The Mayor’s 18 Month State of City Comments

Detailing her 18 months in office at Gannon Golf Course on the clubhouse deck last week at the Lynn Area Chamber of Commerce Breakfast, Mayor Judith Flanagan-Kennedy concentrated, and rightly so, on public safety and what she has done to improve the enforcement portion of the equation.

To her credit, she noted the hiring of 18 police officers since she came into office and new foot patrols with two shifts all over the city.

This is good stuff and if you live here and you call this place your home, you want more police officers. And you want them everywhere all the time.

There are whole neighborhoods as nice as they could be.

The police presence necessary here needs to be in the poorer, more crime ridden areas.

The police need to go where the crime is.

More police officers on our streets is better than fewer police officers.

If we have the security, public safety component just right then we need to create economic opportunity in this city for those without jobs and for the city’s poorest, struggling residents.

It is only with an uplift in the economy that crime gets cut and violence recedes and the city becomes a kinder gentler place.

The mayor has also shown good judgment in hiring more firefighters. After all, this is a city that tries to burn itself down from time to time. Our working fire department  is also getting new equipment as well as additional manpower.

Last, the mayor has been able to keep squirreled away some $7 million in free cash. This amount of free cash is eyed with envy with other cities and towns across the state.

This shows the mayor tends to stay away from wasting what is precious, and this, too, is good.

Crime is down. Fires are down. Free cash is plentiful. Everything important is in place as the mayor moves into the two year mark of her administration.

 

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