Mayor on the move

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

The mayor of New Bedford was far from home.

He was standing just yards away from the fence at the Gaza border in Israel. One week earlier, he had held meetings in New Bedford on code enforcement and public schools. Now, he was within “rocket range” of Hamas.

Mayor Jon Mitchell was leading an exchange trip with two other U.S. mayors in April. They made stops in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and they surveyed war-torn Israeli towns along the Gaza border. A few days later, Mitchell was back in New Bedford to work on the city budget.

The Israel expedition was one of 11 business trips Mitchell took in a one-year period. He traveled farther, more frequently, and at a higher expense that year than any other Massachusetts mayor outside Boston, a New Bedford Light analysis found.

The Light analyzed calendar and expense records for the 53 people in Massachusetts who held the title of “mayor” outside the state’s capital from July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024. The analysis only included travel outside New England on official business, excluding day trips to nearby states and personal vacations.

Mitchell spent 27 full business days on business trips, equivalent to more than five working weeks spent out of town. 

---

---

He flew to Washington, D.C. four times and southern California twice. He visited Miami in March. Last summer, he was in the Azores; this summer, he visited Kansas City and Baltimore. Most of his trips were for conferences with other city leaders, including multiple meetings with the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Mitchell’s 11 trips far outnumber those of his peers. Mayors from Beverly, Salem, and Cambridge each went on three business trips that year. A few other mayors took one or two trips, while the majority took none at all.

The mayors who traveled on the public’s dime also mostly went to conferences with other local leaders, including meetings organized by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the Aspen Institute, and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

When she heard that New Bedford’s mayor had outspent his peers, City Council Finance Committee Chair Linda Morad had questions.

“You’re spending taxpayer money for what purpose?” she asked. “Justify the expense to me.”

In an interview with The Light, Mitchell said the trips allow him to learn new ideas, advocate for New Bedford’s interests, bring federal resources back to the city, and promote the city’s industries.

“You cannot do this job the right way if you’re not out there promoting the city,” he said.

The mayor’s trips cost the city over $14,000, according to receipts obtained through a public records request and additional information provided by a city public information officer.

Other mayors spent less. Beverly Mayor Michael Cahill spent the second-most on business trips, with $7,225 in expenses, records show. He went to some of the same mayoral conferences as Mitchell in Washington, Miami, and Kansas City. Six other mayors spent sums ranging from $355 to $5,799.

---

---

New Bedford’s investment in the trips is worth it, Mitchell said.

“The resources that have been secured by dint of my going to conferences, and doing the networking, and getting to know people, pay for the travel I’ve done over the years many, many times over,” he said.

Mitchell said he traveled much more often during the year The Light analyzed than he has in any other year of his tenure as mayor. He added that he turns down more invitations to travel than he accepts.

“When I travel, it’s an inconvenience to me,” he said. “I do it if I determine it’s in the city’s interest.”

Even while he’s attending conferences, the mayor is constantly in touch with his staff back in New Bedford, he said. 

Mitchell said that comparing him to other mayors is like “apples and oranges.” Each community has different needs and interests, he said, and the role of a mayor varies depending on each city’s government structure.

Justifying the costs

The $14,414 that the city spent on trips helped cover hotels, flights, and taxis for the mayor. Some expenses not included in that total were paid for or reimbursed by the outside entities that organized the trips.

Travel expenses for the four U.S. Conference of Mayors meetings totaled $10,699, with costs for each trip ranging from $2,071 to $3,812.

The city spent $960 to put Mitchell up in the Santa Barbara Ritz-Carlton for a February mayors conference. Mitchell said that’s where all the attendees were staying, and he did not get to pick the hotel.

Morad, the finance committee chair, wanted to know why Mitchell was spending more time and money on trips than other mayors around the state. The council’s audit committee recently held a hearing on the mayor’s office spending more than the council had budgeted for it.

“[Mitchell] keeps coming to the council telling us he needs more money,” Morad said. “And yet here he is at the top of the pack being out of the city more than 10% of the year.”

The cost of the trips is small compared to the city’s $515 million budget, Mitchell said.

“It’s less than a rounding error,” he said. “It is a blip.”

He also pointed to the value the city gets from the trips. The city has received free management training and support from a Harvard-educated data analyst through a Bloomberg Philanthropies program that would normally have cost over $300,000, he said. 

And he said he’s able to run the city more efficiently because of what he learns on trips, though it’s hard to put an exact number on the city’s savings. He also pointed to grant money obtained through meetings with federal officials in D.C.

Worldwide travel

Mitchell not only traveled more frequently than his peers — he also traveled much farther. He was the only Massachusetts mayor in The Light’s analysis to travel internationally, with his trips to Israel and Portugal.

The small delegation of mayors that traveled to Israel for a few days in April met with academics, officials, and the families of hostages held by Hamas. Mitchell was joined by Mayor Daniel Rickman of Columbia, South Carolina; Mayor Travis Stovall of Gresham, Oregon; and other officials from the U.S. Conference of Mayors and American Jewish Committee.

The meeting with officials in Tel Aviv was “within rocket range” of the terrorist group, Mitchell recalled in an interview.

A city public information officer later clarified in an email that “meetings the Mayor joined near the Gaza border were within range of munitions Hamas was using at the time. Hamas fired longer range rockets on Tel Aviv earlier in the conflict, but Tel Aviv was not fired upon while the Mayor was there.”

He put the local geography into context by comparing it to familiar distances in Massachusetts. Parts of the West Bank are closer to Tel Aviv than Fall River is to New Bedford, he said. The distance between the Tel Aviv city limits and the Gaza Strip is similar to the distance from New Bedford to Brockton.

“You can’t help but feel this sense of insecurity, like the bad guys are all over the place,” he said.

But what does violence in the Middle East have to do with running a mid-sized city in Massachusetts?

“It’s something that people were talking about,” Mitchell said. Local people have protested against the war, he said, and the local Jewish community is “on edge.”

The Israel trip was paid for by its organizers, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the American Jewish Committee. Reimbursement for Mitchell’s $246 parking fee at Logan Airport is “under review” by the committee, the city public information officer said.

Mitchell visited the Azores for five days over Labor Day weekend last year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of New Bedford’s sister city agreement with Horta, a small Portuguese city that was once a whaling port.

Mitchell’s trip also commemorated the 65th anniversary of the Azorean Refugee Act, which lifted immigration quotas for Azoreans after a devastating volcano eruption on the Island of Faial.

The city paid $2,162 to cover Mitchell’s airfare, parking, and checked luggage.

The mayor said it was his first official trip to Portugal as mayor. He said he has turned down at least 10 other invitations from Portuguese officials to visit their country because he hasn’t had the time.

“It was very well worth the learning opportunity to appreciate where many people who live in Greater New Bedford came from,” he said. “I probably should have done that years ago.”

He added that he’s overdue for a visit to Cape Verde.

Learning from others

Conferences with other city leaders, which accounted for nine of the mayor’s 11 trips, are a chance to learn about how other communities are approaching certain issues, Mitchell said.

“When you have conversations with other professionals who are doing work similar to your own, light bulbs go off,” he said.

The mayor said he brings back the best ideas to implement in New Bedford. He attends sessions on issues like public safety, housing, and broadband internet.

Mitchell said one conversation he had with a federal official helped him identify the best consultant to do a feasibility study for a city-owned broadband network.

He also said he sat next to the CEO of a major airline at a dinner two years ago, which gave him the opportunity to ask about how to attract commercial air service to the New Bedford airport.

Mitchell went on five trips for the U.S. Conference of Mayors. He’s currently a member of the organization’s Board of Trustees. He is the only member of the board from New England, and he said he’s the first Massachusetts mayor outside Boston to be elected to the position.

The position allows Mitchell to influence the organization’s “urban agenda” and “elevate New Bedford’s national profile,” a city public information officer wrote in a statement.

“I don’t want to brag about it, but I actually think it’s a big deal,” Mitchell said.

Board members must attend at least three of the organization’s four meetings every year, according to a city public information officer. Mitchell attended all four in the year analyzed by The Light.

Two trips were part of programs for Bloomberg Philanthropies, the organization of billionaire and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

“The Bloomberg stuff has paid off for us multi-fold,” Mitchell said.

Bloomberg provided free “executive training” for the mayor and other top city officials, taught by Harvard professors.

And New Bedford’s participation in the Bloomberg Data Alliance has helped the city “beef up” its use of data to improve services, Mitchell said. The city’s new, data-driven fire prevention strategy contributed to a 25% drop in structure fires, he said.

“We’ve probably saved some lives,” he said.

Working with Washington

Mitchell said he meets often with federal officials who have power over issues that matter to New Bedford. Commercial fishing policy is a top priority, he said.

The mayor said that while he was in D.C. a few weeks ago for another conference, he took “side trips” to meet with two members of Congress, representatives of the scallop industry, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Social Security Administration Commissioner Martin O’Malley.

The meeting with O’Malley was to discuss the planned closure of a federal office building in New Bedford, Mitchell said.

“You don’t see all that on my calendar,” he said. “The calendar, I will note, does not represent the full — not even close, to the full set of activities I do at any given time.”

Meetings like these are key to securing federal grants, Mitchell said. The $24 million grant that the Port of New Bedford received to expand Leonard’s Wharf wouldn’t have been possible if Mitchell didn’t personally know Buttigieg and his staff, the mayor said.

“When I travel, I’m the reflection of the city, and they have confidence in me,” he said.

Spreading the word

The trips allow Mitchell to promote the city to the rest of the world, he said, particularly as a port for offshore wind projects.

“It is absolutely imperative for New Bedford to be put on the map,” he said.

The mayor used his past position as the chair of the energy committee of the U.S. Conference of Mayors as a platform for that advocacy, he said. In March, he spoke at a climate conference in Miami. Other New Bedford officials travel abroad to offshore wind trade conferences to make sure people in the industry know New Bedford, he said.

Mitchell’s current position as a trustee of the U.S. Conference of Mayors gives him a significant platform to promote the city, he said.

The spirit of transparency 

The city pushed back against releasing records of Mitchell’s travel expenses for months. The Light first filed its public records request at the beginning of July, but the city asked for a $4,020 processing fee. Months of negotiations between the city and The Light followed.

Twice, the state Supervisor of Records determined that the city had not demonstrated that its fee was allowed under Massachusetts records laws. The city asked for a reconsideration, but the supervisor declined.

In October, more than 16 weeks after The Light first submitted its request, the city released the records free of charge, waiving all fees “in the spirit of transparency.”

In a message sent after the interview with Mitchell, city public information officer Jon Darling wrote that The Light was trying to “make a case that Mayor Mitchell is gallivanting around the country on the city’s dime” by requesting travel records from other mayors.

“The news here isn’t the number of trips he took nor the minute cost to the city relative to its budget, but the window into the work of a mayor who is completely devoted to his city and highly effective at his job,” Darling wrote.

Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org

---

More stories by Grace Ferguson

---

Sign up for our newsletters ⇢