Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting lasted just over an hour and was mostly undramatic. Councilors did cancel their meetings of December 23 and December 30, so this coming meeting on Tuesday, December 16, 2025, will be the final one of this council session and the final meeting for outgoing Councilors Corey Belanger, Wayne Jenness and Paul Ratha Yem. Traditionally, outgoing councilors make conclusory remarks at their final meeting, so that should occur on Tuesday. Of course, incumbents who lose an election sometimes run again and win, so we may not have seen the last of the three as councilors.

Before we reach last Tuesday’s substantive matters, recall that the week before, at the meeting of December 3, 2025, councilors rejected an effort to borrow an additional $40 million to fund the final phase of the Lowell High project. While most councilors supported the measure, it needed a supermajority of eight votes because it involved spending, but only received seven, so it was defeated. Voting against it were Councilors Erik Gitschier and John Descoteaux, while Mayor Dan Rourke and Councilors Corey Belanger, Sokhary Chau, Wayne Jenness, Rita Mercier, Kim Scott and Paul Ratha Yem all voted for it. If Councilors Vesna Nuon and Corey Robinson had been present at that meeting (which they were not) and, if at least one of them had voted yes, then the measure would have passed that night, but that’s not what happened.

Two items about the high school project were on the council agenda last Tuesday. Both were joint motions by Councilors Gitschier and Robinson. One motion requested the city manager “have the proper department explore and provide the council with process required to replace the owners project manager (aka, the OPM which is Skanska) for the remainder of the high school project.” The second motion requested the city manager “explore hiring a clerk of works to protect city’s interest on the remainder of the high school project.”

Both motions were taken up together. After Councilors Gitschier and Robinson explained their reasoning for the motions, the other councilors began to speak. The first two, Councilors Mercier and Yem, essentially said that even though they didn’t support the downtown high school in the first place and that they weren’t happy with aspects of the job that’s been done thus far, they were concerned that replacing the OPM at this point would create even more problems. When Councilor Mercier asked the City Solicitor to explain the possible legal jeopardy that might flow from replacing the OPM, Mayor Rourke interjected that the motions just asked for a report “exploring” these suggestions and the vote before the councilors now was not to decide whether to replace the OPM or hire a clerk of the works. He said that if these motions passed, then at some future meeting councilors would receive a report on the procedures needed and the repercussions of doing it. That prompted an almost audible sigh of relief from the body and Rourke quickly called for a voice vote and moved on to the next item.

Regardless of what happens to the OPM, the council collectively must extricate itself from the funding mess created by the defeat of the bond vote two weeks ago. What impact will that vote have on current work? School vacations have been critical to the sequencing of the Lowell High project. Before the funding fiasco, the plan was that when LHS classes are dismissed this Friday, December 19, 2025, for Christmas vacation, workers were scheduled to move all the classrooms in Coburn Hall and the southern part of the 1922 building into the just-completed northern part of the 1922 building so that when students return on Monday, January 5, 2026, they will occupy that new space and work should commence in the just vacated portions which will be the final phase of this project. Will these plans be disrupted by the funding snafu? If so, how much more will the project be delayed?

Then there is the challenge of bringing the matter back before the city council. Legally and procedurally, I’m not sure of the mechanism that permits a “do over” of a spending measure that was defeated after a public hearing. At a minimum, I assume it must come back before the council for a first reading, then be scheduled for a public hearing two weeks after, and then the public meeting be held and the vote taken. There is nothing on the agenda for this coming Tuesday night related to high school funding and that’s the final council meeting of 2025, so any further action will have to wait until the new year.

Even if the law permits the council to revisit this vote, it will not be the same council voting on the matter. The three outgoing councilors, Belanger, Jenness, and Yem, all voted for the $40 million bond. Will their replacements, Belinda Juran, Sean McDonough, and Sidney Liang, all vote similarly? We shall see.

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The $40 million high school bond discussed above would be in addition to the $382 million previously authorized to be borrowed. Not long ago, people were calling the Lowell High project the most expensive in the Commonwealth’s history. That didn’t last long.

On Monday, December 8, 2025, the people of Lexington, Massachusetts, authorized $660 million for the construction of a new high school in that town. The vote was 5,283 in favor with 3,276 against. According to the Boston Globe, the total reimbursement from the Massachusetts School Building Authority will be $122 million, which is a reimbursement rate of less than 20 percent. (See “Lexington OK’s new high school” by James Vaznis, Boston Globe December 10, 2025.)

The high cost of the new Lexington High School is due to factors familiar to those following the Lowell High project:

“The projects eye-popping price tag comes as school construction costs have been soaring. Much of that has been driven by rising costs for steel, cement, and other materials; a labor shortage in the trades; and higher interest rates on the bonds needed to finance the projects.”

Interestingly, those most vocal in opposition to the Lexington project did not argue about its cost, but that the new school as designed would be too small to meet Lexington’s future needs. The current school, which was built 70 years ago, was designed to hold 1,800 students, but 2,400 attend it now. The new school is designed for that number. Project opponents contend that new multifamily housing now under construction in Lexington as mandated by the MBTA Communities Act will increase the student population to the extent that by the time this new school is completed, it will already be overcrowded.

Proponents of the design responded that the population in Lexington’s lower grades has been going down so any influx of new students will leave a net result of high school students equal to those attending the school now, and that the design has built into it the flexibility to expand to accommodate more students at no additional cost.

Finally, the Globe reports that the annual property tax impact on a Lexington homeowner with the town’s average assessed value of $1.4 million will range from $50 to about $1,800 during the peak years of the bond repayment.

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Earlier this month, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) added Lowell to its Global Network of Learning Cities. For nearly a dozen years, a small cadre of volunteers led by now-retired UMass Lowell professor John Wooding, have been working towards this goal.

The selection of Lowell is especially significant because it is the first city in the United States to be so designated.

The mission of UNESCO is “to build world peace by fostering international cooperation in education, science, culture, and communication, aiming to create sustainable development, eradicate poverty, promote human rights, and bridge cultural divides.”

While the US is currently a member of UNESCO, the Trump Administration has announced the US will withdraw from the organization due to “cultural disagreements and bias.” (The US also withdrew from UNESCO during the first Trump Administration but renewed its membership under President Biden.)

The purpose of the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities (GNLC) is to mobilize cities around the world to promote lifelong learning for all. The goal is to use education as a tool to solve urban challenges, ranging from social inclusion to economic development and environmental sustainability.

The following quote from a UNESCO official summarizes the concept:

“Education transcends the classroom – it is a collective endeavor, and cities play a key role in promoting learning for all. The 72 new UNESCO Learning Cities announced today are redefining what it means to learn – turning every street, library, workplace, museum and home into a space for knowledge and innovation. By making education a priority, from early childhood through adulthood, these cities are empowering people and unlocking opportunities for all.”

That quote could have been pulled from the doctoral dissertation of Patrick Mogan, who is seen by many as “the father of the Lowell National Historical Park.” Mogan’s longtime quest was to make Lowell an “educative city” by which he meant that from birth through death, residents could partake in learning opportunities from the city around them rather than in a strict classroom environment. Consequently, Lowell as a Global City of Learning is a perfect fit for the community and completely compatible with one of our guiding philosophies over the past half century.

Finally, the City of Learning recognition is a great complement to Lowell’s recent designation as the first U.S. city to be designated a “Frontrunner City” under the Global Frontrunner Cities Initiative which is led by the United Nations Institute for Water, Environment and Health along with the Urban Economy Forum and the World Urban Pavilion.

Both designations should lead to some worthwhile events in the coming year which is particularly appropriate given that 2026 is also the bicentennial of Lowell’s founding.

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For the past several years during the annual Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Festival, I’ve attended walking tours of St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Chelmsford and of Downtown Lowell led by Kerouac scholar Kurt Phaneuf whose specialty is documenting the real people and places in Lowell that Kerouac depicted in his writings. Kurt recently shared that he’s compiled an archival photo essay of Kerouac’s short story, “Home at Christmas.” Here’s how Kurt described the project:

This archival photo-montage attempts to capture something of the flavor of Jack Kerouac’s “Home At Christmas,” a poignant autobiographical narrative chronicling his Depression-era Lowell boyhood. Written in the spring of 1951, “Home At Christmas” was first published in Glamour Magazine in December 1961 and later reprinted in Good Blonde & Others by Grey Fox Press in 1993. The story contains numerous references to people and places in Pawtucketville that Lowell natives may still recognize. Reading by Paul Marion, 2007 at WUML Studios Lowell Outro music by Chet Baker, 1986 Varrick Records.

The 24-minute video is at this link on YouTube. I recommend checking it out, especially if you’d like to be transported into the holiday spirit.