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Elect Kevin Dumas to fifth term
The administration of Mayor Kevin Dumas has cultivated a reputation for competent handling of the city budget, avoiding layoffs throughout the down economy, giving the schools financial support above the state minimum and building the city’s “rainy day” fund to $2 million. As dark clouds linger on the economic horizon, a vote for Dumas, and for continuation of his fiscal restraint is best on Tuesday.
With a worldwide recession having set in in 2008, it would he unfair to ask Attleboro residents if they’re better off than they were eight years ago. A more apt question is if Attleboro looks better than it did then. The answer would be an unequivocal yes-- the downtown, in particular, is more inviting and more improvements are coming through the Streetscape program, framed by the Robbins administration and delayed while Dumas made adjustments. Granted, much of the malaise that set in when the retail sector moved to the highways continues, but the Dumas-backed Expo for the Senses and Winter Festival inject welcome jolts of energy.
Admittedly, criticism of the Dumas Administration’s handling of the former Attleboro Redevelopment Authority has been abundant in this space. We are troubled by his reputation for unfriendliness in several quarters, and fear that his decision for a piecemeal approach to Attleboro High School improvements will come back to haunt the city.
But Dumas’s opponent in Tuesday’s elections, former fire chief Ron Churchill, has failed to mount a campaign that convinces us it’s time for a change. Churchill’s leadership is his strong suit after more than a quarter-century as chief and 40 years on the fire department, but he leaves us to wonder just where he would lead the city.
There has been a pattern in Churchill’s campaign of aptly pointing out problems in city government, but providing few solutions. He has rightly raised a red flag about city spending on legal services - the more than $300,000 spent last year outstrips the budget of the Council on Aging, for instance, by many thousands of dollars - and calls for this to be reduced through a greater reliance on negotiations, but he cites no personal experience in bargaining other than some years ago as president of the firefighters’ union. We are unconvinced.
He has called for efforts to get renovations and expansion of Attleboro High School back on the list of construction projects qualified for state aid, but isn’t saying how.
He has raised pointed questions about the “indirect costs,” through which water and sewer rate revenue offset the budgets of other departments, but hasn’t committed to an alternative means of calculating the cost.
And Churchill’s major complaint about Dumas’s conduct in office is that he is a micro-manager. That may be a vice; it may also be why the city is able to pay cash for capital improvements that might otherwise have been bonded and why, in general, the city’s accounts are in such good order.
We need a strong financial manager in these trying times. Today, that’s Kevin Dumas.
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