LYNN — In the final forum before the Tuesday preliminary election, candidates in all races shared what they believed to be the most pressing issues facing the city.
The candidate forum, held at the Community Minority Cultural Center Friday night, hosted candidates for mayor, City Council and School Committee.
The three mayoral candidates had overlapping ideas, but different plans of how best to address them. City Council President Darren Cyr said the most pressing issues in Lynn were its need for new school buildings and more housing. He said that the city should build new “cluster schools” for its younger students, combining more students into one school to replace its current aging buildings.
“We have 28 schools. It doesn’t make sense for us to be maintaining all those schools,” Cyr said. “It’s 28 boilers, 28 roofs. It’s unbelievable the condition and the environment that our kids are going to school, our teachers are teaching in.”
He said the best way to solve the problem of housing is to create more jobs and more development to break the cycle of poverty.
School Committee member Jared Nicholson also named the city’s schools as a major issue, saying that they were overcrowded and had unsuitable conditions. He also listed housing as a priority, but unlike Cyr, favored the recently-passed Housing Lynn plan to create more affordable housing.
Nicholson said that the city’s infrastructure was a huge problem, and noted that the city will soon be potentially receiving millions of dollars from the state and federal government as part of the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. He said that the city needs to be ready to “put (its) best foot forward” and use that money wisely.
“We need to do it in a way that’s inclusive, that gets input from people, from the community, to let them know that these opportunities are coming and to hear from them what their needs are,” he said. “This is something the city needs to do better by making it easier to get involved.”
School Committee member Michael Satterwhite said that his top four priorities are “affordability, accessibility, activities and public safety.” He said that his own lived experiences have shown him the difficulty of being unable to afford housing and other necessities.
“We’re talking about affordability. I’m not just talking about Section 8 and vouchers. I’m talking about the ability to be able to afford to live here,” he said. “If you lived here and experienced it, you would know, and it’s important for the next mayor of this city to have that experience.
Candidates for City Council also voiced their opinions. Ward 4 candidate Natasha Megie-Maddrey and Councilor Richard Colucci, as well as at-large candidates Jose Encarnacion and Marven Hyppolite, all agreed that affordable housing was the biggest issue facing the city.
Current at-Large Councilors Brian LaPierre, Brian Field and Hong Net listed infrastructure and capital improvements as their highest priority.
Ward 3 candidate Coco Alinsug said the biggest issue in his ward was the pollution on King’s Beach, saying that the city needs to work with state, federal and neighborhood-level officials and community members to fix the problem.
At-Large candidate Nicole McClain also said that affordable housing was a big issue in Lynn, but said that her biggest priority was improving communication and transparency in the city government.
School Committee candidates also had their say on the biggest issues in the public school district. Current member Brian Castellanos and candidate Lennin Peña said they were most concerned about social-emotional learning; Eric Dugan named school buildings; Tiffany Magnolia said her biggest concern was representation in district staff; and Daniel Richard said he was most concerned with helping students and families with individualized education programs (IEPs).
Not at the forum were at-Large Councilor Buzzy Barton; Ward 2 Councilor Rick Starbard and challenger Elizabeth Figueroa; Ward 3 candidate George Meimeteas; School Committee members Donna Coppola and Lorraine Gately; and School Committee candidates Sandra Lopez and Posan Ung.
The preliminary election will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 14. All City Council and School Committee candidates will advance to the November election, but one mayoral candidate will be eliminated.
