A joint motion by Councilors Erik Gitschier and Corey Robinson that “the law department draft necessary language to facilitate residents’ ability to select our mayor via ballot before the 2025 city council election cycle” generated some discussion at Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting. However, like so many of the motions that purport to address homelessness and its consequences, this was a feel-good effort that ignores reality to curry favor with a select audience.

Much was made of the outcome of the non-binding referendum on the 2021 city election ballot that asked residents if they would prefer directly electing a mayor to the current system in which the mayor is selected by the city councilors. That referendum passed with 7,429 voting YES and 2,411 voting NO. There was a lot of talk Tuesday about “respecting the will of the people” as demonstrated by the referendum vote.

The reality that this motion ignores is that the method of electing local officials in Lowell, including the mayor, is under the jurisdiction of the US District Court because of the lawsuit prosecuted against the city several years ago. In that case, a group of city residents sued the city on the grounds that the then existing all at large, winner take all method of electing councilors and school committee members violated the Federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the votes of minority residents of Lowell.

After an extensive discovery period, the city council then in office concluded that the city would likely lose the case if it went to trial and so negotiated a settlement that resulted in the current hybrid mix of eight district and three at large councilors. That settlement was then adopted by the court in what is called a “consent decree” which means the agreement of the parties was formalized as the judgment of the court with the same weight and finality as a judge’s verdict after a trial. It also means that the court still has jurisdiction over the entire matter which in turn means that any change to the method of electing local officials must first be approved by the court.

There’s been a lot of talk about asking the plaintiffs in the lawsuit if they would agree to this change, but that is a misleading way of framing the issue. Certainly, if the plaintiffs concurred with the requested change, it would increase the chances of the court reopening the case and allowing the change, but in the end, it’s up to the court, not the plaintiffs.

There’s a concept in the law called “the doctrine of finality” which means once something is decided, it’s been decided. For many reasons, courts are hesitant to revisit something that’s already been decided once. I think that’s particularly true when governmental entities like the city of Lowell are involved. With a new city council potentially being elected every two years, the court faces a revolving door of efforts to change the outcome of the case based on the whims of the next set of city councilors.

The argument in this case – that “the people want it” – seems especially unpersuasive given the facts of the underlying case. By settling that case, the city council essentially said, “Yes, we violated the rights of our minority residents by allowing the wealthiest and whitest neighborhood in the city to dominate the outcome of elections that chose who would represent the entire city.” Because of that past injustice, the city council agreed to change the electoral system to one of predominantly district councilors to give greater weight to residents of other neighborhoods, particularly those with large numbers of minority residents.

Now certain councilors want to go back before that same judge and say, “We’d like to once again violate the rights of our minority residents by allowing the wealthiest and whitest neighborhood in the city to dominate the outcome of electing a mayor who would represent the entire city.” It doesn’t sound like a winning argument to me.

Finally, the whole “will of the people” pitch is a joke given the abysmal rate of participation in city elections. In that much-talked-about 2021 referendum, of the 115,000 residents of the city, 68,000 of whom were registered to vote, just 7,429 supported the direct election of a mayor.

Then in the 2023 city election, with 115,000 residents and 75,294 registered voters, just 7,516 voted in the election which is less than 10 percent of registered voters and about 6 percent of the city’s residents. That’s not “the will of the people.” It’s the will of a small, self-selected subset of the people who participate in local elections.

(Given the almost total absence of any effort by this city council to try to increase turnout in city elections, it seems that councilors are content to keep playing to that very small slice of the residents who participate in city elections.)

In the end, Councilor Wayne Jenness made a substitute motion to send this matter to the council’s election and rules subcommittee to hold hearings so that members of the public could express their thoughts on this matter. The substitute motion passed, but just barely with six voting YES and five voting NO, although I believe several of the councilors who voted not to send it to the subcommittee would have voted against the primary motion, so a vote on that would have also been close.

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The proposed ordinance to ban camping on public property was procedurally back before the council which referred the ordinance to a public hearing on November 12, 2024, so more on that in a future newsletter.

Separately, Mayor Dan Rourke alluded to the issue of homelessness in some brief but intriguing comments he made during the Announcements portion of the agenda at the end of the meeting. He explained that this past September he attended the Urban Economy Forum in Toronto, Canada, and while there, learned about a program called the Frontrunner Community Initiative. It’s a program for cities that helps fund sustainable development and urban revitalization. Lowell is eligible for the program which potentially could provide substantial funding that would assist with such things as housing development and dealing with homelessness. Rourke spoke highly of how Toronto used the program to make massive strides in dealing with substance abuse and homelessness in the inner city. It seems that Lowell is such a likely candidate for this program that the entire council has been invited to visit Toronto for a first-hand view of how the program was implemented there. The council will formally take up the opportunity for this visit at next week’s meeting with the visit potentially to occur in mid-November.

This sounds promising so hopefully we’ll hear more about it in the coming weeks and months.

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Earlier this week the Boston Globe reported that sales of single family homes in Greater Boston in September fell to the lowest number of sales in any September since 1995 which is an astounding statistic since it includes the 2008-2012 Great Recession when the real estate market (and the global economy) cratered. It also is contrary to the expectation that as soon as interest rates started downward, real estate activity would pick up.

A couple of things might be contributing to this slowdown. The first is supply and demand. There are more home buyers than there are homes for sale, so prices remain high. Building more housing of any type would help with that, but as we’ve seen with the fight against the MBTA Communities housing bill elsewhere and past opposition to ADUs in Lowell, the people who currently own houses aren’t disposed to allow more housing which might devalue the property they are living in.

Also, even though interest rates have started to go down, they still are high compared to what they had been. A few percentage points of interest on a home mortgage makes a huge difference in the price you can afford to pay for a house. For example, if you were to obtain a $400,000 mortgage to purchase a home, if the interest rate was 3%, your monthly payment would be $1,686; if the interest rate was 6%, your monthly payment would be $2,398, a difference of $710. Looking at that another way, if you could afford a monthly payment of $2,400, if the interest rate was 3%, you could get a mortgage of $569,255; but if the interest rate was 6%, you could only afford to borrow $400,000.

Finally, I suspect many people are holding off on major financial commitments – and major commitments overall – until the results of the Presidential election are known. Given the policy paralysis that’s so often the case in Washington, I’m not sure the outcome of the Presidential election will have a huge impact on the housing market, one way or another. But I think the outcome of the race will have a big impact on the trajectory of the county, so it’s likely that people are taking a wait and see approach to major decisions such as whether to buy a house.

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Early voting continues through this coming Friday. The city of Lowell schedule is on the city website.

Thanks to Lowell Telecommunications Corp (LTC) for inviting me to talk about the various offices and referendums on this year’s ballot. The 28-minute episode is on now LTC’s YouTube channel.

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Baseball playoffs and the start of the World Series caused me to reminisce about a couple of classics from my youth. Last week on richardhowe.com I wrote about the 1975 World Series (Red Sox v Reds) and the week before on the 1967 World Series (Red Sox v Cardinals).