Neighbor News
Vote Monica For Mayor of Melrose To Rebuild Our Police & Fire Stations
Monica Medeiros Solano is the ONLY candidate for Mayor with a proven public works track record to deliver this project on time and on budget
As a former Alderman-at-Large who helped create and implement the plan for the new Middle School, and who also helped plan and oversee major renovations to both City Hall and Memorial Hall, I know first-hand what it takes to work within a budget and deliver major public works projects on time and on budget. Doing so requires honesty with the community, discipline, fiscal accountability, and creative thinking and resilience to be ready to address the unexpected during any project.
It also requires intelligent leadership that the community can trust, compassion, and an ability to innovate new programs to help alleviate the huge tax burdens that many public works projects create for our most vulnerable citizens who are often our veterans, our retired seniors, and those with disabilities who have lived here for decades and want to stay in their beautiful Melrose homes and age in place with respect, dignity and happiness. Monica Medeiros Solano is a proven community leader who has all these qualities and so much more, and I hope you will join me in voting for her as Melrose’s first elected woman Mayor in the upcoming election on November 7th!
I have known Monica Medeiros Solano for twenty-five years as a friend, and as a dedicated public servant who has served on the School Committee, and on the City Council for twelve years. During those fourteen years on the School Committee and Council Monica worked tirelessly to ensure fiscal accountability in our city and school budget, and to make sure government decision making is open and transparent on every issue including water/sewer fees, real estate taxes, public safety, education and special education, and zoning and development. During that time, Monica worked to extend the senior tax work off program to allow family or friends to perform the work for a senior who could not do the work themselves so seniors too frail to work could still receive desperately needed real estate tax relief. As Mayor she will work with the new City Council to make this important expansion to the program a reality to help our seniors get the tax relief, they deserve so they can stay in their homes.
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Monica has always been a strong supporter of public education and helped create the Early Childhood Education Center at the Franklin School that has done wonders for so many of our children and given them an important head start on their education. She has also worked for many years to improve special education services so that as many children as possible could stay in Melrose and get the services they need to succeed. Monica is also the ONLY candidate for Mayor who has both removed a non-performing School Superintendent and then found and hired a new Superintendent with strong budget and management skills to improve our schools. That experience is an important credential for the new Mayor because Melrose is without a permanent School Superintendent right now once again, and the new Mayor, who also serves as a member of the School Committee, will play an important role in making sure the next Superintendent hired has the skills needed to help solve the whopping $2.7 million surprise deficit discovered in the approved 2023 school budget[1], despite the schools having already received an additional $5.1 million dollars in funds over the last several years from the recent override of Proposition 2 ½ approved by Melrose voters in 2019.
During construction of the new Middle School, Monica also served on the School Committee and worked successfully to ensure the new building was delivered on time and on budget. Similarly, Monica was the Ward Councilor throughout the Ward 2 Storm Drainage and Culvert project, the largest public works project in the city’s history, and successfully ensured fiscal accountability and on time completion of that critical infrastructure improvement that eliminated rampant storm flooding. Monica regularly held neighborhood construction meeting and ensured the DPW addressed constituent issues and that the contractors were held accountable. This proven track record of success with both public education and with large scale public works projects makes Monica uniquely qualified to be Melrose’s next Mayor and to oversee and lead Melrose’s ambitious efforts to overhaul and rebuild its police station and its three fire stations.
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On her website, the other candidate for Mayor touts the fact that she was a founding member of the One Melrose Proposition 2 ½ Override campaign[2] which promised Melrose taxpayers the “Prop 2 ½ Override is the solution”[3] to the school department deficit once and for all, as a qualification for her to be Melrose’s next Mayor. That campaign also promised Melrose voters “[t]his override will allow more “regular” new revenue to be dedicated to the rest of the city departments instead of entirely paying into schools” and that the override funds included $250k specifically dedicated to reopening the Beebe School to alleviate overcrowding in our elementary schools.[4]
Four years later all those promises have been broken, all while the other candidate for Mayor sat on the City Council and served two years as its President. The school budget for 2023 had a surprise $2.7M plus hidden deficit, and once again the school budget consumed most, if not all, regular new revenue, plus an additional $2.7M in free cash and another $3.3M in American Rescue Act federal funds from Covid that Melrose will not continue to receive. Other city departments did not receive significantly “more regular new revenue” from the override. Likewise, the Beebe School did not reopen to help alleviate elementary overcrowding. However, it is now clear from the new surprise $2.7M school budget deficit in 2023 that the school department continues to spend beyond its budgeted means, and there has been little to no accountability for how the $5.1M in override funds as well as the additional $2.7M in hidden deficit funds backfilled by free cash were spent.
As a member and the current President of the City Council, the other candidate for Mayor could have spoken out and demanded that the promises she made for the override funds be kept by the city and the school department, but she didn’t. Likewise, she could and should have demanded accountability and a detailed explanation for the $5.1M in override spending and for the new surprise $2.7M school deficit for 2023, or at least filed an order for a comprehensive outside audit to get to the bottom of this continued school department practice of seemingly runaway spending that is forcing too many of our retired veterans and seniors right out of their homes and out of Melrose! Again, she failed to do so. Instead, the other candidate for Mayor’s publicly stated explanation for the new surprise $2.7M school deficit is that it was an “accounting error” and that the City has foisted a “structural deficit” on the school department when the actual reality is that the school department continues to spend without any regard to the finite amount of taxes that are available each year to run the entire city.[5]
The other candidate for Mayor sees no problem with this blind spending approach and, in fact, voted in 2021 to spend another $10.8M on the Melrose Public Library project when even the Library Trustees admitted at that time that [w]e do not need a “new” library — we need to preserve our historic feel” and that the library was not facing critical needs that needed immediate attention at that time.[6] Yet, in 2021 when this vote was taken, it was already well known that unlike the library, all of Melrose’s three fire stations and its police station faced critical health and safety needs that clearly out ranked any immediate need for library preservation and modernization efforts. Such spending blindness and budget mispriority are not responsible good government, and do a disservice to everyone in the community because they destroy public confidence and trust.
Unlike her opponent, Monica has never used or condoned a blind spending approach and has consistently and publicly demanded full accountability for all tax dollars spent while she was on the School Committee and the City Council, and she will continue ensure full fiscal accountability and transparency in all spending as Melrose’s next Mayor. She is also committed to an immediate outside audit and to developing a detailed five-year fiscal plan for the City to help keep Melrose’s budget affordable and on track for the long term so that the City can responsibly address city services and its infrastructure needs as well as education.
Monica also supports responsible development that doesn’t erode the beautiful small-town atmosphere of our city and that doesn’t over burden our aging infrastructure, our education system or our public safety personnel. However, like many of us, Monica is concerned about several large developments that have been approved with little or no parking or building projects cramming apartment buildings into rock ledge by blasting, blasting, blasting for months on end.[7] Approving large housing development projects that literally require dozens of variances and developments without adequate parking, runs a real risk of irreparably changing what makes Melrose great – its welcoming small-town atmosphere.
For all these reasons, I am voting Monica Medeiros Solano for Mayor on November 7th, and if you’re like me and are voting “Yes” to the public safety debt exclusion ballot question so that Melrose can rebuild and modernize its dilapidated public safety buildings, then Monica should be your choice for Melrose’s next Mayor too. Monica does not have a history of broken promises or blind spending, and has always been a strong public voice for fiscal responsibility and accountability in both our school and city budgets. She is also an innovator and knows how to find and leverage grants and other potential funding for the City. Monica not only supports the rebuilding of our critical public safety buildings, but she is also the ONLY candidate for Mayor with a proven track record of successfully overseeing and completing large-scale public works projects in Melrose on-time and on-budget. Monica is the only candidate for Mayor that can and will do the same for our public safety buildings project which will be the largest public construction project in the City’s history.
However, people need to understand that once the debt exclusion is authorized by the voters, it is not capped at the projected $130M price tag, but is instead akin to giving the new Mayor and City Council a blank check that can then be filled in at any amount. Given this reality, and the massive scale of this project, Melrose must have a Mayor with a proven track record of leadership, honesty, fiscal responsibility, fiscal accountability, collaboration, and innovation. Monica Medeiros Solano is that Mayor, and she is the Mayor that Melrose needs now because she has spent her whole life making Melrose a better place for us all. Please join me in voting for Monica on November 7th for a better Melrose! For more information, please visit www.votemonica.com.
Sincerely,
Paul T. O'Neill, Former Alderman-at-Large
[1] https://www.cityofmelrose.org/...
[2] https://jenformelrose.com/abou...
