The city council met on Tuesday night and addressed several topics worthy of comment, although no single issue dominated debate.

School Funding – Recall that when the city manager proposed this year’s city budget, the school department cautioned that the amount of cash allocated to the schools was insufficient to maintain the current level of services and, if that budget recommendation was adopted, the school department would have to layoff approximately 50 employees. In the face of this pushback, most of the city council voted to increase the cash funding to the schools by an additional $2 million.

Since the Plan E form of government only allows councilors to cut or accept budget recommendations from the city manager but not to increase the amounts, the legal power to take this vote was fuzzy. Nevertheless, City Manager Tom Golden got the message and came back with a revised funding recommendation that added $2 million in cash to the school department, an amount the school department leadership indicated would allow most of the job losses to be averted.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the formal vote to transfer this money from the city manager’s contingency fund to the school budget was on the agenda. School Superintendent Liam Skinner was present to answer questions, most of which probed how much of this money was going to higher paid administrative positions versus lower paid positions with direct student contact.

School Committee member Jackie Doherty spoke in favor of the transfer. She said that when she was first elected to the school committee 18 years ago, the amount of cash allocated to the schools by the city was greater than it is now, although the overall financial contribution has increased. She explained that this was due to a substantial rise in the “maintenance of effort” credit the city receives for in-kind services such as building maintenance and snow removal. Doherty said that you can’t buy textbooks with maintenance of effort credits and urged the council to not disregard the importance of the cash allocation to the schools.

In the end, the council voted to make the $2 million transfer with eight councilors voting yes, Mayor Dan Rourke and Councilor John Descoteaux abstaining, and Councilor Vesna Nuon recusing himself.

Speed Limit Analysis – A report from the traffic engineer shared information with the council about the effectiveness of the city’s 25 mph speed limit. A chart included in the report listed 13 main streets in the city and showed the average speeds traveled by vehicles on a monthly basis from September 2023 until May 2025. Speeds on nine of the 13 streets had gone down slightly while speeds on four streets ticked up by very small amounts. Only one street – Broadway – was at or below 25 mph.

In answering councilor questions, the traffic engineer explained that this data was compiled from a commercial source that tracks Bluetooth devices in vehicles to estimate their speed. Consequently, only 60 percent of vehicles can be tracked. Still, this data gives a more accurate picture than the gut feelings that often creep into council debates.

The traffic engineer emphasized that physical modifications to roads such as center lines, speed bumps, and narrowing the road, are the most effective means of reducing speed. Just putting up signs doesn’t help much.

Pawtucket Canal Floating Walkway – Back in May, Councilors Paul Ratha Yem and Kim Scott requested the city manager have the appropriate department “explore the feasibility of installing a floating walkway connecting Dutton Street to Western Ave.” A response from the Department of Planning and Development was on Tuesday’s agenda. While the response did not expressly say this could not be done, the list of preconditions cited makes it seem highly unlikely.

When first constructed more than a century and a half ago, Western Avenue connected School Street to Thorndike Street. As recently as 1995, the road was still open, but in that year the city blocked Western Avenue at Thorndike Street at the request of the owner of Joan Fabrics, a textile manufacturing company, which occupied the mill building now known as Western Avenue Studios.

A collateral beneficiary of this closure was whatever railroad owns the tracks that cross Western Avenue. These tracks, which lead in one direction to the Gallagher Terminal and in the other to ancient but still used rail lines that reach southern New Hampshire With Western Ave now having been closed for three decades, train operators have grown used to parking their trains and idling their engines in a way that blocks Western Ave at Thorndike.

However, circumstances have changed. The former Joan Fabrics plant, after a period of vacancy, has been transformed into the largest collection of artists east of the Mississippi and is a valuable commercial and cultural asset for the city.

As the Hamilton Canal District gets built out, more people will work and reside within easy walking distance of the Western Ave Studios complex. Except you can’t (legally) walk from the Hamilton Canal District to Western Ave Studios without circling all the way around to School Street, which no one on foot would willingly do.

Since the inception of Western Avenue Studios, the artists who occupy the place and others who recognize its economic potential have agitated for a pedestrian route that safely and legally connects Western Avenue Studios to downtown Lowell. Because the law seems to grant railroads a huge amount of deference, so a surface crossing that disrupts the rail line even sporadically doesn’t seem like an option. There was talk of a pedestrian structure that went above the tracks, but that would be prohibitively expensive to ensure everyone could use it (for instance, there would likely have to be elevators at both ends).

The idea of a floating walkway that allows pedestrians to pass underneath the railroad bridge is intriguing, but necessary permissions from the owner of the canals, the National Park Service (which has the right to use the canals), and the railroad would be difficult to obtain. Plus solutions to practical considerations like how someone with mobility issues gets down to and up from the walkway to the embankment, and what happens when the water in  the canal is drained for maintenance or freezes in the winter seem elusive.

Perhaps the best solution I’ve heard of arose from the National Park Service back in pre-pandemic days. My understanding was that the Park had received funding to develop a plan for a Pawtucket Canal Walkway. The Pawtucket Canal, which is the longest, oldest, and most important canal in the city, runs from the Merrimack River near the UMass Lowell South Campus to the Concord River at the former UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center. The National Park Service tour boats already travel on a portion of the Pawtucket Canal. This proposal I recall would create a pedestrian walkway along the canal, much like the one that exists along the Western Canal and Suffolk Street.

Although this proposed walkway would pass by the back of Western Avenue Studios on the other side of the Pawtucket Canal, a pedestrian foot bridge, like the one that now spans the Concord River near the Lowell Memorial Auditorium (recently named for former DPD Director Bob Malavich) would be affordable and feasible. That would get people across the canal.

To get those same people past the railroad track, National Park planners found that the bridge that carries the railroad track across the Pawtucket Canal is several feet above the grade of the canal bank. By tunnelling underneath the embankment that holds the railroad track and excavating a few more feet of soil underneath, a pedestrian pathway with mobility-friendly gentle slopes would permit everyone to safely pass beneath the train track and emerge at Thorndike Street.

It sounds complicated but it is the most feasible and affordable alternative I’ve heard about. I have no idea of the status of this plan with the National Park. Given all the turmoil that’s been imposed from above, I’m not hopeful. Still, the city should latch onto this idea and try to revive it. Making such a pathway a reality would be a great enhancement to the Hamilton Canal District.

New Enterprise Funds – A memo from the city manager to city councilors shared information about a handful of loosely connected issues including a new trash collection and solid waste disposal contract; a proposal for a trash collection enterprise fund; a proposal for an enterprise fund for the Cawley Stadium complex; and a discussion of using an enterprise fund for parks and recreation.

The memo explained that in 1986, the state legislature enacted an enterprise fund statute that allows municipalities to create self-contained financial structures for many municipal services. The essence of an enterprise fund seems to be that fees charged cover the entire cost of the service including capital expenditures and interest, and that if the fund operates at a profit, the fund can keep the surplus money for future related uses and not have to relinquish the extra money to the municipality’s general fund. (Although if the enterprise fund operates at a deficit, the added cash comes from the general fund as has long been the case with the city of Lowell’s parking enterprise fund, but that’s another issue.)

Although the memo does not make express recommendations to the council, it seems bullish on creating a trash enterprise fund. In reviewing current costs, the memo explains that the three big cost drivers are (1) waste collection which is $4.8 million; (2) waste disposal which is $3.2 million; and (3) the city’s small solid waste and recycling division which costs $300,000. Currently the trash collection fee, which is $225 per unit and $425 per unit in non-owner-occupied rentals, generates $5.1 million in revenue. The deficit of approximately $3.3 million comes from the general fund.

The new trash collection and disposal contract which the memo explains was aggressively bid on by five companies, resulted in more favorable terms to the city than the existing contract. This new deal goes into effect on January 1, 2026.

The memo then provides two trash enterprise fund options:

The first, which contains what is called a “budgeted surplus,” would increase the trash fee for everyone to $425 (from the current $225 for most). This would generate $10.6 million in revenue, which would double the revenue now collected with the existing trash fee. However, the cost to the city of the service would remain the same due to the new, more favorable contract. Consequently, rather than requiring a $3.3 million subsidy to cover the costs of trash collection and disposal, the new fee structure would produce a $2.1 million surplus. Because this would be in an enterprise fund, that surplus would not go into the city’s general fund, but would be retained by the trash enterprise fund for future use. (The memo suggests it could be used to create more drop-off locations for recycling and other hard to dispose of items, and to enhance the city’s sustainability efforts.)

The second option presented to the council is called “budgeted self-sufficient.” This would increase the fee to $342 per household, which would yield $3.7 million which in turn almost exactly covers the cost of trash collection and disposal under the new contract.

Regarding an enterprise fund for parks and recreation, the memo was tactfully dismissive of that idea since the revenue generated by park usage fees is miniscule compared to the cost of operating the parks.

However, the memo warmed to the idea of an enterprise fund for the Cawley Stadium complex. I won’t get into the details of it here, but it seems the prime motivator of this enthusiasm is the new $5.1 million training facility the city is about to commence building, the cost of which will add approximately $300,000 per year in new debt service. By lumping it all into an enterprise fund, fees generated by the use of all the Cawley facilities would be set at a price sufficient to cover this debt service and other costs of operation.

The memo concludes with this language:

“Any consideration of establishing an enterprise fund for the Parks & Recreation operation, or for the Solid Waste & Recycling division of DPW, should include further deliberation by the City Council and/or the Finance Subcommittee” and recommends that the matter be referred to that subcommittee for further discussion.

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This week on richardhowe.com

Dave Perry writes about Ozzy Osbourne, who passed away this week at age 76.

Paul Marion has two articles: a review of Michael Ansara’s new memoir, The Hard Work of Hope which covers Michael’s antiwar activism in Greater Lowell in the early 1970s; then Paul wrote of his own memories from that same turbulent time in “Looking Back to 1968.”

Leo Racicot wrote about his love of movies and the theaters in Lowell that showed them when he was growing up in the 1960s.

Louise Peloquin wrote about the joy she felt as a young child with the arrival each day of the Hood milkman to her neighborhood.

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I uploaded some new Lowell-related videos to YouTube this week:

Paul Tsongas – US Senator and Presidential candidate.

Thomas Talbot – Governor of Massachusetts in the 1870s.

Barilla Taylor – A Lowell mill girl who died at age 17 of “brown lung.”

Helen Sawyer Hogg – An internationally known astronomer from the Highlands.

Walker Lewis Jr. – A Black US Navy veteran of the Civil War who was involved in the Underground Railroad and whose great uncle was responsible for the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts.

To receive notice of new videos I upload, please subscribe to my YouTube channel and click the notification “bell.”

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I have a couple of Lowell History talks and tours scheduled:

On Wednesday, August 20, 2025, at 6 pm, at the Pollard Memorial Library, I’ll give a talk on the Founding of Lowell which will explore the birth of the city in the 1820s.

On Sunday, September 4, 2025, at 10 am, at Tyler Park, I will lead a tour of the Tyler Park Historic District in partnership with the Friends of Tyler Park. (Rain date September 14, 2025).

On Saturday, September 20, and on Sunday, September 21, 2025, both at 10 am, I will lead a tour of Lowell Cemetery. The tours will begin at the Knapp Avenue entrance of the cemetery and are free. The same tour occurs both days.