Roosevelt Park Money Moves

A year ago today, Mayor Gary Christenson sent the City Council a letter calling for a special election and tax increase. That was driven by his "concerns about the sustainability of our annual budget." Barely a year later, at the 9/21/26 meeting, the mayor is asking to move $2.2M of taxpayer funding out of the Roosevelt Park improvement account to cover his shortfall and funding gap (which appears to be driven at least in part by cost overruns) for the Malden River Works project.

Wasn't the MRW budget settled late last year? On 9/18/25, Christenson wrote a letter to the City Council seeking a separate $1.5M for the MRW project, which was to complete the "second, vertical construction phase of the Malden River Works project." The Finance Committee had a dedicated OSPCD presentation about this on December 16, 2025.

In the mayor's letter calling for a Proposition 2.5 tax increase he described Malden's fiscal management spirit: "As you know", the Mayor wrote (less than) a year ago, "we have always been a city that had had to do 'more with less.'"

Yet here he is again, with a big budget gap to fill.

And he's proposing taking taxpayer money from a well-known, long-standing, critical project putting at risk the school environment of roughly 1,000 school children every school day for the last 6 1/2 years? (The entire Roosevelt Park is closed off, designated to have hazardous materials, and has been like that since the start of school this year, with little accomplished towards the goal of remediation and improvement of the grass area.) With the mayor's proposal to move other already approved funding to another project, the Roosevelt Park safety net is removed for good.

These days, the public might wonder if the mayor is doing less with more.

Some community members - active volunteers in both the Malden River Works Project and the Friends of Roosevelt Park - will remember when Mayor Christenson cancelled the Roosevelt Park Improvement Project. The Mayor made that decision more than two years ago on April 29, 2024, which froze roughly $2.2M of financial funding community members, city staff, a small army of consultants and the City Council had worked for years to gather in support of Roosevelt Park. Mayor Christenson's moribund money maneuver banked Roosevelt Park money these last two years, without proceeding on the improvements much needed for Roosevelt Park. And now he sees an opportunity - perhaps thinking the political heat has passed?

During these years Roosevelt Park has been neglected, Devir had (and continues) a massive, costly park renovation. Trafton Park has had multiple park renovation projects. Kierstead and Ferryway too. Did we miss any? Like the Ward 3 Councillor discussing Amerige Park improvements? Or the costly work underway at Maplewood Park's artificial turf installation?

Millions poured into the MRW project, with city staff spending taxpayer time supporting and advocating for that project. Meanwhile, for years, Roosevelt Park has been bypassed, neglected, and left listening to the sounds of silence from City Hall.

Now Mayor Christenson wants to take Roosevelt Park's $2.2M, available after he cancelled that improvement project in 2024, and divert (as the Friends of Roosevelt Park poignantly put it) the funding to a very, very expensive riverfront renovation.

The Mayor assured the City Council, in his 9/22/26 letter: "To be clear, these funds are not part of the funding for the currently planned work at Roosevelt Park. Reappopriating them is the most prudent option as compared to initiating a new borrowing or drawing from reserves." However, the funds the mayor currently appropriated for Roosevelt Park may be insufficient to get the park reopened. The mayor's track record on budgeting for these projects is not good. The mayor needs more funds now because of the funding gap in the Malden River Works project - which is roughly a seven year old project.

Additionally, multiple individuals have raised the concern for Roosevelt Park - where hazardous material contamination was reported to the state in 2019, under legal requirements to do so - is now entirely fenced off from use by roughly 1,000 K-8 students. What happens if that hazardous waste removal project runs into budget problems? (Sources indicate the project experienced an early delay finding disposal facilities to take the contaminated soil.)

What's the current running budget for the Malden River Works project? Is it $11M? $13M? $15M? Could it hit $17M? Let's hope every City Councillor knows the answer, because they have been party every step of the way.

In January, the City Council unanimously approved business item 364-25 to obtain $1.5M from HUD. That vote passed unanimously for "the City of Malden to borrow $1,500,000 from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, or any other entity associated therewith, to support a second phase of construction for the Malden River Works".

Wasn't that the final budget baseline?

The Mayor's Office and City Council can and should balance the needs of the City across these caring community groups who put their hearts into important community projects. Roosevelt Park AND the Malden River Works both deserve the resources to succeed. Malden needs structural reform, not municipal financial shell games taking from one project to pay for overspending on another, needlessly dividing and pitting community groups in opposition to one another.

The public has reacted swiftly and negatively to the mayor's move to divert Roosevelt Park funds. Many see this proposal as an unjust allocation of resources. When resources are distributed so unevenly, and in the eyes of residents unfairly, it starts to look like harmful neglect.

Roosevelt Park is the geographic heartland in the City of Malden. The River Works Project is a very different kind of project at the southern most tip of the city. Both are deserving projects, warranting city support with staffing, funding, and appropriate, balanced prioritization. Neither should be glorified or praised above all others and to the detriment of any other. Certainly, neither should be depleted or demeaned.

The Mayor's need to plug this late breaking, sizable funding gap in the MRW project appears to have come about from incomplete planning and cost overruns on his watch. If he gets his funding redeployment wish, it decimates the promise for progress that many residents have advocated for at Roosevelt Park.

After Malden's March 31, 2026 special election, the Mayor revealed a $1.6M "regrettable but honest human error". This was within the Mayor's administrative oversight. We learned that "regrettable but honest human error" was known before special election day. Why was it not disclosed publicly until after all of the ballots were counted? (We'd flagged the same $1.6M figure once before -- see our 2024 post →) When the Finance Committee reviews the Mayor's latest call for Mo Money, they should do so with greater scrutiny than they gave the ballot questions.

This time, the Finance Committee Chair should be asking more questions of the Mayor and "his team" rather than joining him in a closed-eye push for more money. The Finance Committee meeting on September 29 should demand more documents, scrutinize the budget failures and cost overruns lurking behind this latest funding gap, and make sure that the city doesn't once again commit a "regrettable" error.

Every single member of the Finance Committee should know and be able to recite by rote memory each of the major budget milestones in the River Works Project. The Finance Committee members should all articulate when they bring their recommendation back to City Council what they recommend. Finance Committee members should individually be able to explain the evolution of major expenditures and the sources of funds. All of the City Council members should recap the votes they have taken to push this project forward, and the costs and benefits to Malden.

The Mayor's 9/22/26 letter propelled two proposals forward, which the Finance Committee will address on 9/29/26:

Council order #393-26: "That One Million Two Hundred Ninety-Two Thousand Forty-Five Dollars ($1,292,045.00) of the funds that remain available from the adopted appropriation order authorized by Paper 139 Series of 2023 relative to the Roosevelt Park Revitalization Project be repurposed to pay costs of the Malden River Works Project."

Council order #394-26: "That Nine Hundred Thirty-Eight Thousand One Hundred Seventy-Four Dollars and Fifty Cents ($938,174.50) of the funds from the adopted appropriation order authorized by Paper 140 Series of 2023 relative to the Roosevelt Park Revitalization Project, of which are no longer needed to complete the project for which it was borrowed, be transferred to pay costs of the Malden River Works Project in accordance with the provisions of M.G.L. c. 44, §20."

One more thing for the public to keep in mind. Mayor Christenson appears to be breaking his project promise that the Malden River Works Project would be "funded entirely through grants and outside funds". The Mayor now wants to "reappropriate funds remaining from the cancelled Roosevelt project." (Orders #393-26 and #394-26). The mayor's grab for this $2,230,219.50 is coming from taxpayer, city funds. The Mayor's not keeping his promise.

We have included a gallery of photos showing Maplewood Park getting an entire (artificial turf) makeover. Approval for that project goes back to November 2024, when the Mayor sought and the Council approved $2.5M. Photos provided to us show equipment with similar markings (R.A.D). Is the same crew working on Maplewood Park has been seen at Roosevelt Park? We don't know for sure.

It looks like significant progress is being made at Maplewood Park while reports indicate not much has been done in the last month at Roosevelt Park. We included with this story a number of photos which support these observations.

The injustices are many, and appear to be growing. Malden City Hall, City Council and School Committee staff should explain why they have failed to prioritize Roosevelt Park's Environmental Justice community of stakeholders while pushing and pouring millions into other parks around the city.

The City of Malden needs to be held to account for fundamental equity and fairness across the city's diverse community of needs. The Mayor's latest money moves tip the scales of justice over for all parties.

Once again the Mayor should do more with less, rather than less with more. The $2.2M in funds are not the Mayor's funds. They are not the Finance Committee's funds. They are not the City Council's funds. Those elements of Malden government are the stewards of those funds. After the failure of the tax increase push, and the post-polls admission of a "regrettable but honest human error", the public seems to be paying closer attention this time.

Friends of Roosevelt Park Make a Statement

The long-established Friends of Roosevelt Park posted a statement on the Mayor's planned money move. The group said it recently learned that the $2.2M earmarked for the original Roosevelt Park Improvement Project is being diverted to Malden River Works, while the current, scaled-down Roosevelt/Salemwood Park renovation moves forward on a separate funding source, a HUD Section 108 loan — a shift that, in the group's words, has "painted a clouded picture for both projects leaving many unanswered questions."¹

The group asked whether the diverted funds could instead have gone toward properly fixing the park's drainage, fully restoring the outdoor classroom (previously planned with raised vegetable beds, benches, fruit trees, and flower beds), or clearing the drainage trench behind the field to create a Miyawaki micro-forest and pollinator garden connecting to the bike trail.

The group also pointed to the stalled soil-contamination cleanup, which was promised to begin last June. Some site setup was done in August by RAD Sports Construction, with work stalled pending contracts needed before the contaminated soil can be disposed of. FoRP noted that other Malden park projects dealing with similar contamination, such as Devir Park, have moved forward with fewer delays, while Ward 5 residents and Salemwood School students continue to wait. The group said it was also unable to follow the discussion live at Tuesday's council meeting because the city's Malden Access YouTube stream wasn't working. One resident commenting on the FoRP post underscored the impediments of broken streams and the document difficulty we had gathering city-issued information:

"I have learned that simple things are hard for some people because there is no hiding in simplicity." — Lara Thompson

References

We've provided key reference documents along with this article. These documents include timelines and the evolution of the Malden River Works budgets and designs. We have written extensively about Roosevelt Park.²

ClearGov - Malden's goto transparency center for large projects - presents Malden's latest public project budget update. This shows high level Projected Expenditures of $12,384,168 with Expenditures to Date of $13,321,202, as of 9/14/26. Soft costs of $2,318,001 (for Design, Bid, Consultants, Admin) add to the construction cost for Phase 1 of $11,003,201 accounting for that total. Most of the spending-over-projection is from soft costs.

The Malden River Works Section 108 Application includes information on one of the later projects of the project.

The Malden River Works website indicates "The project has raised over $13 million in funding from federal, state, local, and private grants for design, permitting, and construction, with the first major phase of the transformation to be completed in the summer of 2026." According to ClearGov, expenditures to date (as updated on 9/14/26) are $13,321,202. Some of this money is borrowed.

Interactive Timelines

We built two interactive views of the Malden River Works funding and meeting record: a phase-by-phase overview, and a full chronological ledger of every public meeting and grant award.

Appendix: A Timeline of the $1.6M Disclosure

We went back through our own reporting after noticing the $1.6M figure surface again in the mayor's account of the Malden River Works funding gap. It turns out we flagged the same number in a different context more than two years ago -- before the Proposition 2½ override, before the post-election "regrettable but honest human error" disclosure, and before this week's Roosevelt Park fund transfer. We're publishing the sequence as we reported it, contemporaneously, rather than reconstructing it after the fact.

• July 16, 2024 — "If the Roosevelt Park Improvement Project was cancelled over a $1.6M shortfall, how can the Malden River Works project be moving ahead while underfunded by $3M?"
• April 3, 2026 — Newly disclosed financial revision raises questions, in the aftermath of the failed Proposition 2½ override
• April 4, 2026 — Documentation, and the School Committee memo, surfaces
• April 5, 2026 — A timeline of events
• April 7, 2026 — Finance Subcommittee discusses the mayor and superintendent's memo on incorrect health insurance premium figures
• April 10, 2026 — The mayor tells the City Council it was "a regrettable but honest human error"
• April 28, 2026 — The mayor's staff and School Department staff discuss the insurance reports
• June 2, 2026 — Position elimination criteria

Photo Galleries

Malden River Works — General Information

The City Council's Money Moves

Roosevelt Park's Current Condition

Roosevelt Park and Maplewood Park, Side by Side

OSPCD Funding Chart

Maplewood Park's Turf Renovation