Mayor Jay Ruais
Annual State of the City Address
“From Promises to Progress to Planning for the Future”
February 12, 2025
Thank you, Scott, and good morning to you all!
Today marks my second State of the City address, an event I truly look forward to.
Wonderful to see many of our Department Heads and Aldermen, and School Board Members, thank you all for coming and your dedication to the City of Manchester.
Thank you for the invitation to join the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce here at the NHIOP -- the perfect venue to deliver a speech.
I remember being here years ago when I worked for a Congressman. I was the stressed-out staffer in the back frantically checking emails, and sending text messages. I also had more hair. Those days remind me how blessed I am to be in my current position. Just goes to show you, fake it ‘till you make it, I guess.
Speaking of amazing changes of fate, I had an interesting thing happen 11 days ago, my wife and I became parents. Baby Brielle came a little early, proving once again that man makes plans and God laughs.
My wife is my hero. We spent a week at Elliot Hospital, and she was doing homework to make sure she finishes her Bachelor’s Degree on time in April, while also doing remote work for her job.
I’ve mentioned before that she immigrated from Peru, and I joked with her after Brielle was born that while being married to me isn’t the American Dream, I think she’s doing quite well for herself.
I know this sounds like something a politician should say, but I genuinely love every second of this job. It’s a privilege to wake up every morning and have the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of those who call the Queen City Home.
Standing here, I am reminded of the many extraordinary public figures who have taken their turn at this podium.
Abraham Lincoln was not one of them. However, I do want to wish our 16th president a very Happy 216th Birthday. He is one of my favorite, most inspiring figures in American political life. More on him later.
You might be wondering what some of my thoughts are as I reflect on one year at City Hall?
My first reality is this: While my time in office is finite, my duty to the city is indefinite. It’s incumbent upon us to leave Manchester a better place.
I want to be able to look back and say, we listened and we got things done.
In the final analysis, we are accountable. I don’t have the luxury of just saying “NO” all the time. We have to find compromise and bring people together.
Sometimes both sides of the political aisle get mad, but the only thing that matters is that we deliver for the people of Manchester.
You also need to show courage and conviction when faced with criticism, whether earned or unearned.
As I look out on this audience, I know that every President, every CEO, every Executive here can relate to what I’m saying.
One of the greatest things about being Mayor is all the people you get to meet. At ribbon cuttings, coin tosses at high school football games, big events on Elm Street, graduations, and yes, Town Halls.
You may have heard about the 14 Town Halls we’ve held. We did one in every ward last year, and have started making the rounds again. It’s the best way to get feedback and hear what’s on peoples’ minds.
It also keeps me humble. And it’s totally okay…I take it in stride because of all politicians, Mayors are absolutely the closest to their constituents.
So, what have we been up to, and where are we going?
Of all the issues we deal with, I believe Safety is my most important duty, and one that is non-negotiable.
Fortunately, we have two strong, capable partners in that pursuit: MPD’s Chief Peter Marr, and MFD’s Chief Ryan Cashin. We all share the same “everyday attention to detail” philosophy.
Bail Reform is an essential component of Public Safety.
In January, I testified in Concord in support of HB 592 which would keep violent and repeat offenders off our streets and behind bars.
Just this past week, we had two more examples of why this is extraordinarily important. You may have heard about them. One involved a man stabbed over a dozen times, the other was a bank robbery. Both of the individuals arrested for these crimes received PR Bail.
In what world does that make sense?
This is especially maddening when we learned more: the man arrested for stabbing had a conviction for Domestic Violence on his record and, the guy who held up the bank had three previous bank robberies convictions in New York. Clearly, we need bail reform now more than ever.
Where is the justice for the victims?
Where is the justice for the police?
Where is the justice for our residents and businesses?
On what planet is this acceptable and what is it going to take for this madness to end?
This problem is not just anecdotal, strong numbers back up this type of criminal behavior:
In 2024, there were 2,971 adults arrested in Manchester. These individuals accounted for 4,551 arrests because 27-percent of them were arrested more than once.
Of the 2,971 arrested, 715 or 24-percent of them were out on bail at the time of arrest. This is entirely unacceptable.
There could be nothing more transformative in Manchester than taking nearly one-thousand criminals off our streets. The city would literally change overnight.
Our police department is filled with heroes from top to bottom. Like many departments, we are experiencing a shortage of officers. Our vacancies typically hover around 20.
We ask them to do a tough job, and the difficulty of their work is compounded when they do the hard work, arrest someone, and that person is then let out to reoffend. This madness has to stop.
I have also testified in support of legislation that would raise the mandatory minimum sentences for fentanyl distribution. Those who peddle this poison should be taken off of our streets immediately.
Last year we eliminated a program and transferred the balance of funds to the MPD to create a greater police presence on our streets and in the parks downtown. This has resulted in hundreds of additional arrests and citations, and dramatically changed the look and feel of the downtown.
We also gave the MPD an additional $100K in ARPA funds to help with recruiting to fill these vacancies.
As we enter into the budget season this year, we will ensure our police have everything they need to do their jobs effectively, and I will continue to work with the Governor and Legislature to pass Group 2 Pension reform to help with retention.
For years, the Manchester Fire Department had applied for a SAFER Grant which provides federal funding to bring on new firefighters.
This $3.7 million grant is allowing us to bring on 12 new fully funded firefighters for 3 years dramatically increasing our ability to respond to emergencies in the city. Thank you Chief Cashin for all your hard work in making this possible.
We’re also budgeting now to handle the eventual loss of these federal funds to ensure our taxpayers are protected.
On the campaign trail, and throughout my first year in office, my top goal has been to increase housing in our city, more specifically Affordable Housing.
It’s telling when I speak with those involved in healthcare, or education or businesses around the city, we don’t often talk about healthcare, education, or business, we talk about housing.
Manchester has been designated the Hottest Housing Market in the Country, and ranked one of the top places to live, which is good news because it means our city is a destination for families and businesses and we’re thriving.
But it also creates upward pressure on housing prices, and with a .6% vacancy rate, presents challenges in affordability. A healthy housing market is around 6%, so we literally have one one hundredth of the housing we need.
However, we are making progress. In 2024:
- The city issued 535 Certificates of Occupancy
- 600 new dwellings came on line
- 707 units are in active construction
- Through the use of 79-E: we approved affordable housing units at Lamont Hanley Building on Elm Street.
- We made a $200K expenditure from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund to create 8 units for previously unhoused women that just opened.
- And we supported $1.65 million of federal funds for affordable housing on Pearl Street and right now, there are 300 units of affordable housing under construction.
Manchester has been designated a “Housing Champion” by the state’s Department of Business and Economic Affairs. This qualifies the city to apply for millions in grant funding to help advance innovative housing solutions and infrastructure projects.
Huge shout out to our Economic Development Director Jodie Nazaka for her work on this proposal to receive this designation.
We’re also in the process of conducting our first Zoning Re-Write in over 20 years, and only the fourth one in our city’s history. With tremendous public input, Manchester is committed to making our ordinances more user-and business friendly as well as making certain they reflect what our city needs both now and into the future.
A thank you is in order to our Planning and Community Development Director, Jeff Belanger, and his staff for the yeoman’s work they are putting into fostering open dialogue with the city, the aldermen, and myself in an effort to get this right and implemented.
We got creative and sold 15 vacant city lots at public auction generating $1.13 million for the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund. And thank you to Brenda Masewick who has been the driving force for this in the Tax Department, and is now an auction expert.
We are about to undertake our second round of this initiative, and I would encourage all of you to attend the auction. It is a blast!
The issue I spend the majority of my time on is addressing Homelessness. There is no silver bullet or quick fix to this challenge, but our Team of Irina Owens and Owen Westover work on it every day.
It is truly a mix of mental health, and addiction issues, unaddressed trauma, lack of affordable housing and more. None of these scream “overnight solutions”.
My message on Homelessness is simple: it should be rare, brief and one time.
As I’ve stated from the beginning, this needs to be addressed in a comprehensive way. Ensuring our ordinances and laws are enforced, addressing the underlying drivers and creating more affordable housing. And we have implemented 16 different initiatives with that goal in mind.
We know addiction can be an ever-changing issue, but we are proud to report that overdoses in Manchester are falling significantly.
Our Recovery Overdose Addiction Response Team known as ROAR – is on the street, preventing overdoses and connecting people with life-saving services. They are running into the burning buildings of people’s lives and extinguishing the flames.
Thanks to their work - drug and fatal overdoses are down by 21 and 24 percent respectively.
I want to thank Andrew Warner, his team, and our Director of Public Health, Anna Thomas for their lifesaving work on this issue.
What do those numbers mean when we break them down into human terms?
It means in 2024, we had fewer broken hearts, fewer parentless children, fewer lost futures. More hope, more tomorrows, and more lives recovered.
That is something to celebrate.
We also banned camping in public spaces - the first city in the country to do so following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision upholding that right in the Grant’s Pass case.
As I previously mentioned, we are implementing our belief that if you want and need help in Manchester it exists, but if you are here to ignore our laws and ordinances that will not be tolerated. With the additional police presence we have, our streets and parks are cleaner and more enjoyable than they have been in years.
Our city’s Engagement Center is another critical piece to solving our homeless problem. From July to December of 2024,
- Over 800 provider connections were made
- More than 35 individuals were housed
- 11 gained employment
- 8 entered rehabilitation or detox and,
- 30 vital documents like birth certificates and social security cards were issued
There’s an important subset to our homeless population: our Veterans.
Men and women who bravely served our country who now find themselves without stable housing. Some are in shelters, others couch surf. Some are living in cars. Whatever their situation, it’s heartbreaking and completely unacceptable.
In September, we launched an initiative to effectively end veterans’ homeless by the end of my term in January 2026. At the time of the announcement, we identified 47 homeless vets.
When the gauntlet was laid down, our community stood up. Thanks to 10 of our local landlords, along with a dozen community stakeholders led by HarborCare, I am proud to say, 29 veterans now have long-term, sustainable roofs over their heads.
Then, we realized some of our veterans just needed help with a security deposit, money for an application fee or emergency housing. Our community rallied yet again.
This time, 6 veterans’ groups and one individual veteran donated 7-thousand dollars to our new Sustainability Fund established to cover those needs.
To be clear, these initiatives are not handouts, they are hand ups for our veterans who need just a little more support on the home front.
This idea speaks to a larger point I’d like to make about the direction we are heading with Homelessness. We must break this number down into manageable bite sized pieces, and we must address the pressure valve we have in our emergency shelters. When a person is ready to leave a shelter, there simply aren’t enough transitional, or supportive units, and not enough affordable housing. This condemns them to their current situation.
Along with veterans, we have far too many seniors, families and youths who are homelessness in Manchester. Couple that with those who struggle with mental health, and addiction and you can begin to tackle this issue by specifically targeting these unique groups who have individual challenges.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. This is why we started with veterans, and we will begin to expand to these other groups as we make progress.
To be clear, our work has not, and will not stop to help everyone along the way but I think coordinated, targeted strikes at specific populations can make a significant difference.
We also have an exciting project we are working on that has the potential to greatly increase the number of transitional units in our city, while getting more unhoused off our streets. We have a real opportunity to change a significant number of lives, I only wish this address were a month later so I could tell you all about it!
Another important group that’s never far from my thoughts? Our Students. Ensuring Manchester kids get the best education possible hits home to me now more than ever.
Whether it’s public, private, parochial, charter, or home schooling, a child deserves an education best suited to their needs. Parents should never be excluded from educational decisions, and Education Freedom Accounts are an important part of this mix.
Our educational system is inherently important to the long-term health of our city.
While more work remains, we have exciting things going on within our School District. Last year, the District graduated nearly 800 students who earned almost a half a million dollars in scholarships.
Central’s FIRST robotics team reached the world championships. Students won accolades in arts and music competitions at the state level. In athletics, District students earned state championships and saw a resurgence of programs, notably including football at Memorial and West.
Following declines in prior years, the district saw stabilization in overall enrollment for the start of 2024-2025 school year.
The overall graduation rate has increased year over year as the District continues its focus on career-connected learning pathways, with career-exploration work starting as early as elementary school.
There’s good news regarding Attendance too: Our rates are going up. Kids in class more often means better learning across all grades.
20% of our students are English Learners, and with 57 languages spoken in our schools, we must remain committed to ensuring they have all the resources necessary to be successful both in school and upon graduation. Building off this effort, the District launched a dual-language immersion program, this one is Spanish to English, a first in the state, at Bakersville Elementary, with a second immersion program, French to English, set to launch in the near future.
We will continue our work to increase attendance, and graduation rates, while eliminating distractions in our classrooms like cell phones.
A few additional successes I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention!
To use an aviation term, the status at the airport is Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited!
MHT welcomed 3 new airlines in 2024, and 10 new routes, including Jet Blue, our White Whale, a partnership more than 20 years in the making.
If you’ve noticed a big difference in the cleanliness of our Downtown and our Parks - you’d be correct.
Supported by the businesses and commercial property owners of the Central Business Service District (CBSD) and lead by Jose Sanchez, and Director Nazaka, our new Street Ambassadors work in all types of weather. They have provided the following services over the past 6 months, they have made an incredible difference to our city:
- Collected 82,410 pounds of trash, and
- Removed 820 Stickers
- Pressured Washed 950 block faces
- Removed 606 Pieces of Graffiti, and
- Got rid of 174 Large Items of Debris
Next up: the City Budget
I have met with all our department heads and we’re right in the thick of it now so I don’t want to give too much away, but I will mention a couple things.
Last year, despite inheriting a $10.7 million deficit on the city side alone, the Board of Mayor and Aldermen was still able to deliver a budget that came further under the tax cap than any budget since the inception of the cap.
I will never gut essential city services, and I will always put the taxpayer first.
I want to thank Alderman Morgan for his leadership in righting a wrong. For six years, the city has operated without a Charter Mandated Independent City Auditor. The Alderman and I worked together to identify funding to bring on this important position to ensure our city dollars are spent wisely, with oversight, and accountability.
Two years ago, the Manchester School District entered into contracts which brought their employees to market rates, giving them a competitive chance to land the best educators.
This year, we have a similar opportunity on the city side with our own comprehensive compensation study that was completed. I have ridden on the garbage trucks, removed graffiti, done ride-a-longs with the police, and Squad One at the fire department, while visiting every department, and I know we have the finest workers around.
I am committed to ensuring our city workers are compensated fairly, while continuing to ensure our taxpayers are protected. And I want to thank Director Lisa Drabik, and her team, for their steadfast leadership in shepherding this through the process these last few years.
I’ve talked about the countdown clock in my office a lot. Today, the clock tells me I have 328 days left.
Yes, it’s a good visual and conversation starter, but, as I tell my wife, there’s a method to that madness.
We cannot, and we must not focus solely on the tactical, we have to simultaneously implement a long-term strategy to take Manchester to an even higher plane.
Far too often, politicians think only in terms of election cycles, and not what’s best for their community over the long term. It’s tremendously important for us as leaders to lay out a vision for what we’d like to accomplish, while also planting the seeds for future success.
And that’s what we are committed to doing here. In the coming weeks, we will unveil our “Together We Rise: 50 Initiatives, One Future” collection of plans we would like to implement in the coming years. These ideas come from our countless town halls, community and Aldermanic meetings and more.
It’s aggressive, but that’s what people expect from the city that is as enduring as its iconic mill buildings. The city that always leads the way.
So, let me give you a sneak peek into some of these ideas:
Our downtown should be as bright as our future. You look at photos of other cities and their downtowns are always lit up like the 4th of July. This creates a warm, and welcoming environment, it also helps to deter crime. In our upcoming budget, we will allocate funds for this purpose and work to get them installed ASAP.
One of the consistent refrains at our Town Hall meetings is the condition of our roads. I am committed to making an historic investment in our infrastructure this year.
It’s becoming clear that Artificial Intelligence is the wave of the future, and we are seeing more cities utilize this technology to help deliver services. We will develop both an AI Policy Guide for our city’s future, and also seek to implement items like an AI Chatbot to facilitate user interaction between our departments and our residents.
For the first time in our city’s history, we have hired a grant coordinator, which presents us with an incredible opportunity to deliver more resources to our community without burdening the taxpayer. Utilizing this position, we will increase communication and collaboration between our city departments, residents, and nonprofits to advance our service delivery in Manchester. I want to thank Alderman Vincent for his leadership on this.
Through the work of our Community Needs Assessment it has become clear that Manchester needs an Age-Friendly Action Plan for our senior population. The William B. Cashin Senior Activity Center on our West Side has been a tremendous success but we know the need for the services offered there is growing.
With this in mind, we have already begun conducting a study to develop an action plan for our seniors' future. Another thank you to Director Thomas, and her entire team, for identifying this issue and taking action.
That’s 5 of the 50 ideas we have. I can’t wait to release the full plan!
I began my remarks this morning wishing Abraham Lincoln Happy Birthday. I’ll end my remarks with some final thoughts on our 16th president.
Lincoln faced numerous challenges during his presidency, the Civil War being the most obvious and serious, of course.
While none of us can match his extraordinary courage in preserving The Union, Lincoln’s management of this country’s greatest existential crisis is a master class in Leadership: setting clear goals, staying focused and being committed to the greater good.
He showed in his actions, magnanimity in victory, and defeat. He was not known to yell and scream. He was prudent. He used humor. He had no ego. He took the long view. And he welcomed differing opinions.
Lincoln also left a legacy for everyone in a position of power to emulate: He showed us Leadership is about meeting your moment.
Because -- at one point or another -- everyone in this room has been forced to meet our own moment.
I think about this often. It’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day grind, or give in to the loudest voices in the room and take short term victories that give you a sugar high.
It’s far more difficult to take the long view, to ignore the noise, the petty squabbles, and do what you believe is right. We are better than the political rhetoric of our day suggests, it hurts our ability to get things done.
Years from now when all the speeches are given, all the votes have been taken, and all the campaigns have long since been run, how do we want to be remembered?
To me this is easy.
We should strive to be remembered by the moments when the chips were down, we rolled up our sleeves, we worked together, and we made the difficult decisions that moved our city forward.
The strength of America has always been with its citizens.
The strength of our city is in you.
We are a great American city with so much to celebrate. We are blessed with a foundation of residents, civic leaders and business owners who care deeply about our hometown, people who work every day to ensure it flourishes.
As mayor, my focus is on making Manchester the best mid-sized city in the country, and I’m proud to report the state of our city is STRONG.
Thank you for your time this morning and for everything YOU do to make Manchester a vibrant city. I appreciate you being part of our city’s story and bright future.
The opportunity to lead Manchester as its 49th Mayor is the privilege of a lifetime, and I will be forever grateful for the opportunity and the trust the city has placed in me.
Thank you!
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