Worcester Mayor Joe Petty On Development, Trees, And Council Differences: Profile

WORCESTER, MA — On a recent cool, sunny autumn morning, Worcester Mayor Joseph Petty was having a hard time finding a cup of coffee in the Canal District.

Birch Tree Bread, Creative Cakes Café and the Worcester Public Market were all an hour or more from opening. The only option was the Dunkin’ on the edge of the infamous Kelley Square peanut, also the epicenter of Worcester’s recent development boom.

While sipping a small black coffee leaning on a counter inside the Dunkin’ — itself inside a brand-new gas station complex — Petty explained that part of the reason he’s running for an unprecedented seventh term this year is to keep the boom going.

“[Residents] trust me not to take the city backward,” he said.

Next door to Dunkin’, construction workers were putting the finishing touches on The Revington, a luxury building overlooking Polar Park with some apartments that will rent for Boston-like prices of close to $4,000 per month. Just down Green Street, there’s a 7-story building going up on the site of the former Cove music hall that will also have luxury units with ballpark views, plus an affordable development on the site of a former Table Talk factory. There are at least half a dozen projects in some form scattered across the Canal District and downtown.

The Canal District's coffee scene may not have kept pace, but Petty sees a city on the rise that needs a steady hand. He's been in City Hall since 1997, when he first won an at-large council seat. Petty was elected mayor in 2011, becoming the city's sixth mayor since 1987, the last time Worcester changed its city charter. Petty is the longest-serving mayor with Ray Mariano in second-place record after four consecutive terms in the 1990s.

Petty entered the 2023 election early, confirming in a December interview on the Talk of the Commonwealth radio show he'd seek another term. His run had been in question after his bid in 2022 for a state Senate seat.

Petty lost the Demoratic primary in a race against Robyn Kennedy for Harriette Chandler's seat. The Supreme Court overturning the Roe V. Wade decision might’ve played a role in the loss, especially among women voters, he said. This year, he’s featuring women and reproductive issues prominently in campaign ads, including a large mailer with a picture of him and Chandler. The ad highlights that Petty, as mayor, supported Chandler’s landmark ROE Act expanding abortion access in Massachusetts.

“We want to get those voters back,” he said, referring to women who may have picked Kennedy in 2022.

Petty was also part of a majority of city councilors who voted on Oct. 17 to abandon an effort started in 2022 by At-Large Councilor Thu Nguyen to regulate crisis pregnancy centers — the facilities that mimic abortion clinics with the intent of preventing abortions. An anonymous woman sued Worcester’s Clearway Clinic this year, alleging the facility put her life in danger by misdiagnosing an ectopic pregnancy.

Nguyen argued that regulating the clinics could save lives, but Petty and other councilors said they feared lawsuits by deep-pocketed religious organizations. The Wakefield-based conservative Massachusetts Family Institute sent multiple letters to officials warning it would sue.

But before a vote to kill the effort, Nguyen, backed by District 3 Councilor George Russell, asked for the issue to go to a city council committee, where councilors could draft a stronger ordinance that might be able to withstand a legal challenge. Petty declined, saying at the Oct. 17 meeting the whole effort was “just not working.” He says state lawmakers should act on the issue.

“At the end of the day, we weren’t going to produce something with teeth that would be constitutional,” Petty said, adding he’s no fan of CPCs. “You have to make decisions in the best interest of the city.”

(The Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund of Massachusetts has endorsed Nguyen this year, but not Petty.)

Petty’s role in the crisis pregnancy center debate is part of a shift on council that began after the 2021 election, and continues today with a slate of new, progressive candidates running fors seat this year. Petty describes himself as one of the more progressive mayors in the state, but has found himself on the opposite side of progressive councilors in Worcester, including Nguyen, District 5 Councilor Etel Haxhiaj and At-Large Councilor Khrystian King, who’s making his first run for mayor in 2023.

Petty voted for a more conservative inclusionary zoning ordinance after a year-long debate, siding with other councilors who said making the inclusionary zoning ordinance too strict would drive developers away. He also moved to end a nationwide search for a new city manager before it began. King was in charge of that search and was still in the process of lining up a firm to find candidates when Petty announced on Talk of the Commonwealth he wanted to end the search and hire then-interim City Manager Eric Batista.

Petty stands by the decision today, saying he didn’t want to waste time and money on a search when Batista was already perfect for the job. Haxhiaj, Nguyen and King ultimately voted against hiring Batista — not because he wasn’t qualified, they said last year, but because they wanted to go through the process of a search.

Two political action committees active in this election have in recent weeks galvanized the competing camps of candidates.

Petty has been endorsed by the new PAC Progress Worcester, which received $10,000 donations each from the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce, Winn Development and the Worcester Business Development Corp. Petty has worked with leaders from all three of those organizations at city hall: WBDC President Craig Blais was a former city economic development director, Chamber President Tim Murray (who made an appearance at the Kelley Square Dunkin') was mayor in the early 2000s and former city manager Michael O'Brien — who hired and mentored Batista — serves as an executive vice president at Winn.

Meanwhile, King has been endorsed by the Worcester Working Families PAC led by Cara Berg-Powers with backing from philanthropist Patty Eppinger. Another PAC run by Berg-Powers, Massachusetts Women for Progress, is also backing King, and spent over $20,000 supporting Kennedy last summer.

Petty feels the progressive slate has painted him as someone who doesn't care about residents across the city. Those candidates, he said, want to take the city in a different direction with “no definition” of what that means.

As far as tangible priorities for a new term, Petty has a goal of making Worcester the cleanest Gateway City in the state — a combination of possible pay-as-you-throw trash bag reform and expanding hours at the residential drop-off center — planting 1,000 trees by 2026 and the big one: a new Burncoat High School (a renovation of East Middle School is also on his wish list). A new Burncoat would be the city's third new high school after South (completed 2021) and Doherty (opening September 2024). Petty began his sixth term with a goal of Worcester building its first large-scale affordable housing complex since the early 1990s, and says he would carry that goal into the next term.

Petty says he sees his main role as mayor as an interlocutor between the leaders of the two biggest parts of local government: the city manager and the superintendent. Under the city charter, he’s both the chairman of the city council and the school committee. In those roles, he can set the tone for how meetings run and influence policies and legislation. The mayor also decides who leads city council committees, where many key decisions are made. At the beginning of the last term, Petty made outgoing District 1 Councilor Sean Rose chair of the economic development subcommittee, much to the disappointment of longtime chair District 2 Councilor Candy Mero-Carlson. Petty has endorsed Mero-Carlson this year.

Worcester has plenty of growing to do, he says, and thinks his experience and approach are the ticket.

“What I bring to the table is collaboration,” he said.

This part of a series of Worcester 2023 mayoral candidate profiles. Neither Colorio nor Coleman responded to interview requests. Read Guillermo Creamer's profile here, and King's profile here.