[slideshow](This is the third profile in an occasional series about candidates for municipal office. We continue today with the Lynn mayoral race.)
LYNN — Mayoral candidate Darren Cyr says his experience as City Council president for the past five and a half years — and his lifelong ties to Lynn — would make him a great fit to lead the city.
His plans for Lynn include prioritizing the construction of new schools and adding more developments and infrastructure projects, both of which would be aimed at revamping the downtown to what it was when he was growing up.
Cyr grew up on Herschel Street in East Lynn and attended Aborn Elementary School, Marshall Middle School — which was known as Eastern Junior High School at the time — and Lynn Vocational Technical Institute.
Cyr’s two sons, Christian and Kylian, were the fifth generation of his family to attend Aborn, but he said the school hasn’t changed since he was a student there. Aborn is one of 14 schools in the city that is more 100 years old; Cyr emphasized the importance of focusing on building new, modern schools for the city’s public school students.
Cyr used the new Thurgood Marshall Middle School as an example for the kinds of schools the city needs, citing its state-of-the-art resources, which include its labs, studios, a wood shop and cooking and sewing classes which offer the students a variety of options to gain skills and see what interests them.
“Every kid, no matter what part of the city they live in, should have these same opportunities,” Cyr said. “Education is the most important thing because the future of Lynn is in our younger generation.”
Cyr supports building a larger elementary school, which would combine four or more schools into one building, but would include different sections that would separate each school. For example, he said that one building could have an Aborn wing and a Brickett wing, but the building would feature an abundance of resources like Thurgood Marshall does. This would be a better solution to the school issue, he said, and would eliminate the time it would take to rebuild each of the 14 schools with the most pressing needs.
Cyr and his wife, Dale, who graduated from Lynn Classical High School, have lived in Lynn for their entire lives; Cyr said he eats, sleeps and breathes Lynn.
Growing up, Cyr recalled frequent trips to a then-bustling downtown, where he would visit one of its five movie theaters, go shopping, gather for parades that drew in hundreds of people and play in his neighborhood and at Clark Park.
As mayor, he would focus on bringing in more restaurants and trendy shops, and would also work to increase the arts-and-culture scene downtown to encourage more foot traffic and take advantage of the space’s close proximity to the MBTA train station in Central Square.
“Our downtown is the easiest walking downtown anywhere,” Cyr said.
With this comes the need for more parking, which Cyr said he plans to address by releasing a request for proposals (RFP) for parking lots in the area. The RFP would seek developers who would build a parking garage with designated levels reserved for public parking. For example, if a developer wants to build a 10-story apartment or office building, they would have to provide the city with at least three floors of municipal parking.
Cyr describes Lynn as a transient city, saying that more development will bring in people with disposable income to support small businesses and the downtown economy.
Between infrastructure projects — such as renovating the city’s parks, sidewalks, streets and the MBTA parking garage — and continuing with development, Cyr said he is also in favor of affordable housing and is always trying to help people in Lynn by giving them a “hand up, not a handout.”
With that being said, Cyr added that he intends to come up with a plan for affordable housing that “everyone benefits from,” because he said taxpayers won’t benefit from the current Housing Lynn (housing production) Plan that has been proposed.
“It will stop development in the city,” Cyr said.
There is a major wage problem, he said, which can only be fixed through education while emphasizing the importance of schools.
When speaking with the city’s immigrant population, Cyr said that “all they want is a fair shot and a fair chance at the American Dream,” which, he added, includes homeownership.
“I know we can come up with a program for affordable housing through education, through coming up with a homeownership program,” Cyr said. “The way to fund that homeownership program is by a percentage of the new developments that are going to come into the city.”
However, Cyr stated that he does not want to force developers to build affordable units; doing so, he said, would lead to a loss of money and will increase taxes in the city.
Cyr cited his 16 years of experience on the City Council as a reason why he would make a good mayor. In the past, Cyr said the City Council and former mayors have had rocky relationships. But as a longtime councilor, Cyr said, he knows how to work with the rest of the council, and has a good relationship with them already.
“If a mayor may not agree politically with someone, what we have to do is compromise … I’m familiar with every department. I’m familiar with the process and the city charter. I’m familiar with our city and the issues and the problems that we have,” Cyr said. “Each problem is unique to each neighborhood and each population of the city. There’s so many different issues and they all (community members) don’t get an opportunity to sit at the table and discuss those issues.”
Cyr emphasized the importance of including the community in city decisions, saying that in his potential administration, “anyone who wants to sit at the table will be given the opportunity to sit at the table and have a discussion about our city.”
He said he wants to hear from community members about the good and the bad, as well as the direction that people want to take the city in.
Cyr said he will be the type of mayor who goes into the community and gets work done. He wants the future of Lynn to include a vibrant downtown, which brings people in from all over because they want to put roots in the city — not just as a temporary, affordable option for families while they save up to move out of Lynn.
He wants to offer generational mortgages so families can pass their homes onto their children and become generational Lynn residents.
“I’m not a suit-and-coat guy,” Cyr said. “I’m a work-boots-and-calluses guy. I built my own house that I still live in, and I’m invested in that house, my family and this city.”