Kennedy touts successes in state of Lynn address

LYNN – Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy on Friday rattled off a list of accomplishments over the last three-plus years in office, but she also pointed out what she sees as one of the city’s weaknesses.”One of the biggest impediments to bringing in business is us,” she said during her annual state-of-the-city address to the Lynn Area Chamber of Commerce.Kennedy, who is running for re-election, then put a piece of the blame squarely on the Lynn City Council.”Recently the City Council instituted another site plan review committee, and I think that is a bad way to go,” she said.She called the review plan “one more hoop to jump through, and we have too many hoops now. We need to remove, not add.”Her plan to reduce the number of “hoops” is to redraft the city’s zoning ordinances through a committee comprising local community and business leaders plus elected officials and representatives from Community Development, Economic Development and Industrial Corporation, and Lynn Housing Authority and Neighborhood Development.”We first enacted our zoning ordinances in the 1920s and we really haven’t done an update since,” she said.There have been zoning changes made for various areas, such as Sagamore Hill, the downtown and the waterfront but there have been no comprehensive changes, Kennedy pointed out.At the start of her speech Kennedy said someone had recently called her an “extemporaneous beast” but she stayed on point during her address. She touched on a myriad of items she has checked off her to-do list during her tenure as mayor, including recently submitting a balanced budget while maintaining $6 million in reserves. Not only have there been no layoffs, but the number of public safety personnel has increased in both the police and fire departments, she said.”We have actively courted, assisted and broken ground on a variety of businesses including Enzo’s Pizza, Rossetti’s restaurant and D’Amici’s Bakery, all of which will open within 60 days,” she continued.Kennedy also touched on street projects under way and planned park improvements, including a $400,000 grant to redo Robert McManus Field and another to rehabilitate the historic bandstand on the Lynn Commons.John Olson, owner of Columbia Insurance, asked Kennedy if there were any plans to spend money rehabilitating the interior of the Grand Army of the Republic Museum on Andrew Street. Kennedy said the city has sealed the building, making it watertight and will soon give the facade a face lift but there are no immediate plans to spend money on the interior.”Right now it’s just too cost prohibitive,” she said. “Most important was to get the outside watertight so as not to ruin the things we already have in there.”Other pluses touted by Kennedy included a new approach to rodent control, a 4 percent drop in the crime rate, a senior tax abatement program, a teen room at the library and cleaning up how summer jobs are handed out to teens.”I have done away with the good-old-boy network way of getting kids jobs that had been prevalent in the city and instituted a lottery for summer youth employment,” she said. “Now everybody has a chance of getting a job. Plain and simple, fair and square.”Kennedy also announced that two new shows have been booked for the auditorium. Celtic Women will kick off the holiday season in December and “a proven winner,” Get the Led Out, will be back in town in January.”In the end our collective hard work is paying off,” Kennedy said.Chris Stevens can be reached at [email protected].