Last Tuesday night featured a rare summertime Lowell City Council meeting that finished before the 10 pm deadline set by the council rules. The public portion of the meeting finished at 9:30, but the council then went into executive session and adjourned from there. Perhaps the main reason this meeting was so concise was that none of the public relations stuff that usually takes up 30 to 60 minutes at the start of the meeting was on the agenda. By “public relations stuff” I mean the presentation of proclamations, the welcoming of new businesses, or the reading of multiple obituaries of the newly deceased (there was just one of them).
That stuff never used to be part of council meetings. To understand where it came from, a bit of history is needed. Consider the following from an October 3, 1993, Lowell Sun article titled “Cable and the council: TV meetings spur many challengers to run.”
. . . the cable television broadcasts of City Council meetings that started last year have made many residents more aware of their city government, and that could spell trouble for at least a few current councilors in Tuesday’s preliminary City Council election. “The emperor has no clothes,” more than one challenger has said in describing how residents view the council now that they can actually see it in action.
The predictions in 1993 that televised council meetings would harm incumbents came true. Five incumbents lost outright (one of those didn’t even make the cut in the preliminary election) and a sixth did not run, so in January 1994, six new councilors took office along with the three surviving incumbents. But elected officials are evolutionary beings and councilors learned how to use cable TV to their advantage. That came with a cost. Meetings became longer as councilors spoke more often to get more TV “face time” and more of the agenda was devoted to public relations items that were intended to “inform the public” but which also promoted incumbent councilors. That’s where the retirement citations, the new business welcomes, the obituary readings, and the in-meeting photo ops came from.
I have nothing against local government using technology to keep the public better informed. As fewer residents consume local news on traditional platforms, providing information directly to the public has become an even more important governmental responsibility. In the past, there were attempts to use social media and in-house video to do that, but they always ran afoul of city council sensibilities.
One of the perquisites of being a councilor is to be in the know, to hear about what’s going on in the city before anyone else does. Few things infuriate councilors more than “reading it in the newspaper” or “hearing it on the radio” before being told about something by the city manager. For city social media accounts to effectively communicate with the public, the accounts must be (1) operated by multiple people in multiple departments (as opposed to all coming through the city manager’s office); and (2) provide timely information. That means putting it out regardless of who hears it first and that means annoying city councilors. That’s one of the reasons why it’s not done.
There was a lot of experimentation with these novel means of communication during the time of City Manager Bernie Lynch, but councilors quickly grew hostile to it so that effort ended.
Whatever benefits the PR stuff at the start of council meetings provides, they have been offset this year by the radical increase in the number of motions being filed by councilors. The two together have ensured that most council meetings end chaotically which is not a good look for councilors but also frustrating because things councilors believe are important enough to file a motions about get short shrift as time runs out or they are bumped to “old business” at the next council meeting.
When you consider that council rules require the meeting to end at 10 pm (it begins at 6:30 pm), one hour on PR stuff is more than one-third of the time available for the meeting. Some councilors recognize that there’s a procedural conflict between the council rules and what councilors hope to accomplish at their meetings and have tossed out some possible remedies including:
Moving public relations-related matters outside of the formal council meeting whether that be earlier on the same evening or at another time.
Eliminating or changing the mandatory 10 pm stop time for meetings to give the council more time on Tuesday nights (and early Wednesday mornings because without some time limit, meetings will go on forever).
Reducing the every-other-week summer meeting schedule to the Fourth of July to Labor Day (now it goes through the end of September).
Reducing the need to file “routine” motions on things like streetlights and cross walks by encouraging council colleagues to first call the City Manager’s designated point of contact on a matter before resorting to filing a motion.
I believe the council’s Rules Subcommittee will meet soon to discuss these and other procedural changes that might address this issue.
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Councilor Kim Scott had an interesting motion on Tuesday’s agenda:
Request City Manager provide an update on the MassDOT project for Gorham Street/Lowell Connector and request we explore any feasibility around transitioning the Connector to an at-grade boulevard to promote better connected neighborhoods and possible economic development benefits.
As I understand the MassDOT “Gorham Street/Lowell Connector” project, it’s a continuation of work done on Thorndike Street and Highland Street several years ago. This project created a new center lane on Thorndike from the Gallagher Terminal to Highland Street. The purpose of this new lane was two-fold: to provide inbound cars with a left turn lane to access the Lupoli Development in the Hood Medicine/Comfort Bedding complex; and to provide outbound cars with a dedicated left turn lane from Thorndike onto Highland Street. This project also split Highland at Thorndike into two lanes which created a left turn from Highland onto Thorndike.
Unless something has changed, the rest of this project would widen the Connector onramp at Thorndike Street to two lanes. Thorndike outbound in front of the YMCA would split into three lanes from the current two with the leftmost lane continuing towards South Lowell and the center and right lanes both swinging right onto a two lane on ramp for the Connector. To accommodate this wider onramp, the Connector outbound starting at Gorham Street would be reduced to a single lane and the second and third outbound lanes of the Connector would begin with the Thorndike Street on ramp.
That’s the extent of the current MassDOT project, at least as I understand it.
The idea of making the Connector an “at-grade boulevard” is not new. Back on November 29, 2012, I attended a meeting where that very thing was discussed. Here’s what I wrote on my website the next day (part about the Connector is in bold):
Last evening, I joined more than 30 others at the LRTA Maintenance Facility conference room at 100 Hale Street to hear the latest thinking from the city’s Planning Department and the various urban planners (Crosby, Schlessinger & Smallridge) and EPA officials who have been working on a master plan for the redevelopment of Tanner Street. That part of Lowell is perhaps best known for its scrap yards and used car dealerships as well as the location of the city’s most infamous hazardous waste site, Silresim. But the cleanup of Silresim has been underway for decades and as bad as the site was, it is also the impetus for this redevelopment and it gives the city access to a variety of programs and funds, both state and federal, that would not be available under normal circumstances.
Given the “maturity” and density of much of the rest of Lowell, the Tanner Street area presents the potential for a lot of new development in the city. The planners and consultants have judged that the northern part of the site (that closest to Thorndike Street) would be best suited to heavy industry while the southern part (closest to Plain Street) could accommodate new retail uses. One of the big challenges of that end of the street is the intersection of Tanner and Plain which, because of its proximity to the Lowell Connector off ramps, presents a real bottle neck, especially when considering the large trucks that would be accessing the site. The hoped-for resolution of that problem is to bend Tanner Street to the other side of Lowell Car Wash so that it meets Plain Street at the traffic lights at the entrance to the Target shopping complex across the street. To complement that, a new off ramp from the in-bound Connector at about Cambridge Street, which though a long-shot to be built, would ease the traffic flow into the area from Plain Street.
Regarding the Connector, it is a major asset to the district, but it is also a safety issue. To make it less dangerous, the proposal calls from transforming the Connector from a superhighway into a boulevard, reducing it from three lanes down to two and lining it with trees. The speed limit would then taper down from 55 to 45 to 35.
My memory is that MassDOT shot down the idea of transforming the Connector into a slower-speed boulevard, but I don’t recall why. Still, it’s a good idea that ought to be revisited. It would be good to get the city’s representatives in the legislature onboard because they might be able to change how MassDOT looks at this.
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The Lowell Connector was one of several projects in Lowell in the early 1960s that fall under the Urban Renewal umbrella. As more people got cars and moved from cities to suburbs, urban planners concluded that high speed roadways that would rapidly bring workers from their suburban homes to their urban jobs were needed. That led to highways like the Lowell Connector (and many inner city parking lots for worker cars).
Unfortunately, once the workers moved to the suburbs, the businesses and jobs followed, and city centers were left hollowed out with adjoining neighborhoods severed by divided highways that were never really needed.
The original design of the Lowell Connector did not call for it to end in someone’s front yard as it now does. Instead, it was to continue over Gorham Street (using a to-be-constructed bridge) then pass underneath Central Street at Hosford Square (with another new bridge carrying Central Street over the highway) and merge onto Lawrence Street about midway between Church Street and Rogers Street. From there to Church Street, the Connector would be laid on top of a widened and divided Lawrence Street. But instead of ending at Church Street as Lawrence Street does now, this Connector Extension would continue across Church Street (via an at-grade intersection with traffic lights) and then span the Concord River (goodbye Bagshaw Mills!) on a new bridge, ending in a surface intersection at East Merrimack Street, right across from the Lowell Memorial Auditorium.
When this came before the city council there was enormous pressure from the city’s business community to build the rest of the Connector, however, the plan called for the eminent domain taking of something like 700 houses and 150 small businesses. The council balked at doing that and the extension of the Connector died which is why the highway ends so abruptly on Gorham Street.
But even if the reformation of the Connector is beyond reach right now, other portions of the Tanner Street Development Plan are still worth pursuing. For instance, the relocation of Tanner Street is ongoing and should continue to be implemented.
Another aspect worth pursuing is a “multi-use trail” that would run from Plain Street to Thorndike Street. This “trail” would be more of a well-marked collection of sidewalks and bike lanes that utilized existing roads rather than an entirely new off-road trail. River Meadow Brook, which runs along the Connector for its entire length, would be an attractive place to put such a trail but the land along the brook’s bank is inadequate for that, hence the need to use the road and sidewalk network.
Still, making this stretch accessible to walkers and bikers would be a big link in connecting the Concord River Greenway which now ends on Lawrence Street at Lowell Cemetery to the Bruce Freeman Trail that begins at Cross Point.
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I posted a detailed sketch of the proposed Lowell Connector Extension on richardhowe.com if you want to see it in plan form.
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Last week’s newsletter contained the speech I gave at the 100th anniversary of the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. This past week on richardhowe.com, I posted the following:
My 100th anniversary of LMA speech (same as the newsletter)
Explanations of the:
Historical artifacts in the LMA Hall of Flags
MassDot’s latest plan for the Connector is to “improve” its terminus at Gorham Street, with the favored concept being a rotary. The problem with any of their plans is that they don’t address the speed problem approaching the end of the Connector. Re-doing the Connector much farther out has a better chance at doing that, but it won’t be easy.
A two-lane entrance to the Connector outbound at Thorndike street is just one additional step of dividing the urban landscape with speedways, and should be rejected before any planning money is spent.