The Mayor’s Swearing In Address

The following is the text of the speech given by Manchester Mayor Lou Spadaccini at Cheney Hall on Monday, November 19, 2007, during the Swearing In Ceremony. 

Good evening. I want to thank Lieutenant Governor Michael Fedele for joining us tonight and giving us some advice and wisdom as we embark upon this new beginning in Manchester government. I offer my congratulations to all the elected officials who begin their terms tonight. I look forward to working with all of you these next two years. I also want to thank Mayor Josh Howroyd for his many years of dedicated service on the Board of Directors and also Director Jason Doucette for his contributions to the Board.

This is the sixth swearing in ceremony I have attended and I have come to view them as similar to the first day of school. The meeting is fairly short, everyone is on their best behavior and there’s no homework assigned. But above all, this swearing-in represents a new beginning, a clean slate and a fresh opportunity to do good for the community. For the Board of Directors, this is the first swearing-in in eighteen years where a majority of the Directors are Republicans. This will be a new experience for all of us as we have five directors who have never served in a majority and four who have never served in the minority on this Board.

Bipartisanship is an ideal that is frequently invoked at the beginning of a new term, but it is a real challenge to accomplish. Being bipartisan does not mean always agreeing with each other or surrendering your principles. It means working together toward of common goal of making the community a better place to live and when you are not able to agree on the best the way to achieve that goal, to respect each other’s viewpoints and disagree without being disagreeable.

As a member of the majority, I will do my best to be open and inclusive with all of the initiatives that appear on this Board’s agenda and all of the decisions that this Board makes. The input of all members is valued and this Board will adopt good ideas regardless of where they come from or who gets the credit.

The recent campaign was long and hard fought. We all worked very hard. Now that the dust has settled and votes have been counted (twice), let’s apply that same work ethic to governing and let’s meet head on the challenges that this community faces.

Accountability, fiscal responsibility and an improved quality of life – these are more than just talking points during a campaign. This is the agenda we were elected on and an outline of future Board actions.

Some goals can be accomplished quickly while others will take time to develop and implement. In our first meeting tomorrow we will change the Board’s rules of procedure to allow public comment at the beginning of every meeting. We will also open the Town Attorney’s position to its first ever competitive selection process.

We will strengthen our anti-blight ordinance so that it gives our Building Department the best enforcement tools available to municipalities. We will work with community leaders and property owners to eradicate blight and restore neighborhood pride. Owners of abandoned, severely blighted and uninhabitable commercial properties must either fix them up or take them down.

We will identify ways to reduce the shortage of patrol officers. The funding is already in place for these officers, we need to fill the positions and get these officers on the street. Our police force does an excellent job fighting crime, but the shortage of staff unnecessarily tests the limits of these dedicated officers. Additional officers are needed to step up traffic enforcement and enforce the laws that combat vandalism, graffiti and promote other quality of life measures vital to our neighborhoods. Combating blight, putting more officers on the street, increasing home ownership, creating an atmosphere where we refuse to accept broken windows and graffiti – these are the ways we make Manchester fulfill its motto of being the “City of Village Charm.”

We will renew our focus on economic development and encourage the creation of better paying jobs in Manchester to reverse the trend of falling incomes among our citizens. Manchester has a strong concentration of retail establishments, but retail wages have lagged behind other sectors of the economy. To raise the real income of Manchester households, we need to be a leader in the State’s economic development strategy that encourages the development of industry clusters. By drawing upon the resources of Eastern Connecticut Health Network, Manchester Community College and other business leaders in Town, we can make Manchester a leader in the healthcare sector one of the fastest growing and best paying industry clusters.

Finally, we share the frustration of homeowners who have seen large increases in property taxes these last few years. Manchester must remain an affordable community to live in and that means that tax increases cannot exceed the community’s ability to pay. Controlling taxes will be a great challenge considering the fact that there remain two more years of revaluation phase-in on the horizon. We are committed to identifying savings and efficiencies wherever possible, enacting the principles of performance based accounting and adopting fiscally responsible budgets.

This is our vision to keep Manchester a vibrant and viable community. We are, the nine of us, servants to the common good of our families, neighbors, and friends. We are tasked with using our best judgment, marshalling the facts, and making decisions that improve the quality of our community and positively affect the lives of the people living in it. Public service is about leaving things a better than you found them.

It has been an honor to serve this community as a member of the Board of Directors. I am greatly honored and humbled by the trust that has been placed in me tonight. Leading this community these next two years will be big responsibility, but it is an opportunity that we all approach with enthusiasm and a deep commitment to enrich the lives of the people we represent. I wish you all a good evening and a happy Thanksgiving Holiday.