Clancy lauds record, launches ’09 bid

LYNN – “We have changed things,” Mayor Edward J. “Chip” Clancy Jr. said Wednesday as he discussed his run for a third term in the office he has held since 2002.Clancy, who turns 59 next week, typically equates running with the 100 miles he logs at a fast-paced jog every month. He keeps statistics on the road races he has run on a piece of paper tucked away in an office filing cabinet. The list of his mayoral achievements and challenges resides in his head.Closing the city’s two nursing homes, rolling back bar hours from 2 a.m. to 1 a.m. and building a new police station and Manning Field sports complex are accomplishments, he said, that have saved the city money, cut crime and made Lynn a more attractive city to live in.”I can point with pride to changing all those things successfully in eight years during the most financially challenging times we’ve seen,” he said Wednesday as he prepared for last night’s campaign kickoff at Hibernian Hall.Clancy succeeded former Mayor Patrick J. McManus, his prospective challenger in the September preliminary election, on the heels of a state income tax cut that reduced the amount of money the state could share with Lynn and other cities. In 2003, former Gov. Mitt Romney cut local aid to balance the state budget and a new round of cuts this year and in 2010 raise budget-balancing challenges.Clancy said the city under his leadership took the necessary steps to correct Classical High School’s sinking foundation.”We aggressively litigated to get a favorable settlement and keep kids in the building.”He said the plan to relocate the power lines bisecting a large plot of waterfront development land is on the brink of being completed.”Once DPU (state Department of Public Utilities) gives its seal of approval, we’ll go forward,” he said.He stands by his decision in the face of the current spending challenges to close the Ford School annex on Bennett Street. Clancy said “there is plenty of space” in local junior highs for annex students and said 116 of the 220 students currently attending annex classes are not from the Highlands, where Ford School is located, but other parts of the city.He said Lynn in his tenure as mayor has broken pace with other communities and not introduced user fees for athletics and other extracurricular school activities.Clancy said the city’s gang violence problem is a top priority for police who have assigned extra officers to evening and overnight shifts. He said police anti-gang officers are among the first in the state to work with other police departments to track gang members moving from one community to another.”By sharing this information, if they come here, we know immediately.”Clancy said his leadership has promoted women into top city jobs, including the top school post held by Superintendent Cathy Latham.He is working on introducing a senior property tax abatement program to help older Lynn residents. The program may be modeled after ones in other cities offering tax breaks to seniors who volunteer for community service.The man who, by his own reckoning, ran 40,000 miles in 32 years by the end of last year, must focus on looking ahead, not backwards.”Any campaign should be about tomorrow, what is in the future.”