July 6, 2025

The Lowell City Council had a special meeting this past Monday night to complete the agenda for last Tuesday’s meeting. Usually, unfinished business would have been kicked over to the next regularly scheduled meeting, but on Tuesday when the clock slid past 10 pm, Mayor Dan Rourke asked his colleagues to allow him to take up two brief items that were time sensitive. Councilors rebuffed that effort and ended the meeting, so Rourke presumably called the special meeting for Monday rather than wait another two weeks.

All eleven councilors participated in Monday’s special meeting although Corey Belanger did so via Zoom. Also, City Manager Tom Golden was not at the meeting.

The special meeting took just 39 minutes. The bulk of that time was spent on ten motion responses, none of which was time sensitive. Otherwise, there were five public hearings involving National Grid replacing existing gas lines; the authorization of two lease agreements; six votes that involved city finances; and the order of taking for 40 Market Street (the former police station and future DPD office that was fully discussed by the council on Tuesday).

The public hearings and votes were covered so rapidly that at the end of the meeting I thought I had missed something. In other words, Mayor Rourke wasn’t exaggerating last week when he told councilors he could cover the time sensitive stuff “in 2 seconds.”

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One motion response deserving of comment was an update on the Frontrunner program. Representatives from the program are due in Lowell this week. According to a memo from DPD Director Yovanni Baez-Rose, a delegation from the Urban Economy Forum will visit Lowell to:

Tour the city, meet with strategic development partners and learn more about our community with in-person meetings and discussions. The visit of this delegation from Canada will mark the first of many in this ongoing partnership. During the visit the city will present information about ongoing city projects and development opportunities that align with the SDG goals that are central to the Frontrunner City Program. The city administration will bring together stakeholders and developers active in Lowell to learn more about potential partnership opportunities. Discussions will also include opportunities to bring the first American location for a World Pavillion to Lowell.

This discussion will also build upon discussions with developers that occurred at the DCAMM event in early June which brought state-wide developers together to learn more about state-owned property which is being made available for housing development. This event provided the city an opportunity to meet and network with developers active across the state in developments of all types and sizes.

As I’ve written before, this is potentially a BIG DEAL for Lowell, although it’s difficult to grasp what it’s all about.

Essentially, the Frontrunner program is a strategic partnership designed to leverage Lowell's existing strengths and connect it with international resources and knowledge to further its sustainable urban development goals.

The primary player in the Frontrunner program is the Urban Economy Forum (UEF) which is a non-profit international organization dedicated to fostering sustainable urban economies and advancing the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) which strives to “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.” The core purpose of the Frontrunner program is to identify and empower cities that are leading the way in implementing innovative solutions to urban challenges.

As I understand it, here’s how it might work in Lowell:

Lowell's selection wasn't about starting from scratch. Instead, it recognizes the city's ongoing revitalization efforts, its commitment to sustainability initiatives (like energy efficiency and solar expansion), its adoption of the MBTA zoning law, and its master planning process. The program acknowledges that Lowell is already "committed to these ideals" and that "much of the city's ongoing work aligns with these goals."

Being a Frontrunner City aims to unlock significant resources and opportunities for Lowell including:

Connecting to a global network: Lowell will gain access to a worldwide network of practitioners, experts, and organizations in fields like urban finance, sustainable design, community engagement, and development. This facilitates knowledge exchange and sharing of best practices.

Attracting Investment: The Frontrunner designation hopefully will create a pipeline for global investment into Lowell's urban development projects. The UEF explicitly aims to connect cities with financial institutions and resources for high-impact projects.

Showcasing Lowell as a Model: Lowell's successful initiatives in areas like housing development, vacant property revitalization, and fostering a business-friendly environment will be showcased as examples that can inspire and be replicated by other cities globally.

DPD Director Baez-Rose indicated that if the delegation arrives early enough on Tuesday, they will be present at that evening’s city council meeting, so I’ll write more about this next week.

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This past Tuesday was the six-month anniversary of my first day of retirement (which has been terrific). Thursday, I awoke to an email from the Social Security Administration informing me that my application for benefits had been approved (a relatively easy process when done entirely online, but a complicated calculation of when to do it).

Friday brought another email from Social Security. Had they changed their mind? No, this email said the following: “The Social Security Administration (SSA) is celebrating the passage of the One Big, Beautiful Bill, a landmark piece of legislation that delivers long-awaited tax relief to millions of older Americans.” The email went on to say that “nearly 90% of Social Security beneficiaries will no longer pay federal income taxes on their benefits.”

Interesting, if true.

One thing is clear: It is NOT TRUE that this bill eliminates the tax on social security benefits. It’s more complicated than that.

To be clear, I think this new legislation is terrible, mostly because it exacerbates existing income inequality in America, but also because its cuts to Medicaid will harm millions directly but will also devastate the health care system we all rely on, and it will increase the federal deficit by $3 trillion which in turn will make consumer loans for houses, cars and education more expensive by driving up interest rates. But for now, I just want to review how this legislation affects social security benefits.

Here is how social security benefits are treated for income tax purposes under current law: Whether your social security benefits are taxable is dependent on your “combined income” which is your adjusted gross income (wages, pension payments, IRA distributions, interest, dividends and other income); plus any tax-exempt interest (like from a municipal bond); plus one-half of whatever social security benefits you receive.

If you file as single and your combined income is less than $25,000, then none of your social security benefits are taxable. If combined income is between $25,000 and $34,000, up to 50% of your social security benefits may be taxable; and if your combined income is $34,000 or more, then up to 85% of your social security benefits may be taxable.

If you are married filing jointly, the brackets are (1) less than $32,000; (2) between $32,000 and $44,000; and (3) $44,000 or more.

Note that the formula says that percentage of your social security benefits “may be taxable.” That’s because the next step in your tax return is to apply any deductions available to you. For most taxpayers, that means the standard deduction. For tax year 2024, single filers got a standard deduction of $14,600; married couples filing jointly got a standard deduction of $29,200. (Those amounts are adjusted for inflation so for the current year will rise to $15,000 for single taxpayers and $30,000 for married filing jointly, plus the new legislation may increase those amounts even more.)

The standard deduction reduces the amount of your income to which the applicable tax rate is applied which in turn reduces the amount of tax you will owe. (There are other deductions available to some like state and local taxes that may reduce taxable income even more, but I’ll set them aside for today.)

This new law makes no changes to this method of taxing social security benefits. What it does do is increase the amount of the standard deduction available to people 65 years of age or older. Specifically, the new law boosts the standard deduction already available to seniors by $2000 for a single filer and by $1600 for a qualifying spouse in a couple filing jointly. (In other words, if a married couple filing jointly are both 65 or older, their standard deduction would go up by $3200.)

In addition, there is a “bonus deduction” for seniors of $6000, although it goes away after 2028 (which not coincidentally is right after the next presidential election). As I understand it, if both spouses are 65 or older, they would each get this $6000 bonus deduction meaning their adjusted standard deduction would be $45,200 rather than the standard deduction of $30,000. (That’s $30,000 + $1600 + $1600 + $6000 + $6000 = $45,200.)

However, this $6000 bonus is not available to everyone. Seniors with incomes of up to $75,000 ($150,000 for spouses filing jointly) can subtract the full $6,000 from their taxable income. The deduction phases out as your income goes up, and you can’t claim any of it if you earn more than $175,000 ($250,000 for a couple).

To illustrate, a hypothetical married couple filing jointly who are both over 65 with a combined income of $140,000 would, under the new law, have a standard deduction of $45,200, so the amount of income to which the applicable tax rate was applied would be $94,800, rather than $110,000 if only the existing standard deduction was available.

Undeniably, this boosted standard deduction would reduce the overall tax liability in this scenario, but that does not mean their social security benefits were received tax free. It just means that the amount of their income that is taxable – including social security benefits – is reduced which in turn reduces the amount of tax they end up paying. A senior who was not yet collecting social security would get the same tax reduction benefit. However, for seniors with little income beyond social security, they would pay no tax on any of their income, social security included.

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This week on richardhowe.com:

Leo Racicot wrote about holidays in Lowell in the 1960s

Terry Downes has the July installment of his baseball poetry collection

Louise Peloquin translates articles from L’Etoile about displays of patriotism in Lowell 100 years ago.

Steve Edington shared his thoughts on July 4, 2025, in light of just-passed federal legislation