Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
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182 Mayor Rivera has made some big changes in Lawrence, as well as a number of smaller, but just as important, changes. Ask nearly anyone on the North Shore what should be done to fix the city of Lawrence, and they'll likely give you some big answers: Reduce drug use and crime, increase jobs, rehab the schools. But as Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera has discovered, there are smaller things that can be fixed, too. And all of those small things add up to big things. There was no bus, for instance, to get people from the city's outer neighborhoods to the downtown business section. The Little League baseball fields were in desperate need of upkeep. A sloping side- walk and dangerous intersection at Lawrence and Park Streets made it hard to access a nearby community healthcare center. "You see how awful the condi- tions are, you don't feel very good about your city or yourself," says Rivera. "So I think we have to [make] some of these investments so people have a better sense of Lawrence as a place we need to take care of." Changing the perception of Lawrence, both inside the city and out, is one of Rivera's big, over- arching goals as its young, exciting new leader. Elected in November T H E C H A N G E M A K E R Mayor Dan Rivera After spending several years working in and out of politics, Rivera served on the Lawrence City Council, and eventually ran for mayor. "I wanted to help out the com- munity in a real way," he says. Rivera has been working to make Lawrence City Hall more pro- fessional and transparent. He says he's gotten everyone trained on conflict-of-interest rules and how to do purchasing properly. He's lifted the previous administration's gag order on department heads talking to the press and has provided me- dia training instead. "For us, more professional gov- ernment isn't just wearing ties and showing up on time," he says. "It's a state of mind, so people think, 'Hey, I know that my pay comes from the citizens of the city, so I'm going to give them a good product. I'm going to serve them well.'" Rivera's done other things, too. Big things, like adding more police officers to the city's force, as well as those seemingly small things, such as scheduling traffic lights to allevi- ate gridlock downtown; bringing back the St. Patrick's Day parade; rehabbing the Little League fields; and adding a downtown shuttle bus. He says the city's also slated in spring to begin fixing the infrastruc- ture at a particularly dangerous and business-unfriendly intersection. (He also wants people to smile more and be nicer to each other.) 2013, Rivera beat out incumbent William Lantigua by just 81 votes after a ballot recount. Since then, Rivera has brought new hope and vibrancy to a mayor's office that had been plagued by ongoing al- legations of corruption. "I'm trying to earn people's trust by doing the right things," he says. "It doesn't mean we're going to be right all the time or get it right all the time, but when we get it wrong, we're honest about it." Rivera moved to Lawrence from the Bronx at the age of five with a single mother who kept him busy and involved in community activi- ties. He had a paper route, was a Boy Scout, and was senior class secretary for his Lawrence High School class of 1989. Later, he served in Iraq and Kuwait during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield before earning his bachelor's degree from UMass Amherst and, later, his MBA from Suffolk University. "I'm the poster child for pub- lic schools, public college, GI bill, student loan programs," he says. He also eventually served as the man- ager for the public housing project where he grew up. by Alexandra Pecci photograph courtesy of the Lawrence Office of the Mayor WHAT ARE YOU READI NG? DECODED by Jay-Z EMPIRE OF SIN: A STORY OF SEX, JAZZ, MURDER, AND THE BATTLE FOR MODERN NEW ORLEANS by Gary Krist MOVERS SHAKERS &