April 3, 2022
New City Manager
After a two-hour interview on Wednesday night (March 30, 2022), the city council unanimously selected State Representative Tom Golden to be the next city manager of Lowell. The mayor and city solicitor will now meet with Golden to finalize an employment agreement. City Manager Eileen Donoghue’s contract expires April 11, 2022, so if Golden is not onboard by then, City Clerk Michael Geary will likely serve as acting city manager until Golden officially takes office.
Lowell High Loan Order
At Tuesday’s meeting, the city council unanimously voted to increase the loan order for the Lowell High renovation by another $38.6 million. There was a moderate amount of griping about Skanska and Suffolk Construction, but all councilors saw no alternative to approving the increased borrowing authorization and promising to pay closer attention to the project than had been the case earlier.
City Manager Eileen Donoghue added a positive note to this discussion. She said the city has had productive meetings with Congresswoman Lori Trahan who in turn has met with U.S. Treasury officials about the propriety of the state of Massachusetts putting federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money towards the Lowell High project. Donoghue said that all who are made aware of the facts that the increased cost is directly related to Covid agree with the city’s argument that the project should be eligible for Covid relief funds.
Congresswoman Trahan and the city have also been meeting with the city’s state delegation who are expected to lead the legislative effort to funnel ARPA funds received by the Commonwealth through the Massachusetts School Building Authority and then on to the city to fund the Covid-related increase in the state’s financial contribution to the project.
Donoghue repeatedly emphasized that just because the council authorized the new loan amount does not mean that the city will borrow all of it. But unless the council at this time granted the legal authority to potentially borrow that money in the future, the project could not go forward.
Funding Cawley Stadium Repairs
At the March 8, 2022 council meeting, the council passed a Vesna Nuon motion requesting the city manager “invite the school department to share Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding to help pay for the improvement of Cawley Stadium.”
ESSER is like ARPA funding only for schools. It is intended to address the impact that Covid-19 has had on elementary and secondary schools across the country. The Lowell School Department is receiving $40 million of ESSER funds.
Among the motion responses provided to the council this past Tuesday night was one answering this motion. Here’s what City Manager Donoghue wrote:
As requested by the City Council, I recently met with Superintendent Joel Boyd to discuss the prospect of Lowell Public Schools contributing to renovations at Cawley Memorial Stadium. Our proposal was for the City to contribute 50 percent of the cost through ARPA funds, and LPS funding the remaining costs with ESSER funds. It is our understanding that renovations to the stadium would be an eligible use of ESSER funds. The Superintendent informed me that he does not intend to recommend contributing to the Cawley Memorial Stadium project.
The reaction by councilors was mixed. Most who spoke – and not all did – were critical of the school superintendent for his unwillingness to use some of this federal money to help with the repairs to the stadium which is used primarily by Lowell High athletic teams. But Councilors Rita Mercier and Erik Gitschier sided with the superintendent and defended his unwillingness to contribute to the repairs. (Left unsaid was the likelihood that the superintendent is following the will of the school committee).
During the discussion, there was a comparison of the city as the owner of the schools and the school department as the occupant of the buildings to the traditional landlord-tenant relationship. That is one way to look at it but only to a limited extent.
From a property law perspective that’s not an accurate analogy. Instead, the rights of schools versus cities in school buildings are controlled by statutes. For instance, Mass. General Laws chapter 71, section 68 begins with “Every town shall provide and maintain a sufficient number of schoolhouses properly furnished and conveniently situated for the accommodation of children therein entitled to attend the public schools.” I assume that who is responsible for what in terms of maintenance and costs is further delineated by other statutes or regulations.
However, the statutory mandate that the city provides schools would also come with the inferred duty of the city to keep the buildings habitable without any corresponding duty of the school department to pay rent or to contribute to the cost of the buildings or other capital expenses. Arguments regarding financial responsibilities that draw parallels to a traditional landlord tenant relationship are potentially misleading.
Management of City Workers
At some point late in the meeting, councilors had an extended and intense discussion on how the city’s workforce, particularly the Department of Public Works, is being managed. There was a “beneath the radar” element to this discussion – meaning there is more going on than councilors expressly stated – but drawing inferences from the discussion as a whole, here’s what likely happened:
At a prior council meeting, Councilor John Leahy who represents the Belvidere District, asked for potholes on Andover Street to be filled. Less than 36 hours later, someone saw a supervisor from the Parks Department on Andover Street using a can of spray paint to mark potholes. Those potholes were quickly filled by a DPW crew.
Of course there are potholes throughout the city and other councilors had previously requested that specific potholes in their districts be filled only they hadn’t been. That potholes in Belvidere seemed to take precedence over potholes in other neighborhoods didn’t sit well with some councilors. There were explanations: Andover Street was in tough shape; priority was given to main roads, etc., etc.
Still, it was nice to see councilors fighting for the equitable distribution of resources to the neighborhoods they were elected to represent. Under our prior electoral system, every councilor represented the whole city, but the reality was (1) most councilors lived in Belvidere and (2) that neighborhood’s residents cast many more votes in city elections than did any other neighborhood so it was predictable that disproportionate attention and resources would end up there.
But the council discussion didn’t stop at whose potholes got filled first. Others asked why were Parks Department employees filling potholes when among other things (1) overflowing trash barrels in city parks were not being emptied; (2) ballfields were not being prepared for sports seasons that in some cases have already begun; and (3) monuments and memorials need to be spruced up for Memorial Day but have yet to be touched.
City Manager Donoghue responded that the city work force in general and the Public Works Department in particular is short staffed and despite much effort by the city to recruit new employees, job postings result in few if any applicants which Donoghue attributed to the low wages the city pays to entry level employees.
Councilors on Tuesday night and in the past have talked of appropriating more money for wages to help fill these jobs but it’s not as simple as that. I suspect that collective bargaining plays a big part in this. Presumably, the salaries in most city jobs are set out in pay scales that have different steps. As an employee gains seniority, the employee ascends the scale, earning a contractual step increase each year until the maximum step is reached.
When a new employee is hired, is management able to start that new employee at a higher step on the pay scale than the very first one in order to make the salary competitive enough to take the job? If the collective bargaining agreement says you cannot, or if prior practice says you cannot, you are stuck offering the new applicant only the lowest wage possible. To change that requires renegotiating the collective bargaining agreement which is complicated and brings in many other issues and takes time. Simply appropriating more money at budget time is only part of the process.
Then when it comes to managing the workforce, when management tries to do things differently, to find ways to increase efficiency and productivity, is there push back from the workforce? Likely there would be. That’s inevitable in any employment relationship. There are grievance and arbitration procedures in place to resolve such disputes. But too often in Lowell the aggrieved employees take their case to city councilors who then undercut management. It’s rare for councilors to have the self-discipline to stay out of management/labor disputes and let managers manage (and by “managers” I mean everyone in a supervisory positon, not just the city manager). That sends the message to managers not to be too innovative, don’t make too many changes. As long as you promptly fill a pothole or paint a crosswalk whenever Council X makes a motion to do so, everything else can slide.
Ensuring that services and resources are equitably distributed across the city is huge. So is appropriating sufficient funds to pay city employees competitive wages. But like so much else in the world, this is a more complicated problem than we’d like it to be so no one should expect easy or quick solutions.