October 9, 2022
At Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, City Manager Tom Golden unveiled the long-awaited plan for spending the city’s portion of the American Rescue Plan Act 0f 2021 (ARPA), a $1.9 TRILLION Federal package intended to fight the public health and economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Golden, the city’s share of this funding is $75 million which he called a once in a generation opportunity.
Golden’s presentation was concise. Councilors had few questions which likely means they fully participated in the creation of the spending plan. The PowerPoint presentation used at the meeting is available online. Golden emphasized the following points in his presentation:
The city has already received $65 million and just received an additional $10 million which totals $75 million.
All of the money must be “committed” no later than December 31, 2024.
All of the money must be spent no later than December 31, 2026.
Up until the “commitment” date, the spending plan may be modified and money may be shifted to other (allowable) things.
The city has already spent $9 million and has committed another $4 million.
Golden said repeatedly that his objective is “to get the money on the street as soon as possible.”
The Manager also said he was being careful to not create a structural deficit through the use of these funds. In other words, if whatever this money is spent on is a recurring cost, like wages for an employee, whenever this money is no longer available, the need for funds to pay that employee’s salary would remain as a new burden on the city’s existing revenue. They are trying to avoid this in choosing how to spend the money now.
Several councilors urged Manager Golden to revisit the past opinion from the city’s outside auditors that ARPA money could not be used for the Lowell High renovation project. They pointed out that since that opinion was first given, many months have passed and perhaps some other entity has challenged the basis for that opinion and received a favorable ruling. There is a certain logic to this argument: The cost of the LHS project ballooned due to supply chain issues created by Covid and since ARPA funds are intended to mitigate the harm done by the Covid pandemic, then ARPA funds should go towards mitigating the increased construction costs of the high school project.
Broadly speaking, categories of expenditures eligible for ARPA spending are:
Support Public Health Response to Covid
Replace Public Sector Lost Revenue
Water and Sewer Infrastructure
Address Negative Economic Impacts
Premium Pay for Essential Workers
Broadband Infrastructure
Here is how the money is proposed to be spent in Lowell:
· Social impact programs ($13.4 mil)
o Education training programs for underserved populations - $2.2mil
o Public Health programs in underserved populations - $1mil
o Social & economic equity - $1mil
o Grow generational wealth & affordable housing - $4mil
o Support victims of domestic violence - $2mil
o Weatherization & fuel efficiency assistance - $1mil
o Translation and communications improvements to muni ops – $1mil
o Bookmobile & mobile library - $300K
· Fire Department apparatus replacement ($10mil)
o Replace six front line vehicles
o Replace four spare vehicles
o Average age of current fleet is 15 years
· Neighborhood improvement plan ($9mil)
o Eligible park projects
o Water & sewer infrastructure projects
o Neighborhood business district improvements
· Municipal building improvements - $7mil
o HVAC & ADA upgrades to muni buildings and schools
· Water & Sewer infrastructure - $10.6mil
o Combined sewer overflow separation - $6mil
o Specialized vehicles - $2.7 mil
o Misc projects – balance
· Economic Development
o Marketing campaign - $1.5mil
o Arts, culture & events programming - $1.5mil
o Improved signage - $1mil
o Downtown revitalization - $500K
o Neighborhood business district revitalization - $1.5mil
· Non-profit support - $4.6mil
o Will supplement other funding such as CDBG
o For mental health, substance abuse, homelessness, food security
Congresswoman Lori Trahan was present at the start of this meeting and provided the City Council with some background on how these funds came about, the objectives behind the appropriations, and the additional steps that Congress is taking to support cities like Lowell.
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Councilors approved a motion by Dan Rourke to provide a $5,000 annual stipend to the four Lowell residents who serve on the Lowell Vocational School Committee. The chair of that committee, Fred Bahou, appeared before the council and spoke in favor of the proposal. The council voted unanimously for this (Councilor Gitschier abstained from voting; he is employed at the school and his brother is on the school board).
This seems like a good idea. The Vocation School board meets regularly, conducts contract negotiations, and answers to constituents. Of course the same can be said for members of the more active city boards such as zoning, planning, conservation and a few others. Perhaps if those positions received some payment there would be more people willing to serve on them. (Although I would stop far short of offering health insurance to board members which used to be done but was discontinued during the Bernie Lynch administration).
Back to the vocational school: It educates students from Lowell, Dracut, Tyngsborough, and Dunstable. Lowell has four committee members, Dracut has two, and the other two towns have one each. Up until four years ago, members were elected only by the voters of the communities in which they lived, however, that changed after a claim that such a system was unconstitutional because it diluted the impact of Lowell voters. The argument went that the one committee member from Dunstable represented the town’s 3,400 residents whereas the four members from Lowell represented 111,000 people (or 27,750 each) which meant a person’s vote carried different weight depending on what community they lived in. The solution was to have the people of all four towns vote for all candidates, regardless of where they were from. To ensure that each town had representation, only a candidate from that town can win that town’s seat on the board even if that candidate gets fewer votes than candidates from other towns.
Because town elections are held each spring and Lowell city elections are held in the fall of odd years, the only time voters from all four communities go to the polls at the same time is during the every-other-year state election which is when the office of Vocation School Committee member is on the ballot.
However, as recently reported by the Lowell Sun, there will be five seats for the Vocational School Committee on the ballot in the November 8, 2022, state election, but only two candidate names will be on the ballot: Fred Bahou from Lowell and Matthew Sheehan from Dracut. There are no candidates for the Tyngsborough and Dunstable seats (the incumbent for Tyngsborough, George Tatseos, is not running for reelection and the incumbent from Dunstable, Kempton Giggey, did not make it onto the ballot although he plans to run as a write-in candidate). There is also a second seat for Lowell which has been filled by George O’Hare who is not running for reelection so a write in candidate from Lowell would stand a good chance of winning a seat.
This situation of more offices on the ballot than there are candidates is troubling but it’s tough to tell if it’s a onetime thing or part of a bigger trend in which fewer people are interested in and willing to run for public office. I do think paying a reasonable salary helps attract candidates. When my father first run for Lowell City Council in 1965, there were 54 candidates in the preliminary election. At the time, councilors were paid $4000 per year which may not sound like much but to put it in context, a full time teacher at Lowell High that year had a salary of $7500 making a part time councilor’s salary 53% of a full time teacher’s pay. Councilors today make $25,000 per year, but if you paid them 53% of what a teacher earns, you’d probably have more candidates running for council.
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Several years ago when a group of residents sued the city of Lowell over the method of electing city councilors and school committee members, the high likelihood that the plaintiffs would prevail at trial led the city to settle the case by implementing the current hybrid system of electing some councilors and school committee members at large and some from districts. In that lawsuit, the plaintiffs alleged that the city’s method of all at large councilors and SC members violated Section 2 of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 by diluting the impact of minority voters. The argument was that under the all at large system, 51% of the voters could control 100% of the seats. The law and the evidence favored the plaintiffs, hence the settlement.
However, if the plaintiffs had waited until now to bring the same suit, it may have reached a different result. Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Merrill v. Milligan in which plaintiffs challenged a Congressional redistricting map created by the state of Alabama on the grounds that it diluted the votes of members of minority groups (the same basis as the city of Lowell lawsuit). After the arguments were finished, the well-regarded SCOTUSblog reported “Conservative justices seem poised to uphold Alabama’s redistricting plan in Voting Rights Act challenge.” While the Supreme Court won’t issue a decision in this case until next spring, given the expansive, precedent-reversing rulings of this past term from the Conservative majority, it’s likely that the judicial interpretation of Section 2 will change substantially to the detriment of members of minority groups in the United States.
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The city council also voted unanimously to name the Lowell Senior Center for City Councilor Rita Mercier. The motion was made by Councilors Erik Gitschier and Corey Robinson who amended the motion before it was discussed to add the caveat that Councilor Mercier’s name would not appear on any sign, literature, website, or anywhere else related to the Senior Center until after she “retired” from city service. Councilor Gitschier explained that this condition was needed because the Senior Center is a polling location and having Councilor Mercier’s name all over the place when her name was on the ballot would give her an unfair advantage as a candidate.
Councilor Mercier was gracious in accepting the honor, saying she was happy to still be alive to experience it. However, she gave no indication of when she might wrap up her council career. The end of this term would give her 28 years in office. Another term would give her 30 years, which seems more impressive than 28 (or even of 32), so it’s likely she’ll run for at least one more term on the council.
The city of Lowell has a complicated relationship with monuments and naming things for people. The city does not have a comprehensive list nor does anyone else. I’ve been working on compiling such a list for several years and have found more than 600 instances of things being named for people. Only a small percentage of those are named for women (see my list of Lowell Monuments to Women) and fewer have been named for people of color, so there’s a lot of catching up to do achieve some equitable representation of the city’s population.
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One of Lowell’s greatest singer/songwriters passed away last month. Bob Martin was born in the Highlands, graduated from Lowell High, went to Nashville and toured across the United States and Europe. Bob returned to Lowell and lived here most of his life. On richardhowe.com, Paul Marion has written about Bob and the memorial service held for him.