20250406

April 6, 2025

Tuesday night’s Lowell City Council meeting was concise and, as far as I could tell, controversy free. There were two items discussed that I thought worthy of mention in this newsletter: The city’s new 311 system and funding for local cable television operations.

The 311 system came up on a motion by Councilors Wayne Jenness and Corey Robinson that requested “quarterly summary updates to the city council from data within the 311 system to give information to the council about what kinds of issues are being reported and how they are being addressed.” The motion was approved so the reports should be forthcoming, but City Manager Tom Golden and councilors made a few comments about the long-awaited and recently implemented system. Golden called it “fabulous” but admitted it can be “a little quirky.” Several councilors, from their comments, seem to be regular users of the system.

A 311 system is a non-emergency telephone number, mobile app, and website that provides a centralized hub for residents to inquire about city services, report problems, and request assistance. It consolidates various city departments and services into a single point of contact. The system then directs the request to the appropriate city department, tracks the progress of the request, and provides updates to the person who initiated the contact. Perhaps most importantly, the 311 system collects data on common resident issues and, if used properly, helps city officials identify trends and improve services.

Among the challenges of operating a 311 system are the time and cost of setting it up, the need to train city employees on the system, language barriers for those who speak languages other than English, and a dependence on technology that might be an obstacle for residents without internet access or smartphone literacy.

Lowell has used a company called Tyler Technologies to provide the 311 software. Tyler, headquartered in Plano, Texas, is a big provider of tech services for local government. A few years ago, when I was still register of deeds, we studied Tyler’s land management software as a replacement system for the one in place in most of the registries of deeds in Massachusetts. The product was impressive and would have been a strong contender if funding had been available to begin the replacement process (but it wasn’t).

To utilize the new Lowell system, you first create an account on the 311 page by entering your email address and setting a password. The system then sends you a confirmatory email to validate your account. Once you acknowledge receipt of that email, you’re all set.

The mobile app is available for both Apple and Android devices and can be obtained from the Apple App Store or from Google Play. Once you’ve installed the app, you log in using the credentials you created on the website, then the system sends you a text message to validate your phone.

I found the account creation process on the website and the mobile app to be straightforward, about what you would expect from most online interactions these days. However, both do require a degree of technological familiarity that might pose a challenge to some residents. However, for those who find technology a challenge, they can use a basic telephone interface by dialing 978-674-4311. (Regarding the phone number, I always thought a 311 system meant that you just dialed three digits on your phone – 311 – just as you would dial 911 for an emergency but everything I’ve seen on the Lowell system refers to the full ten-digit phone number.)

Coincidentally, a streetlight near my house was out so I used the 311 app to report it. I submitted the request on March 22, 2025, a Saturday. Two days later, on Monday, March 24, 2025, at 9:04 am, I received the following reply:

Dear Richard Howe,

Thank you for contacting the Department of Public Works’ Electrical Department for assistance with a Streetlight/Lamp Repair, as reported to us on 3/22/2025 9:04:23 AM.

Please note that depending on the nature of the pole (e.g., City owned vs National Grid owned, etc.), and the availability of the fixture/ parts, repairs may be delayed.

If you have any comments, questions, or concerns, please feel free to contact the Department of Public Work’s directly at 978-674-4111.  When contacting us, please make sure to reference the 311 Request Number 642 for any inquiries regarding this request.

Thank you.

City of Lowell Electrical Department Team

A week later, on March 31, 2025, at 9:53 am, I received this email:

Dear Richard Howe,

Thank you for contacting the Department of Public Works’ Electrical Department for assistance with a Streetlight/Lamp Repair, as reported to us on 3/22/2025 9:04:23 AM. At this time, your request has been closed as follows:​

Location: XX Westview Rd

Request Details:

• • Streetlight Type – Wooden Pole Light Fixture
  • Light/Lamp Status? – No Light, or Out

Resolution: [No tasks found]

If you have any comments, questions, or concerns, please feel free to contact the Electrical Department directly at 978-674-4111.  When contacting us, please make sure to reference the 311 Request Number 642 for any inquiries regarding this request.

Thank you.

City of Lowell Electrical Department Team

Sure enough, the light had been fixed. I thought the one-week turnaround time for this request was very good. My only suggestion would be that a bit more information about how the request was resolved be included. On the response I received, and as it appears on the very impressive interactive map that shows all requests across the city, it simply says “closed” which was warranted since the light was fixed, but I had to look at the light to confirm that. The resolution of other requests may not be so self-evident and, unless there is additional data in the system hidden from the public but visible to city leaders, useful information like it was indeed fixed, what it took to fix it, and what had caused the problem in the first place would not be included in the data.

The website also provides statistics on the type and frequency of requests. By far the most common item was potholes of which 144 were reported, followed by broken recycling carts (60), broken trash carts (40), and missed trash pickups (39). Other trash-related items like bulk item pickup and missed yard waste pickup were also common.

The consequences of the 311 system are already being felt. For instance, on Tuesday, the council approved the transfer of $118,750 from the city manager’s contingency fund to the DPW to pay for all the potholes that are now being filled.

Additionally, several councilors joked that the frequency of their calls to Assistant City Manager Shawn Machado have significantly decreased since councilors are now utilizing the 311 app to report things rather than calling the assistant city manager. Although they were joking about this, a prime method incumbent councilors use to enhance their favorability with constituents is to rapidly respond to requests for assistance from constituents who contact them. If my trash wasn’t picked up and I call Councilor X, if the trash truck returns an hour later to empty my container, I’m impressed with the responsiveness of Councilor X and am more likely to vote for Councilor X in the next election.

Although this process works well for the small number of constituents who call councilors to report problems, it puts everyone else in a lesser class when it comes to the receipt of city services since those called in by a city councilor will take precedence over tasks that would otherwise be done in the normal course of business.

Assuming councilors become power users of the 311 system, it would be interesting to track whether requests submitted by councilors get addressed faster than those coming from the average resident. But unless someone makes a public records request for that data, it won’t be forthcoming from anyone at City Hall.

Setting that aside, congratulations to those responsible for the implementation of the 311 system which seems an efficient, rational way for residents to interact with their local government.

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On Tuesday the council received a report on a recent meeting of the Technologies and Utilities Subcommittee on the upcoming renewal of the city’s cable TV contract with Comcast. The report caused me to find and watch on YouTube the March 25, 2025, subcommittee meeting.

Councilor Wayne Jenness is the chair of the subcommittee with Councilors Sokhary Chau and Kim Scott as members. The subcommittee meeting doubled as the legally required public hearing on the cable contract renewal. That was chaired by the city’s longtime Chief Information Officer Miran Fernandez. Also participating in the meeting were Attorney William August (via Zoom) who is the city’s outside legal counsel in these negotiations, and Adam McCune, the executive director of Lowell Telecommunications Corporation (LTC). The public hearing opened with a PowerPoint presentation which is available online.

This contract is limited to cable television services and does not involve the delivery of internet or telephone. State law is very strict about the segregation of these things so local negotiators are barred from blending them together during negotiations. State law also prohibits local negotiations from addressing the amount Lowell residents pay for cable TV, the channel lineup offered to Lowell residents, and the placement of channels in various tiers of service.

The city’s current contract expired in 2023, but the Covid pandemic disrupted the many procedural steps that precede renewal, so the contract has been extended from year to year until now. Also, the authority to execute the contract on behalf of the city lies exclusively with the city manager although the city manager is obliged to consider input from residents.

Before getting into more details of this new contract, some history might be helpful. Back in the 1980s in the United States, cable television emerged as a new technology. From the late 1940s when television first became available until the arrival of cable, TV came to viewers over the air for free with TV station transmitters pushing out signals that were captured by rooftop antennas and carried to your TV set via a ribbon-like wire called twin-lead cable. (For those without a rooftop antenna, “rabbit ears” extended out from the TV were used.)

Cable TV worked differently. As its name implies, the electronic signal was carried to your home by a coaxial cable that originated at some distant location. Cable opened up a whole new world of entertainment since the number of channels that could be offered was almost limitless, and the content was not restrained by over-the-air regulations that made everything family friendly.

But stringing wires to every house in a community was a huge expense. To warrant such an investment, cable companies influenced federal law to allow for local monopolies on cable service. Federal legislation granted municipalities the authority to award exclusive franchises. This meant that a city would enter into a contract with a single cable company which granted that company the exclusive right to provide cable TV services within the city. That is exactly what happened in Lowell. I believe the initial provider was called Colony Cable but after decades of consolidation, that company and its successors are now part of Comcast.

To help temper the effects of the monopoly, the same legislation also required the cable company to provide certain benefits to the municipality, most notably funding for Public, Educational, and Government (PEG) access. This funding enabled local governments, schools, and community organizations to produce and cablecast their own programming.

That’s where LTC – Lowell Telecommunications Corporation – and LET – Lowell Educational TV – came from. Lowell currently has four PEG channels: one for publicly produced programs; a second for publicly produced programs with a “global” theme which includes most programs in languages other than English; the government channel that televises municipal meetings; and the educational channel that is operated by and for the school system.

The law also caps the PEG payment from the cable company to the city at 5 percent of the cable provider’s gross revenue. This contract, like all previous ones for Lowell, hits that maximum amount. CIO Fernandez said that under current conditions, 1 percent is approximately $150,000 with the city’s 5 percent allocated as follows: 2 percent to LTC; 1 percent paid to LTC to televise municipal meetings; 1 percent to the schools for LET; and 1 percent used for capital funding for both LTC and LET.

Another benefit that has flowed to the city from the cable contract is something called the I-Net or Institutional Network. This came early on in the Lowell-cable provider relationship and was a cutting-edge development back then. The I-Net is an internal city network that connects 70 public buildings and spaces (think schools, fire stations, etc.) to a central computer hub by high-speed fiber optic cable. This is a critical piece of infrastructure to the city which, I believe, costs the city little or no money due to this provision of the cable contract. My sense is that this type of arrangement is extremely rare in these contracts. In fact, I believe Mr. Fernandez said that we cannot expect it to be included in any future contract renewal. If that is true, in five years when this new contract expires, the city will have to absorb the cost of the I-Net or pay to replace it with something newer and better. Whichever results, I expect that to be a substantial expense that no one at City Hall, other than Mr. Fernandez, is very concerned about just yet.

Similarly, the national trend of “cord cutting” is an existential threat to our entire public access television model. The availability of high-speed internet and the rise of streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu have caused a steep decline in the number of people subscribing to cable TV. While the city of Lowell may still receive its 5 percent from Comcast for PEG television, the amount that 5 percent is applied to keeps shrinking, last year by nearly 14 percent.

There are some bills pending in the Massachusetts state legislature that would impose similar PEG-financing obligations on high-speed internet providers and streaming services, but I suspect that lobbyists for those entities will be adept at frustrating such efforts.

In past newsletters, I have frequently mentioned the steep decline in voter participation in the last city election in which the 7,515 votes cast was the smallest turnout in more than 100 years. A big driver of this lack of participation is that many Lowell residents feel disconnected from local government. Many feel they lack the information needed about local government to make an informed choice on their ballot so they opt not to participate. This is not healthy for city governance, especially in the context of the ongoing assaults from Washington on our democracy. The time to start thinking of a post-Comcast world for the funding of local programing and especially government programing is now, not five years from now when this new contract expires.

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This week on richardhowe.com:

Paul Marion provides a sketch of John Webb, a mysterious character who was a critical player in this region nearly 400 years ago.

David Daniel makes some observations on the censorship trends we now confront with “The Great Book Burn-a-Thon.”

Terry Downes has his latest baseball poem, Opening Day.