Mayor's salary - is it over yet?

The story that will not die... Is it dead yet? The City Council voted overwhelmingly to raise the mayor's pay to $100,000 a year starting with the next term (beginning January 2010). Good move in our view. But instead of simply uncoupling their own stipend from the mayor's salary rate (does any other town in Massachusetts even do this?), they zero out the Council's individual expense accounts and lump it into their stipend. End result? Mayor's pay will go up, Councilor's stipend is level. Clever, but why not just disconnect the two and then vote on the Mayor's salary separate? Wouldn't that be simpler? The measure passed the Council with just one dissenting vote from Ward 5 Councilor Matt Veno.

No contest

No, this is not another post about Bruce Guy.

The deadline for candidates for the legislature to file nomination papers with the city clerk has come and gone. Sen. Fred Berry and Rep. John Keenan will be unchallenged this fall in both the Democratic primary and the general election. So much for Berry retiring and so much for Lovely gunning for a re-match. Looks like it'll be a quiet election year in Salem.

In related news, next door, Rep. Joyce Spiliotis has her first free election since taking office. It's not all quiet on the North Shore, though. newly elected Rep. Lori Ehrlich will face another challenge from Republican John Blaisdell, whom she defeated in the special election in March, and Rep. Brad Hill has a challenger in Democratic candidate and attorney Donald Bumiller.

Uncouple it!

The Salem News offered their regular, practically obligatory article about Mayor Driscoll's unusually low salary in comparison to other municipal chief executives on the North Shore (funny, we don't remember the sentiment being so pro-mayor under the last denizen of the corner office...). This has opened the flood gates elsewhere online and in the community: is it time to raise the mayor's salary?

We think it is. And, almost more importantly, it's time to uncouple the City Council's stipend from the Mayor's salary. Kill that ordinance, revoke Council health insurance (what other job provides full health benefits for the worker and their family for a part-time position?), and use the savings to start increasing the mayoral pay. You get what you pay for.

Goodbye, Walter

Long-time Planning Board chairman and member Walter Power passed away last week. He had served chair of the board for three decades. Wrote the Salem News:

He literally gave thousands of hours serving on a board that handled complex and often controversial developments and was an unpaid volunteer. And, for years, he did it while working a job that took him all over New England. Many was the night Walter would rush back from some far corner of Maine to make a meeting.

Under his leadership, the Planning Board reviewed projects that literally changed the face of the city — the Peabody Essex Museum expansion, the massive Fafard condominiums off Highland Avenue, the 130-home Strongwater Crossing project on Marlborough Road, the Salem Waterfront Hotel & Suites. The list goes on and on.

In recent years, he also served on committees reviewing the harbor plan and the proposed redevelopment of the Salem News block.

The city is the worse for his loss. He was a decent guy and cared deeply about Salem.

Budget

The Massachusetts House is out with its proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2009. In an article this weekend in the Salem News, reporter Matthew Roy looks at earmarks from North Shore reps. Our own John Keenan filed six amendments, according to the legislature's website -- two are mentioned in the article, $50,000 for the Salem Mission and $65,000 for the Creative Economy Association on the North Shore. The latter was also sponsored by Rep. Steven Walsh (D-Lynn) and Rep. Ted Speliotis (D-Danvers).

Not included in the article were Rep. Keenan's four other amendments:

• $250,000 for Children's Friend and Family Services in Lynn
• $50,000 for an economic development program through the Salem State College Enterprise Center
• $125,000 to match a federal grant for the Essex National Heritage Commission
• $100,000 for the Historic Ports Initiative

In reading the actual text of the amendments and asking someone familiar with the state budget process, we learned that these amendments do not actually add spending to the budget total but instead direct how the funds should be spent within the existing budget. This isn't always the case and some amendments filed by lawmakers will also boost the final budgeted amount, but in Keenan's amendments all six do not increase spending, just specifically allocates it. What do you think?

Clerk squabble

Real trouble or grandstanding? What do you think? The Clerk's office, like most city offices these days, is short staffed. City personnel issues are the Mayor's purview - not the Council's. Yet it was the Council, spearheaded by Mike Sosnowski and Joan Lovely, who have apparently rushed to the Clerk's staff's rescue, with proposals to shutter the office for a few hours a week to the public so the workers can catch up on paperwork. The Mayor seemed miffed that that decision was made without her consent (according to the City's ordinances, personnel and office hours are run by the chief administrative officer, the Mayor) and that she was invited at the last minute to a Council meeting where the Council berated her for the cut-backs. According to the Salem News:

"Driscoll said she reached out to councilors by e-mail earlier this week to sit down and find alternative ways to work through the staffing shortage. Not a single councilor replied, she said... Ward 3 Councilor Jean Pelletier said, "There's got to be a different way than doing it this way. ... Mr. President, there has to be better communication between you and the mayor.""

...This is starting to sound familiar.

Someone commented below that Lovely is going to run against State Rep. John Keenan again. From the sounds of this encounter, however, we would have to agree with one of the comments posted at the Salem News website: "Sounds like Lovely is gearing up to challenge Driscoll."

1 Year Old

Today our little blog celebrates its one year birthday.

On April 17, 2007, we began blogging about Salem politics. In one year we've made 75 posts about the political scene, issues, and players in this city. We've had a few hundred comments and several thousand visitors. Two of our posts - the 2007 election results and the musings about candidates for an open State Senate race should Berry every retire - were referenced to by local newspaper articles and columns.

Much of our traffic came last spring (when we began), last fall (during the 2007 city election), and more recently after the State Senate post and the subsequent removal of moderated commenting.

Salem Politics is happy to be part of the growing online community of Salem residents and businesses - links to them all are at right. We're also happy to post links to our neighbors to the west, and to our favorite Salem blogs. We may not always agree, but our community is certainly a better place for the discussion.

Here's to another year!