Events
Left: Members of the community raise candles in honor of the victims. Right: the Newburyport Children’s Glee Club.
On June 15th the City of Newburyport and Interfaith Council held a vigil to honor the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting.
My thanks to the Interfaith Council, Ann Upton and the Newburyport Children’s Glee Club and the hundreds of residents and visitors who joined the event.
The stamp honoring the US Coast Guard unveiled.
On June 21st the Rotary Club held their annual luncheon to recognize the Coast Guard. Capt. Claudia Gelzer, Sector Commander was the keynote speaker. The Post Office was on hand to unveil the Forever USCG stamp.
Zach McNaughton Lucy Gagnon
June 22nd was the last day of school and the 8th grade Moving Up Ceremony. This year a new award was introduced, the Mayor’s Youth Award, to recognize two students that have great potential but have not necessarily been willing to share their talents and gifts yet with the rest of us. This year the award went to Lucy Gagnon and Zach McNaughton.
Secretary Jay Ash Attendees at the planning day
On June 23rd the Merrimack Valley Planning Commission held their Annual Regional Planning Day. Secretary Jay Ash, Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development, was the keynote speaker. Panels were held on Comprehensive Planning, Transportation, GIS/IT, and Environmental programs.
Left: Mayors attending North Shore Pride pose together. Right: View from the parade
On June 25th, Mayor Kim Driscoll of Salem hosted the 5th Annual North Shore Gay Pride Parade. Several North Shore mayors and elected officials attended.
Upcoming Dates
Next Intermodal Advisory Group: June 28th at 7 pm in Mayor’s Conference Room
Master Plan Steering Committee: July 7th at 4 pm in Mayor’s Conference Room
Other
Annual Table-top exercise: Chief LeClair has coordinated this year’s table top exercise with our Public Safety teams, Anna Jacques staff, Cataldo EMS, and Coast Guard.
FY17 Budget: The Legislature has passed a temporary 1-month budget to cover state obligations through the end of July so legislators work on dramatically scaling back their 2017 fiscal budget of $39.5 billion. The Governor has announced that 2017 fiscal revenues will certainly come in far below earlier predictions; the shortfall is at least $450 million and could be as much as $750 million. Any cuts to municipal or school accounts would trigger major budget problems in our City as well as for other cities and towns.
Please reach out to Sen. Ives and Rep. Kelcourse to request they hold local aid and school funding harmless.
In regards to the local review process, thank you for passing our FY17 budget. I have expressed my concerns about your cuts.
Parks: Mike Hennessy began employment two weeks ago as the Parks Manager/Caretaker. His resume is attached to the transfer for the budget for the remainder of this year. In addition to his impressive resume, including owning his own landscaping company for 25 years, Mr. Hennessey has also demonstrated his passion for Newburyport parks through donating the following gifts:
- Three years of mowing and fertilizing at Joppa Park, as a contractor-partner through the Parks Commission’s Landscape Partnership
- An irrigation system and fertilization of the new Joppa Lawn
- An irrigation system for the Joppa Rose Hedge
- Two years of weekly landscaping at Atwood Park working with the Opportunity Words crew
- A test excavation and repair method of a small section of seawall walkway at Joppa Park, to confirm that we can repair the walkway ourselves in sections. This approach will save the city an estimated $300,000 to $400,000 and fix a seriously dangerous walkway that has plagued a popular park for years
- A beech tree at the front of Atkinson Common in honor of the birth of his daughter 16 years ago
In addition, he was the contractor for Atkinson Common for 16 years under Belleville Improvement Society during Atkinson’s glory days until 2007. He looks forward to bringing Atkinson Park back to its former glory.
Plum Island:
Life guards are now working full time and participating daily in cleanup of the point lot.
Charos dredging project for the Captain Lady boats, after a lengthy approval process, is underway. DPS is assisting in accepting the dredged sand and stockpiling at Olga Way. Newbury has taken a portion of the sand, but the majority of the 3600 cubic yards will be reserved for the N. Reservation Terrace area to combat erosion and the loss of a major dune. We are awaiting the engineering report authorized by DCR to GZA.
Councilor Zeid coordinated a very well attended and productive meeting with the residents on PI with Fire, Police, Harbormaster and DPS last week. A new patrol on Friday and Saturday nights has been initiated from 10 PM to 2 AM.
Water and Sewer: The team from MIT under Dr. Alex Slocum will be joining us next week for a thank you luncheon. This team helped our DPS staff brainstorm a fix for the Air Vac system to prevent it freezing; a pilot test of their system has been successful to date.
Pioneer Field & other Ward 4 issues: Councilor Tontar also held a very productive meeting at the Senior Community Center. Sgt. Kohan joined in the meeting- parking, speeding, roads and sidewalks were actively discussed.
Hale St: My office as well as many City Councilors have received emails and calls to pave and upgrade Hale Street. I sent you my response, but wanted it in this update as well.
We will be doing additional paving that will coincide with the sewer project. I was out walking and driving on Hale St. a few weeks ago and I know this is a difficult road to access from the west end. Hale St. was completely redone in 2002 (milled and paved) and is showing wear and potholes. The road is narrow and wetlands, ledge and culverts/swales surround both sides creating major obstacles to any widening. This is why building a sidewalk will be difficult if not impossible to get approved. However, we are developing a Complete Streets program, required by MADOT, to apply for additional funding to evaluate how we can make the street safer for bikes and pedestrians.
The city receives State funds annually for roads and sidewalks and, as I mentioned above, this year we received only $516,000. The funding does not go very far, which is why we allocated 50% of the meals tax for sidewalks. For example, DPS has estimated the cost to mill and repave Hale St. would be close to $2 million. We will work in phases- repairing potholes, paving areas associated with the sewer project, and adopting a Complete Streets policy to allow eligibility for additional state funding to work with traffic experts to determine the best approach to make the street safer.
Whittier Bridge: My office has been involved in this project for 6 years prior to the construction. We have successfully advocated for mitigation including the shared use path and the wall and plantings on the 95 North section by Laurel Ave. We have continued those meetings now with the contractor Walsh/McCourth for mitigation for the use of city property for staging- we have an additional meeting this week and hope to finalize this work. One area of great importance is to assist the neighbors on Pine Hill who have lost their buffer and are dealing with significant noise and impacts from the construction. We understand that the residents had a productive meeting with MADOT last week and will be reviewing a landscape design.
Bresnahan School: I am pleased to report that last week, under the MA CHPS program, the Bresnahan School Building has achieved the highest energy rating- Verified Leader Status.