March 19, 2023
Last week’s Lowell City Council meeting was canceled due to that day’s snowstorm which had caused the closure of City Hall earlier in the day. All the items from that meeting’s agenda will be appended to the agenda for this Tuesday night which should make for a marathon evening. Among all the other things on the March 21, 2023 Agenda are 23 motion responses and 23 new motions.
As for Lowell Council meetings in general, aside from a high volume of motions and frequent suspension of the rules to take things out of order, the meetings have been orderly and expeditious, something I appreciate even more after reading a WGBH report on the workings of the Worcester City Council.
The title of the story on the GBH website - ‘A chaotic mess at any turn’: Why Worcester City Council meetings can be a spectacle – tells you all you need to know. Here’s how the story begins:
There have been times when speakers have cursed out counselors. And when the mayor has threatened to have people arrested for speaking too long during the public comment period. Last year, councilors debated international nuclear weapon disarmament.
One observer attributed the lengthy meetings to excessive speaking by councilors, saying “There’s a tendency for Worcester City Council to see themselves as deserving of the limelight the position affords – that the point of the job is speech time.”
There is also a tendency to relitigate recommendations from subcommittees. Despite the full council having referred a matter to a subcommittee and then the subcommittee holding a meeting, taking testimony, deliberating on the issue, and returning a recommendation, the full council tends to disregard subcommittee recommendations and start the debate over from the beginning.
The article contrasts the chaos of Worcester City Council meetings with the more efficient and productive meetings of the Boston and Springfield city councils. Although both of those communities have “strong mayors” who are the chief executive while Worcester, like Lowell, has a City Manager elected by the City Council, Worcester observers attribute the dysfunction to the lack of support staff available to councilors. The thinking is that full-time staffers could do much of the constituent service work and information gathering that councilors must do during council meetings.
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On the topic of how governmental meetings are conducted, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court recently struck down a rule of the Southborough Board of Selectmen that required members of the public to comply with a “civility code” which the SJC held violated the Massachusetts Constitution.
The case is Barron v Kolenda, SJC-13284, decided March 7, 2023. The plaintiff, Louise Barron, spoke during the public comment phase of a Board of Selectmen’s meeting but her remarks were cut short by Selectman Daniel Kolenda, who was chairing the meeting. Kolenda ruled that Barron’s remarks violated the “civility code” and cut her off.
The SJC held that while civility should be encouraged, it cannot be required, and that the state Constitution provides “robust protection of public criticism of governmental action and officials.” What is permissible is to have rules on when during the meeting public comment is to be allowed, time limits on how long someone may speak, and rules preventing speakers from disrupting others.
The Southborough policy required public comments to be “respectful and courteous and free of rude, personal, or slanderous remarks.”
Notably to the facts of the case, the Board of Selectmen had previously been found by the Massachusetts Attorney General to be chronic Open Meeting Law violators and had been ordered to undergo individual training on that law.
On the night in question, Ms. Barron, a frequent presence and speaker at public meetings, began by questioning a proposed property tax increase but then addressed the Open Meeting Law violations, saying to the board of selectmen, “You’ve got to stop breaking the law.” To that, Mr. Kolenda, who was chairing the meeting, said that Ms. Barron should stop slandering town officials and ended the public comment session. To that, Ms. Barron said to Kolenda, “You’re a Hitler” which prompted Kolenda to threaten Barron with forcible removal from the session and then to declare an immediate recess of the meeting. (Barron left on her own at that point.)
In ruling in favor of Barron, the SJC quoted Article 19 of the Massachusetts Constitution which states:
The people have a right, in an orderly and peaceable manner, to assemble to consult upon the common good; give instructions to their representatives, and to request of the legislative body, by the way of addresses, petitions, or remonstrances, redress of the wrongs done them, and of the grievances they suffer.
The SJC held that Barron’s actions and words at the meeting fell squarely within Article 19, which it said “envisions a politically active and engaged, even aggrieved and angry, populace.”
Article 19 does permit restrictions that ensure public participation is “peaceable and orderly,” but that is very different than the “respectful and courteous” requirement of the Southborough rules. Governmental entities may set reasonable limits on the “time, place, and manner” of public comments, but they cannot restrain the content, with the SJC going so far as to say “rude and personal” remarks were the very type contemplated (and allowed) by Article 19.
As for the application of this ruling in Lowell, there have been several instances where speakers have been cautioned or cut short because of their comments. Some of them were criticisms of Councilors which would seem to be fully permitted by this ruling. In other instances, at least one speaker uttered things that were racist and directed against certain classes of city residents. Would it be permissible to cut off the latter type of remarks, or must they be permitted? The SJC decision doesn’t directly address that scenario, so the answer is unclear.
Lowell City Councilor Wayne Jenness had a motion on last week’s agenda that will be reached (hopefully) at this Tuesday's meeting. The motion requests a legal opinion from the Law Department on “what changes may be required to City Council rules and public comment procedures for other public meetings” considering this SJC decision.
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Three years ago this weekend, everything in Massachusetts shut down due to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Viewed from today, it’s easy to forget the fear and uncertainty that gripped the community and the nation in the early days and months of the pandemic.
Today, Americans are more divided on nearly every issue imaginable than at any time since the Civil War, yet one thing most would agree on is that government at all levels could have done a better job in responding to Covid. Granted, everyone will be bitterly divided on defining what a “better job” would have been since half believe government went too far and half believe it did not go far enough. But reasonable people on both sides should agree that revisiting the government response and developing a “lessons learned” report should be done. After all, how can we hope to have a better response when the next pandemic hits if we don’t try to learn from the one that began three years ago.
Several weeks ago, the City Council spent a large chunk of a weekly meeting discussing how additional pay for city employees who worked during the pandemic should be allocated. And every Councilor will be taking bows for the upcoming improvements to city parks that are fully funded by money coming to the city from the Federal government solely because of the pandemic. Clearly, the City Council has not put Covid in the past.
So for a City Council that never met a report that it didn’t want to get, why hasn’t anyone asked the City Manager for a comprehensive assessment of the city’s response to the pandemic with recommendations on how that response might be improved in the future?
One thing I’ve always found curious is why there was never any public talk of mandating Covid vaccinations for city employees (at least none that I can recall). The state of Massachusetts required most of its employees to be vaccinated as a condition of their employment, but I don’t recall such a mandate even being publicly discussed in Lowell. The absence of such a mandate always struck me as reckless, especially when it came to public safety personnel who, as part of their duties, had to come into close contact with some of those most vulnerable to Covid, such as an elderly individual who had fallen in their home.
Many other aspects of the city’s response to Covid deserve further scrutiny if only to learn from the experience and improve future response.
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The city election is seven months from now, so campaign activity should start picking up. The fact that it hasn’t already suggests this will be a slow year election-wise.
Whenever people ask me about running for office in Lowell, I tell them about my “Dan Tenczar Rule.” In 1999, Dan Tenczar, who still lives in Lowell and practices law here, made his initial run for Lowell City Council. Back then, there was a big local road race called the Irish Feet Are Running Race that was sponsored by Hynes’s Tavern and took place the weekend before St. Patrick’s Day. Although not much of a runner, I was a regular participant in all the local races back then. At the 1999 Hynes’s race, between runners and spectators there were at least 50 people wearing “Dan Tenczar for City Council” t-shirts. In that November’s election, Dan finished a strong third which was very impressive for a new-comer. (He finished behind Rita Mercier and Eileen Donoghue and was joined by fellow council new-comers Rithy Uong and Bill Martin).
So the Dan Tenczar rule is, if you want to run a winning first-time campaign for Lowell City Council, you should have your campaigned organized and underway by St. Patrick’s Day.
Since money is another indicator of a strong campaign, let’s take advantage of the excellent Office of Campaign and Political Finance website to see what kind of funds the incumbent Lowell Councilors have on hand:
Sokhary Chau - $37,306
John Drinkwater - $2698 (He has already announced he is not running for reelection)
Erik Gitschier - $3907
Wayne Jenness - $5440
John Leahy - $78
Rita Mercier - $11,773
Vesna Nuon - $4234
Corey Robinson - $7739
Daniel Rourke - $12,296
Kim Scott - $2477
Paul Ratha Yem - $3723
Then if you query the OCPF site for “Lowell City Council” campaign accounts, you find the following accounts, all for people who have run for Council in the past:
Paul Belley - $123
Kevin Broderick - $2478
Ty Chum - $298
David Conway – As of February 28, 2023, OCPF account closed but closing letter states “it is our understanding that you are seeking office at the local level.” (School Committee). $6900.
Daniel Finn - $1482
Justin Ford - $1284
Robert Gignac - $9
Kamara Kay - $1291
Robert Hoey - $67
Marty Lorrey - $390
David Ouellette - $362
Ryan Rourke - $9
William Samaras - $2180
Jeffrey Thomas - $1161
Patricia Stratton - $0
Bobby Tugbiyele - $3558
Tooch Van - $2026
Raymond Weicker - $505
Jeffrey Wilson - $850
OCPF operates a “depository system” that all City Council candidates must participate in. (School Committee candidates report their finances locally and not through the OCPF system.) All incoming funds (donations and loans) and all expenditures are reported through the system. The OCPF database which is all online shows who donated how much to which candidate and how much a candidate spent on what. It also has a “recently organized filers” query. If you click on that and scroll through, you should see any newcomers who are gearing up to run for Lowell City Council. As of this weekend, no new Lowell City Council committees have been created since the last election.
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Congratulations to Lowell writer-editor-author Emilie-Noelle Provost whose new novel, The River is Everywhere, was released this week. Emilie will be at Dracut’s Parker Memorial Library this coming Wednesday, March 22, 2023, at 6:30 pm for a book launch event.
I grabbed a copy of the book and couldn’t put it down. I just posted a review on richardhowe.com.
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Speaking of reviews, the new Boston Strangler movie premiered on Hulu on Friday. The film stars Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon as two Boston newspaper reporters who battle the sexism and insularity of 1960s Boston to break the story of the city’s most notorious serial killer.
I thought the movie was excellent and will write a review on richardhowe.com in the coming days. I was especially interested in this movie because some of its filming took place in Lowell at the Superior Courthouse on Gorham Street, and at the District Court on Hurd Street. I only recognized the local setting in one scene when the rear of the first floor of the Superior Courthouse appeared for about 45 seconds as the interior of the 1960s-era Cambridge Police Station.
Here's the trailer for the movie.