Let’s study — for a minute or so — the contrasting elections in Lynn and Saugus.
Could there be a more pronounced difference between the two communities? Here, we have Lynn on one side. Every seat but one was contested. With the exception of Rick Starbard in Ward 2, we could have had an entirely new City Council. And we could have had two new School Committee members too.
Instead, we have status quo. Every incumbent was re-elected.
Now, let’s go next door, to Saugus. Two members of the School Committee and one of the selectmen chose not to run. That left seven of the 10 incumbents facing re-election in their respective crowded fields.
I suppose it should have been plainly obvious, judging from how many candidates ran, that there was a restless feeling over there. People were stirred up.
Do you know how many of those incumbents survived? Two. Debra Panetta and Jeff Cicolini made it back onto the Board of Selectmen. Otherwise, the broom swept everyone out. Individually, some of those who were defeated are good people. They are not professional politicians. They are people who stepped up in a time of extreme crisis in the town (the 2015 recall vote) and worked hard to stabilize things.
Move over to Lynn and what do you have? The city looked extremely short-sighted two years ago when it rejected, in a special election, a proposal to build two new middle schools — schools the city desperately needed both to alleviate overcrowding problems and replace a badly declining physical facility at Pickering. And Lynn is still behind the eight-ball with this situation, both at the middle and high school level.
By contrast, Saugus seems to be well on its way toward addressing its educational needs. Its solution is creative: one lower elementary school on Hurd Street, one upper elementary school at the Belmonte, and a middle-high school at the site of the current SHS.
A lot of thought went into these proposals, and the town worked hard to increase its bond rating, and that had a lot to do with its ability to get the funding it needed to carry these projects out.
Back in Lynn, just about a year ago, right outside my office on Munroe Street, protesters demonstrated at the groundbreaking of an market-rate apartment/condo complex. The protesters felt that the project would displace people who couldn’t afford higher rents, and they also didn’t like the fact that the developer got a tax break as the result of doing a project.
Before we go on, let me just say that I make no judgments about any of this. These are just the issues.
All right. Let’s continue. Nobody would ever suggest that Saugus is devoid of social issues, or that there’s no crime in the town. And it’s not fair to compare the two communities when it comes to crime anyway. For all Saugus has to contend with, I’m sure most people would assume the town is reasonably safe.
It’s been a pretty tough year for Lynn when it comes to violent crime, punctuated with the late-August homicide of one person in a brazen shooting at the Warren Street Playground.
If you read this much, and didn’t know anything else about either communities, wouldn’t you think it would be more likely to vote all the Lynn politicians out and keep them all in Saugus? I think that would be a fair assumption to make.
But as we’ve seen, that’s not what happened. Saugus threw all but two selectmen and school committee members to the curb and took a chance on a new cast of characters while Lynn stood pat (pending the results of a recount Marven Hyppolite wants in Ward 4).
Why?
Because of one galvanizing issue in Saugus — the privatization of custodial services at the expense of the jobs of 50 school custodians.
If you live in Ward 1 in Lynn, that homicide in Ward 6 is a long way away. If you can afford to send your children to private schools, what do you care about overcrowding in public schools (well, you should, but who really does?). If you’re a homeowner and weary of paying higher taxes to support city services, you’re probably all on board with the construction of market-rate housing. It’ll benefit you in the long run.
But laying off the custodians struck a nerve. After the election, I talked with all but one of the new members of the School Committee and Board of Selectmen. An overwhelming majority of them said the layoffs propelled them to run. The general sentiment was either “you just don’t do that to people” or “there had to be a better way.”
The Saugus election turned on that issue alone. We all have our own gripes and causes, and it’s often difficult to get people to understand the reason we have them. But this one was a fastball down the middle. It resonated with people, and they rallied around their fellow Saugonians and held the establishment accountable.
I’m sure this wasn’t an easy issue. The town could either kick the can down the road a little longer, or do something it honestly thought represented the best interests of its citizens. It chose Option 2 despite how unpopular it was. But, as history has proven more than once, there’s no guarantee that making tough decisions will reward you in the short run.
