April 2, 2023

The big news from Lowell City Hall this week came not from Tuesday’s council meeting, but in the next day’s Lowell Sun which reported that City Solicitor Helene Tomlinson was no longer employed by the city of Lowell. In “Helene Tomlinson out as Lowell city solicitor”, the Sun explained that City Manager Tom Golden informed City Councilors by email on Monday that he had decided to “move in a different direction on the departmental leadership and, effective immediately, will be posting the position of City Solicitor within the next week.”

Tomlinson began as City Solicitor on January 9, 2023, so she lasted just eleven weeks. In another Sun article published the day she and new First Assistant Solicitor Corey Williams began work, Golden is quoted as saying:

“I am excited to bring experienced leadership to the city’s law department,” Golden wrote. “I firmly believe the combination of skills and knowledge shared between Ms. Tomlinson and Mr. Williams, as well as their individual expertise in certain aspects of the law will serve the city well as we forge ahead with the many priorities of the City Council.”

The same article reported that Tomlinson had been a lawyer for 20 years and had “extensive experience in litigation matters involving municipal and civil court cases.” It did not report that she had ever worked in a City Solicitor’s office or that she had any experience representing city or town governments in her practice.

Being the City Solicitor in a place like Lowell must be one of the most challenging jobs there is in the legal profession. In almost every other setting, a lawyer can specialize in one or two areas, however, In representing a city the size of Lowell, a lawyer must be versed in many areas of the law: municipal finance; government purchasing and contracts; employment law; Open Meeting law; election law; eminent domain; tax takings; real estate transactions; collective bargaining agreements; litigation involving breach of contracts, property damage, negligence, employment, and many others. Not only does the person in charge need familiarity with all those areas, but the attorneys on staff must have a mix of backgrounds and experience so that the city has expertise in all those areas. Having the top job vacant is a problem; having the top job and most of the subordinate legal positions vacant or filled by individuals new to that area of the law magnifies that problem.

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The Council did meet on Tuesday night. There were 14 motions on the agenda but only three motion responses and no major reports or presentations, so it was a relatively light agenda (although the meeting still lasted nearly three hours). Here are some of the things that were discussed:

The highlight of the meeting for me was hearing from Kamil Peters, the artist who created “Black Joy” a metal sculpture that Peters and DIY Lowell wish to donate to the city. To receive ownership of a gift, the City Council must vote to formally accept it. This was on the agenda last week but since no photo or other depiction of the sculpture was included in the Council packet and at least some Councilors had not seen it before, they continued the vote to this week’s meeting so they could all see it before voting on it. They approved it unanimously.  

In a way, the delay was fortunate because when it came up the second time, the artist was present to explain the work whereas he was not there the first time. It was a delight to hear from him and for him to explain the piece. According to Peters, the base of the sculpture is a ship that depicts the ships that carried enslaved Africans to America in the so-called Middle Passage; arising from the hull of the ship are large flowers, all native to Africa. Additionally, the ship’s hull may be filled with dirt and serve as a planter from which actual flowers native to this region may be grown. According to Peters, the flowers depict the people who were taken and the entire piece and its placement here in Lowell represent “the triumph of those people.”

The sculpture will be placed on the small brick plaza at the southwest corner of the Appleton and Gorham Street intersection, just across Appleton from the former Juvenile Court building. An installation ceremony and celebration will be scheduled for later this spring.

Here is the “about” page of the artist’s website:

Kamil Peters is a contemporary metal artist working out of Ludlow, MA. With roots in Texas and Western Massachusetts. His work encompasses a wide range of expression, from intricate mask work to large-scale commercial installations. Peters evokes glimpses of the past with a distinctly modern edge, his work lures you into his interpretations of the natural world; allowing his environment to play a key role in how his work is expressed.

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Councilors were very excited by a report on an “Opening Day” parade and festival for Lowell youth baseball and softball teams. This will occur on Saturday, April 22 with a rain date of April 29. The parade will begin at noon at the Tsongas Arena and process down Arcand Drive to JFK Plaza where there will be music, food, and activities (and speeches by and introductions of elected officials, no doubt).

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There was no mention of LeLacheur Park which is scheduled to be sold by the city to the UMass Building Authority this coming Tuesday.

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Parking Director Terry Ryan reported to the Council that the first batch of new parking payment kiosks are due to arrive within a week with the rest to follow in a steady flow. Installation will begin right away.

For several years, I’ve used the Passport parking app to pay for curbside parking. It works very well. You load in your credit card and whenever you pull into a spot you just enter the number of the parking space, the length of time you will be parking, and it charges your credit card. If you park regularly in downtown Lowell, or even occasionally, it’s well worth downloading.

For those not using the App, the new kiosks will be a relief. When walking around downtown, I often see people trying to use the existing kiosks to pay for parking. In the three years of the pandemic, I’ve never seen a person succeed in doing that.

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The Lowell School Department’s fiscal practices faced some City Council criticism on a vote to authorize the payment of “bad bills.”

Some background on city and state fiscal processes: The fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30. Money budgeted for that fiscal year must be obligated and spent within the year (with a grace period through the month of August to pay for services rendered just before June 30). If a bill for goods or services rendered during one fiscal year is either received or is received but not processed until after that fiscal year has “closed”, it’s a “bad bill” and it cannot be paid without legislative authorization. For the city, that means the City Council must approve payment; for the state, it’s the State Legislature.

This vote included 38 pages of unpaid bills from the prior fiscal year along with certifications by vendors that (1) the services were delivered and (2) they have not yet been paid. The amounts due ranged from a low of $84 to a high of $64,000.

While Councilors seemed inclined to authorize payment, they indicated that the documentation provided by the school department was inadequate and sent the matter back for supplementation so it will likely return to the Council in the coming weeks. There was also a fair amount of criticism of School Department fiscal practices, mostly about the insufficient documentation of individual bills but also for the sheer number of invoices that were in this category.

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The Lowell Police Department also came in for some criticism when a homeowner petitioned the Council to speak about the uneven enforcement by police officers of the resident’s “reserved for homeowner” parking space in front of his residence. This resident gave councilors a lengthy account of his ongoing efforts to keep others from parking in his reserved spot. He told of numerous times when he called police, but the responding officers did not write tickets on the vehicles occupying his space. He apparently has made frequent trips to the police station and to the city manager’s office for redress which must have been lacking in his opinion, otherwise he wouldn’t be petitioning Councilors.

The Councilors who spoke on this matter almost universally sympathized with the homeowner and criticized the police for not consistently writing tickets, saying that when people pay for a residential parking placard, the city has an obligation to enforce the rules through ticketing.

The one dissenting voice was Councilor Paul Yem, who somewhat cryptically said that in some cases, people call the police to harass their neighbors, adding, “which is all I want to say about that.”  So it appears there may be another side to this story.

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It’s long been my routine to walk around my neighborhood early each morning, usually before the sun rises. About three weeks ago, I noticed that a stretch of Lincoln Parkway was especially dark due to a streetlight being out. Since it was still out two weeks later, I decided to report it using the city’s CivicPlus cell phone app. After identifying the issue as a streetlight being out, it asked for its location by the street address of the closest house and the number of the pole which is easily seen on a metal plate on the pole at eye level. I submitted the request. Shortly thereafter, I received an email saying it had been assigned to a particular employee. Exactly a week later, the light was fixed. Someone else may have previously reported it, but if I was the first one, I was pleased with the speed of response.

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If you’ve seen the recent buzz in the media about new artificial intelligence products, especially one called ChatGPT, you should check out my latest blog post on richardhowe.com. I asked ChatGPT and a similar app called Bard, to write an essay on the history of Lowell. Both results were impressive, but please decide for yourself by checking them out.