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Haverhill Mayor Jim
Fioretini's
Monthly Newsletter
A Wonderful Community
The
recent flood was the worst natural disaster to hit our
city since the flood of 1936. It brought out the best in
people.
 Here are a few examples of what I
saw when I toured the city this week.
* On River Street, residents like City Councilor Krystine
Hetel pitched in to help other residents who were flooded
out. Above, local resident Bev Rogers shows me the damage
as entire apartments had to be cleared out.
* On Coffin Avenue, some residents along the river lost
everything in the flood, with no insurance to cover their
losses. Neighbors like Kathy Gray and Mike Feenstra
pitched in to help, cleaning out the apartments of people
devastated.
* At the Phoenix Row elderly housing project, over 100
elderly residents had to be relocated when the building
flooded. We’re working to get those folks back into
their units. In the meantime, the owners of Bradford
College stepped forward and agreed to my request to allow
people to stay there temporarily.
To all of you who pitched in to help, and to a wonderful
group of city employees who worked night and day to get
our city back on track, a heartfelt thank you! You made
me so proud to be the mayor of this great city.
Advance Planning Helped
As
bad as the flood was, advance planning helped lessen the
blow.
Last October, if you recall, we had some minor flooding
in the city. We used that occasion to plan in the event
there was major flooding. The flood gates on Wall Street
were tested. An evacuation plan for Coffin Avenue and
Phoenix Row was drawn up— with people assigned to
notify residents, and emergency plans to locate people at
the Citizen’s Center. All of this planning paid off
when we needed to evacuate those areas.
This flood also shows that the sea wall established after
the flood of 1936 works, and works well. Although well
meaning groups have talked of removing portions of the
wall, this flood shows that the wall performs an
invaluable function and must remain.
Sewer Line, Bates Bridge Back on
Line
The flood knocked out the main sewer line going to the
waste water treatment plant in Bradford and the bridge
going to Groveland, officially called the Bates Bridge.
(It is generally referred to as the Groveland Bridge.)
Haverhill work crews worked through the nights to hook up
an emergency bypass line to the treatment plant and put
it back on line by Thursday night— a few hours ahead
of schedule.
At the bridge, Mass Highway department workers reopened
the bridge to automobile traffic after an examination
showed it to be safe. Further testing is required before
it can be reopened for truck traffic.
Abandoned Gas Station to
Become Haverhill’s
First Starbucks!
Last week, the Board of Appeals gave final approval to
Starbucks to locate in Haverhill. Starbucks will be
located on this abandoned gas station site at the corner
of Main and Rosemont. Starbucks joins BJ’s Wholesale
Club, Lowe’s, Beacon Properties, and Magellan as
recent and welcome additions to our city.
Magellan Aerospace CEO credits
Haverhill officials
Haverhill was, once again, highlighted in the Globe Real
Estate section: “Haverhill Finds Work for One of Its
Factories” Boston Globe, May 20 2006 , page C27.
The Globe quotes the CEO of Magellan who said that he was
considering moving out of state, but local and State
officials persuaded him to stay in Massachusetts and
consolidate to Haverhill:
“The fast and enthusiastic response of local
officials offering financial incentives and a pool of
available labor.”
The article went on to say: “Middleton’s move
follows a commercial development near Haverhill’s
highways, which has seen Lowe’s and BJ’s
Wholesale Club stores moving to town. Business
development in the city follows a residential boom in the
city’s downtown.”
Abandoned Factory Building Approved
for Upscale Condos
Thursday,
the Board of Appeals approved the request of Angela and
Sean Chen project to turn this old factory building at
104 Essex Street and turn it into 60 modern, upscale
condominiums. The project has been held up for two years
over parking— the Chens could not acquire enough
parking to meet the parking requirements of the
city’s zoning code, so the building remained vacant
and in deplorable condition. Last week, the Board of
Appeals decided that a reused building was preferable to
an unused and run down factory building.
New Business Growth, New State Aid,
Helps Balance Budget
Increased state aid, including the long awaited $2.6
million in additional hospital aid, and an improving
local economy has allowed us to balance our budget for
the third year in a row with no layoffs, no cuts in
services and no request for an override or debt
exclusion.
Two years ago, Haverhill instituted a “consumer
cities” approach to local economic development. Our
goal was to make the city more attractive, attract new
residents to our downtown and control growth in our
outskirts. We felt that this would, in turn, attract new
businesses.
We instituted a number of policies to improve our revenue
picture, including:
* Rezoned downtown to allow for mixed-use development and
more residents;
* Rezoned areas near the highway for retail;
* Increased charges for building permits and other fees;
* Demanded Impact fees from large residential developers;
This budget sees the first positive results of these
strategies.
Money from permit fees, mostly from downtown building
permits, is up 51% in this budget, to a total of $1.7
million. This is an increase of $757,000 over what was
budgeted in FY06.
This budget reflects $750,000 in impact fees negotiated
with the developers of the Ridgecrest housing project .
Taken together, the consumer cities growth strategy has
resulted in over $3.9 million dollars in revenues, which
helped us to increase funding for public education and
balance our budget.
New Business for Haverhill - An Investment That’s
Paying Big Dividends
Fees and permits : $1,700,000 - Increase of
$757,000
New growth: $1,500,000
- Increase of $400,000
Impact fees $750,000
-
Ridgecrest Development
Total in FY 07 budget $3,950,000.00
Haverhill Receives
Gang Violence Grant
Last week we received notice that Haverhill will receive
a grant from the state for over $200,000 for gang
violence prevention. The grant was put together by the
police department working in conjunction with the
Community Violence Coalition. The money will be used for
prevention— to reach out to young people before they
join a gang. My congratulations to the coalition for a
job well done in putting forward the application.
This week’s questions:
1. How do you feel the city handled the flood and related
flood problems?
2. What can we do to improve our response to situations
such as this?
E-mail your responses to mayor@cityofhaverhill.com
Disaster Assistance
President
Bush recently made the federal disaster designation
necessary for Haverhill residents and business to seek
federal disaster relief. Homeowners, renters and business
owners who sustained damage in the flood may apply to
FEMA by phone at 1-800-621-3362 or on the web at http://www.fema.gov. FEMA asks that people have social
security, phone, address, insurance and damage
information ready. FEMA reps are still in our area.
Apologies are in order to people who attended a meeting
on a Wednesday night about the flooding. There was a
notice published in the newspaper that the seminar we
held with FEMA was to be held at 7 p.m. Actually, the
seminar was at 7:30 a.m. While the newspaper ran two
corrections with the correct time, about 15 people did
not see the corrections and showed up in the evening. I
personally called the people who emailed me to offer my
apologies.
I also have written a letter to the Gazette thanking them
for setting the record straight about the flood wall. As
the Gazette pointed out, it was former Transportation
Secretary Dan Graubauskas who suggested (probably in
jest) taking the flood wall down. No city official has
proposed removing or shortening the flood wall and,
indeed, we could not do so if we wanted to.
HaverhillMeds Promises to
Save Money for City
The
city of Haverhill has adopted a new program to allow
retired city employees to import prescription medications
by mail order directly from Canada. The program, called
HaverhillMeds, allows non-union city employees and
retired city employees to purchase their prescription
medications directly from Canada, at a savings of about
40%. This has the potential to save our city, and our
retirees, some badly needed money. We are one of about
100 cities nationwide to adopt this program, but only the
fourth or fifth statewide.
City Establishes Permit
Fee Waiver Program for Flood Victims
In
order to help the victims, we have set up a program to
defer, or waive, permit fees, for people that need to
rebuild after the flood. We are allowing individuals who
suffered damage to defer the fees until they receive
assistance from FEMA, and in some cases we will waive the
fees entirely.
Brownfield’s Grant to
Emmaus for Housing
Last
year the city obtained a grant to assess sites that were
possibly polluted — called a brownfields grant. This
year we made our first award under the brownfields grant
to Emmaus House. Emmaus House would like to use one of
its vacant lots for housing, and needs our help to have
the site tested for possible pollutants. We are proud to
help such an excellent group.
Help for Public Education
The
city of Haverhill school department faces a $2.7 million
budget deficit.
Let me begin by explaining that the school budget has not
been cut —, it has increased. The city budget for
public education is up by $1.8 million and state aid is
up by $1 million, so the school budget is up by $2.8
million. Unfortunately, our fixed costs — health
care, utilities, salaries, pension, etc. are up by $5.5
million.
Schools all throughout this region are experiencing
enormous problems. Part of the problem is that state
school assistance, called Chapter 70, was cut a few years
back and was level funded for a time after that. The
legislature is working on it.
Thanks to our state legislators, the city has obtained
additional state aid for its hospital and has used a
portion of that to try to make up a portion of the
difference. We have been able to increase funding by
almost $5 million over the past four (4) years.
We can not perform miracles. We can not make up for a
$2.7 million shortfall in the public schools budget. We
will continue to do what we can. Education is all of our
responsibility, not just the responsibility of those with
school children.
High School Graduation
June
is my favorite month, since I get to meet so many
wonderful kids at graduation and commencement ceremonies.
Thursday I had the pleasure of walking with the children
of St. Joseph ’s at the Walk of the Faithful.
Friday, June 2nd, in my office at 11 a.m., I had the
pleasure of honoring three students who had perfect
attendance for all twelve years of school. Please join me
in saluting a wonderful class of Haverhill High School
graduates who are going to such schools as Columbia,
Bates, Boston College, U-Mass, Northern Essex and many
other fine schools.
No city funds are used in the writing or dissemination of
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The June, 2006 Edition
of the Valley Patriot
The Valley Patriot is a Monthly
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All Contents (C) 2006, Valley Patriot, Inc.
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Prior Coluns by Haverhill Mayor
Jim Fiorentini
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