When Mayor Dorothy Kelly Gay was elected in 1999, she inherited an economically depressed city in need of new leadership. Tomorrow, Somerville residents - among them a few Tufts students - will decide whether or not she has effectively led the city.
Kelly Gay is pitted against Bill Baro in an election focused largely on the future of Assembly Square, the city's need for affordable housing, and the improvement of Somerville's relationship with Tufts.
Kelly Gay was elected mayor in 1999 in a hotly contested special election to replace former Mayor Michael Capuano, who left Somerville for Washington to represent Massachusett's eighth congressional district. The mayor's two years in office were marked by various challenges, ranging from garnering funding for new schools, to improving a public safety building and fixing troubles with the town's police department.
"Kelly Gay discovered, right after being sworn in, that she had inherited many, many challenges," Tufts Community Relations Director Barbara Rubel said. "I think she would tell you herself that she had no idea what she would be getting into."
Because Kelly Gay had to address municipal issues, she did not work extensively with Tufts during her mayoral tenure. But after finding solutions to many of these problems, she says she is committed to improving relations with Tufts. "She has expressed great interest in working in partnership with Tufts," Rubel said. "But I think she has been so consumed with the very large issues elsewhere in the city, that there hasn't been any substantive discussion yet on what shape that partnership might take."
Kelly Gay did not respond to an interview request for this article.
The few projects Kelly Gay undertook that involved significant contact with the University received mixed reviews from the Tufts administration and Somerville residents. Last fall, Kelly Gay helped negotiate an agreement wherein Tufts leases space in the Tufts Administration Building (TAB) on Holland Ave. to the city. Rubel told the Daily last winter that the Tufts administration "responded positively" to the lease proposal and that she hoped the responsiveness would be reciprocated.
But the mayor has not always been willing to work with Tufts. Last fall, for example, she thwarted plans to bring the Boston Breakers, a professional women's soccer team, to Tufts, disappointing many who said the team would bring publicity to the University and pump money into the local economy.
"People in my department put a lot of work into it," Athletic Director Bill Gehling, a former Tufts soccer coach, told the Daily in January. "Whether the costs outweighed the benefits is another question," he said. "A lot of effort was put into the proposal. In the end, politics won out."
At the time, Kelly Gay said she rejected the proposal for fear that the team would bring excessive traffic, noise, and pollution to Somerville.
"She will always be a mayor who listens to her constituents in the neighborhoods very carefully," Rubel said. "It was neighborhood concerns that caused her to oppose the soccer arrangement."
Overall, Rubel said the mayor has been receptive to Tufts during her two years in office. Kelly Gay has met with former President John DiBiaggio several times and had an introductory meeting with President Larry Bacow earlier this semester. "She's always willing to talk and wants very much to be part of our discussions about work with the public schools and so forth," Rubel said.
"As she's able to resolve some of the pressing municipal issues, I'm sure those more involved discussions will happen," Rubel said.
Kelly Gay's administration has had many successes outside of Tufts. She increased the amount of affordable housing units available in the community by forging partnerships with local organizations, creating over 100 new housing units - some of which opened within the past two months - that provide affordable and assisted living for handicapped citizens.
More recently, the mayor stirred up controversy over her methods for handling the development opportunities in East Somerville and Assembly Square. Some favor promoting the development of "big box" stores, including housewares giant IKEA and a super Stop n' Shop, in Assembly Square. Others say an up-scale riverfront development that preserves the riverfront atmosphere is a better plan.
"She has worked hard to try to find the best resolutions for the city - generating more property taxes, being respectful of nearby residential neighborhoods - while dealing with developers who actually own the land," Rubel said.
But a solution has yet to be reached, and whoever wins tomorrow's election will decide whether to implement "mixed usage" development in Assembly Square, zoning the area for office spaces, restaurants, and retail stores.
Kelly Gay, 58, served as Administrative Coordinator of Nursing at the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for the Aged in Boston before she was elected as mayor.
