September 1, 2024

The city council met on Tuesday night and while the meeting lasted for more than three hours, no single issue dominated. Most of the time was spent on 14 motion responses and 18 new motions from councilors. With Mayor Dan Rourke absent, the meeting was capably run by Vice Chair Paul Ratha Yem. (Councilor Sokhary Chau was also absent.)

The meeting began with emotional presentations by two parents. One spoke in support of a Councilor Erik Gitschier motion requesting the council to urge the state legislature to ban the sale of kratom.

According to the Mayo Clinic website, kratom is a supplement that is sold “as an energy booster, mood lifter, pain reliever and remedy for the symptoms of quitting opioids, called withdrawal.” But the site goes on to say, “there are safety problems linked to its use.” Kratom is an herbal extract from an evergreen tree native to Southeast Asia. It is unregulated in America and is sold over the counter in health and vitamin stores. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned people not to use kratom which has many known side effects and has been linked to several deaths.

One of those death involved the young adult son of the woman who spoke to councilors. She urged them to take whatever steps they could to prevent others from experiencing the tragedy that befell her family.

Lowell Director of Health and Human Services Lisa Golden explained to councilors that the Board of Health has the authority to ban the sale of kratom in Lowell and is expected to take up that matter at a future meeting. A handful of states already ban the sale and use of kratom, however, it remains legal in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

In the end, councilors unanimously went on record in support of an outright ban of the drug.

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The second parent who addressed the council spoke in support of a Councilor Wayne Jenness motion that the city implement anti-bullying and anti-harassment training for all city employees and that the city implement a zero-tolerance policy for bullying and harassment by employees. 

In this case, the women who spoke has an autistic child who attended a city run youth camp at Shedd Park this summer. It was not a good experience, and it was made worse, according to the woman, by the inappropriate treatment of her son by some of the camp counselors. The mother’s recounting of events was very powerful as were personal remarks made by Councilor Jenness about his own experience as a victim of bullying at a young age.

Councilors unanimously supported this motion.

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A petition from members of Solidarity Lowell and LLAMA (which is Lifting Lowellians: Assistance and Mutual Aid, an organization advocating affordable housing, the rights of the unhoused, and advocating warming and cooling centers) asked the council to “have the city provide shelter for people who need it when weather is too hot or too cold for safety (unhoused or lacking appropriate AC or heat).”

The petition specifically asked for the following:

• Create a specific written protocol that indicates high and low temperatures at which centers should open.

• Consistently staff and support those sites.

• Offer a 24 hour option with cots to sleep indoors as long as the extreme weather event lasts.

• Include bathroom and shower facilities.

• Support and include people with substance use disorder, ensuring that they have access to all resources.

• Locate centers in areas that are accessible and provide public transportation to folks who need it.

• Include the ability for families and couples to stay together.

• Provide options for families and individuals who may already have housing, but do not have adequate climate control in extreme weather events.

• Be welcoming to pets.

After hearing from several speakers supporting this request, councilors held a respectful, thoughtful discussion that lacked some of the hostility exhibited by councilors when some of the same speakers have previously addressed the council. However, as councilors pointed out, doing what was requested would take a considerable amount of money that the city, considering all of its other responsibilities, does not have.

City Manager Tom Golden also voiced a more practical consideration. Whenever Lowell has opened a warming or cooling center of this type in the past, neighboring communities routinely bring unhoused individuals from their jurisdictions to the Lowell site and drop them there, leaving the cost for caring for these individuals solely to the city of Lowell.

Whenever this discussion arises at a council meeting, it concludes with no seeming resolution. That’s understandable, since this is a crisis without a clear or easy solution. Still, it is helpful for the parties to come together and to keep it in the public eye. If that happens, no one can ignore the issue.

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At the conclusion of the public section of the meeting, councilors voted to go into executive session “to discuss the disposition of parcels within the Hamilton Canal District.” This presumably involves the four parcels previously conveyed to the Lupoli Companies for which Lupoli has requested a modification of what it had committed to build on them. Although we won’t know exactly what was discussed in executive session for some time, earlier in the meeting City Manager Golden briefly said something like there will be positive news in the executive session. We shall see.

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Finally, there was a lengthy report provided to councilors on all city projects completed, underway, and in design. It’s an impressive list. Because there was not much else to write about from this meeting, I will reproduce some of the list here in condensed and summarized form.

When watching Tuesday night council meetings, it often seems I’ve tuned in not to a council meeting but to a convention of civil engineers because most of the talk is of infrastructure and traffic. What doesn’t get talked about enough is how to generate the revenue needed to pay for all of this. Personally, I feel I receive a good return on the money I pay in taxes. Thankfully, I can afford to pay those taxes but not everyone is similarly situated. Without a coherent strategy to increase the city’s tax base and raise more revenue from that source, the only way to pay for the council’s insatiable appetite for more infrastructure projects is to keep raising taxes which, given the financial demographics of the city, will make it even harder for residents to afford housing. Granted, some of these projects are funded with federal ARPA or state school building funds, but the city always ends up paying something at some point for every undertaking.

That said, here’s the project list:

Projects completed in 2024

• Morey Elementary School - $150,000 - Replacement of non-functional HVAC rooftop unit.

• Beaver Street Bridge - $4.5M - Reconstruction of the Beaver Street bridge is completed.

• Stoklosa Middle School - $97K - HVAC work.

• Veteran’s Park - $850K - Construction of a new park on Douglas Road honoring veterans.

• Localized Paving - $327K - Part of a 3-year contract, 24 different locations done thus far.

• Pavement Maintenance - $363K – crack sealing 45 streets; fog sealing 6 streets.

Projects currently under construction

• Pollard Memorial Library Elevator - $242K – much needed modernization.

• Freshman Academy Mechanical Project - $525K – Boiler/heat system upgrade.

• Duck Island Treatment Plant Upgrades - $23.9M - Upgrades necessary to comply with environmental laws.

• Localized paving - $325K – Year two of three year contract.

• Lowell Memorial Auditorium Waterproofing - $700K - Waterproofing to exterior masonry to prevent water infiltration.

• Lowell Memorial Auditorium Stairs - $300K – Reset granite stairs; new railings.

• Carvalho Field - $1.83M – Install new synthetic turf field; new fencing, electrical and scoreboard.

• South Common - $675K – Various landscape renovations, new signage, and new trees.

• Armory Park - $160K – Install splash pad, rain garden, new benches and trees.

• Wastewater Transformers - $99K - New energy efficient transformers at Wastewater Treatment Plant.

• McAuliffe Elementary School - $1.4M – Roof replacement (MSBA funding).

• Firehouse Abatement - $87K – Asbestos abatement at four firehouses.

• Robinson Middle School - $7.8M – New roof, boiler and windows (MSBA funding).

• Shaughnessy & Wang Schools - $8M – New roofs and boilers (MSBA funding).

• Butler, Bartlett & McAvinnue Schools - $5.3M – Boiler replacements (MSBA funding).

• Water Main Upgrade - $7.35M - On Pawtucket Boulevard & Varnum Ave.

• Downtown Wayfinding - $700K - New pedestrian signage and kiosks.

• Pawtucket Memorial School - $722K – New chiller (for HVAC system).

• Catch Basin & Street Sweeping/Debris Removal - $300K - Over 1,600 catch basins cleaned; regular street sweeping.

• Sewer & Drainage Improvements - $1.8M – Proactive repairs ahead of new paving.

• Roadway Reconstruction - $2.2M - 4.3 miles of roadways across 26 streets.

• Roadway & Sidewalk Reconstruction - $4.8M - 2.4 miles of roadway and 4.5 miles of sidewalks across 13 streets.

• LED Lighting Projects - $513K – At various fire houses and schools.

• Weatherization Projects - $528K – Of Pollard Library and firehouses.

• City Hall - $1M – Renovation of bathrooms.

• Water Utility work - $4.6M – Install several large water meters & two 16” gates at Western Canal Bridge.

• Pavement Preservation - $900K – Crack sealing on 14 streets; other sealing on 9 streets.

• Water Main Improvements -$5.5M – Replace water mains and numerous streets to increase water flow.

In a future newsletter, I’ll revisit this list to include the many projects starting in 2024 and others that are currently in design.

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In last week’s newsletter, I wrote that you could take any event in world history and find some Lowell connection. This week, Major League Baseball conveniently illustrated that phenomenon. On Monday, Red Sox catcher Danny Jansen became the first player in major league history to play for both teams during the same game.

Here’s how that happened: Back on June 26, 2024, Jansen, who was then on the Toronto Blue Jays, was at bat with a count of one strike on him when the game was suspended because of rain. A month later, the Blue Jays traded Jansen to the Red Sox. This past Monday, August 26, 2024, the Blue Jays were back in Boston, so the game originally scheduled for that day became part of a double header with the first game being the resumption of the June 26, 2024, game. Normally, Jansen would have resumed his at bat, but he was no longer a member of the Blue Jays, so a pinch hitter took his place. The player who had been catching for the Red Sox back in June when the game was suspended, Reese Maguire, was no longer with the team so Boston replaced Maguire in their lineup with Jansen and history was made.

The Lowell connection? The official scorer for the game was Bob Ellis, longtime voice of the UMass Lowell River Hawks hockey team and before that, the longtime news director of WLLH radio. Representatives from the Baseball Hall of Fame were on hand to take the official scorecard used by Ellis back to Cooperstown to memorialize the historic event.

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Upcoming Lowell History events:

Sunday, September 8, 2024, at 11am at Tyler Park. Walking tour of the Tyler Park Historic District. Th

Sunday, September 15, 2024, from 10am until noon at Lowell Cemetery. Self-paced Portrait & Mausoleum Tour.

Saturday, October 5, 2024, at 10am at Lowell Cemetery. Walking tour. Begins at Knapp Ave entrance.

Sunday, October 6, 2024, at 10am at Lowell Cemetery. Walking tour. Begins at Knapp Ave entrance.