Jeffrey Roth, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government

Smart growth and land-use issues

While reporting directly to Mayor James Fiorentini of the City of Haverhill, and Chief of Staff Ted Van Nahl, I had the opportunity to work on some timely and important projects.  The work can be summarized as follows:

The Haverhill Downtown Boardwalk – I met with Mass Highway to discuss the 14-year-old project.  It was put on hold several times as design requirements and mayoral administrations changed.  Mayor Fiorentini asked me to meet with state officials to determine what could be done and why the project was put on-hold.  As a result of my meeting, the mayor and his staff gained a better understanding and we succeeded in reopening dialogue on the project.  The mayor held a subsequent meeting, had money obligated from the state and hired a design company, Earth Tech, to redesign the boardwalk.  Hopefully, from these steps, the project will move forward towards construction within the next two years.

Best Practices for Downtown Development – Mayor Fiorentini and I traveled to and met with officials in several other cities to learn different strategies for downtown development.  The meetings were not just a learning experience for me, but for the mayor as well.  Most significant, we learned not just the policy tools used to help foster growth in the downtown, we learned about the processes that cities followed and how different community groups came together in such a way as to attract new investment into their downtown regions. Each meeting was extremely valuable and provided new insights.

Grants – I prepared a grant application to the State of Massachusetts for a Smart Growth Technical Assistance Grant for the city. The grant award would allow the city to hire an individual to conduct downtown inventories. These inventories would allow the city to better measure their current status in terms of vacant parcels, commercial/retail, residential and office space as well as policy obstacles to reconnecting the commercial downtown to the riverfront.  Should Haverhill be awarded the grant, it would allow the city to learn a tremendous amount about the actual space use of the city. 
Downtown Task Force – The Mayor established a Downtown Task Force to help the city prioritize policy goals, discuss and identify major obstacles to development, and establish a working action plan for redevelopment. I provided the city with a draft outline of how such a plan should look. This plan will also be a guideline to my Policy Analysis Exercise* as the Downtown Task Force further identifies what is needed downtown.

*The Policy Analysis Exercise (PAE) is the capstone of the Master in Public Policy curriculum – a major enterprise meant to clarify and address a practical policy or management problem for a real-world client.