This coming Tuesday is the Special Primary for the 1st Middlesex State Senate District which became vacant when Edward J. Kennedy passed away last October. The district includes Lowell, Dracut, Dunstable, Pepperell and Tyngsborough.

In the Democratic primary, the candidates are State Representatives Rodney Elliott and Vanna Howard, both of Lowell. The Republican specimen ballot shows no candidates but may be used for write-ins.

Normally in Lowell, schools are closed on election day since many are used for polling places, but all Lowell schools will remain open on Tuesday (unless weather dictates otherwise). More info about where in the various school buildings voting will take place is available on the city’s website.

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On Tuesday, January 27, 2026, the city council held a relatively brief meeting. Two issues were discussed at length: the ongoing attempt to create a combined city and schools facilities department; and a proposed moratorium on data centers in the city. Here’s what happened:

Combined Facilities Department – This discussion arose with a motion by Councilor Corey Robinson that requested the city manager “have the proper department provide a draft home rule petition allowing the city to establish a centralized facilities department.”

Here’s some background: Lowell has something like 27 schools serving 14,000 students which makes it one of the largest school districts in Massachusetts. The city owns the schools, and the school department operates them. Many Lowell schools have been plagued by maintenance issues such as broken pipes, no heat and the presence of mold. In recent years, the city council has devoted substantial sums to fixing these problems. Councilors believe (correctly, for the most part) that these repairs costs are elevated due to a failure to perform preventive maintenance and a failure to fix small problems before they become large ones.

Councilors have identified a division of responsibility as a contributor to the inadequate maintenance. Specifically, custodians employed by the school department are responsible for cleaning the schools while tradespeople employed by the city’s department of public works are responsible for repairs. A boundary or seam between two things always is a weak spot and creates a risk of things slipping through the gap, so consolidating maintenance and repairs under a single entity would address that.

Still, the obstacles to the contemplated consolidation are considerable. Massachusetts General Laws chapter 71, section 37M, states that a city “may consolidate administrative functions, including but not limited to financial, personnel, and maintenance functions, of the school committee with those of the city or town; provided, however, that such consolidation may occur only upon a majority vote of both the school committee and in a city, the city council.”

At its May 6, 2025, meeting, the city council adopted this section and asked that the school committee take up the issue which the committee did at its May 21, 2025, meeting. According to the minutes of that meeting, Mayor Dan Rourke voted in favor of a consolidated maintenance department but the other six members of the school committee, David Conway, Eileen DelRossi, Jackie Doherty, Dominik Lay, Connie Martin, and Fred Bahou, all voted against it. There has been an election since then with Danielle McFadden replacing Jackie Doherty (who did not seek reelection) and Erik Gitschier replacing Dan Rourke as mayor. However, unless something else has changed – and I don’t think it has – the school committee would presumably reject the proposal once again.

Perhaps in anticipation of that, Robinson’s motion asks the council to go it alone by filing Home Rule legislation with the legislature seeking an exception to the requirement that the school committee concur with any consolidation. Asked to comment on the likelihood of passage of such a bill, City Manager Tom Golden, who served as a state representative for 28 years, tactfully said it was unlikely that the legislature would go against the wishes of the school committee.

In the end, the council did three things: (1) it asked Mayor Gitschier to bring this issue before the school committee for discussion; (2) it voted unanimously (with Councilor Sean McDonough abstaining) for Councilor Robinson’s motion that a Home Rule petition be drafted (whether it will then be filed is a question for another day); and (3) it concurred with a Councilor Kim Scott motion to schedule a meeting of the joint council and school committee subcommittee to answer whatever questions and concerns school committee members may have.

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In response to a Councilor Kim Scott motion from earlier this month, a draft ordinance that would impose a moratorium on new data centers in the city was presented to the council on Tuesday night. The ordinance would halt city permissions on new requests for “the construction, expansion and operation of Data Centers” within the city for 360 days to allow the city to study the impact Data Centers might have on public safety, infrastructure, and the ability of the public to peacefully enjoy life in the vicinity of such a facility.

Councilor Belinda Juran asked if the definition of data center in the ordinance might be overly broad with the unintended consequence of applying to someone operating a server out of their home. She requested that the proposed ordinance be sent to the Zoning Subcommittee to clarify that. Councilor Scott objected to that and the discussion continued. The city solicitor and the DPD director both said small operations of the type envisioned by Councilor Juran were not intended to be covered by the ordinance, however, the solicitor suggested that if the ordinance was referred to his office for clarification he could have the revised ordinance back to the council next week. Everyone seemed content with that.

Here’s the Data Center definition contained in the ordinance that came before the council Tuesday night:

“A building or series of buildings that houses and supports the high-performance servers, storage systems, networking equipment, and related computing infrastructure and equipment necessary for storing, processing, and distributing data and applications.”

By that definition, the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds would be a data center. It is in a building and it “houses and supports” (as of the day I retired a year ago) “high-performance servers, storage systems, networking equipment, and related computing infrastructure and equipment necessary for storing, processing, and distributing data and applications.”

If that definition captures the relatively small and benign registry of deeds, what else would be affected? And what impact might this have on companies seeking to become part of the UMass Lowell LINC project? I understand the harm that motivates councilors to enact an ordinance of this type, and I don’t object to it in theory, but the city should be extremely precise with any such ordinance lest the ordinance intended to be remedial instead become a roadblock to desirable economic development.

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This week in Seen & Heard, I reviewed Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum; a podcast interview of author Check Klosterman about his new book, Football; a New Yorker review of a new album by singer Zach Bryan (the fiscal savior of Lowell’s Kerouac Center); the movie Sinners which set a record for the most academy award nominations; and the book Disney Adults: Exploring (And Falling in Love With) a Magical Subculture by A.J. Wolfe.