City Leadership
The Gloucester Mayor’s Office
The Mayor
Paul A. Lundberg
Paul A. Lundberg is the chief executive of Gloucester, elected in November 2025 with 57.44 percent of the citywide vote. The job he won is the busiest in City Hall. The Mayor runs the city’s departments, appoints the people who lead them, and writes the budget that decides what Gloucester can afford, from plow trucks to teachers. The City Council can approve or reject what the Mayor proposes, and it confirms his appointments to city offices, so nothing important happens on one signature alone. The Mayor also holds a seat on the School Committee by virtue of the office, which puts the city’s chief executive at the table where school policy is set.
Lundberg knew the building before he moved into the corner office. He served as an at-large city councilor from 2013 to 2019 and finished his third term as Council President, the member the Council picks to run its own meetings. Before that he spent six years on the Planning Board, two of them as chair. He is a Gloucester High School graduate who went on to earn a communications degree from Northwestern University and an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, then spent more than forty years in transportation, starting as a conductor on the Chicago and North Western Railway and rising to senior vice president and chief operating officer of RailAmerica and general manager of the MBTA’s commuter rail in Boston. Running a railroad is scheduling, labor, and maintenance under a hard budget, which is not a bad description of running a city.
His civic record centers on two ballot campaigns. He led Vote Yes for Gloucester Kids, the initiative through which Gloucester voters approved 66 million dollars in bonding authority to build the new East Veterans Elementary School, and the Vote Yes for Gloucester campaign encouraging compliance with state housing law. He has served ten years as a trustee of Northeast Hospital Corporation, the parent of Addison Gilbert and Beverly Hospitals, and on the boards of the Gloucester Lyceum, the Sawyer Free Library, and Wellspring House.
The office is where a resident’s problem meets the person who can move money at it. If the issue is a department, the department head answers to the Mayor. If it is the budget, the Mayor writes the first draft. Reaching this office early, before the budget is filed, is how residents get a number changed rather than defended.
| Role | Mayor (chief executive) |
|---|---|
| Elected | November 2025 |
| Office | Gloucester City Hall, 9 Dale Avenue, Gloucester, MA 01930 |
| Phone | (978) 325-5100 |
| Website | gloucester-ma.gov |
What the Mayor Does
- Runs the departments. Police, fire, public works, health, the harbormaster, and the rest answer to the Mayor, who appoints their leaders.
- Builds the budget. Each year the Mayor proposes how Gloucester will spend its money, then sends it to the City Council, which votes on it and can vote it down.
- Appoints, with a check. The Mayor picks department heads and board members, and the City Council confirms appointments to city offices.
- Sits on the School Committee. The Mayor holds one of the seven seats by virtue of the office, linking City Hall to the classroom. He does not chair it.
The Election That Filled the Office
Gloucester chooses its mayor in a citywide general election, and the most recent one shows exactly how much a city ballot can move. In November 2025 voters weighed the sitting mayor, Gregory P. Verga, against Paul A. Lundberg, a former Council President. Lundberg won, 57.44 percent to 42.56 percent, and the city changed its chief executive in a single evening. The City Clerk posts the results race by race at elections.gloucester-ma.gov, first as informal counts on election night and then as official numbers once the Clerk formally certifies them. Municipal elections here run in odd-numbered years, so the next full city ballot is never far away, and every councilor faces voters on a two-year clock.
Contact & Engage
- City Hall: 9 Dale Avenue, Gloucester, MA 01930.
- Mayor’s Office: (978) 325-5100.
- Report a problem: potholes, streetlights, and other service requests go through the city’s Citizen Request page.
- Show up: the City Council meets on the second and fourth Tuesday of the month at 6:30 p.m. at City Hall, and the public is welcome.
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