Mayor Thomas P. Koch of Quincy
Recipient of the Canon Brian S. Kelley Public Servant Award
Thomas P. Koch was elected the 33rd Mayor of Quincy in 2007. He’s since been re-elected a record six times. In 2020, he became the longest serving Mayor in the City’s history.
Mayor Koch took office amid the most severe financial crisis of our generation, and his steady, clear-eyed leadership during that time — which ended with the wholesale protection of vital education and public services — would come to characterize much of his tenure as the City confronted challenge after challenge over the years. From the historic winter of 2015, to major floods in 2010 in 2018, to the ravages of addiction, to the 2020 pandemic, Mayor Koch galvanized the full resources of the City and leveraged his long-time relationships with federal, state and private-sector leaders to make Quincy a consistent leader among its peers in emerging stronger from crisis.
Mayor Koch couples this foundation of leadership with a bold, generational vision for securing Quincy’s future. Under his direction, the City has opened four new state-of-the-art schools; maintained one of the strongest, most diverse school systems with the smallest class sizes of anywhere in Massachusetts; built new parks and playing facilities across the City for our young people; restored and protected our vital historic assets; and made unprecedented investment in replacing the City’s aging and faltering infrastructure from water and sewer lines; to flood-relief measures, to roads and sidewalks.
Today, a great renaissance is underway in Quincy. More than once, the City has been named to Boston Magazine’s renowned “Best Places To Live” list and has been recognized nationally by publications like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Nowhere is the progress the City making more clear than in its downtown. Once the commercial hub of the entire South Shore, downtown Quincy struggled n for nearly 40 years. But with hundreds of new residences, dozens of new restaurants and new businesses, and nationally recognized public spaces, downtown Quincy is once again the driving force of the local economy. And the work is just beginning.
Always with an eye on the City’s bottom line, Mayor Koch has embarked on these projects while protecting the City’s financial position, earning major bond upgrades from Wall Street. Many of the projects either completed or underway are leveraged by financing outside of the City’s general revenue, a fact highlighted by the City’s low borrowing levels and its property tax bills at or below state averages.
The mayor’s life-long dedication to Quincy doesn’t end at the office, as he’s actively involved in a number of groups and organizations around Quincy, including Sacred Heart Church, the Quincy City Club, and the Quincy Partnership.
Most importantly, Mayor Koch is a family man. He married his high school sweetheart, Christine Keenan, in 1990 and they have three grown children: Cornelius Richard, and twins Thomas Jr. and Abigail. The family lives just two doors down from the Mayor’s childhood home on Newbury Avenue in North Quincy.