Chelsea is about to get a new senior official whose job is to make development happen, and the City Council is being asked to create the post tonight without knowing what it will pay. The letter from City Manager Fidel Maltez requesting a Chief Economic Development Officer runs two pages. The job description runs five. Neither contains a salary. The position is not in the budget the council adopted in June, and the letter says so.
What the job is
The description calls the officer “the City of Chelsea’s senior executive responsible for advancing the City’s economic development, redevelopment, business attraction, business retention, housing production, commercial growth, and strategic investment initiatives.” The person would report directly to Maltez, sit at pay grade MM10, and be exempt from the union. The duties read like a wish list of every lever a city has: negotiating development agreements and public-private partnerships, administering tax increment financing and district improvement financing, chasing state incentive money, pursuing grants, and serving as “the primary liaison among developers, businesses, investors and governmental agencies.” The officer would advise the council, the Planning Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals.
The order itself, filed by Council President Roberto Jimenez-Rivera, authorizes the City Manager to create and fill the position and to establish an Office of Economic Development.
Why now, in the City Manager’s words
Maltez is candid that this is a response to the council. “At the conclusion of FY2026, it became very clear that the City Council is seeking greater clarity, accountability, and effectiveness in how the City manages and advances economic development opportunities,” he writes. “The Council appropriately asked the administration to clearly identify who is responsible for shepherding development opportunities through City government.” His diagnosis is that the work has been scattered across Planning, Inspectional Services, Public Works, Law, Finance and his own office, and that “this decentralized approach has created confusion about responsibility and accountability.”
He also says the last six months have shown “significant interest in Chelsea from businesses, developers, and other potential investors,” and that “these opportunities do not happen on their own.” He cites two models: “The City of Everett recently established a position identical to the one proposed here,” and Worcester, which he says has had a Chief Economic Development Officer for several years. Everett’s version is real. Mayor Robert Van Campen introduced Monica R. Lamboy as Chief Development Officer in February as part of his senior leadership team, with the city describing her as bringing 35 years of municipal experience in major development projects and comprehensive planning.
The money question
“I recognize that this position was not included in the FY2027 adopted budget,” Maltez writes. “Establishing the position during FY2027 will require a supplemental appropriation once free cash is certified. For FY2028 and beyond, the administration will identify reductions and efficiencies elsewhere in the budget to accommodate this position.” That is the entire discussion of cost.
Free cash is the relevant constraint. In March the administration told the council it expected the city’s free cash to fall from $32.4 million to about $5.3 million by June 30, after a year of drawing on it to balance the budget, cover a snow deficit near $950,000 and fund a long list of year-end shortfalls. The state has not yet certified the new figure. A senior executive position at the top of the city’s management pay scale, with an office around it, is not a small ask against a $5 million balance, and the letter does not say what “reductions and efficiencies elsewhere” would give way in 2028.
Maltez does promise the council a seat on the hiring committee.
The pattern this fits
The request is the latest in a string of economic development moves this year that the administration has announced without price tags. In March, Maltez told the council the city had “signed a contract with a firm to launch our business attraction campaign,” naming neither the firm nor the cost. In February the city wrote to Connecticut Sun owner Stephen Pagliuca pitching Chelsea’s industrial waterfront as the site of a WNBA practice facility, with all eleven councillors signing on. Tonight’s agenda also carries an order from Councillor Leo Robinson asking Maltez to meet with the owners of Market Basket about their plans for the plaza, which now sits inside the West Chelsea overlay district the council created in June.
The city’s own five-year forecast, and the master plan that goes to the Planning Board later this month, both rest on the same premise: that Chelsea’s budget cannot balance past 2027 without new taxable development. Hiring someone to go get it is a defensible answer to that. Councillors may still want the number before they vote.
The meeting starts at 7 p.m. in the council chambers at City Hall. The master plan and charter review, both of which bear on the same question of who runs development in Chelsea, are on separate tracks this fall.