DANVERS ― Local municipal leaders addressed the business community at the 2021 State of the Region Address on Wednesday morning, naming COVID-19 recovery, infrastructure work, equity, and climate change among their main priorities.
Mayors of Lynn, Peabody, Salem, Beverly, Gloucester, and Newburyport, as well as the Danvers town manager, participated at the event organized by the North Shore Chamber of Commerce. State Sen. Joan Lovely (D-Salem), state Rep. Sally Kerans (D-Danvers) and state Sen. Diana DiZoglio (D-Methuen) attended the event.
All of the municipal leaders acknowledged the challenges of last year in their remarks.
“I got to know many leaders very intimately in the last 18 months,” said Lynn Mayor Thomas M. McGee. “All the leaders had to make the toughest decisions without a playbook and I am so impressed with the work they’ve done together.”
McGee said that keeping communities safe while giving support to the businesses was tough to balance.
“We spent a lot of money ― federal, state, and local money ― through grants in our community to top-priority businesses,” McGee said.
Lynn directed 82 percent of grants to minority- and female-owned businesses, McGee said. The city joined other communities in launching the North Shore Diversity Catalog to create a single resource for residents, foster collaboration, and improve business equity and diversity of municipal contracts and bids.
Now, Lynn is preparing to spend $70 million of federal money under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021.
“We want to make sure we maximize those dollars,” said McGee. “Make sure that they last and that some of those investments in 10, 15, 20 years make a return on those dollars.”
McGee named a $25,000 equity-and-inclusion fund and appointment of a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) officer among the achievements of the year, as well as equipping police with body cameras. He also said that the city has budgeted $500,000 for a nonviolent crisis-intervention unit, the All Lynn Emergency Response Team (ALERT), to supplement and support police work.
“Hopefully, what we are doing in Lynn will be a model for other communities,” said McGee.
The city has also created a planning department, which includes a principal planner, a social planner, and an arts-and-culture planner, which will continue moving the city forward, McGee said.
Speaking about infrastructure development, McGee said that the city has spent $1.7 million of local money to access $63 million in state and federal funding for the construction of three big projects. Western Avenue will undergo a complete reconstruction from the Salem line to the Saugus River, which will cost $44 million.
The city is also investing in recreational activities. The Northern Strand Community Bike Trail now runs for 11 miles, linking Everett to Lynn, and will be extended all the way to the beach.
Another major project is creating a regional signature park on 60 acres of waterfront at the site of the former Lynn landfill, McGee said.
McGee also urged state legislators to electrify the railway system and make it a regional, rapid-transit system.
Peabody Mayor Edward A. Bettencourt Jr. focused on revitalization efforts of the downtown area and Main Street in the last several years. He said that the city built a retention basin to hold stormwater upstream to prevent downtown flooding; streamlined dangerous traffic patterns; improved parking and pedestrian safety; and welcomed into the city many new restaurants, shops, housing developments, and the Black Box community theater ― which he said increased the foot traffic to the downtown district.
Bettencourt mentioned such new promising enterprises as Mills 58 (a shopping destination comprising small businesses housed in a refurbished mill building) and Olio (a 6000-square-foot event space), an upcoming development project at the old O’Shea mansion, and plans to open a children’s museum in downtown Peabody.
The city will receive about $11 million of state and federal funding to rebuild the entire Central Street corridor up to Route 114, Bettencourt said, including new road surface, sidewalks, crosswalks, and modern landscaping.
“Despite the persistence of the coronavirus and the many challenges we face, I remain very optimistic about the local economy and about our future,” said Bettencourt.
Peabody was voted the third-hottest real estate market in the U.S. with houses being sold within three days, on average, after their listing, said Bettencourt.
Salem Mayor Kimberley Driscoll spoke about two interrelated sets of priorities: housing, transportation, and climate change; and equity, education, and the workforce.
She added that affordable housing was one of the biggest challenges for the city. Many people want to live where they were born or went to school. Despite working enough, they don’t qualify for a subsidy and can’t compete with market prices for renting or owning a house. This is changing the character of the whole region, Driscoll said, and is why the city is looking to form public-private partnerships to meet the community’s housing needs.
“Access to safe, affordable housing is a human right,” Driscoll said.
She also identified suburban traffic congestion as a problem, not only in Boston, but locally ― citing Peabody and Danvers as examples. Driscoll said that Salem was looking into bikes, trains, and rideshares as a solution.
Last December, Salem introduced a shared-ride service called Skipper and 20,000 rides have been completed since then. The city would also like to get another train stop and introduce electrified trains. Getting cars off the road will help not only congestion but contribute to tackling climate change, Driscoll said.
“We are not gonna outrun sea-level rise,” said Driscoll. “We are not going to be able to achieve these things until we are thinking thoughtfully about how we are powering our buildings and moving around.”
In terms of post-pandemic economic recovery, Driscoll said that the priority was to continue incentivising people to fill up jobs in restaurants, shops, and the service industry.
At the same time, she added, Salem needs to diversify its economy ― from tours and hospitality to life sciences and technology.
Driscoll invited everyone to get engaged in discussing how local governments will spend federal funding.
“We have state legislators here, we have city leaders here, we have the business community here. The way for us to leverage that to do good is to come together and recognize that,” said Driscoll.
