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This coming Tuesday will be the last city council meeting of the year and of the 2016-17 council term. The first item on the agenda, under Mayor’s Business, is “Recognition – Mayor’s Holiday Fest Committee.” That event – the First Annual Mayor’s Holiday Fest – took place on November 28,…
Read More »The following just arrived in my inbox from Councilor Samaras: Why I want to be Mayor: A Vision for Lowell As I’m sure most people are aware, I have decided to seek the office of Mayor of the City of Lowell. In the weeks following the election, I have had…
Read More »Selecting a Mayor One of my earliest memories of Lowell politics is from January 5, 1970. A new city council was being inaugurated and my dad, just reelected to his third term, was going to be mayor. Or so we thought. As our family walked into City Hall for the…
Read More »Founded as a town in 1826, Lowell’s first governing body was a board of selectmen. The rapid growth of the mills made a city form of government preferable, and so in 1836 the state legislature granted Lowell a city charter. The city charter brought a new form of government consisting…
Read More »Between Thanksgiving, a quiet council meeting last Tuesday, and no meeting this coming week, today is a good opportunity to step away from the day-to-day political life of Lowell and remember the big picture. To me, understanding the big picture is all about history, because as Harry Truman once said,…
Read More »The campaign to succeed U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas in the Third Congressional District next year has gone from start to overdrive in no time. Lately, poking around in a pile of old journals at home, I found this account of a political moment in Lowell in 1992, during another hot…
Read More »City Election Follow-Up Last Tuesday’s city council meeting was pretty sedate, with barely a mention of the Lowell High project. That seems to reflect the will of most people in the city. This past election was like a Micky Ward v Arturo Gatti fight: the winners and the losers were…
Read More »MAJOR GRANT & AWARD FOR WATERWAYS VITALITY PROJECT The Lowell Heritage Partnership’s Waterways Vitality Initiative surged forward this month with several milestone achievements. The initiative’s recent successes include receipt of a $100,000 grant from the Theodore Edson Parker Foundation of Boston; a MassINC Innovation Award to be presented on November…
Read More »Members of Lowell’s Division of Planning and Development provided an update last evening on the remake of the Lord Overpass. Held at the Pollard Memorial Library’s public meeting room, the event drew about three dozen people, including Mayor Ed Kennedy, Councilors Bill Samaras, John Leahy and Rodney Elliott, and Councilors-elect…
Read More »Post-Election Analysis After a campaign of many months, Lowell voters spoke on Tuesday. Their message was loud and clear: The nonbinding referendum in favor of keeping the high school downtown prevailed by a margin of 61% to 39% which, by any measure, is a landslide; the council’s existing 5 to…
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