LYNN – Despite losing her bid for a third term, Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy said she is leaving the city better off than she found it.
Kennedy, 55, the city’s 57th and only woman mayor, said the highlights of her eight years in office include construction of Market Basket on General Electric Co.’s 21-acre Factory of the Future site that had been undeveloped for decades, the new Thurgood Marshall Middle School, and expansion of the Lynn Auditorium.
“The GE site had been a blight in the city for years, the new Marshall Middle School has been called a model school by the state agency that finances school construction, and the Lynn Auditorium was underutilized and uncomfortable until we transformed it,” she said.
But the biggest highlight of her eight years in the corner office might surprise you.
“Handing my kids their high school diplomas when they graduated as they crossed the stage at Lynn English,” she said. “It was a proud moment.”
Kennedy became mayor in 2009 when she beat Mayor Edward J. “Chip” Clancy Jr. by 27 votes of the more than 16,000 ballots cast. In 2013, she bested J. Timothy Phelan 59-41 percent. Last month, she lost to state Sen. Thomas M. McGee 64-35 percent.
Still, Kennedy said she has no regrets and accomplished much in her two terms. She cited Kettle Cuisine, which brought 250 jobs to the city, improvements to Wyoma Square, new equipment for the Fire Department, improved parks, a reverse 911, and free recycling bins.
When she took office in 2010, she said Sluice, Flax, and Goldfish ponds were infested with invasive weeds, not every park had lights for night games, there were few options for seniors to save on their real estate taxes, the downtown was filled with litter, the rotary in front of Market Basket at Federal Street was gridlocked, and if teens wanted a summer job, they needed help from an elected official.
“Today, the ponds are clean, Barry Park and Wyoma Baseball Field have lights, there’s a nightly street sweeping schedule in the downtown, we implemented a way for income-eligible seniors to work off $600 from their property tax bills, there’s a lottery for summer jobs, the Lynn Auditorium is air conditioned and booked, and we invested $2 million in infrastructure improvements in front of Market Basket to keep the traffic moving and make it safer for pedestrians to cross,” she said.
Kennedy said she is also proud of the fact that there were no layoffs on her watch.
“I did everything I could to keep anyone from having to be unemployed,” she said.
Trained as a lawyer, Kennedy said she’s not sure what she will do next. She plans to take some time off and figure out the next step.
“This chapter of my life is closed and I’m about to start a new one,” she said. “I don’t know yet how it will be written.”
