April 12 Council Meeting
The agenda for last Tuesday’s council meeting was brief, mostly due to Monday’s departure of City Manager Eileen Donoghue. City Clerk Michael Geary, appointed by the council to be interim city manager, filled in ably as he’s done before but no major reports or initiatives were presented to the council.
The council did vote to cancel its April 19, 2022, meeting which falls during school vacation week so the council will next meet on April 26, 2022. I believe incoming City Manager Tom Golden will begin on Thursday, April 28, 2022, so his first council meeting will be Tuesday, May 3, 2022.
Joint Facilities Subcommittee Meeting
The Facilities Subcommittees of the City Council and the School Committee met together earlier Tuesday night (April 12, 2022) in the city council chamber. The members of the council subcommittee are John Leahy (chair), Erik Gitschier, and Corey Robinson. The members of the school committee subcommittee are Jackie Doherty (chair), Dominik Lay, and Eileen DelRossi.
Also speaking at the meeting were Rick Underwood, the Operations and Maintenance Director of the Lowell Public Schools; Christine Clancy, the Public Works Commissioner, Paul Georges, President of United Teachers of Lowell; Keith Rudy, a retired foreman of the city’s Lands & Buildings Department who is still active in the AFSCME Local that represents many city employees; and Conor Baldwin, the city’s Chief Financial Officer.
The meeting lasted one hour and 20 minutes and is available for viewing on LTC https://www.ltc.org/on-demand/ch99/city-council-subcommittees/
There seems to be universal agreement that the process used to maintain city-owned buildings in Lowell, especially the schools, is not working. Everyone is interested in improving the situation but the meeting identified more roadblocks than workable solutions.
Maintaining municipal buildings is incredibly complex due to many factors, some of which don’t exist outside of government. Those factors – like strict bidding laws, for instance – serve important purposes but they also come with rules that make accomplishing the mission more difficult. If fixing the chronic maintenance problems with Lowell schools was an easy thing to do, the problem would have been solved long ago. Recognizing that there is no simple solution should be the starting point of any serious effort to make the situation better.
Here are some of the challenges identified at the meeting:
Fiscal Year Spending – The city of Lowell operates on a fiscal year that runs from July 1 to June 30. Right now, we’re in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2022 which runs from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022. Fiscal year 2023 begins on July 1, 2022, and ends on June 30, 2023. Money appropriated by the city council in the FY2022 budget must be spent within FY2022 which means by the end of this June. If the money is not spent by then, it does not simply rollover into the next fiscal year for use then. Instead, it reverts back to a bigger pool of unused funds that collectively become “free cash” sometime in the future.
To illustrate how this is an impediment, at Tuesday’s meeting there was considerable discussion about the need for more on-call services (outside private contractors) for things like HVAC systems. This is a little like you calling a plumber when your home heating system stops working. You can’t repair it yourself, you call the plumber, the plumber arrives and fixes the problem, and you pay the plumber’s bill. Applying this to the city, the heat stops working in a school, the city’s on-staff tradesmen either aren’t available or aren’t able to fix the problem, so the city calls a private company with more training and experience on the unique equipment that’s not working.
Using more on-call outside contractors seems like an important tool to use in addressing the maintenance problem. With that in mind, Councilor Gitschier moved to recommend that the city manager transfer $500,000 from an existing municipal stabilization fund (currently with a balance of $1 million) to the budgetary account used for outside contractors. This makes perfect sense. Who could argue with it? Well, CFO Baldwin and DPW Commissioner Clancy could and did, not because they didn’t want the money used for that purpose but because they worried about their ability to spend that amount of money by June 30, 2022. Under the fiscal year budgetary system, whatever amount of the money was not spent by then would be lost.
It gets more complicated. Many governmental entities have a requirement that expenditures be made no later than June 1, not June 30. That’s an internal control designed to minimize the risk of money being lost because it was not spent on time. It also gives the auditor more time to pay end of the year bills (although they can usually be paid up until the end of July - after that they become “bad bills” which creates more problems).
Adding to the fiscal trepidation of Baldwin and Clancy was the need to solicit bids for these services. Even when the money is available and appropriated, DPW can’t simply pick up the phone, call a big HVAC company, and have them in to begin work the next day. State law has varying requirements – for instance, contracts for $50,000 or more must be awarded through a competitive sealed bidding process – which are often supplemented locally. These rules are important to ensure public funds are spent wisely and fairly but they do add layers of complexity that extend the time needed to get stuff done.
Then you have the availability of contractors and materials. After last month’s scrutiny of the increased cost of the Lowell High addition, we all know plenty about how Covid has caused a spike in building costs, delays in obtaining materials, and made contractors busier than ever.
And again, it’s not just a matter of having a contract signed before June 30. The contract must be signed, the parts installed, all the work completed, and the invoice submitted all before June 30.
The challenges posed by this fiscal year system are magnified when it comes to the schools. The prime time to do large, proactive maintenance projects at schools is in the summer when fewer people are using the schools. In a perfect world, a school maintenance project would commence on June 20 (the last day of school) and finish by September 1 (the first day of school). But that period straddles the fiscal year and for all the reasons stated above, make doing jobs that span the summer much more complicated.
Competition for Limited Resources - DPW Commissioner Clancy said that in the current fiscal year, DPW’s budget for on-call outside contractors was $30,000. She said that she’s requested $300,000 for FY23 but that she could use $1 million. (Councilor Gitschier’s motion to immediately provide $500,000 for on-call HVAC contractors was amended to recommend that $500,000 be budgeted for that purpose).
Clancy also said she had checked with other communities to see how they handle building maintenance. Somerville has a combined maintenance staff for city buildings and schools, all under their department of public works. But Somerville also has a separate Capital Project Management office which oversees all capital projects. Clancy said that would be very helpful in Lowell where she as DPW Commissioner and the CFO’s office are the ones overseeing the many capital projects now underway while doing all the other things required of their departments.
According to Clancy, the city of Worcester just last year separated their facilities maintenance staff into two separate offices, one for city buildings, the other for schools. Worcester has 6 city buildings with 18 fulltime maintenance employees and 62 school buildings with 29 fulltime maintenance employees.
Some Lowell councilors seem to think a centralized facilities department would work best for the city. Commissioner Clancy said whether you centralize maintenance or not, a much bigger budget for on-call contractors is needed. Councilors did pass a motion requesting the city manager to hire a consultant to study the benefits of a consolidated maintenance department and to provide a template of what that might look like for the city.
Earlier in the evening, the School Department’s maintenance director Rick Underwood, had pushed back against further studies. He said there was a comprehensive report done on school maintenance needs in 2018 that mapped out exactly what was needed but little of what it recommended has been accomplished. He said he’s responsible for 30 school buildings comprising 2.4 million square feet of space which need $30 million in repairs for roofs, HVAC, and windows alone. He added that the city’s public works department is down 22 employees which is a big reason for why repairs don’t get done. Underwood closed by saying, “Don’t just come up with ideas, put them on paper, and then not fund it.”
Challenge of Too Much Money – When it comes to public education in recent decades, the American Way has been to impose strict mandates with woefully inadequate funding. Now due to Covid-19, the Federal government has stepped up in a big way with enormous amounts of funding for municipalities through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and for the schools through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER).
Unfortunately, this big pool of federal money has to be spent in the next couple of years. ARPA funds must be spent by the end of calendar year 2024 and for ESSER funds must be obligated by September 2022.
There is a vigorous debate in the city about how this money should be spent. However the money ends up being used, it will raise the baseline budget requirements. For instance, at Tuesday night’s meeting, Paul Georges of United Teachers of Lowell said that ESSER money was intended to respond to problems caused by the pandemic; that nearly two years of remote learning has dramatically increased the behavioral issues among school children; and so the best use of the money would be on additional school psychologists to directly address that problem. No doubt the additional support staff is desperately needed and would do much good but what happens when the ESSER funds run out and the budget reverts back to its normal amount? Do all the new psychologists get laid off? What would be the alternative? (The alternative would be for the state and federal government to provide the funding needed on a consistent basis but that’s not going to happen).
So the challenge of spending a lot of one-time funds is to do so in a way that addresses real problems but that also doesn’t set the city up for a budget crisis when the one-time funds are no longer available.
Conclusion. There is no conclusion because there is no easy fix to this problem. Whatever is done in the short term, a long term strategy is needed that will get the city where it should be with building maintenance over a period of five or ten years. Then there have to be specific, measurable benchmarks that measure the implementation of the plan over time. Finally, there has to be, by the council especially, the commitment to abide by the plan and to fully fund it. The problems that exist aren’t going to be solved by an infusion of funding in this year, or bringing the DPW staff up to full strength, or consolidating facilities maintenance, or providing more money for outside contractors. Those are all part of the solution but if they are implemented in isolation, the same problems will occur again and again.
Lowell District Courthouse
In compliance with a request from the state’s Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DAMM), the council on Tuesday night agreed to reduce the notice period of any solicitation of proposals for the Lowell District Court property at 41 Hurd Street from 120 days to 30 days. Someone explained to the council that nothing specific is in the works but that DCAMM has declared this property to be surplus and proposes to sell the building. If someone submits a proposal, if the process had to wait the full 120 day notice period, it might tend to derail the project whereas a wait of 30 days would be more feasible.
DCAMM has already scheduled and (I assume) held a public hearing on the proposed sale of this building on March 30, 2022, at the Pollard Memorial Library. Here is the notice of that meeting that appears on the DCAMM website:
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance hereby gives notice that, pursuant to Section 37 of Chapter 7C of the Massachusetts General Laws, a public hearing shall be conducted to disclose the conditions and reasons for the proposed sale and significant change of use of 1.4± acres of state-owned real property located at 41 Hurd Street Lowell, Massachusetts. (the “Property”).
The Commonwealth property, which has been determined surplus to current and foreseeable direct public uses, is currently vacant. It was used as a district court prior to that function moving to a new location in Lowell. The hearing shall be conducted on March 30, 2022, at 7:00 p.m. in the Ground Floor Meeting Room at the Pollard Memorial Library, 401 Merrimack Street, Lowell, Massachusetts.
Here’s some background on the Lowell District Court:
On March 27, 1837, Lowell Mayor Elisha Bartlett executed a deed conveying the second floor courtroom in the city’s Market Building to Middlesex County. The conveyance was the consequence of two pieces of legislation: An Act to Establish a Police Court in the Town of Lowell (March 2, 1833); and An Act Relating to Certain Courts of Middlesex County (April 16, 1836). Also transferred to the county were several offices adjacent to the courtroom and “a stove for warming, a carpet, and several tables.”
The “police court” continued to sit in its Market Street quarters for nearly a century, until 1924 when the state legislature authorized the construction of a District Court of Lowell. On May 24, 1924, Middlesex County purchased two parcels of land on Hurd Street; one of 9673 square feet from Kirkor Sahagian, the other of 7398 square feet from Katie W. Welch. The original Lowell District Court, which can still be discerned today around the ornate front entrance that is no longer used, was constructed on these parcels.
Through the years, the Lowell District Court had had two major additions. In 1945, Middlesex County obtained five additional parcels along Williams and George streets to acquire sufficient land to construct small wing-like additions to the original building and to also create a significant surface parking lot behind the structure.
In 1967, the state legislature enacted a bill to expand the size of the Lowell District Court. Pursuant to that legislation, Middlesex County took by eminent domain one parcel on Hurd Street and a contiguous parcel on Williams Street. On this space the new addition was constructed. That portion of the building housed the Clerk’s Office and the Fourth Session courtroom.
In March 2020, the entire Lowell District Court moved into the new Lowell Justice Center on Jackson Street. The Hurd Street building has been vacant since then.
Lowell and Lincoln
President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865. Although Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theatre, he died in a rooming house across the street where he had been carried after being shot. The usual occupant of the bed in which Lincoln died was William Clark, a resident of Lowell. Read the story of William Clark and Abraham Lincoln on richardhowe.com.
I have a suggestion about the Future of Facility Maintenance & Operations for the City of Lowell. The investment needed to build a "Digital Twin" can be paid by some of that windfall funding sitting at the city's doorstep. What that investment creates is a workable solution that plans for the near term and for the future. To better understand what a digital twin is and how it can solve all the problems mentioned in the above post I've provided a YouTube Video Link
https://youtu.be/asMox4SA-as
The concept doesn't just provide substantial cost savings by being efficient and transparent but it also assigns KPI to be met by the obligations of contractors so if early failures or poor workmanship can be clearly pointed to and whom to blame.
You can replace a window half a dozen times but if it's the construction of the wall the window sits in and not the window itself causing air leakages, you could end up throwing a million dollars at a problem and never resolve it cause you don't have any type of metric to evaluate what issues you have at hand.