded partnership with Lynn Public Schools, local nonprofits Gregg House and LEO, and others to add at least another 250.
LEO is getting closer to opening a brand-new flagship building for its Head Start program which the City help fund, allowing them to add another 38 preschool seats.
Facilities are important but the learning comes from people not buildings. Lynn Public Schools will continue to work to attract and retain high quality teachers. In an exciting new strategic initiative, Superintendent Dr. Evonne Alvarez is working with her team and our teachers to help our high schools capitalize on our students’ strengths, creating pathways for rigorous instruction, language acquisition skills, financial technologies, and Science Technology Engineering Arts and Math, while retaining what defines public education – open access and inclusion.
A school pathway is a great example of enhancing our connections. Our teachers are doing great work in our classrooms. Our students are too. Encouraging those with common interests, interests in particular types of learning or in areas of future opportunities, to cluster, to share and deepen those interests, to build community, is a great example of how we want to come together, to build on what we have. To take our students’ resolve to achieve the future they and their families want for themselves and allow it to animate and energize the work we are already doing. To let it radiate through our schools, our neighborhoods, our whole City.
I want to thank our entire City team for all that you do and all of our residents for the opportunities that you give us to serve and for all that you do to make this City what it is. I also thank you for the resolve that you have to make the City what it ought to be, the best version of ourselves.
Becoming the Lynn we ought to be is not about changing who we are. It’s about supporting our people here now as we build our desired future together with openness and inclusion. We don’t need to wait for the resolve to come from elsewhere. We need our own resolve to course through one another.
My resolve comes from wanting to get it right for my family. Raising my boys in a place they’ll be safe, loved, taught well, and proud of. I certainly am energized by the resolve I feel in this room, the resolve all of you bring everyday to better our community.
Wherever your resolve comes from, we need it, we feel it, and we share it. Thank you.