(This is the second in a two-part Patch series on Salem Mayor-elect Dominick Pangallo ahead of his swearing-in to the office on Saturday.)
SALEM, MA — One of the key tenets that Dominick Pangallo campaigned on in his bid to become Salem’s next mayor was his ability to do the job on day one after serving as former mayor and current Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll’s chief of staff for the previous decade.
Once sworn into office on Saturday during a ceremony at the Bentley Innovation School, Pangallo will have no other choice than to do just that, as he faces a looming budget deadline, the need to move on a bid for state funding for a new Salem High School, and must negotiate a community benefits agreement with the developer of the proposed offshore wind turbine terminal in the city.
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“The budget is by far the most critical challenge,” Pangallo told Patch in an interview earlier this week. “It’s going to be filed (on Wednesday). I saw it for the first time (last week). It’s going to be an accelerated process.”
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(More on Patch: Dominick Pangallo Steps To Forefront As Salem’s Next Mayor)
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Pangallo said he has been trying to get as much information as he can ahead of the budget hearings set for early next month to help make sure as many aspects of the budget as possible are in line with the city’s priorities and investments with him as its highest elected official through the next 2.5 years.
He backed funding for a new Salem High School during the campaign — declaring in one debate that the question is not as much whether the city could afford to build a new high school as much as it was whether it could afford not to — but a building committee and other preliminary planning must soon be in place to make Salem remain eligible for state matching funds.
He told Patch there are also pending negotiations with Crowley on the community benefits agreement — tax and other commitments due a city in exchange for support on the developer’s project — as the offshore wind terminal stands as a long-term beacon for new industry in the region.
“Getting the office set up and getting things rolling is a top priority,” he said. “The mayor’s calendar is extremely, extremely busy. We need to get Salem rolling as quickly and effectively as possible, and let the staff know that this is an administration that’s got their back.”
In a normal election cycle, a November winner would have about two months to set up a transition to get everything in place upon inauguration in January. But with this year’s special election, and with City Councilor Robert McCarthy serving as acting mayor for the past four months, there will only be 11 days between Pangallo’s victory in a close race against former Salem Mayor Neil Harrington, and his taking the office at the start of what also happens to be a three-day holiday weekend.
For the past 10 years as chief of staff, Pangallo would have been the person to help steer Driscoll and the administration through any similar deadline whirlwinds and burn the midnight oil. But he said he will not have his own replacement in place in time for the start of his term.
“If there is one thing I’ve learned it’s that I want to have the right person for chief of staff and not just a person,” he said. “I don’t expect to have that on day one. But I will fill it as soon as possible.”
While Pangallo will walk into City Hall with immediate priorities, he told Patch one of his longer-term goals is to increase civic engagement and make more residents feel like they have a voice and a stake in city government.
He referenced his own victory last week in which about 29 percent of eligible voters took part in a mayoral election and he won by a bit less than 500 votes.
“I was surprised by the low voter turnout,” he allowed. “You always want to see a higher degree of participation in an election that is of great significance. It gives us a really good target to work on.
“How do we build more civic engagement so they feel checked in more? We want to work as a city around that.”
On election night, Pangallo said there was validation that his campaign based around continuing the progress that he helped steward during the final 10 years of the Driscoll administration resonated with voters and that he found residents were generally positive about the direction of the city.
“I’m excited to have the chance to have that platform to share the message of keeping Salem moving forward,” he said. “I want that to include all the voices in the community, including people who may have felt excluded and maybe had been excluded in the past.
“During the process, I tried to articulate a vision that I found a lot of people in Salem share, which is optimism for the future.”
(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at [email protected]. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)
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