Gloucester City: Mayor Bill James’s 2009 State of the City Address

Gloucester City Mayor William James released the \”State of the City\” address today. The six page press release covers a wide range of topics such as housing, the Chatham Square apartments, planned expenditures, improvements to the infrastructure, and the city water plant. Also discussed is what is happening with the Southport project, Freedom Pier, the new school, the UEZ, the need to develop new sources of tax revenue. Plus plans for a four day work week for city employees, the possibility of layoffs, billboards, the city administrator, a new Master Plan, the Welsbach Cleanup of the baseball and softball fields, the Brooklawn/Gloucester City bridge, the stalled union contracts, fire department overtime, and much more.

The mayor along with councilman Nick Marchese, and Jay Brophy, begin their third year in office this month. Marchese and Brophy will be up for re-election this November while the mayor\’s term doesn\’t expire until 2010. ~ Bill Cleary

His statement reads as follows:

\”A lot has happened over the past two years that Mayor and Council have been in office and a lot of work still has to be done. With the help of numerous advisory committees, the business association, and the support of our workforce, several initiatives and programs have either been introduced through phase in planning or have come to actual fruition.

\”It was of primary concern of this administration to address the overwhelming existence of uninspected rental properties within the city to improve the quality of life within our neighborhoods. Rental registration fees were increased for the purpose of supplementing the cost of such an enormous endeavor and much needed personnel were brought on board with these funds to accomplish the task. Our purpose for this effort was noble and our actions were aggressive. This was done to protect both the tenants who were subjected to living in unsafe conditions by absentee landlords and to protect landlords who were being abused by lousy and uncaring tenants. The objective of this program was to improve the quality of our housing stock and to identify violations as it related to existing city housing code ordinances. Since this programs inception earlier this year we have inspected over 1,100 rental properties.