February 9, 2025

On Tuesday the City Council voted unanimously to prohibit the use of “second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides” (SGARs) on city-owned properties. Eight residents spoke in support of the ordinance, and one spoke against it.

A rodenticide is a pesticide intended to “prevent, destroy, repel or mitigate rodents that are declared to be pests by the Massachusetts pesticide board.” A second-generation anticoagulant rodenticide (SGARs) contains compounds that interfere with blood clotting and cause death from excessive bleeding.

Pest control companies use SGARs in bait boxes. Rodents die soon after consuming the SGAR but the SGAR remains in their tissue even after death. When a predator such as a hawk or a fox eats a rodent that has consumed SGAR, the hawk or the fox becomes ill and may even die. Because these predators each kill so many rodents, killing off the predators exacerbates the rodent infestation.

The amended ordinance also grants the city’s Health Department the authority to grant an emergency waiver of this prohibition for a “well-documented request detailing a significant rodent infestation of public health consequence.”

Councilors are also taking steps to urge state authorities to ban SCARs entirely from use in Massachusetts.

****

Councilors also received an update on the Lowell High project from Jim Dowd of Skanska which is the city’s project manager. Dowd had appeared before the council earlier this year and was chastised for many deficiencies that high school coaches and staff had identified to councilors. On Tuesday, Dowd updated councilors on those issues:

• Reports that there were roof leaks and mold in the brand-new freshmen academy building were not true.

• The gym door that was not locking has been repaired.

• Malfunctioning locker room locks have been replaced and all other locks have been inspected.

• There was a leak of glycol from an HVAC unit, the leak and the damage it caused were repaired within a week.

• People were stuck in the new gym elevator. That was caused by a part that was improperly installed. Since that was fixed there has only been one problem and that was caused my misuse. Someone propped open the door while loading and unloading sprots equipment onto the elevator which caused a malfunction. Since then, staff members have been trained in the proper use of the “mover’s function” which locks the doors open when loading and unloading.

• Gym equipment “touch panels” were malfunctioning. The factory sent two new control panels. One was installed and the other is on hand as a spare. This solved the problem.

• The retractable bleachers in the gym would tear the gym floor any time the bleachers were deployed. The setup was missing a “limiting switch” that would have stopped the wheels from spinning and tearing the floor. That has since been installed and it is being monitored very closely but it seems to work as it was supposed to.

• Overhead door operation – Overhead doors in the equipment room and on the loading dock were malfunctioning. The cause was automated safety monitors were being triggered. They have installed guards over those devices and they seem to be working properly.

• Condensate leak – an automatic shut off has been installed so if there is a leak in the future it will limit any damage.

• Mirrors in the weight room which were 4 inches off the ground (and were being broken) will be replaced with ones 3 feet off the ground.

• The wall in the Athletic Hall of Fame has not been painted because wood paneling is to be installed there in the next phase.

Councilors thanked Dowd for the thorough review but then raised concerns about the amount of the contingency fund that has been spent thus far, observing that the usage of it has increased recently. Dowd attributed that to unforeseen issues in the 1922 building that were discovered once the full demolition called for in the project was undertaken. Dowd said that preliminary studies did not detect these issues because the scale of the intrusions they could make was limited because it was being done while the building was still being used by the school. He also said that every renovation will encounter unforeseen issues. That is the nature of a renovation.

Councilor Erik Gitschier focused on some specific items that have been done by the contractors that should have been handled by the city’s own maintenance personnel. He is concerned that the city is shifting its responsibility for maintenance onto the contractors. He said he was not being critical of the contractors because they were doing what their customer asked of them but he did say that having the contractors do something is much more expensive than the city doing it in house, and it also burns through the money for the high school project faster when the money is being spent on things that are not within the scope of the project.

****

Councilors received a report on the creation of a downtown Lowell business improvement district (BID). A business improvement district is an area where local businesses and property owners fund services that supplement those provided by the city such as street cleaning, security and marketing. The BID is funded through financial assessments on its members and is run by a board that includes business owners.

The city has been trying to establish a downtown BID for several years. A steering committee meets regularly and several grants have funded planning studies. The next phase will be to try to create the district which requires a certain percentage of business and property owners to concur.

On Tuesday, the council referred this report to the council’s downtown subcommittee for further hearings on the topic.

****

Councilor Vesna Nuon asked for a report on the feasibility of increasing the property tax surcharge that funds the Community Preservation Act (CPA). The CPA is a state law that allows the residents of a municipality to vote to add a surcharge on their property taxes with the money raised being earmarked for open space preservation, historic preservation, affordable housing, recreation, and some other uses. To encourage communities to participate, the legislature created a state matching fund that supplements amounts raised locally. The state fund gets its revenue from a surcharge on documents recorded at the registry of deed.

In the 2019 city election, Lowell residents accepted the Community Preservation Act with 5028 Yes votes to 3646 No votes. As adopted, the CPA in Lowell added a 1 percent property tax surcharge but exempted many properties. Councilor Nuon suggested that the city should revisit those exemptions and perhaps curtail them to help raise more for the CPA. The motion passed so a report on the feasibility of doing this should be before the council at a future meeting.

****

National Grid quietly ended its geothermal pilot project last week due to high costs, according to the CommonWealth Beacon website. Not long ago this project was highlighted at a Lowell City Council meeting that featured presentations by representatives from National Grid and UMass Lowell which was partnering with the utility company on the project. Geothermal uses the temperature difference between ground level and deeper in the earth to provide heat in the winter and cooling in the summer. Pipes carrying special liquid are inserted into holes drilled deep into the ground. Other pipes of the system carry the liquid underground to houses on the network to provide heating or cooling. During the winter, the surface temperature is much lower than the earth’s core temperature so the liquid would absorb heat when down below and release that heat up above. In the summer, the physics would be reversed.

As promoted before the city council, this system would have the drill holes in UMass Lowell’s surface parking lot at Broadway and Wilder and would use an existing underground network of gas pipes repurposed to carry the hot or cold liquid to the homes of subscribers. Because it involved a low-income neighborhood this would be a rare occasion when clean energy was offered to less affluent people at an affordable price.

Except the price was not so affordable after all. Citing higher than expected costs and the inability to charge customers enough to cover those costs, National Grid ended the project.

****

This week on richardhowe.com Paul Marion provided an update on Joseph Donahue, a nationally known poet from Lowell; Cameron DaCosta wrote an essay beseeching the city council to reconsider its vote to demolish the Smith Baker Center; writer and poet Jacqueline Malone wrote “Why I Love Lowell”; and Louise Peloquin shares three education-related stories appearing in L’Etoile in 1925.