Looking Forward to Quincy’s First Olympic Games

AJQ's blog is a place for members to express opinions and ideas and should not be considered official statements from the group. This post was written by Jon Gorey, a writer and Quincy resident.

Paris, France, is set to host its third Summer Olympics later this month. I’m excited to watch the world come together in a spirit of free, fair, and fierce competition, in one of the most enchanting cities on earth. Since bidding for the games almost a decade ago, Parisian mayor Anne Hidalgo has worked hard to prepare her city for this intense global spotlight, building arenas, expanding Metro service and accessibility, and cleaning up the River Seine to allow recreational swimming.  

And yet, next year, Quincy’s mayor will be paid more than double what his Parisian peer earns.  

The mayor of Paris, a legendarily glamorous city of 2 million residents, earns about $115,000 annually, while the lord of our six wards will draw a staggering salary of $285,000 next year. That’s more than the mayors of New York, Boston, and London earn, according to the City Mayors Foundation. Not only that, Quincy’s mayor will soon make three times as much as his counterpart in Tokyo, who earned about $76,000 while leading a thrumming metropolis of 14 million as it hosted the previous Summer Olympics. 

So what I’d like to know is: When is Quincy submitting its bid to host the 2036 Olympics? 

It would be a thrill to watch the world’s most elite athletes sprint around the track at Faxon Field, glide across the Lincoln Hancock pool, row sculls down the Neponset, bounce down the trails of the Blue Hills Reservation on mountain bikes, leap and tumble across the mats in the Quincy High School gym, and dive to dig volleyballs out of the sand on Wollaston Beach. If we could slow climate change enough to once again ensure reliable snowfall and frozen February ponds, maybe we could even make a bid for the Winter Games, and resurrect the speed skating and ski jumping terrain in the Blue Hills where Quincy used to host an annual St. Moritz Winter Carnival almost a century ago. 

While it’s gratifying to realize that our little city of 102,000 really does have, on a small scale, many of the recreational facilities and landscapes needed to host a sporting event as diverse as the Olympic Games, this is mostly a joke, obviously — just like the mayor’s 79% pay raise. 

Of course our mayor should get a raise; that’s hardly in question. But when adjusted for inflation, the mayor’s last pay increase, which brought his salary to $150,000 plus perks, would amount to about $198,000 today. That’s a competitive and fair salary, more than double what the median Quincy household earns, and roughly in line with the mayor of Boston’s salary. Bring it back up to par, then set it to automatically increase with inflation so we don’t have to keep doing this.

Some folks may consider Quincy “the Paris of the South Shore,” but if we’re going to pay our mayor more than double what the real Parisian mayor makes, I expect much bigger and bolder leadership to accompany that whopping pay raise. As mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo hasn’t just readied her city for another Olympics. She has also ushered in a new era of sustainable livability for her residents by prioritizing people over cars — slashing vehicle emissions and car trips  by adding bike lanes, repurposing parking spots, and closing hundreds of streets to traffic next to schools.

If a Mount Olympus-sized mayoral salary won’t buy us an Olympic Games, I at least want a world-class city out of the deal. Or better yet, a more reasonable pay increase we can all live with.