Door to door, it's only 28 miles. But politically, the distance between city halls in Boston and Lawrence could span the nation. This month, both cities welcomed new mayors, but any comparison ends there.
While Boston has been on solid political footing for 20 years under former Mayor Tom Menino, Lawrence has been plagued by charges of corruption against some of former Mayor William Lantigua's closest allies. Lantigua lost re-election by just 81 votes, leaving the city deeply divided.
Lantigua took over a city in 2009 burdened with a $25 million dollar deficit, and is credited by many here with reining in a ballooning budget. Consequently, he still has many supporters.
At Bali’s, a popular Dominican restaurant on Essex Street, Nancy Santos finished up a plate of sancocho.
"Lantigua was good," Santos said. "Every road in Lawrence is repaired, and that’s what I think he did good."
But when others think of Lawrence during the Lantigua years, they recall news stories about scandals, corruption and crime. So, Dan Rivera, the newly elected Mayor, says his most daunting task is to rewrite the script, the story of Lawrence.
"You know, you can go to other communities in this state that are gateway communities, or communities that have similar issues as we have, and you can lay down on main street at 5 o’clock and you will not be hit by a car," Rivera said. "It’s just that slow and that less-populated. You can’t do that in Lawrence. We have a thriving Essex Street and Broadway. They’re just thriving because we have that entrepreneurial spirit. Lawrence is something different."
And if that sounds like standard boosterism, Rivera makes no apologies. He says he is working to spruce up parks, root out corruption and beef up the city’s police force to change both the reality and perception of the city of his birth. And across Lawrence, I found lots of people willing to work with Rivera to rewrite the script — about a city that Boston Magazine insulted in 2012 as "the most Godforsaken place in Massachusetts."
"We’ll be working with Dan to figure out his agenda and how that might fit with some of the work that we do," said Heather McMann, who heads up Groundwork Lawrence, an environmental group that has succeeded in cleaning up the Merrimack and the Spicket Rivers, which run through this old mill city. "We just finished building the Spigot Greenway, which is a 3.5 mile trail. And long before there was any paving, people found this great new place that was safe to walk off the street to get between neighborhoods, to get between schools, and we noticed immediately how people were changing to get from place to place. And also realizing some of the assets of the city, like the river, that no one realized was there."
McMann says real success stories in Lawrence like this were overshadowed in recent years by stories about corruption and crime; which Jonathan Frios — out shopping one day with his children on Essex Street — says forced him out of the city.
"Because, you know, the same stuff — I pay less in car insurance if I moved to Methuen," Frios said. "Because of the delinquency, the crime here is worse than over there."
A summary of 2011 state crime statistics cite Lawrence as the city with the 10th highest number of reported violent crimes; a rate that was exacerbated — according to The Eagle Tribune newspaper — by the layoffs of nearly 40 police officers at the height of the recession. Violent crime subsequently increased by 63 percent. Though some cops were later rehired, the city’s reputation for violence stuck like glue.
Lawrence resident Valentine Roman, getting into a car on Broadway, is counting on the city’s new leadership to change the narrative.
"The new mayor? I know him personally, Dan Rivera," Roman said. "Great guy. I hope he does a better job than Mayor William Lantigua … he only fixed the streets, you know what I’m saying. You know, we need to see more things for the community. I would like to see the drug addicts on Broadway disappear, maybe, which is not going to happen, but at least we could try to contain that, and I would also like to see the crime rate go down in Lawrence, Mass."
So would businessman Luis Yepez.
"One of the things I was happy to hear that Dan — right on the top of his list — was to increase the number of police in the city," Yepez said. "Unfortunately, in the last two to three years, there is a marked and recorded increase in crime rates in Lawrence, and if there is going to be a way to attract both people and investors into the city, crime is something that needs to be, not only brought under control, but put onto a negative slope."
Rivera says he’s listening and acting.
"We are at 113 police officers," Rivera said. "We have to get 155. We have to have people walking the beat, and we’ve talked about that with the acting chief of police. We have to make as big a deal about fighting crime as about having crime. So we’re going to be safer. Guaranteed."
An additional 42 officers will cost the city more than $2 million, but Rivera does not see that as an obstacle. Rivera also says to assuage people’s fears about crime, he may reach out to law enforcement officials outside the city’s borders for a new police chief.
"I think it’s important enough that we bring other voices into the conversation," he said. "I'm going to reach out to people like chief Davis from Boston, who’s now gone. He’s got some time on his hands. We’re going to get the best chief that $140,000 a year can find us."
Rivera says $140,000 a year for someone of former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis' stature also buys good will that could help change the city’s narrative. Before Boston, Davis was the police chief of Lowell.
Yepez — originally from Ecuador — says building a good reputation is key to the city’s future.
"My brother and I own a considerable amount of commercial property here in the city of Lawrence," he said. "And we’ve decided to, as they say, drop anchor here and make Lawrence our home and have invested not only structurally but also in the community. We hire locally. And we’re happy to have Dan be on our side and help with that growth."
To help his struggling city grow, Rivera is also appealing to potential home buyers outside of Lawrence with the promise of cheaper mortgages and affordable rents, without altering the city’s distinctly Latino culture and traditions.
"Our demographic is already built in," Rivera said. "A lot of people are afraid that we want to change that. I don’t think that’s the answer. I mean, you can buy a a four-bedroom house in Lawrence with a front yard and a back yard for $200,000, and taxes aren’t that expensive, and water’s not that expensive. And you don’t have to figure out how to make the money in Cambridge or in Brookline, or live in an apartment or condo, and you can have a nice place to raise your child."
But Rivera says before he can tackle housing and other pressing issues, he has to work to repair the deep chasm that separates people in his city: Lantigua and Rivera supporters, the North Side and the South Side, Irish and Latinos, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans.
"As the son of a Dominican mom and a dad who is Puerto Rican, neither one of them claims me, so Puerto Rican folks are like ‘Oh, he looks like he’s Dominican,’ and Dominican people say ‘Rivera, that’s a Puerto Rican name,’ he said, laughing. "So I got a lot of support from Puerto Rican people and support from Dominican people. Puerto Rican people who felt that they were disenfranchised by this mayor, but what we didn’t allow was the chest beating and the kicking people while they were down and acting like they have no character. Some of the things that the pervious mayor was know to encourage."
Since his inauguration, Rivera's been on a whirlwind tour with the goal of changing the story of Lawrence in 2014: Instead of thinking of crime, corruption and divisions, Rivera hopes the script will conjure up images of …
"Neighborhoods that have huge lawns, nice Victorian homes, get something to eat at some of the bodegas," he said. "And we have this great all-girls ensemble choir in Lawrence High School. They've been doing it since I was a kid. The best all-female adult choir in the state, and we’re going to start building up so that when people say 'What are you going to Lawrence for?' it’s not just court, or 'I got a Registry of Deeds issue,' or something government. It’s going to be, 'You gotta hear these ladies sing.'"
And on this day, they are singing “I have a dream,” and so does Lawrence’s new mayor, who is working to rewrite the script.
"I think, what does it mean for me, a kid who grew up in Lawrence to be the mayor," he said. "I feel a sense of pride that way, but I also feel a sense of responsibility. If you’re a family and you’re trying to figure out how to make a life in Greater Boston and inside 128, you got to come check out Lawrence. And we’re going to make the place safer. We’re just going to do it."
