11/06/08

Haverhill Mayor Jim Fiorentini's Notebook

Council Approves Mayor’s Plan to Meet Fiscal Crisis

Due to the recent fiscal crisis, the State cut aid to the city of Haverhill by $1 million.To meet the challenge, I put a number of good things on hold including the hiring of two additional police officers. I cut back on overtime, level funded our capital improvements budget, and drew $170,000 from our rainy day account. The only department I did not cut was public education.

As I told the council, “education is our top priority.” I told the city council that we would not ask for an override or debt exclusion unless it was an absolute last resort. Because of careful advance planning, we were able to meet the challenge of a $1 million budget cut with minimal impact on public services. However, we are all deeply concerned that if the economy continues to deteriorate there will be further cuts required in January. In my address to the council, I told the council “in everything we do, we need to pay careful attention to the bottom line.” The Council approved my plan by a 9-0 vote.

Consolidation Vote In this tough fiscal environment, it is important that government be as efficient and transparent as possible. Today, the city and the school department each have their own departments handling worker’s compensation, payroll, benefits, civil service, and web site updates. We have separate finance departments and separate personnel departments. The city has one person who prints payroll checks. The schools have their own people. We have a person who handles worker’s compensation. They have their own. The list goes on.

Surely, we can and we must do better. I have proposed that we consolidate our departments. Cities like Reading, Barnstable, Methuen, Andover, Harvard and Salem have consolidated. So can we. The Mayor of Salem tells me that consolidation was resisted, but today she feels it is the best thing she has done. If a city and school consolidate their functions, the school committee can vote to end the consolidation at any time. It is telling that not a single city that has consolidated services has ever unconsolidated. Under my proposal, the policy decisions and decisions on who to hire would always be left to educators.

The administrative and ministerial functions would be consolidated. In personnel, consolidation will save us money and make government more efficient. We do not know how much until we are able to get into the school department and see exactly how many people are really needed to do every job. In finance, it will lend us a separate set of eyes to review the finances, and allow us to do what we can not do now, long-term budget projections. You may wish to contact your school committee members on this issue. Kerry Fitzgerald, President kerryf@verizon.net Scott Wood Jr., Vice-President wood45106@aol.com Joseph Bevilacqua (the only member who supports consolidation at this time.) joebevilacqua@haverhill-ps.org Erin Francescone, erinfrancescone@comcast.net Shaun Toohey, shauntoohey@earthlink.netSusan Danehy, sdanehy16@hotmail.com

Sewer Extension to Hilldale Avenue Industrial Park Completed Our long term plans to meet the Hale debt have always been to increase our revenues by growing the tax base. New development downtown, new businesses like Magellan Aerospace and new retail stores like Target, Lowes and BJ’s have already added millions to our tax levy. To make certain Haverhill is ready to compete for jobs of the future, we are working to expand the Hilldale Avenue industrial park.

Our first task was to bring new sewer service to the park. Thanks to a $1 million grant from the State which we applied for, lobbied hard for and obtained, we have now installed sewer service to the first half of the industrial park. The work was completed in October, and the first businesses are ready to be tied in. We have new applied for a new grant to further extend the sewer service to the rest of the park right up to the New Hampshire line. We will hear from the State shortly. Part of our strategy to bring in new jobs is to make this park bio ready and ready for the new green jobs of tomorrow.

Mayor Chosen to Speak at Economic Development Conference in Hartford, Conn

Mayor James J. Fiorentini has been chosen to be a guest at the Conference of Shopping Centers annual meeting in Hartford, Connecticut this coming Thursday. Mayor Fiorentini was asked to speak about how Haverhill rezoned and brought in BJ’s, Target and Lowes— the largest influx of new retail stores in its history. Mayor Fiorentini said he intended to use the conference as an opportunity to pitch his city to shopping center developers to try to bring more retail to the city. “We know that in this economic environment no one is expanding. We also know that his downturn will not last forever. We want to be ready when the economy turns around.”

MCAS Scores Show Small But Continual Improvement MCAS scores, which went up by 5% last year, continued to improve but by a much more modest number.Math MCAS scones were up by 3%, while ELA (English Language Arts) was down by 2%, leaving a net 1% improvement. The top scoring middle school was Hunking. The biggest improvement was at the John Greenleaf Whittier Elementary School which showed a 17% improvement. I will be at the school to honor them with the Mayor’s Educational Excellence Award. While improvement is always good, I am nowhere near satisfied with the result. Our goal in education must be constant improvement.

Retail Brand Alliance Coming In January On November 18, we go before the city council to outline our incentive package to bring for Retail Brand Alliance, makers of Brooks Brother suits, here to Haverhill. Retail Brands comes with over 300 new manufacturing jobs, and the possibilities of 100 more. Retail Brand Alliance came down to a choice of Haverhil or moving the company oversees to the Far East. Keeping them here required a tremendous amount of hard work, a strong economic incentive package, and a strong partnership with the Patrick administration. When the company opens in January, we are hoping to lure Governor Patrick here to celebrate.  


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