Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing Page 42
Mike Gallagher
Mike Gallagher, 9 Old Coach Road. In full disclosure, | have 3 children in school district. | have 3
children at New Searles. Not looking for applause but Jay Harding and his team do an amazing job
there. My youngest daughter is in the pre-school program so | pay out of my pocket to have here go
there for that because my family values education. | would directly benefit from full day kindergarten
because my daughter would benefit from full day kindergarten. It’s not a childcare issue. My wife
currently is home. So it’s not a place to drop my child. | think that there’s a lot of reasons to look at
this. | am as kind of a fiscally conservative person, I’m looking and saying well if you have 8 positions
that aren’t needed elsewhere, why not cut. At the same time as we look at providing better services
for our community to grow and you talk about economic development, you talk about jobs, and you
talk about you’re looking to recruit young families. We're the oldest State in the nation. | came here
12 years ago, raised a family, we’re here. We’re planted in this community. | see significant value in
full day kindergarten. As I’ve seen my children progress through pre-school, the other two went
through private pre-schools. | certainly see the value and | appreciate the efforts that have been
made. However like the rest of the budget for school and as for teachers, there needs to be some
better way, some better metric to measuring success. | would certainly appreciate seeing that.
Jumping around just a little bit because | didn’t want to get up just for code enforcement but from my
time on the Conservation Commission when | was there, there’s a significant need for code
enforcement in this city. | know that at the time it’s been 1 % or 2 half bodies assigned to that. We
have ordinances, we have resolutions, we have land use codes for a reason. If we allow for oversight
or things to be looked at twice, | Know that in my six plus years there, there was a particular property
that was mentioned on several occasions and nothing happened. I’m not looking for this to become a
revenue stream for you but again some teeth to the laws that you have on the books | think is warrant
in that.
| don’t see on here an opportunity to speak about the citizen group for the $200,000. So if you'll allow
my kind of interjector here. | think if you look around this room and you ask those who work for the
city in some capacity either as a volunteer — | include the Board of Aldermen as volunteers by the
way. If they raise their hand, 90 percent of this room works for the city in some capacity volunteer or
paid and that is our issue as a community. There are not more of us here. There are not more of us
saying hey that’s good idea, that’s a bad idea. We're sitting here talking about a fiscal budget and
we’re talking about things that this board has no control over. You have no control over if there’s full
day kindergarten or not. That’s the Board of Education. So the appropriate time to have that
conversation is while the Board of Education is having those meetings. It’s the same thing | say to
parents who just don’t understand. They don’t get it. They hear a buzz word and they run with it. So
there is an obligation for those of us who are in position of knowledge to share that knowledge.
Now as it pertains to creating this committee of volunteers if we have $200,000 of discretionary
money, | would argue that we don’t but let’s just say if we did. | would suggest to you to tap upon the
volunteers you already have: planning and zoning, conservation, culture — all of the different boards
and commissions that this city already has people who are giving their time because the mechanism
in which you’ve put in place already exists. | could go to my ward alderman. | could say here’s a
great idea. | could get him or her to buy into the issue and then sponsor legislation to make that
happen. | don’t have to get around and what | have noticed is that when these committees are
started, it’s the same group of people. So let’s reward the people who are already with us, who are
already entrenched in your city, who already understand the issues some better than you.
One last thing. | will be at the school board meeting on Monday from an issue of public safety. Tick
season folks — horrible year. So we go to New Searles where my daughter goes to Girl Scouts and
Main Dunstable School. Part of their project was to walk around the school and clean up trash. They
