Supporting Our Community
Kate Toomey has supported Working
Class Families by voting for the lowest
residential tax rate and working to lower your
tax bill.
Kate Toomey has supported Quality of
Life issues by voting for additional police
officers, fire personnel, and better streets and
sidewalks.
Kate Toomey has supported Education
for almost two decades. While on the school
committee she co‐founded a state‐wide coalition
to reform a funding formula which saved the
Worcester Public Schools $16 million dollars
over 5 years, saving 55 teachers’ jobs each year.
Kate Toomey supports Economic Development. The best way to increase revenue is to broaden our tax base. Kate will be a leader who will help market Worcester and attract new businesses. She endorses a commission to study and address reforms to
help stabilize property taxes for residents and businesses. She has been an advocate for Worcester Local First, and the 10% Shift.
Kate Toomey has been an effective public official for ten years and has been an independent, steady voice for the taxpayers of our city.
Kate Toomey's Top Priorities as Mayor
1 – Fiscal Responsibility – I will continue to work with the City Manager, Superintendent and their staffs to be sure that every dollar spent in the city is spent wisely. I will work to ensure that we maintain and preferably improve our bond ratings so our cost of borrowing remains relatively low. We need to scrutinize capital spending to be sure we are getting the maximum return on every dollar we spend. We need to monitor our revenue and spending to be sure that we are on budget and make adjustments as soon as we see issues.
2 – Economic Development – Our biggest challenge in the city is going to be Revenue. Without adequate revenue we will be limited in the services we can provide as a city. With the State and Federal Government also in financial crisis we cannot expect any increases in local aid. The only way to do increase revenue is to increase our tax base, preferably with new business, expansion by current businesses and the right types of housing development.
First and foremost we need to do a better job of marketing our city. We have to let people in Worcester, people in Worcester County, people in Massachusetts, people in New England and across the country know about the fabulous City we live in. Let them know why we are in the top 10 best places to live in the country. Let them see the resources we can offer them. Our schools, our educated workforce, our central location and a City ready to work with them and welcome them. We must convince them to move to Worcester and bring their good paying jobs here to Worcester.
We cannot sit and wait for people to come to Worcester. We have to be proactive: attend trade shows, visit businesses that might have an interest in Worcester. I understand that funds for this type of spending are in short supply. With this in mind we need to continue to work with the Chamber of Commerce, Choose Worcester, Worcester Local First, Destination Worcester, and development partners like Berkeley Investments and Mayo Group to get Worcester’s message out to the world.
We have thousands of people driving thru our city on I290, I190, Rt146 and Rt9 on a daily basis. We are currently doing nothing to tell those people know about the great city they are driving thru. We need to give them a reason to turn on their blinker and stop in our city. Give them a reason to come back and give Worcester a test ride.
UMass will be opening a new research facility in 2012. They talk about generating 1600 jobs when this facility comes on line. We need to begin working NOW to take advantage of this fa-cility. We need to work with biotech and other businesses that support UMass and find a way for them to locate here in Worcester and support the work that is going on at UMass. We have to reach out to the people who will be taking the new jobs at UMass and give them a reason to select Worcester as the place to live. We have to find a way to keep the graduates of our local colleges here working in the City. We also need to work with UMass to be sure we have a place to build future facilities within our city.
Along the same lines we should be working with the State and Federal Governments to take advantage of our central location and affordable real estate (when compared to Boston) and locate more state offices here in the city. We need to know when State and Federal leases are expiring and be sure we are working to provide a lower cost, more centrally located facility here in the heart of the commonwealth.
As Mayor I will work with the manager and the economic development department as part of the sales team trying to bring business to the City. I will use the position of Mayor to meet and speak with the decision makers and make the case for them to come to Worcester. When an RFP gets sent out follow it up with phone calls to be sure we have a host of responses, not one or two to chose from.
With the new agreement in place with CSX we will have more trains coming into and out of Worcester. We need to start now to capitalize on this with development in the areas close to the train station. We need to market to young professionals, many who have been educated in our local colleges, looking for reasonable market rate housing who might be commuting to Framingham or Boston. Get them to Worcester or back to Worcester and show them what a great location we offer with very easy access to work. Let them see the activity in the Downtown, Canal District and Shrewsbury Street areas and the wide range of options for dining and entertainment. Let them see how energetic and affordable a place Worcester can be to live. We need to reinforce the views from a recent episode of Channel 5’s Chronicle Show. The show placed Worcester in a new, invigorating light: focused and pointed, informative and factual, not perception or hearsay.
3 – Education – My first real exposure to government in the city of Worcester began nearly 20 years ago, when the first of my children started in the WPS. I got my start in Worcester government by spending six years on the School Committee. I still believe that education is a cornerstone to our future. We need to be producing well educated citizens who are prepared and ready to accept jobs in our city. Whether we are preparing students for college, a trade or just a job we need to be sure they have the basic skills they need to perform at that next level.
We need to work with local business to understand what they currently need for their workforce now as well as what they will need in the future. We need to add to our curriculum, especially at the Worcester Technical High School, programs that ensure they are ready to go out and work in the jobs that we are creating in our City. Make these businesses a partner in the education process.
As recently noted by Dr. Boone we need to also market our schools better to be sure that par-ents and businesses know how successful we are in educating our students. Too many people only hear about MCAS scores and under performing schools. Let’s focus emphasis on the many success stories that are coming out of the Worcester Public Schools.
Education extends beyond the traditional K through 12 students. We have a substantial number of new immigrants who are smart, and well educated. They lack the Basic English skills to work up to the level of their education. We need to find a way to improve their language skills and assist them in using their talents to impact our community. Let’s help non-native English speaking parents with their language skills so they can become partners with their children in their children’s education.
Education also extends beyond our public schools. We have numerous Colleges in and around Worcester and we need to take advantage of their expertise and research. I will work to have more partnerships like the University Park Campus. Together, we will find ways that they can contribute to the education of our population while getting a return on that investment.
Funding for education will be very difficult over the next two years. We need to work with the State and Federal authorities and to maintain and hopefully obtain additional funding. We also want to work with them to reduce unfunded mandates that take money, time, effort and focus away from the classroom and actual education. We also have to search out grants and other funding mechanisms that supplement current funding.
4 – Public Safety – Although easy to place in my top five priorities it is difficult where to place it in the Top 5. Without safe streets, neighborhoods and schools we cripple our ability to do economic development. Without safe streets, neighborhoods and schools we limit our ability to educate our children.
As a city we are very fortunate to be served by dedicated departments of police and fire
fighters. They are lead by expert professionals who have a track record for keeping Worcester safe. Unfortunately with the current budget status we have removed funding that is critical for maintaining the safety of our city. We are making it a habit of doing more with less.
Within the current fiscal limitations we need to find a way to maintain the base of operations, and find a way to support those programs which are necessary to the quality of life our citizens expect and deserve. We are a victim of our own success, recently losing Federal Subsidies that went to other cities that have higher crime rates. We cannot let crime rates raise so that we be-come one of those cities!
We have to be sure that we maintain budgeted staffing levels. As people retire we need to have trained and qualified recruits ready to take their place. In the fire department we must have fire trucks staffed so that response time to calls remains within accepted levels. We cannot risk the safety of our citizens, or firefighters by not maintaining the specified levels. In the police department we need to have an adequate level of staffing. There has been so much good work done, and we can’t afford to slide back on the safety levels of this city.
5 – Streets and Sidewalks – While we try to improve our city we cannot forget to maintain what we already have. We must have streets that are safe and drivable in all seasons. We require sidewalks that are safe and usable.
We have to work with our community to keep them clean and free of clutter. Let’s congratulate groups that maintain the median and store fronts in their neighborhood. We must find more groups that are willing to invest in their neighborhoods and improve the look and feel of their streets. It is all in our best interest to do this.
We need to continue to maintain our water and sewer service that meets the needs of our resi-dents and businesses. We need see how we can invest in future infrastructure to create eco-nomic development. Route 20 is an example of an area that lacks development due to deficien-cies in the sewer capacity. We must find a way to pay for this development as an investment in future economic development. We should identify weak links in the systems and address them before they become critical problems that require more expensive emergency service.
