By Adam Swift
City Manager Fidel Maltez is looking to keep the lines of communication open with Chelsea residents as he heads into his second year on the job. Recently, Maltez reflected on the challenges and successes of his first year as city manager, pointing to the city moving forward with the Pa’Lante comprehensive planning initiative as a major initiative for 2025.
“I am very happy about where we are in this administration,” said Maltez. “This year has been about really engaging with the community. Right off the start of my tenure, we embarked on a listening tour where we visited a majority of our nonprofit groups, our church groups, our businesses, and the intention of mine was really to establish a strong relationship with the community.”
Maltez said his desire is to show the city’s residents, businesses, and its employees that the city and the administration is there to serve them. “My goal is always to get out of city hall and into the community, and that is being done through conversations, through listening sessions, and through direct engagement,” said Maltez. “That is why I am so excited about the comprehensive master plan.” Very early in his tenure, Maltez said the city council asked about developing Chelsea’s first comprehensive master plan since the 1970s. With funding, a consultant, and a steering committee now in place, Maltez said the city is now ready to begin the two-year process of going out into the community and getting information, feedback, and listening to the priorities of the residents and the businesses to launch a platform and long-term vision for Chelsea.
Over the past year, Maltez said Chelsea was faced with a number of crises and challenges that helped spur action for the current year and beyond, from the migrant crisis that saw the Quigley building at the former soldiers’ home housing migrants to the extraordinary number of serious fires across the city. “The housing crisis that is felt in the region is really impacting our residents, and with that comes a lot of residents who are burdened with poor housing conditions, really burdened with the cost of housing,” said Maltez. “I think also the number of fires we had this year was really unprecedented. We had 11 fires this year, which is almost one a month, and we had a couple of fires that were probably the largest we have seen in Chelsea in a very long time.” Partly as a result of those fires, Maltez said the city is encouraging its residents to get renter’s insurance, and is reinforcing its response mechanisms and focusing on fire education for residents. In 2025, Maltez said he is looking forward to keeping up the engagement levels with residents and businesses he looked to establish in 2024.
“This year has been a year of learning for me,” he said. “Over the next 60 days, we are going to be launching our listening sessions again.” Maltez also said he is excited about where the city is with its schools. “We settled our teachers’ contract, which is huge,” Maltez said. “We are focused on improving our schools and growing our schools.” One large school initiative in 2025 will be the expansion of the Chelsea Opportunity Academy. “Internally, I am really excited about building on the success we have seen this year and making these successes more of a cultural habit,” said Maltez. “It takes a long time to build a culture, an organizational culture, and when I came in, the three words that are centered on our culture are accountability, responsiveness, and transparency, and it is starting to sink in with our team. Continuing to beat on that drum is going to be really positive.”
While Maltez was very familiar with Chelsea before become city manager, both as a resident and the head of the public works department, he said there were some aspects of the new job that were a pleasant surprise. In particular, Maltez said the many events around the Chelsea 400 celebration really gave him a sense of the history of the city. “Chelsea has an incredible history, and there are so many people who are proud to be a part of the city and the future of the city,” said Maltez. “The biggest surprise was how much history there was in the city and how much love there was for the city both inside and outside of the city.”