Gloucester's new mayor suddenly an uneasy target

Mayor Carolyn A. Kirk of Gloucester addressed the media Monday about teen pregnancies in her town. (DOMINIC CHAVEZ/GLOBE STAFF)

GLOUCESTER - Just six months ago she swept into office, a self-described soccer mom with a sterling resume as a management consultant, promising to clean up this seaside city's dismal finances.

But just as she was getting her sea legs - freezing hiring across all city agencies, reviewing every expenditure over $100, and submitting her first budget that would aim to close a $2 million projected deficit - a new problem broadsided Carolyn A. Kirk.

On her way Thursday to a family wedding in Portland, Ore., the new mayor had stopped at a layover in Chicago, when her cellphone rang. It was her husband, and he had a copy of a new Time magazine article reporting that nearly half of the 17 girls who had become pregnant at Gloucester High School in the last year had made a pact to do so.

"He started reading it to me, and I immediately knew this was going to be a complete and utter fiasco for the city," Kirk said yesterday in her office, as reporters hovered outside, kept at bay by an aide.

Now, as Kirk tries to rein in the city's finances and revitalize its storied waterfront, she finds herself buffeted by a national uproar that has ignited a sometimes caustic debate about teen sexuality, parenting, popular culture, and contraception.

These were not exactly the issues high on Kirk's agenda when she delivered her "State of the City" address in April, warning that "our economic base is in flux, and the conditions facing us could cripple us for years to come."

Kirk said that since holding a press conference Monday, during which she declared that there was "no evidence" to corroborate the notion of a pact put forth by the high school principal, she has become a nationwide target.

"I'm getting e-mails from all over the country criticizing me for my press conference," Kirk said. "Someone told me I had a bad hair-dye job, and I wanted to write back and say, 'I'm a natural blonde!' "

She broke into laughter, recalling other e-mails that accused her of blaming the teen pregnancies on President Bush, because she said during the press conference that the president's No Child Left Behind law has led to cutbacks in health education. Other e-mails, she said, included biblical passages and criticism of her "immoral ways."

On the streets of this deeply Catholic city, residents said they were concerned that the issue had become a distraction.

"Anything like this that takes up hours in her days, that she could spend doing other things, is a drag," said Thomas Hauck, a 53-year-old writer who voted for Kirk and was unlocking his bicycle outside the Post Office yesterday. He did not blame Kirk, however, saying that the controversy just happened to erupt during her term.

Treasure Mercurio, 64, who was outside City Hall waiting for a friend who was getting a beach parking sticker, said Kirk is "trying the best she can" to handle the firestorm.

"I wouldn't want her job because it really has not been fair to her to have this thrown at her," Mercurio said.

Yesterday, one of the 17 girls spoke publicly for the first time, calling the quadrupling of the average annual number of pregnancies at Gloucester High a "coincidence."

"There was definitely no pact," Lindsey Oliver, 17, said on "Good Morning America." "There was a group of girls already pregnant that decided they were going to help each other to finish school and raise their kids together."

Time, which reported the pact in its June 18 edition, acknowledged that it had not interviewed any of the girls involved and has been unable to reach principal Joseph Sullivan, who gave the magazine the information. (Kirk said at her press conference that Sullivan was "foggy in his memory of how he heard about the information.")

Kirk, 46, who has an 8-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son, said she wanted to hold the press conference in part to protect the pregnant teenagers from what she described as the media's intrusiveness. "Part of me," she said, "feels like a mother bear protecting the cubs."

She has not relished the role, however.

On Friday, she was relieved to receive word from Moody's Investors Service that the bond rating agency would not downgrade the city's rating, as she had feared. The agency noted that although the city's long-term outlook is negative, "new management as of Jan. 1, 2008, has taken aggressive action to stabilize the city's finances."

"I wanted to jump up and down at the press conference about the Moody's bond rating being held," Kirk said. "Nobody wants to talk about that, but that was very important to the future of the city."