Salem Mayor Dominick Pangallo Campaigns For New High School In Inaugural Address

SALEM, MA — Salem Mayor Dominick Pangallo used his inauguration speech on Monday to stump for voter approval for about $250 million in funding for a new Salem High School in what he said was the most important investment that the city can make in its future.

Pangallo said this week he will file a request with the City Council to accept $200 million in matching state funds through the state School Building Authority, and to request a ballot initiative where residents will be asked to foot the bill for the estimated $250 million remaining to fund the full project.

"If they do, we'll keep moving forward for a new building that will be safer and healthier, intentionally built for the academic and technical education models we use today, and that creates the opportunity for new competition-grade baseball, softball, and other athletic fields on the campus," he said. "A plan that reduces traffic congestion on Willson Street and Highland Avenue, preserves the Salem Diner, substantially reduces our city's carbon footprint and energy bills, and most importantly, gives our kids the 21st-century building they deserve."

Pangallo said that if voters reject the matching funds, it will require a "30-plus-year phased code renovation of the existing deficient building" that he said will "cost more and provide less."

"For the sake of Salem's kids and Salem's taxpayers, I hope we'll keep this project advancing with a favorable vote from the City Council this winter and then from the residents of Salem this spring," he said.

Pangallo, who ran unopposed for his first full term as mayor after winning a special election to serve out the term of Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll three years ago, also touted the city's Signature Parks initiative, pending South Salem commuter rail station, climate action resiliency and Safer Streets plan as objectives as the city celebrates its 400-year anniversary in 2026.

He said the city remains committed to the offshore wind turbine project amid attempts to block the project from the President Donald Trump administration.

"Our history has always been connected to the sea, and this project remains a continuation of that legacy and a promise to future generations," Pangallo said. "Because our future can't only be more resilient and safer: it must be more affordable, as well."

He said the city will look to increase housing stock by 1 percent each year as a goal that he called "imminently achievable and minimally impactful."

"Housing must remain a key priority," he said. "The stories of the nearly 500 Salem residents who came to my office this past year to access housing services, those are real stories — real pain felt by the constituents who we have a sworn obligation to serve and a moral responsibility to help.

"Because we believe that Salem must continue to be a city for everyone."

Pangallo pledged that Salem will continue to be a "welcoming community" for immigrants and compared modern-day anti-immigrant sentiments to the city's dark history of witch hysteria.

"That unique history directly informs our values and calls us to be a better place — a place where we welcome all, including, for 400 years, generations of newcomers hoping to add their own chapter to the American story," he said. "To be a place where neighbor once turned on neighbor, we now turn toward our neighbor — and we lift them up. A place that has learned from its past and lives up to its name, as the City of Peace.

"With a federal government abandoning its commitment to those values, here in Salem our constituents rightly demand and deserve a local government centered on compassion, not cruelty. On community — not chaos. And on competence —not vengeance. A government that understands that empathy makes us stronger, resilience makes us safer, and care for our neighbors makes us American.

"Because we cannot be great, unless we first are willing to do good."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)