Havehrill Mayor Jim Fiorentini's
'08 Innaugural Address
1/7/08
Thank you
Thank you for coming here
today. Let me take a moment to recognize and thank a
few people in particular.
Welcome—Congresswoman Nikki Tsongas, State Senator
Steven Baddour, To our elected officials who took the
time in their busy schedule to Representative Brian
Dempsey, State Representative Harriett Stanley and State
Reprehensive Barbara L’Italien, Lawrence Mayor
Michael Sullivan thank you for your service and thank you
for being here.
There are a number of former Mayors who are here, and I
want to thank them for their service to the city--James
Waldron, William H. Ryan, Ted Pelosi, James Rurak, and
John Guerin.
I would like to introduce my family— the first lady
of the city, my wife Martha Fiorentini, my mother Lucy
Fiorentini, my sister Anne Savinelli, and my many aunts,
uncles and cousins, and nieces, thank you.
To our newly elected city council and school committee, I
look forward to working with you.
And most importantly, to the people of Haverhill, thank
you for allowing me to be here today.
Haverhill Four decades ago
Four decades ago, I was there, in
the band, playing in this building, which was then Haverhill
High School.
The education I received here in
this building opened doors for me, and allowed me to go
onto Tufts university and then to law school.
I pledge to you today that I will
work as hard as I can to so that our children and
grandchildren have the same great opportunities I
received in this building four decades ago.
As we stand here today, we face a
very different city than the city I saw in the 1960’s.
Then, I saw a city where our major
industry, the shoe shops and retail stores were leaving,
and where our population was leaving with them. As
the shoe shops left, some people lost their jobs, and the
others lost their hope.
We face a very different city
today. Today, instead of people leaving in droves,
they are coming back—something we should celebrate.
Instead of stores leaving, today
we see a city where large retail stores are moving in.
Instead of our shoe shops being abandoned, today they see
new life as people are moving into them.
As we stand here this morning, we
see a very different city than I saw four decades ago,
and a different city than the one I addressed four years
ago. Today, we have:
ü
The lowest unemployment rate
in 6 and half years.
ü
The greatest increase in
MCAS scores in a decade;
ü
The highest percentage of
high school graduates of any urban school district in the
State.
ü
The greatest influx of new
retail stores in three decades.
ü
A stable or declining crime
rate that makes us one of safest urban areas around and,
ü
The largest investment in
downtown in history.
Change brings
a new set of challenges
Today we have a changed city, but
every change brings with it an entirely new set of
challenges that require us to always reinvent ourselves
and always look for new solutions.
Today, we are challenged to bring
in new jobs at a time when our State economy teeters on
the brink of recession.
To do this, we need to open new
industrial parks to business and we need to expand the
Hilldale Avenue industrial park—we’ve talked
about it for decades, this term we intend to make it
happen.
There are so challenges to meet.
I’d like to speak of one of them today.
How we
preserved the shoe shops and shoe shop era
Four years ago, I spoke to you of
one the challenge of turning brownfields into greenfields
and taking old shoe factory buildings and turning them
into vibrant centers of commerce.
The odds were against us but we
worked together and today, old shoe shops are being
replaced with the largest investment in the history of
our city.
River
city
Preserving the shoe shop era was
important, but the shoe shop era was not the only
important era in our city and it is not the only era we
should preserve.
Before Haverhill was a shoe city, Haverhill
was a ship building city.
By the late 1700’s three
shipyards were working full time in Haverhill, building
tall sailing ships to go out to the Atlantic. In
100 years, 252 tall sailing ships were built in Haverhill.
For two hundred years, our shipyards sent ships and
molasses and sturgeon to Europe and brought in goods from
Europe.
Over the decades, new bridges
downriver prevented our tall ships from sailing to the Atlantic.
The last tall ship sailed from Haverhill in 1909—and
a little over 200 years after our ship building tradition
started, it was over and the shoe shop era, and the era
of new factory buildings was begun.
These new factories provided jobs
hope and opportunity, but they also provided waste which
was discharged their waste into the Merrimack, Walls were
built and houses faced away from the river. For one
hundred years, we turned our back to the Merrimack.
In the 1970’s, all this began
to change. Today, we are spending millions of
dollars to separate storm water from waste water, and
soon, the Merrimack River will be clean enough to swim in
for the first time in a century.
Today, instead of turning our
backs along the river, we are turning towards it. Today
it’s clear: the river is back.
But like every other change, this
change brings with it its own set of challenges.
As we look up and down the Merrimack
today, we see vast stretches of land that are vacant.
Someday, these tracts of land will be developed. We
know it will happen, and we know that now is time to make
certain it is done right.
Our challenge is this: to
preserve public access to the waterfront for future
generations so that when these vacant tracts are built,
future generations can enjoy seeing and walking along and
boating along the Merrimack.
We need to start now, planning,
revising our zoning laws, and developing new laws that
restrict growth along the Merrimack unless that growth
encourages public views, public boating and public access
to the river.
This month, I will announce a
Waterfront Development Task force, to develop those new
waterfront zoning laws.
This waterfront development task
force should eventually become a waterfront development
commission, a commission that is responsible to the
elected leaders, and has the power to acquire land for
parks and for waterfront access—using eminent domain
powers if necessary, the power to control development
along the river.
The details are complicated and
will require study and public hearings, but the overall
concept is quite simple: the river belongs to all
of us, not just to those private interests with the money
to develop along the river.
Our
economic crisis
Make no mistake about it,
preserving public access to the river will be difficult.
It is so much more difficult because of the financial
crisis facing every city in the State today.
Today, we live in the shadow of a
recession, with growth slowed to a trickle.
Today, every city in the State
sees its fixed costs rising faster than its revenues—and
unless the State passes the municipal partnership act,
that crisis will continue. We ask the State today—give
us the tools we need to solve our problems and we will
solve them.
On top of the challenges facing
every city in the commonwealth, we have our own unique
set of challenges caused by the collapse of the hospital
which served this region, the Hale hospital.
Managed
competition
To meet today’s challenges,
we must constantly reinvent government.
This year, we’ll reorganize
our public works department, and introduce the concept of
managed competition. We will ask our unions to work
with us to be so efficient that they can beat the bid of
any private industry that wants to do city work and pays
fair wages and benefits.
Managed competition worked in
Charlotte North Carolina, Phoenix Arizona, Indianapolis, San
Diego and in Springfield, Massachusetts. It can
work here today.
Call to work
together
Managed competition can be part of
our solution, but not all of it. To meet the
financial crisis of 2008 we will all need to work
together for the public good.
Today, I invite the city council
and the school committee to join with me as municipal
partners to solve our common problems. I call upon our
unions to work with us as municipal partners, to solve
the greatest financial problem we face, controlling out
of control health care costs.
Municipal
Partnership
That municipal partnership, that
spirit of all of us working together, has to include our
State and Federal officials. Part of the reasons we
overcame the odds of four years ago, is the assistance we
received from our State and Federal officials, we thank
them today for their help. That spirit of working
together can bring us through the next crisis as well.
Conclusion
In the two years ahead, we face
enormous challenges and enormous opportunities. We’ve
overcome enormous odds to get where we are today.
Now we need to take the next step
to overcome the challenges of today, to preserve our
waterfront, and to overcome our financial difficulties.
We can take the next step, and,
working together, we can be certain our best days lie
ahead.
Thank you.
*Send your questions comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com
The January 2008 Edition
of the Valley Patriot
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