The Lowell City Council met Tuesday and covered several issues deserving of comment. Councilor Corey Belanger moved that the city “work with community partners to organize a regional fundraiser to benefit the Lowell Folk Festival Foundation.” Addressing the council on this motion, Art Sutcliffe, the Foundation chair, explained that the National Endowment for the Arts recently notified the Foundation that it had cut the $20,000 grant already awarded for this year’s Folk Festival. (The NEA made a like cut to funding for the Merrimack Repertory Theatre as reported by the Lowell Sun in “Feds slash arts funding in Lowell” back on May 7.)

Sutcliffe explained that the Foundation can endure the cut this year but if the money is not provided going forward, the viability of future Folk Festivals will be threatened. Besides supporting Belanger’s motion, Sutcliffe urged people to help now by donating directly to the Festival via its website.

While councilors were unanimous in supporting the motion and the Folk Festival, no one spoke about the cause of the Festival’s current financial distress which is the Trump Administrations widespread cuts to all types of funding already appropriated by Congress. A few councilors cryptically cited “events in Washington” but as was the case two weeks ago with the demise of the city’s DEI initiatives, councilors have shied away from speaking out on both the anti-DEI mandate and now the cuts to funding for the arts in Lowell.

As I wrote with reference to the DEI issue, remaining silent and hoping you don’t get noticed is just an invitation for more harm. Councilors have a big public megaphone and a corresponding obligation to their constituents to clearly and forcefully explain what’s going on and the harm it is causing the city.

Perhaps some councilors remain silent because they support what Trump is doing. It would be nice to know if that was the case.

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Councilor Kim Scott, under suspension of the rules, raised an issue not on the agenda which was Monday’s announcement by Governor Maura Healey that the Commonwealth would close all hotel shelters this summer which is six months ahead of schedule.

This line, from the state’s online press release, raised concerns for Scott:

“Due to declining caseload, the Norfolk Rapid Shelter located at the former Bay State Correctional Center and the Revere CSR site at the Revere Quality Inn will close this summer. Additionally, the Lowell Inn and Conference Center will transition from a Bridge Track shelter site to a Rapid Track shelter and CSR site in July.”

The Lowell Inn and Conference Center was constructed in the 1980s as a 251-room Hilton Hotel which was eventually acquired by the University of Massachusetts Lowell for student housing and for use as a conference center. Several years ago, the University ceased those uses and leased the building back to the state as a shelter for refugees and families experiencing homelessness.

As I understand the terms used in the press release, a Bridge Track Shelter is one designed for families with higher risks and more complex needs that are expected to take longer to resolve before they can find permanent housing. Usually, families can stay in a Bridge shelter for up to six months.

A Rapid Track Shelter is a short-term shelter where homeless families can work intensively with case managers to quickly find and move to more stable, permanent housing. Families in a rapid track shelter can stay for a maximum of 30 business days.

A Clinical and Safety Risk (CSR) Assessment Site is a designated location where families entering the emergency shelter system undergo a comprehensive evaluation to identify any immediate or pressing health and safety concerns.

Besides the implications of having a regional or even statewide facility for homeless families in the middle of downtown Lowell, Councilor Scott had concerns about the impact of this plan on the Lowell Public Schools since the schools of the community in which homeless children reside carry substantial responsibilities for the care and education of those children. (Recall that School Superintendent Liam Skinner said last week that ten percent of the students in the Lowell Public Schools are homeless.)

Although the state’s lease of the ICC only runs through the end of this year, Scott is concerned that the lease might be extended.

On a related note, the Sun reported on Thursday that Ed Augustus, the Secretary of the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, will meet with City Manager Tom Golden this coming week to discuss long-term plans for the ICC and for the two vacant courthouses in the city – the Lowell District Court on Hurd Street and the Middlesex Superior Courthouse on Gorham Street. (“State eyes Lowell for more housing” subscriber only link).

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The City Manager’s written response to a Councilor Erik Gitschier motion for a report on the number of water main breaks in the city since July 1, 2023, and whether the breaks were repaired by city employees or by outside contractors yielded some interesting comments from Councilor Gitschier. The report identified 56 breaks during this period with 15 being repaired by the Lowell Regional Water Utility and the rest by outside contractors. However, the itemized section of the report showed that almost all the LRWU repairs came before August 2024. Since then, outside contractors have done all the work.

In the report, LRWU Director Steven Duchesne cited “employee turnover” as the reason for the extensive use of contractors. Gitschier suggested the problem was bigger than that, noting that at the start of the report, payments to outside contractors averaged about $100,000 per year but are now more than $1 million annually. He attributed this surge in costs to “some of our employees have become very good at watching others work.” Duchesne conceded that a big problem is the failure of LRWU employees to answer after hours calls to report to work for emergencies.

Some blend of staffing needs, collective bargaining agreements, licensing requirements, and past practice are all likely contributors to this, but the back and forth between Councilor Gitschier and Manager Golden indicated that when a water main breaks after normal work hours, three LRWU employees with the proper blend of licensure must be present to perform the repair. If that standard is not met, then a private contractor is called.

It seems that two employees often report, but that the third does not, leaving the other two to call the contractor to do the work but also to remain present (and be paid) while the work is done. (I assume this is what Gitschier was referring to with his “watching others do the work” comment.) Citing a past pattern of non-response, Golden explained that he had negotiated an additional $6 per hour stipend on top of the overtime pay employees receive for answering these calls, but that this financial incentive does not seem to have improved the situation.

In fairness to the employees, I believe Mr. Duchesne said there were only nine workers in this department. With one-third of the entire department being needed each time there’s a water main break, the number of after hour calls could get relentless, especially if the city uses a “call everyone and see who responds” approach rather than designating people to be on call for set periods.

Still, as Gitschier made clear, the current approach is fiscally unsustainable, although it’s unclear what City Manager Golden can or will do about it.

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In response to last week’s request by councilors that the city manager reconsider his proposed funding level for the Lowell Public School for the next fiscal year, Golden submitted a lengthy report to councilors that recommended leaving the school appropriation as he proposed while hoping that the state legislature increases the amount of state aid to the Lowell Public Schools beyond the amount Golden assumed in crafting his budget. Should the legislature come through with more funding, Golden told councilors  he would submit a supplemental appropriation of money for the schools for the council’s approval.

Both city and state budgets use a fiscal year that begins on July 1 and ends of June 30. By law, the city’s budget must be finalized by the start of the fiscal year and for as long as I can recall the city has met that deadline. While the state legislature should be held to the same timetable it is not. Often the state budget is not finalized until the end of July or later. (For example, the FY2001 budget was not finalized until Thanksgiving.)

I won’t get into the reasons why the state budget is so often delayed, but for those entities like the city of Lowell that are dependent on substantial funding from the state budget, they must rely on a crystal ball to craft their own municipal budgets, a process that can cause havoc in city operations. In the school department, for instance, many employees have likely received layoff notices already, just in case, per the requirements of collective bargaining agreements. If those notices cannot be rescinded by the end of this school year, the affected employees will likely qualify for unemployment compensation through the summer even if they are brought back to work in Lowell in September. More likely, those employees will seek and obtain jobs in other districts so even if the legislature comes through with more funding than anticipated, the school department will be left scrambling to hire new employees at the end of the summer when the pool of candidates is at its lowest.

All this makes the already challenging task of educating children in the Lowell Public Schools even more difficult.

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I’ve often said that I can take any event in world history and find a Lowell connection. Such is the case with the recent death of Jim Irsay, the owner of the Indianapolis Colts football team. Irsay also owned the original 120-foot manuscript scroll of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road which Irsay bought in 2001 for $2.43 million. The scroll, which Kerouac typewrote on a continuous sheet of rolled-up paper, is an iconic artifact for Kerouac fans and, thanks to Irsay, has been exhibited in Lowell previously.

This comes as Kerouac has been much in the local news due to the recent purchase of the former St. Jean Baptiste Church on upper Merrimack Street by country singer Zach Bryan for use as a creative hub and performance space to be called The Jack Kerouac Center. WBUR recently wrote about that purchase, complete with an artist rendering of what the exterior of the Center might look like after renovations.

Also this week (on richardhowe.com), Steve Edington of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac, shared his thoughts on the soaring Kerouac trajectory in the decades since the dedication of the Kerouac Commemorative on Bridge Street in 1988.

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This spring’s Lowell Cemetery tours will be held on Saturday, June 7, and on Sunday, June 8. Both begin at 10 am inside the Lawrence Street gate. They are free and require no advance registration. Plenty of parking is available within the cemetery.

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Happy Memorial Day! If you’re near downtown Lowell, please walk or drive past Monument Square, the grassy triangle in front of City Hall that is home to the Ladd and Whitney Monument. Thanks to the initiative of City Councilor Paul Ratha Yem, 1200+ small American flags have been emplaced on the square, one for each servicemember from Lowell who died during time of war in our country’s many conflicts.

Also in honor of Memorial Day, I did a blog post on the history of Kittredge Park at the corner of Nesmith and Andover Streets. The park is named for Captain Paul Kittredge who was killed in action while serving in the US Army during World War One.