At its Tuesday meeting (February 17, 2026) Lowell City Council addressed residual problems with snow removal from the big storm at the end of January. In the past, I’ve criticized councilors for micro-managing city operations but that didn’t happen this time. Instead, councilors were critical of the city’s procedures, or lack of documented procedures, for how to deal with a major snowstorm and its aftereffects. At least one councilor called it a “make it up as you go along” approach.

Councilors cited examples of neglect. Councilor Corey Robinson mentioned a school bus stop in Centralville that services 15 children that is still covered by a massive snowbank and Councilor Sean McDonough asked about clearing snow from the Broadway sidewalk on the bridge over the Western Canal which is a critical passageway for downtown residents walking to and from the Acre Market Basket for groceries. Neither of these were instances of councilors cherry-picking areas to be addressed. Instead, they illustrated the city’s failure to prioritize critical spots that should be promptly cleared in the aftermath of a storm.

In their defense, city officials pointed to the substantial snowfall of this storm and its long duration; the unrelenting cold weather that followed which prevented natural melting; the failure of (some) residents to remove cars from the streets which inhibited plowing; and the practice of residents and contractors of taking snow from driveways and dumping it onto the street. Another challenge is the region-wide shortage of private contractors willing to perform snow removal, a crucial supplement to the city’s own workforce.

Councilors pushed back, observing that even though it’s been years since we’ve had a multi-foot snowfall, it is a common enough occurrence that the city should be prepared for. (Like tonight, for example, if the current weather forecast is accurate.)

This discussion occurred in the context of a combined response to a handful of council motions related to snow removal. In the end, I believe councilors sent the response back to the city administration with a demand it be returned to the council once a more systematic policy is drafted.

One observation: Many of the problems cited flow from a political and governing culture in Lowell that values automobiles over people. The priority of snow clearance is streets and parking lots with sidewalks and bus stops an afterthought. Similarly, most people who leave their car on a street in a snowstorm have nowhere feasible to put the car. In the past, councilors have asked for snowstorm satellite parking areas for those distant from downtown parking garages but I’m not sure anything has come from it. In the bigger picture, creating infrastructure that promotes using transportation other than a privately owned vehicle would be beneficial in the long term. We are far from having the ability to be a carless city, but there are strategic steps that could be taken which over the long term might reduce 24/7 dependency on cars but rather than pursue them, we reinforce our car centric ways by spending more than $20 million a year repaving roads.

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The council received an informational report with an agenda heading of “refuse.” It previewed a couple of big changes coming to the city’s trash and recycling operations. As part of the coming fiscal year budget, the city manager will ask councilors to increase the residential trash fee from $225 per year to $325 per year. He will also ask the council to create a Refuse Enterprise Fund with the goal of making the fees charged for trash and recycling pick up cover the full cost of the services.

City Manager Golden explained that through skillful contract negotiations, his team has kept the cost of pickup of both trash and recycling reasonable, but that the cost of disposing of material to be recycled has skyrocketed. He explained that up until approximately 2018, “a country” (China, I think) would take most US recyclables at an affordable cost, but that country has gotten out of that business and the unrelenting increase in the cost of disposing of this stuff is the biggest driver of increased costs to the city. (State law mandates municipal recycling so just combining it all in the trash is not an option.)

Although the proposed increase will not affect the discounted fee charged to seniors, the council is unlikely to rubberstamp this request although my guess is that after some perfunctory council protests, it will be enacted, mostly because other pressures on the budget and the disappearance of the last of the ARPA funding will make this year’s budget very tight in other areas.

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Massachusetts General Laws chapter 90, section 14, requires drivers to stop when approaching a school bus with red lights flashing and a stop sign extended and remain stopped until the flashing red lights are turned off and the stop sign is retracted. This applies to drivers behind the bus and to those approaching it from the other direction. There is a substantial fine for violating this law.

Despite the fine, it seems that many in Lowell ignore the red lights and drive past buses that are picking up or dropping off children. Left unaddressed, disastrous consequences will ensue, so the council on Tuesday took up several measures intended to enforce this law.

First was a vote to adopt a state law that permits cities and towns to install and operate “a school bus violation detection monitoring system on a school bus” to enforce violations of this law. The vote passed with Councilors Chau, Descoteaux, Juran, Liang, Mercier, Robinson, Rourke, Scott and Mayor Gitschier voting yes, Councilor Nuon absent, and Councilor McDonough recused.

Second, the council amended a city ordinance to allow the installation of “a school bus violation detection monitoring system” which involves cameras mounted on the bus that record any vehicles passing in violation of state law. Software and the private company operating the system identify the vehicle then pass that along to the police department which reviews the finding and mails a citation to the vehicle owner. This also passed with the vote identical to the previous item.

Third, there was a vote to establish a “School Bus Stabilization Fund” that would deposit the money raised by the violation citations into a dedicated fund to pay for the system. This required the support of two-thirds of the council, which would be eight votes. This came up later on the agenda and only received seven votes which means it failed. While no councilors voted no, two had supported the related matters that came earlier – Councilors Robinson and Rourke – were recorded as absent when the vote was taken so the vote didn’t achieve the needed two-thirds majority.

Perhaps the defeat of this third item was just a procedural glitch, and it will come back when the full council is available, or maybe there is some passive opposition to the measure. Time will tell.

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Councilor Sidney Liang got his “welcome to the city council” initiation when his colleagues substantially pared back his motion requesting demographic information on the city’s workforce. Here’s his motion:

“Request City Manager have the HR Department provide a summary of a demographic report, including city staff residency (Lowellians vs. non-Lowellians) by leadership level; additionally, include the percentage of respondents who answered “YES” to the question: Pursuant to M.G.L. Chapter 268A, please indicate if you have any family members employed by the City of Lowell in the City of Lowell’s Employment application form.”

Councilors were surprisingly hostile to this motion. Liang was accused of trying to embarrass city employees whose relatives also work for the city. Others asserted that the city should seek the best qualified person for the job regardless of where they live, so it is wrong to measure how many city employees live outside the city.

After a sustained – but not universal – barrage of similar critiques, Liang consented to a scaled-back version of the motion, presumably concluding that it would be better to keep the issue alive than to have the motion defeated outright, which would have happened given councilor comments.

In the aftermath of this episode, I looked at Liang’s online campaign presence for anything related to this issue and found a May 29, 2025, interview he did with Ted Panos on Inside Lowell which is available on YouTube.

In the interview, after Liang talked about issues specific to the Acre (the neighborhood he sought to represent on the council), host Ted Panos asked Liang about citywide issues. Here is the relevant portion of the Google Transcript of the interview, lightly edited for clarity:

Panos: What do you see as the most important issue facing the city today, not just your district?

Liang: I know there’s stuff in the news, for example, housing, of course homelessness, but for me I would say jobs. I look at it a little bit differently where I like to see Lowellians, you know, doing the work not just for the Acre district but for the whole entire city. I want us to get more high paying jobs for Lowellians. We can’t be just the regular worker, but we want to be in a managerial executive leadership role as well and sustain that. So, therefore, we can spend the money that we earn in a city so we can improve our economy, you know, so therefore, we’re going to spread it all around the city.

Panos: All right. Very interesting.

In making this motion, Liang was following through with what he said was his priority during the campaign. He was elected, so the voters of his district ratified his agenda and supported what he’s trying to do.

Per the 2020 census, the people of Lowell were 39% white, 22% Asian, 20% Hispanic, 14% Black, and 5% two or more races. If you accept that having a municipal workforce that reflects the community it represents is a good thing, I suspect Lowell has a long way to go. Consequently, it was entirely proper for Liang to inquire as he did.

As for multiple members of the same family working for the city, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Though they might deny it, children tend to be drawn to the occupation of their parents and having a family tradition of public service is a noble thing. Still, there is no harm in the public learning how many city workers are related to each other, particularly if the individuals are not identified in the report.

I recall a decade ago another councilor questioned the demographics of the city workforce. When asked how job openings were publicized, the reply from the city administration was, “mostly by word of mouth.” Because those already working for the city and others with political connections would be in the best position to learn of job openings in that system, their relatives would have a head start in seeking that job. I believe city administrations have sought to cast the employment net wider, but old habits die hard which is another reason why Liang, who likely sees his constituency as those who aren’t privy to the “word of mouth” pipeline, was further justified in asking these questions.

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This week in my Wednesday “Seen & Heard” column, I wrote about week two of the Winter Olympics, the podcast Uncanny Valley from Wired magazine, an Op-Ed about the demise of the Washington Post, and a book review of King of Kings which is about the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s.

Finally, you can order a print copy of my new book, Lowell: A Concise History from Lulu Press at this link or download full PDF of the book for free at this link.