Several cities across New Hampshire have elected new mayors. This week, NHPR is sitting down with some of these new leaders to talk about their plans for office.
Jay Ruais is the mayor-elect of Manchester. He’s a National Guard member and former Republican staffer. Ruais spoke with NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa about homelessness, education and other issues he plans to address as mayor.
Transcript
There's been a lot of tension surrounding how homelessness should be addressed in Manchester, both on the state and on the local level. What do you see as the right approach to providing services and solutions?
One of the things that we have talked about since the inception of the campaign, and certainly post-election, is the need for a comprehensive response to this issue here in the city, trying to be more proactive and less reactive than I think we have been. So we've been talking about strengthening the ordinances in the city. [For] those that are here that want help, that need help, making sure that the provision of services is such that people aren't falling through the cracks. So coordination and communication with the community [and] nonprofit entities that are doing a lot of this work. Strengthening our services where people are at their most vulnerable, so when people are coming out of jails, when people are leaving hospitals and prevention programs within our schools.
And then obviously housing is a huge piece of this. So doing everything that we can to update our zoning ordinances as expeditiously as possible, streamlining our permitting, better incentivizing our developers that are doing this work in the city and then providing regulatory consistency as well. So it's really that comprehensive approach, I think, that will serve us well.
You've talked about not wanting to criminalize homelessness, addiction or mental health—things that folks are going through in Manchester. But you do support enforcement mechanisms. Could you tell me what that looks like?
There's got to be a balanced approach to this. The city has to be safe, clean and inviting for people to come downtown and make sure that they feel as though this is a place that they can come to to grab dinner, or go to a play or something along those lines, to enjoy the city of Manchester and all that we have to offer. So, making sure that we're enforcing and strengthening the ordinances that we have here on the books, like banning camping, for instance. I think that's something that we can look at as a city and [also] look at other suggestions for strengthening our ordinances that we have already.
As mayor, you will also chair the school board in Manchester. Seven schools in Manchester are currently on the Department of Education's list of lowest performing schools in the state. They will receive federal funds to help with this, but how will you support improvement?
One of the things that we want to do is making sure that the dollars that are coming into the city are going directly into the classroom and targeting where the need is greatest. So making sure that those students who are coming here have that language proficiency, making sure that kids who may have fallen behind during COVID have the necessary resources to both catch up and then excel. Kids that have high ACE scores, high trauma, adverse childhood experiences, making sure that we're doing what we need to do to make sure that they have everything they need to be successful as well. And then, making sure that we are attracting and retaining the great teachers that we have in the city and bringing more in where there may be shortages. I want to make sure that we are addressing this from all angles.
What else do you hope to accomplish as mayor? And maybe what do you hope to do differently during your time in office?
For me, the windshield is far bigger than the rearview mirror. I want to look towards the future and how the Board of Mayor and Aldermen and I can work together to hit on the most pressing issues in the city: improving public safety and coming up with solutions for the homeless crisis. Those were the primary concerns I heard from residents across the city.
But I do think there's a ripple-in-the-pond effect when you have these quality-of-life issues that certainly impact our ability to develop economically, to attract people into our city over the long term, [and] to bring jobs into our community as well. So I think that addressing those quality-of-life issues will have a reverberating impact throughout the rest of the city.
