February 16, 2025

The highlight of Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting was a presentation by City Manager Tom Golden titled “2024 Year in Review.” There is no written version that I can find online, but the LTC YouTube recording captures the full presentation starting 38 minutes into the video.

After watching the comprehensive talk, here are four things that I thought stood out along with my commentary on each. I confess to being a tough grader but keep in mind that it is the city council that sets the direction of the city and hires and fires the city manager, so when you have a council prone to micromanaging city operations, as this one is, it makes the city manager’s job much more difficult. That said, here are my four takeaways from Golden’s presentation:

First – The talk was a celebration of all things infrastructure from road and sidewalk repairs to upgrades to city parks. This is all good, but the challenge is how to pay for it. From week to week there’s an attitude, especially from some councilors, that past city councils were woefully negligent in not paying enough attention to these things. I don’t think that’s a fair characterization. Every council wants more streets paved, but that costs money and there is always competition for funds. Among all city councils in my (long) memory, this council and its immediate predecessors have been the beneficiaries of an unprecedented stream of federal funds to the city. But that stream has been abruptly cut off so the challenge for the council will be to navigate that new fiscal reality.

Second – Golden stressed that “strong fiscal management” is key to the success of city government, adding that 2024 “was financially a very strong year.” He cited the increase in the city’s bond rating by Moody’s Investors Service and the very transparent city budget that’s fully available online. Knowing where the money is coming from and where it is going is critical and from all evidence, the city seems to be in good shape in that area. In the (now distant) past, the city got itself into trouble with overly optimistic revenue projections that were intended to support higher spending and to keep city councils from making politically difficult cuts to services. That always led to disastrous results down the road so it’s essential that the current administration guard against that temptation.

Third – The volume of cultural and culinary events sponsored by the city was cited as a highlight. Festivals are nice and they do play a valuable role in highlighting things the city has to offer and drawing in niche audiences that might not otherwise come to Lowell. But annual festivals, no matter how many you have, are not a substitute for day-to-day activity, whether that be in the downtown or in neighborhood shopping centers. Stand on any downtown sidewalk someday and the vibrancy you feel in other communities is absent. Perhaps the most important ingredient that’s missing is people. There aren’t enough of them walking around, doing things. A higher population of pedestrians would not only provide more customers, but it would also create a sense of activity, cohesiveness and security that would then build upon itself. There’s long been a belief that if someone visits Lowell for an event like the Folk Festival and has a good experience, that person will just morph into a regular visitor to Lowell. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The leap from a person attending a festival to that same person just coming to downtown Lowell to hang out is not something that happens organically. It must be aggressively encouraged and nurtured.

Fourth – Golden also listed the many housing developments that arose in the past year. I won’t list them here but in the aggregate it’s impressive although much more housing is needed to help make the city a more affordable place to live. The challenge of doing that was illustrated by the brief discussion on an Erik Gitschier motion for a report on parking and traffic plans for the new housing development at 463-473 Gorham Street. That’s the site of the former Hynes Tavern, a one-time Lowell institution that is just a few dozen feet from the end of the Lowell Connector.

An article in Friday’s Lowell Sun, “Development Drives Parking, Traffic Questions,” reported that the proposed five-story structure will contain 39 studio or one-family apartments but will contain just 13 onsite parking spaces. If you’re familiar with that area, you know that Gorham Street from Elm/Highland Street to the Connector routinely has bumper-to-bumper traffic in both directions so you might label a 39-unit housing development midway through that stretch insane, or something like that, because how will vehicles get into or out of the development? But that misses the point that there will be no vehicles going in or out because there is no parking onsite, or hardly any.

At the urging of the city solicitor who pointed out that this matter was still pending before some city regulatory boards so adverse comments about the development by councilors could lead to litigation against the city, Mayor Dan Rourke cut short the discussion, but not until after a few councilors expressed their dismay with this situation, although none seemed to acknowledge that it was an amendment to the zoning code that they put into place that allows this development with its scarcity of parking. In fact, the zoning code does not require any parking so the 13 spaces could be seen as a bonus for the city.

A recent trend in urban planning is to greatly reduce or even eliminate the requirements of onsite parking for urban housing developments. Part of the thinking is that requiring parking greatly increases the cost of a development which means some developments that would otherwise be feasible won’t get built if parking is required and those that do get built will be more expensive than they need to be. The theory is that the people who move into these places will rely on walking, bicycling or public transportation rather than privately owned vehicles. If they do have their own vehicles, they’ll just have to figure out where to put them.

That, of course, is no consolation to the existing residents who already face great challenges in finding parking since these developments are only allowed in densely packed neighborhoods with small lots, few driveways, and narrow streets and not allowed in the city’s suburban-style neighborhoods that have big lots, big driveways, and plenty of on-street parking.

Allowing housing to be constructed without any requirements for parking is not totally irrational although to be successful, or at least tolerable to its residents and neighbors, it needs to be part of a more comprehensive, neighborhood-wide plan that includes small businesses within walking distance, more robust public transportation, more acceptance of walking which includes the reversal of our prioritization of vehicles over walkers, and, as much as some may ridicule the idea, creating a local culture that promotes the use of bicycles.

Getting back to Manager Golden’s presentation, there were two last things I found encouraging. First, was his embrace of innovation in city government. “We have always done it this way” is no longer an acceptable reason for why something is done the way it is. Golden said he urges everyone to find ways to do things better and that he encourages employees to try to do things differently. Importantly, he added that when you make changes, mistakes will be made but rather than dwell on who gets blamed, everyone “owns the mistake and moves on.” This last part is especially important. In any bureaucracy, the safe approach is to do things the way they’ve always been done. The risk of being penalized when something new doesn’t work out is a deterrent to innovation. I have no idea how well this attitude has been communicated to the city workforce or how much the workforce embraces it, but the fact that the manager thought enough of it to say it out loud in this setting was a big deal.

The second bit of encouragement came in a brief mention of the long-awaited 311 system which I understand will be the quality of life equivalent of what the 911 system does for public safety. What I found notable was Golden’s statement that he plans to use data derived from the 311 system to drive city operations and, presumably, budgeting. Imagine city hall making decisions based on data rather than calls from city councilors! What an innovative idea.

Finally, Golden also teased a forthcoming formal announcement of Lowell’s selection as the first “Frontrunner City” in the United States. This is the initiative that Mayor Rourke encountered last year in Toronto and which I’ve written about before. It sounds like it will become a reality in Lowell sometime this year which is great news.

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On Sunday, February 23, 2025, at 2 pm, at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church at 8 Kirk Street in Lowell, UMass Lowell professor Robert Forrant and Jacquelynn Coles of the Black Lowell Coalition will present a program on St. Anne’s role in the pre-Civil War Underground Railroad. The program, which marks both Black Heritage Month and the church’s 200th anniversary, is free and open to the public.

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This week on richardhowe.com, Paul Marion wrote about the Lowell art scene in the 1960s; Rich Grady wrote a Jonathan Swift inspired satire of the US effort to make Canada the 51st state; and Louise Peloquin posted some Valentine’s Day related articles from L’Etoile in the 1920s.