December 4, 2022

With no city council meeting last Tuesday night due to the Thanksgiving holiday the week before, I’ll use this week’s newsletter to catch up on some items that didn’t fit in previous editions.

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The city council voted recently to reduce the speed limit on most city streets from 30 mph to 25 mph. Anything that will calm traffic is a good thing since fast-moving vehicles are a threat to everyone. But as a recent New York Times article explained, the primary problem in the United States is not dangerous drivers but dangerous road design.

“The Exceptionally American Problem of Rising Roadway Deaths” reports that in the mid-1990s, the United States had the same number of traffic deaths proportionately as did other advanced nations. Then as car design everywhere embraced safety features like better air bags and seatbelts, traffic deaths – especially of people inside cars – declined significantly.

But in recent years, traffic deaths in other countries have continued to decline while in the United States they have risen. Why the difference? Other countries have drivers who speed, drivers who are distracted, and drivers who drink, so none of them can explain the discrepancy. In the United States, the rising death toll is among people who share the roads with cars - pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcyclists - rather than people inside of the cars.

Other countries design their roadways with safety as a priority, meaning safety for all who use them, whereas the design priority for roads in America is to move traffic rapidly. Ensuring the safety of others who use the roads is an afterthought.

So reducing the speed limit is a good first step, but commitment to safe design is what’s needed to make the city’s roads safer for everyone.

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CORRECTION – In last week’s newsletter on Fire Department overtime, I wrote that overtime pay was included in calculating and employee’s pension. That was incorrect. Overtime does not affect an employee’s retirement.

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The local real estate market continues to slow. The number of documents recorded at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds in November was down 40 percent from the same month last year. The number of mortgages recorded was down 60 percent. “Mortgages” includes purchase mortgages, refinancing an existing mortgage, equity lines, and lines of credit. All have been adversely affected by the rise in interest rates. Real estate continues to sell due mostly to a lack of inventory, but today’s higher interest rates will inevitably push down the price of real estate. Buyers can only afford to pay so much per month; if more of that goes towards interest, less is available for principal.

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Elon Musk has been in the news recently for his purchase of Twitter. He financed much of the $44 billion purchase price with Tesla stock (the electric car company of which Musk is co-founder and CEO). That made it easy to notice the flood of Tesla documents that were recorded at the Registry of Deeds recently.

The documents in question are UCC Financing Statements. They are commonly used in the business world to create a security interest in a piece of equipment, however, they sometime get recorded at the registry of deeds when that piece of equipment becomes part of the real estate. Years ago, window or boiler installers would record a UCC when they did an installation that was to be paid over time.

In the past ten years, there’s been a flood of UCCs from solar companies who install rooftop solar panels on terms that provide payment for the equipment over time.

Tesla installs battery storage systems in homes. As I understand it, these systems store electricity that’s generated from rooftop panels with the electricity being used by the homeowner or sold back over the grid to a supplier. Tesla gets payment for the battery setup over time and protects its interest by recording a UCC at the registry of deeds.

Only up until this September, Tesla hadn’t recorded many UCCs. It averaged two dozen a year and from January through August 2022, had only recorded seven. But in September, October, and November – ever since the Twitter sale went through – Tesla has recorded 310 UCCs.

Is Tesla suddenly selling more home battery units in Greater Lowell? Probably not. I suspect the company has been selling these units all along but has been sloppy about perfecting its security interest by recording UCCs. Although Musk put up much of the $44 billion Twitter purchase price himself, he borrowed $12 billion of it from big banks and presumably used some of his Tesla stock as collateral for those loans. Tesla’s accounts receivable – the amount it expects to get paid from people who installed residential battery units – are more valuable if they are “secured” by a UCC filing than if they remain “unsecured.” So I think there has been a scramble to clean up the Tesla paperwork, probably at the behest of the big lenders.

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The effects of the 2020 census on State House redistricting will show up in the state election two years from now. As mentioned in last Sunday’s Lowell Sun political column, State Senator Ed Kennedy will have a major change to his First Middlesex District. Beginning with the 2026 election, that district will consist of Lowell, Dracut, Tyngsborough, Dunstable, and Pepperell.

Since 1994, the First Middlesex District consisted of Lowell, Dunstable, Groton, Pepperell, Tyngsborough, and Westford. Prior to that, Dracut was part of the district.

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We’ve heard much about the “midterm” elections that were just completed. That name refers to the Congressional elections held midway through the four year term of a president.

Midterm is less of a thing in Massachusetts because midterm elections always coincide with our gubernatorial elections. Not only is the office of governor on the ballot during the national midterm election, but so are all the state Constitutional offices (Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Treasurer, and Auditor). District Attorneys have four year terms and their election cycle puts them on the ballot in these elections too.  

The President of the United States is elected to a four year term, but the presidential election and the gubernatorial election are never at the same time; they take place in alternate state elections. 

Other offices - members of the US House, State Senators, State Representatives, and Governors Councilors - are elected to terms of two years, so those offices appear on the ballot in every state election.

Still other offices – US Senator and county-level positions such as sheriff, register of deeds, register of probate, and clerk of courts – have six year terms so those offices are sometimes on the ballot with the president and sometimes with the governor.

In general, turnout is much higher in a presidential election year than in a gubernatorial election year. Here are the turnout numbers for presidential elections since 2000, showing the vote statewide followed by the turnout in Lowell:

• 2000 (Bush over Gore) – 2,734,006 statewide – 27,435 in Lowell

• 2004 (Bush over Kerry) – 2,924,141 statewide – 29,232 in Lowell

• 2008 (Obama over McCain) – 3,102,995 statewide – 31,905 in Lowell

• 2012 (Obama over Romney) – 3,184,196 statewide – 34,226 in Lowell

• 2016 (Trump over Clinton) – 3,378,801 statewide – 37,346 in Lowell

• 2020 (Biden over Trump) – 3,657,972 statewide – 38,982 in Lowell

Here are the turnout numbers for gubernatorial elections since 2000, with statewide vote followed by the vote in Lowell:

• 2002 (Romney over O’Brien) – 2,220,301 statewide – 21,584 in Lowell

• 2006 (Patrick over Healey) – 2.243.835 statewide – 21,348 in Lowell

• 2010 (Patrick over Baker) – 2,319,963 statewide – 22,520 in Lowell

• 2014 (Baker over Coakley) – 2,186,789 statewide – 21,268 in Lowell

• 2018 (Baker over Gonzalez) – 2,752,665 statewide – 27,024 in Lowell

• 2022 (Healey over Diehl) – 2,508,298 statewide – 21,354 in Lowell

Another large variation occurs in state primaries, but it’s the inverse of what happens in general elections. Because the presidential primary is held separately in March, there are no major offices on the ballot in a state primary during a presidential election year (except sometimes a US Senate seat as was the case in 2020 when Congressman Joe Kennedy III challenged incumbent Senator Ed Markey), whereas when the governorship is on the ballot, the state primary often includes a hotly contested race for the gubernatorial nomination which tends to increase turnout.

Here are the turnout numbers, statewide and in Lowell, in Democratic primaries during presidential election years:

• 2000 – 293,005 statewide – 4,133 in Lowell

• 2004 – 378,427 statewide – 4,018 in Lowell

• 2008 – 506,187 statewide – 4,812 in Lowell

• 2012 – 379,960 statewide – 1,988 in Lowell

• 2016 – 313,550 statewide – 4,235 in Lowell

• 2020 – 1,427,868 statewide – 13,463 in Lowell

And here are the turnout numbers, statewide and in Lowell, in Democratic primaries during gubernatorial election years:

• 2002 – 767,226 statewide – 8,306 in Lowell

• 2006 – 926,402 statewide – 9,518 in Lowell

• 2010 – 487,817 statewide – 6,894 in Lowell

• 2014 – 556,092 statewide – 6,351 in Lowell

• 2018 – 700,944 statewide – 11,593 in Lowell

• 2022 – 777,226 statewide – 7.272 in Lowell

If you live in Lowell, city elections always happen in odd numbered years, whereas towns hold their local elections each spring.

If you’re ever looking for historic Lowell election results, either state or city, check out the Elections and Candidates page on richardhowe.com.

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Local author/poet/co-blogger Paul Marion was featured on a recent WBUR podcast the explored the French-Canadian origins of Chinese Pie. Searching for the history of the dish, segment producer Amanda Beland, a native of Manchester, NH, discovered Paul’s poem, Chinese Pie, and got in touch.

Paul acquainted Amanda with a 19th Century official from the Massachusetts Department of Labor who used in an official state census report the double-barreled slur that French-Canadians “were the Chinese of the east.”

The WBUR webpage has a link to the audio but also a full transcript of the segment so you can read it or listen to it.

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Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore took on the wild turkeys of New England in the magazine’s Thanksgiving week edition. Because I frequently encounter turkeys in my neighborhood, I read the article.

Turkeys were prolific in colonial New England, so much so that Benjamin Franklin wanted to make the wild turkey the national bird instead of the bald eagle. But turkey was so popular that the birds were hunted almost to extinction. The last known wild turkey was killed in Massachusetts in 1851 and then they were gone. But in the early 1970s, scientists found a flock of them in the Adirondacks and relocated three dozen of them to the Berkshires where they were released into the wild. Those three dozen turkeys went forth and multiplied, for they are the ancestors of those who now roam the streets and yards of Lowell.