Community campaign launches and outreach ramps up ahead of May 5 debt-exclusion vote

Members of the community and committee briefed the building committee Jan. 29 on a coordinated campaign to support the upcoming debt-exclusion vote and on outreach plans leading up to the May 5 special election.

Beth Ann Cornell, who identified herself as a member of the school committee and said she helped organize the campaign with the mayor, said the campaign committee has a manager and communications volunteers and planned to launch a website on Monday named "Yes First Salem." "On Monday, we will officially launch our website, the Yes First Salem website," she said, and invited committee members to provide testimonials and participate in door-knocking and outreach.

Committee members raised practical questions about campaign participation and legal limits. Speaker 1 said he would circulate guidance from the Office of Campaign Finance and stressed the constraint on public resources: "free speech is free speech," he said, but public funds and public employee time cannot be used to promote the campaign. He promised to share the campaign-finance document with the group and to highlight key prohibitions.

The committee reviewed its community-engagement calendar and tools: the project team has been tabling, attending neighborhood meetings and preparing a tax-calculator tool that several members said should be clearer on mobile and make the yes/no options more obvious. A design-day public event is scheduled for Feb. 7 at the high school; the presenters encouraged councilors and volunteers to host local meetings and to coordinate with the building committee staff to avoid using public resources.

On election administration, a committee member asked whether the special-election question would appear bilingually; the group was told that bilingual ballots are required for the election by state law.

Beth Ann Cornell and other volunteers emphasized they were seeking endorsements, testimonials, and volunteers for signage and door-knocking; committee members offered to make presentations to local groups and to help staff tabling events.

The committee asked the legal department to provide a refresher on what city-affiliated volunteers and city employees may or may not do; Speaker 1 said he would circulate the Office of Campaign Finance guidance with summary nuggets for committee members.