State of the City: Mayor urges focus on long term

Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais delivered his State of the City on Tuesday, Feb. 10, framing a path to the city’s future through the lens of history.

His speech, at times rapid-fire and metrics-driven and at others raised to the passionate, oratorial tone of a secular civic sermon, addressed a standing-room-only crowd of business and civic leaders at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College. The speech concluded with a Q&A from the audience and discussion with moderator Scott Spradling.

Ruais opened with a moment of silence for former Mayor Robert Baines, who died Jan. 23.

Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais answers a question from moderator Scott Spradling during the Greater Manchester Chamber’s State of the City breakfast in 2024. (File/Jeffrey Hastings/FOM Media)

He then spoke of the city’s history, describing leadership as a relay race in which each generation builds upon the work of the past.

He pointed to strong planning in the early days of the city, such as when in 1872 Mayor James Weston oversaw the construction of a water hydraulic plant that could support up to 125,000 residents, at a time when the population was only 23,000.

“Mayor Weston was thinking centuries ahead,” Ruais said, going on to tout current water and public works projects, including mining of the Cemetery Brook Tunnel, a project to improve water quality and reduce flooding, and a record 2025 investment in roads and sewers, including the paving or sealing of 42 miles of roadway and thousands of pothole repairs.

Broadly, Ruais described the state of the city as strong, citing falling crime rates in both 2024 and 2025, progress on the homelessness issue and the “hottest housing market in the United States.” But he emphasized the need to prioritize long-term planning over “crisis response,” and cited the “cruel math of prevention” as an obstacle to making this case.

“Some of the most important work that a city does is work that no one ever notices. When prevention succeeds, nothing happens. And that can make it hard to value. The costs of action are real, and they are immediate, in time, in money, in attention. But the benefits are invisible. The crisis that never came, and the harm that never reached a family: That is the cruel math of prevention.”

He also acknowledged significant challenges in the upcoming budget cycle. He defended Manchester’s voter-approved tax cap as an important tool for protecting residents, while noting that inflation, employee contracts and health care expenses continue to strain city finances. He warned that the school district is facing a projected $14 million to $15 million budget gap under the current cap and expressed concern over pending state legislation that could reduce Manchester’s education aid by roughly $10 million, calling the coming budget process a “difficult balancing act” requiring close coordination between city and school leaders.

Two additional key and intertwined arenas the city faces challenges in are homelessness and housing stock broadly.

Ruais, continuing to emphasize the need for long term planning versus patchwork crisis response, outlined a plan he’ll be putting forward next week: a proposed three-year funding cycle designed to move the city toward a stable, coordinated system of support for the unhoused supported by a mix of opioid settlement funds, federal grants, charitable gaming revenue and a modest city contribution. He said the plan would guarantee consistent winter warming capacity, expand daytime engagement services and ensure that elderly, sick and disabled residents are not left without shelter.

He also cited recent progress, noting 103 homeless veterans and nearly 100 other individuals have been housed, encampments are down by 28 percent, and overdoses have declined 54 percent.

On housing more broadly, Ruais said that since 2024, nearly 1,000 new units have been certified and cited a range of projects underway, including affordable housing, representing over a thousand additional units in the pipeline.

During the audience’s Q&A session, Ruais tackled issues from economic development and childcare affordability to the city’s tax cap and upcoming school budget challenges. He stressed the vital need for coordinated planning, regional partnerships and maintaining affordability to attract and retain young professionals.

He returned to his historical theme to close, urging residents and leaders to focus on long-term results over short-term disputes.

“History is a demanding judge,” he said. “It is not going to remember the small, petty, silly arguments of the dead. It will remember, though, whether or not, when our moment came, we rose to meet it. And we will remember whether or not we chose responsibility over noise, results over rhetoric, and the solving of our collective problems over the easy satisfaction of division.”

The event was hosted by the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce and sponsored by Dartmouth Health, Eversource and Consigli.