Dominick Pangallo: Salem Mayor Special Election Candidate Profile

SALEM, MA — Salem residents will head to the polls on May 16 for a special election to choose the city's first newly elected mayor in 17 years with Neil Harrington and Dominick Pangallo the two candidates on the ballot to serve out the final three years of the term through the end of 2025.

For this election, Patch sent each of the candidates five questions specific to Salem to help voters decide who they feel is best suited to lead the city as its chief elected official.

Pangallo serves as the chief of staff in Salem City Hall from 2013 until former Mayor Kim Driscoll left the office in early 2023 upon being elected as the state's lieutenant governor.

His answers to Patch's candidate questions can be found here:

What do you believe are the most important priorities, experiences and perspectives that the next mayor of Salem should possess?

I'm an optimist about our city. Like so many others here, I believe that Salem's best days are ahead of us and that we must keep moving forward as a city. I'm ready to get to work on day one, because I've been doing the work for the last decade.

I have a professional understanding of and familiarity with the pressing issues facing Salem today and into the future. Our next mayor must be prepared to lead with skill and competence, but also with compassion. I'm prepared to lead with a vision shared by so many in our city of what Salem can be — not what we once were — and with the values that have made our community a success story: a focus on affordability, equity, transparency, accessibility, responsiveness, sustainability, and professionalism.

Salem is, in many ways, a much different city than it was when residents last elected a new mayor in 2005. What aspects of the transformation, if any, do you believe have been the most successful, and what aspects, if any, do you believe have been detrimental or in need of improvement/change?

I think there have been some remarkable success stories while Kim Driscoll was mayor and I was proud not only to be part of it as the chief of staff for the last decade but also to have earned Lieutenant Governor Driscoll's endorsement in this election. The positive changes our city has seen came about because of the commitment, expertise, and intentional efforts of so many people who were present for and engaged in the important work of our community.

The Driscoll administration started with a substantial fiscal mess inherited from the bad practices of past mayoral administrations. It took commitment and collaboration to rebuild our city's finances and to maintain that strong, professional approach to our finances. Those practices have resulted in Salem earning stamps of approval from the Government Finance Officers Association for 17 years in a row. It also means that the increase in the average single-family tax bill in Salem for those 17 years was half what it was during the 17 years prior, during the previous administrations. As a percentage of the average home value, Salem's average property tax bill is now 18 percent less than it was in 1997. We've all worked with professionalism and diligence to pull Salem out of the fiscal hole we were in, and I don’t think we should just jump back in that hole now.

Another area where we have seen some remarkable positive progress — but where more is certainly needed — is in making Salem a more equitable and welcoming community. This work started in the last administration and I am deeply committed to ensuring that it continues to move forward. We've strived to make Salem a place that welcomes everyone. When we fought to pass one of the first non-discrimination ordinances in the state we had to act right away to enforce it. I helped create the positions of Latino Affairs Coordinator and Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and then helped hire and supervise the people who filled those roles.

Working with the members of the Commission on Disabilities we updated our decades-old Americans with Disabilities Act Transition Plan and then started implementing it to make a more accessible city. I co-chair Salem for All Ages, an AARP initiative for an age-friendly city, which is working diligently on addressing age discrimination. During my time as chief of staff, Salem consistently received a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign's Municipal Equality Index. And I'm incredibly proud to have written our ordinances requiring more accessibility in public meetings and creating our Race Equity Commission. When I think about the place where I want to raise my children, I want it to be a place where they'll be supported, safe, and respected, no matter who they are.

Salem has had a remarkable economic revitalization in our community. Today we have a robust and thriving small business community downtown, along our waterfront, and on entry corridors and neighborhood centers; but it wasn't always that way. The city has worked hard and with intentionality to cultivate and support the growth of our local business community and today we're enjoying some of the lowest storefront vacancy rates in our downtown since Salem Main Streets started tracking that metric. There's always more to do to nurture the growth of new businesses — especially more resident-facing businesses — and to support our existing ones. In addition, the city has a lot of work to do to further support BIPOC entrepreneurs and businesses, and we should prioritize those efforts as a component of both our equity work and our economic growth initiatives.

Lastly, the progress and forward momentum of our schools over these recent years is both positive and encouraging. There's another question below about our schools, so I'll offer additional thoughts in response to that, but I think the work underway in the Salem Public Schools is something that our entire community should be proud of. Enrollment is up and we have remarkable new programs and opportunities tailored to the unique needs of our community, including our public pre-K, middle school pilot, early college, and career and technical education programs. I'm excited about the additional opportunities that are ahead of our schools — both as a Salem Public School parent and as a candidate for mayor. We have some big challenges on the horizon, but I'm an optimist about our schools and I believe we have a strong foundation in the work done over the last few years to continue striving to ensure an excellent public education for every child in Salem.

When it comes to places for improvement, there are two major areas where I believe we need to focus additional efforts. One of them is not unique to Salem, but one of them very much is. Every Salem senior, family, child, and resident deserves a roof over their head — and one that they can afford. If the demand for housing keeps outpacing the available supply, rents and home prices will keep going up as well. In Salem in the last decade, the median family income increased by 8 percent, but the median home price increased by 49 percent. Fewer new housing units were created in the last decade than in the average decade of the 20th century. Right now for every
four low-income families in Salem, we have one affordable unit. The waitlist for senior public housing is years long. And as of March 2023, we had over 200 homeless students in our schools — a 43 percent increase over the same time last year.

We clearly have more to do to meet these needs in a responsible and thoughtful manner. Much of the groundwork for these efforts has already been laid over the past years: progress toward finally adopting an inclusionary housing ordinance and establishing reasonable condo conversion regulations, for example. But we also need to start looking at our housing crisis as a human-centered problem and not just a building problem. There are seniors and families in crisis in our city right now — people who want to be part of our community and part of our school district, but they just can't keep up with the cost of living in Salem for much longer. We need a coordinated human services approach, based in and owned by our city government and focused intensely on rental assistance, eviction diversion, broadening the far-reaching senior property tax exemption program that I created, and more communication about first-time homebuyer programs, food security, and utility assistance.

A lot of these programs exist and don't need more funding, just better connections to people who qualify for them but who are not yet signed up. I created the Neighborhood Stability Coordinator position and hired the person to take on that role to start the framework of this effort. As mayor, it will be one of my very top priorities. Because housing is about far more than just buildings: it's about the people who live in them.

The other challenge is in regards to managing our visitor economy and especially, though not exclusively, October. Salem is a vibrant and happening place — and while that's better than the alternative, it means more and more people want to visit us. The city has a responsibility to manage that.

We can't go back to the practice a few decades ago of just pretending that people aren't here in October. That approach resulted in property destruction and violence. We also know, from 2020, that even when we tell people not to come, there are still plenty who do — almost 500,000 in 2020, to be exact, despite the pandemic.

We need to amplify our communications to push visitation out of October and spread it out more. We need to keep telling people to plan their visits in advance and to take public transit. We can improve how we manage traffic and parking impacts with tools such as parking capacity wayfinding signage, expanding the October shuttle program I helped create, and pushing the MBTA to add more train service throughout October. We can proactively plan to close roads, improving transportation flow and allowing for more control over public performers in those areas.

Lastly, we have to identify ways to export the costs of managing visitors to the visitors themselves and take those costs off of Salem residents. The rate of October costs to our city will soon outpace the rate of revenues coming in; we shouldn't wait until it does to start this work. The visitor economy provides jobs, revenue, and helps keep in business the restaurants, shops, and attractions that we, as residents, get to enjoy 12 months a year. It's valuable to us and it's
not going away, but that means we have even more of a responsibility to manage it and not just pretend that it's not happening.

As mayor, you will also be Chair of the School Committee. How would you approach that aspect of the job and what do you believe is the most important focus when it comes to the direction of Salem Public Schools?

As the only Salem Public School parent in this race, a proud public school graduate, and the son of retired public school educators, I am deeply committed to supporting students, teachers, and our school community and I’m a strong believer in the power of public education. I'm an optimist about Salem's schools and I think the path our district is on is largely the right one, but we need to keep a strong, positive focus to maintain that.

We've created remarkable programs and supports — from public pre-K to early college, from our career and technical education program to our student mental health initiative. We need to make them sustainable and more broadly available.

While I am incredibly optimistic about Salem's schools, our teachers, and our students, I also recognize that there are significant challenges on the road ahead. My approach will be to take on these challenges through collaboration and partnership with every stakeholder in our school community.

Like communities across our state, nation, and the world, the impacts from the pandemic are deep and profound for our children and the teachers who educate them. Our kids lost learning time, yes — but they also lost family members, friends, and connections with one another. As a parent, I've seen this myself, firsthand. A successful school district must recognize that and build itself into a system that can best meet those evolving needs.

We have a remarkable structure here in Salem to make that possible: our early education programs, the middle school redesign, early college, career & technical education, and the framework of the social, emotional, and community supports developed through City Connects are all the backbone of what will help us in this challenging new space. The mental health needs of our children are substantial and they will, unfortunately, persist long after ESSER, ARPA, and other temporary funding supports have long since evaporated.

Our district needs our ongoing commitment to close the racial and economic opportunity gaps that impact student achievement and it needs our continued work to be an anti-racist district that elevates and celebrates students and teachers of all backgrounds and identities. We need especially to elevate the voices of caregivers and students who have been excluded, even unintentionally, for far too long, and maintain our goal for a teacher workforce more reflective of the diversity of learners they educate.

The turnover of teachers and others in the educational workforce is another challenge and one that is truly a systemic problem throughout our nation; we need to address it thoughtfully here in Salem and to advocate for meaningful support from our state and federal partners in this work.

Lastly, we must invest in suitable physical spaces for every class and every student. The forthcoming Salem High School project has enormous potential to be a positive change, creating a first-class facility designed for the class sizes and technology needs of today. We must continue along the path laid out in the Facility Master Plan, in collaboration with every stakeholder in our school community.

Salem had some of the most aggressive COVID-19 mitigation strategies in the state during the pandemic. What did you learn through your role in municipal leadership during that time and how would that inform your future decisions on public health and the relationship between government and city businesses?

Salem was a leader in our Commonwealth in dealing with the pandemic and I am so incredibly proud to have been part of the City’s COVID Response Team, alongside many other dedicated public servants and medical professionals.

Expansive free testing and vaccine clinics, our pioneering wastewater surveillance testing, the Salem Together initiative we launched to help vulnerable residents and our small businesses, all were critically important work and work that helped us weather the crisis together. We worked hard, with very little information — and, for a time, very little federal and state support — to protect lives and livelihoods.

But that work isn't over. We need to continue supporting our small businesses by pivoting the Economic Recovery Task Force into a new Economic Coordinating Council. And we absolutely must prioritize support for our students and our school staff. The learning loss and social and emotional impacts from the pandemic are real, they're persistent, and they aren't going away any time soon. We must adapt our approaches in our schools to account for that. We had the benefit of some good existing structures in addressing these challenges thanks to City Connects and the Our Salem, Our Kids initiatives, and we've created new programs to focus on them, like the Cartwheel mental health service for students.

COVID made it clear that communities need to have strong, present leadership ready to make decisions based on evidence and science. That's what we did in Salem and that, to me, is one of the most critical governing takeaways from the pandemic.

What are the top 1, 2 or 3 things you most hope voters consider before casting their vote in the special election?

I truly believe that Salem's best days are ahead of us.

I'm an optimist about Salem and I believe Salem can continue to move forward.

I hope they consider how we can continue our work to ensure every child has great schools, to prepare thoughtfully for the impacts of the climate crisis and lessen our own contributions to it. I hope they weigh our efforts to meet the housing needs of all Salem residents and what we can do to make our community more affordable for everyone who calls this city home. I hope they reflect on our vibrant local economy, our great neighborhoods, and our remarkable parks and public spaces. And I hope they consider the importance of an ongoing commitment to centering equity in all of our municipal actions.

All of that is what's made the Salem of today — the one that so many of us have been building together. I believe Salem needs a mayor who has been here for that work and is ready to continue leading us forward on day one.