City Council - Regular Meeting

. . Thank you so much for coming.

Good, how are you? Good.

Thank you. Thank you. I had a punch.

You got it? You got it? Just don't read it.

It's not bad, right?

All right, are you ready?

I'm ready.

august 11 20 26 lowell city council meeting come to order city prayer dear god today as this session opens we pray that your presence will be before us and everyone who serves in the decision-making process of our city we pray for your direction which will lead our city to be strong and unified may we continue the legacy of our founders may we be granted this day the wisdom to make decisions which will be for the good of our city We also pray for your special blessing on all those who are working to transform our city and make it a better place to live and work. Amen. Pledge allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Roll call, Mr. Clerk.

Councilor Duran?

Here.

Councilor Liang?

Here.

Councilor McDonough?

Here.

Councilor Marcia?

Here.

Councilor Noon?

Here.

Councilor Robinson? Here. Councilor Rourke? Here. Councilor Scott? Here. Councilor Chau?

Here.

Councilor Decoto?

Here.

Mayor Gitche?

Here.

Time present.

Are there any moment of silences? Councilor Marcia.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'd like to offer a moment of silence and docking chamber for Amon LeMay, a lifelong resident and devout Catholic. Amon was a member of the former St. John Dock Parish and was a faithful member of St. Rita's Parish. Armen proudly served his country in the United States Navy from 1946 to 1950 and received the World War II Victory and Good Conduct Medals. He also took great pride in playing football and baseball there during his service. Upon returning home, Amon began working with his father as a carpenter, eventually becoming a superintendent and general superintendent overseeing multiple construction projects. Amon then started his own general contracting firm, the LeMay Company, for over 20 years until his retirement in 2004. He also served as superintendent of the state office buildings for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts under the Dukakis administration. Ahmaud was deeply committed to the city of Lowell and its people throughout his life, serving as city councilor for 20 years from 1967 to 1987, and as its mayor from 1974 to 1975. He served eight years on the Lowell Historic Park Commission and was instrumental in helping Lowell as the only city to be designated a National Historic Park, initiated the first Lowell Regatta along the Merrimack River, and remained actively involved in many civic organizations throughout his life. He was a founding member and first president of the Franco-American Day Committee in 1971, and was the first recipient of the Franco-American of the Year Award in 1975. A past Grand Knight of the Knights of Columbus, Council 72, a life member of Mount Pleasant Golf Club, a member of the Club Past Temps, and a member of the Club Lafayette and former Patagonia Social Club. Blessed with a beautiful singing voice, he also sang the national and Canadian anthems several times over the years, leading him to the privilege of singing the national anthem in God Bless America at Fenway Park shortly after 9-1-1. Above all, Amon loved spending time with his family. He is survived by his five sons, Curtis, Timothy, John, Joseph, and Mark, his 17 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild, his brother and his brother Richard. In addition to his wife Connie, he was pre-deceased by his five brothers, Gerald, Henry, Robert, Leo, and Paula May, and his three sisters, Marguerite, Jeanette, and Teresa. Our condolences to his family, relatives, and many friends. He will be truly missed. I'd also like to offer a moment of silence and docking chamber to all those who passed on since our last city council meeting. May they all rest in peace. Amen. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Marisio. Any other morning silences? Seeing none, if we can dock in the chambers, please. to mayor's business 2.1 communication remote zoom participation motion will accept and place on file by councilor duran seconded by council dakota all in favor signify by saying aye any opposed so ordered three city clerk 3.1 minutes of non-profit organization subcommittee july 28th city council regular meeting july 28th for acceptance motion will accept and place on file by councilor mcdonough seconded by councilor murcia councilor

uh thank you mr mayor i did have a question about the um city council minutes from july 28th item 8.5 which was the vote on the transfer for the supplemental appropriation for the department of health lease i wasn't sure where we ended with that vote i understand the vote was seven yes uh four no but i wasn't sure if it did or did not require a two-thirds vote the minutes indicate that it failed So I wanted to understand the status. Thank you. Solicitor Williams?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So you are correct. Actually, I'm not sure exactly what you said, but it did require a majority vote. I know it was written as a two-thirds vote. It got seven votes in the affirmative, if I'm remembering correctly. So looking at it through a legal lens, where it's governed by statute, I would be of the opinion that it passed. However, in this scenario, these meetings are run by the chair, and the chair declared that The vote did not pass so I think for my purposes looking at it the chair typically They get the last word in these situations barring any sort of appeal or point of order or anything like that so I guess that's a long way of saying that I think for our purposes the vote did not pass and If I were to make a suggestion, if it's at all helpful for the group, it may make more sense to just bring another vote in front of the council with the correct language that says it requires a majority and not a two-thirds vote. Obviously, it's up to everyone here, but that would just be a suggestion. Thank you.

You want to say, Councillor Joyner?

um i understand the explanation i uh i think i'll defer to uh whoever else may have questions i'm confused still thank you council jurian council mcdonough thank you mr mayor i i do just want to kind of for the sake of clarity here um there there is a motion later tonight uh from me to reconsider that i put in to reconsider that vote um because as it was called by you i was on the prevailing side which was no And I also just wanted to note both for this record and for anyone at home that you know The chair of the meeting nor the City Council not none of us nor I believe the city clerk, right? And this isn't this is just true None of us decided that that should need a two-thirds vote. You can't just decide that in the middle of a meeting that vote was submitted it was submitted to the council whether it was a you know a a typo error or it was you know common practice and it does look like it has been common practice that is how votes for this type of appropriate have been submitted it sounds like i think we're going to fix that going forward but this was a vote that was submitted to the council signed by the the manager submitted by the administration that said by a two-thirds vote of the city council of lowell which is what leads to the confusion so hopefully that all gets settled tonight but thank you thank you council mcdonough counselor dakota

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just for clarity, through you to City Solicitor, so it is your opinion that we should bring this to another vote in two weeks, just to make sure it's nice and clean, basically, right?

Solicitor Wayans?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yes, that would be my suggestion. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I just, Councilor Rook.

Do you want to take Councilor McDonough's motion out of order and do it now so we can talk about it?

Motion to suspend the rules by Councilor Rook to take Councilor McDonough's motion out of order, which is motion 6.3 out of order, seconded by Councilor McDonough. All in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered. Councilor McDonough, on your motion.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is what I believed was the kind of simplest move here. I had a number of concerns and questions that I attempted to get answered on the floor two weeks ago. I had a difficult time getting to a point where I felt comfortable with both the tax implications and just the financial implications of raising and appropriating $250,000 and what that meant for the rate payer. I have since done my best to get to the bottom of where that came from. I'm hoping that if this motion to reconsider passes, that I will have the opportunity to ask those questions tonight, get clearer answers for everybody at home, and then hopefully we can just take the vote on this and move in the direction. So I guess I'm asking to reconsider the motion so that we can actually talk about the appropriation. Thank you.

Council Robinson.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. On this vote to reconsider, are we able to get any more relevant information about what this vote is, what it isn't, as far as the department that would be impacted before this vote is taken again?

Manager Golden.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, and through the council. Yes, councils, we can. We've talked about this a little bit in executive session, but I think the cleanest version, but this is up to the council, of course, the cleanest version is to bring it back in two weeks with the appropriate language stating that it's a simple majority, if that's okay. But once again, to whatever the council would like to do would be helpful. or we can answer questions tonight. Once again, Councilors, it was a mistake or a Scribner's error from a simple majority to two-thirds. So it was something that I didn't caught, and that's on me. That's my responsibility to check the packet every page, and I didn't catch the two-thirds as opposed to simple majority.

um but my concern is before we're in put in a position to take the vote all over again now that we ironed out if it's super majority simple majority um how can we get that information any of the any of the questions that the councils might have so we can make an informed decision on the final vote when it does appear if it is in two weeks if that's the rule of the council So basically, a no vote, where are we with the department that would be impacted, a yes vote, what does that look like?

It would just be a brand new vote, so everything would be in the packet with it.

But the concern was, they said some of this was discussed in executive session and all that, so that's why I'm trying to say, how do we get that information if that information, and that's why this is kind of

You'd have to release the executive session.

It's kind of a messy situation because of the executive session.

thank you very much mr mayor and three to the council uh councils because some of this was an executive session and we are meeting uh there are ramifications with the bargaining units uh which we are meeting with them tomorrow that is something once again it's to the decision of the council uh in two weeks from now we would have all the appropriate information uh we could possibly release those minutes if if once again to the body's decision but there are uh collective bargaining ramifications for any type of change in workplace. And we're meeting with those unions tomorrow. So if that... Trying to clarify, counsel, by walking that line, if not...

So by the time this vote reappears before the council, again, we'll be able to have an open conversation and answers will be able to be provided to any questions we might have at that time.

Manager Golan.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, through to the council. That'd be correct, sir. That is 100% correct.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Robertson.

Mr. Mayor? Councillor McDonough. I apologize. Go ahead.

Councillor McDonough. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Sorry. Only because I'm just trying to clear up some of the procedural questions now on when the vote happens. Because I'm not, at this point, trying to delay us getting this information. When I put the motion in, it was my understanding that the council can only vote on something like this once. Right? So part of the reason I put the reconsideration is, and I will defer to the opinion of you, Mr. Mayor, the clerk, and the city solicitor here, but I was under the impression that by reconsidering, I didn't know if the manner of voting constituted a substantive enough change for us to basically do a do-over vote versus reconsidering. And that's OK. If that's the will of the body and that's what we think we can do, I'm happy to, with the consent of everybody, withdraw the reconsideration. But I thought we might be able to get this answered tonight and move on. That's all I got. Solicitor Williams?

I think I understand what you're saying. So in this scenario, you are all able to take another vote on the same thing in the future. We've used this in the past. Someone could put forward a motion to rescind a previous action, and then it can be put forward again. But I do think it is the best path forward to have the motion reconsider, vote on the motion to reconsider, and... Is it really necessary? Probably not, but it's there. We can take the vote, and then we can get all the information to the council along with a clean vote.

Council of Dakota.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I agree with the city manager that we bring it back in two weeks. My concern is if we do that and executive minutes are put out to public, there were other topics in that executive session that we may not want to come out. Now, how would we do that? A portion of the executive session would only come out? Through you to the city solicitor, please.

Solicitor Williams.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yes, and this is something we've done before. We've partially released minutes and we've redacted anything that needed to remain confidential. So it's something we can absolutely do.

If the maker of the motion would postpone this for two weeks, I think that's the way to go with this.

You have to have it if you want a reconsideration, then you can vote it in two weeks. Right. So you don't want to pull this. This is the vote to reconsider. Yeah. Councilor Duran. All set? I'm good. Anyone else? Roll call.

Councilor Duran.

Yes to the reconciliation.

Councilor Leang. Yes. Councilor McDonough.

Yes.

Councilor Mercier. Yes. Councilor Noon. Yes. Councilor Robinson.

yes Council Rourke yes Council Scott Council child yes Council Dakota yes may I get you yes 10 years all right back to the regular agenda for general public hearings seven oh I don't think we voted on the minutes because I interrupted us I'm sorry oh yeah say it again Council Durant

We, sorry, we didn't vote on the actual minutes because I interrupted.

Oh, I'm sorry. You're right. I'm sorry. Yep. Yep. Motion to accept the minutes already went through, right? We already had a motion. So roll call. Roll call, Mr. Clerk. Roll call? Well, you're making a change to the minutes, so I'm just trying to get away with it.

Councilor Duran. Yes. Council Leang? Yes. Council McDonough? Yes. Council Mercier? Yes. Council Noon? Yes. Council Robinson?

Yes.

Council Rourke? Yes. Council Scott? Council Chau?

Yes.

Council Decoto? Yes. Mayor Gitche?

Yes. Ten years. Motion by Council Rourke to suspend the rules, take 8.1 out of order, seconded by Council Robinson. All in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered.

Mr. Mayor, while you are on suspension of the rules, sir, can we take also 11.2 of order? 11.2.

Well, we're under suspension. 11.2, is that what you said? Yes. Councillor Noon to take 11.2 also. Second. Under, seconded by Councillor Robinson.

And Mr. Mayor, all in favor?

Signified by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered, Councillor Robinson.

While we're under suspension, can we please also take the TDI Cambodia Town informational report out of order, please? It's 7.2, informational report, TDI Cambodia Town.

It's at 7 o'clock, so. if we get past seven o'clock we can do that motion by council robinson to take informational report 7.2 tdi cambodia town second out of order seconded by council and noon all in favor signify by saying aye any opposed so ordered votes from the city manager 8.3 vote except expend 25 000 mcoa grants 8.3

I thought it was at 8.1.

Wasn't it 8.3? 8.1? I'm sorry, 8.1. 8.1, vote accept the gift of the commemorative bicentennial plaque. Vote authorize the city manager on behalf of the city of Lowell to accept a gift from the Lowell Bicentennial Fundraising Committee of a commemorative bicentennial plaque in honor of the city's 200th anniversary. Senator Finch-Tox.

Thank you. Steve Hanna for Utica 191 Sanders Avenue. Mike Kunzler. Mike, myself, and Shayla Mahoney were tasked with being the Bicentennial Fundraising Committee. And over the last months, through the generosity of many sponsors, we were able to raise a significant amount of money to put on different events that have happened and some that are going to happen. like the Cake Boss event during Winterfest that was paid. And again, I'm going to preface my remarks by saying everything we have done has been privately paid for. No city money, no ARPA money, all prived for the generosity of our sponsors. After that, we had the Lowell Bicentennial Concert at Lowell Memorial Auditorium, which was a huge success. We're going to have, coming up, a senior cookout on August 20th at the Senior Center. We also had the previously we had a nonprofit cookout for all of the nonprofits right out here in the JFK Plaza. We're also going to be releasing our bicentennial book. which will be done in September. And after that, we have, when you have your monster match, we're also going to have a tent down there with a live entertainment. And we are going to do a drone show on that evening, documenting the history of the city of Lowell. And it's going to be where it's in the works. So we're still getting there. But it's going to happen. That's October 24, I believe. And then after that, there was one inadvertence. When we were doing the bicentennial concert, and we had a tribute to Lowell veterans, all of the soldiers, sailors, airmen who have been killed fighting for our freedoms. All of their names from Lowell are at the auditorium in the Hall of Flags. Some on large bronze plaques and some like Scotty Fennerill just by himself. But there was one that was missing. It was the last Lowellian killed, John F. Landry Jr. And we've met with Eric LaMarche, and when they do their veterans' remembrance on November 10th at the auditorium, we are going to put up a plaque for John F. Landry Jr. to recognize and remember his sacrifice for our freedoms. We are here today to donate, because they said we had to donate it to you. So a bicentennial, I would say, plaque, but it's really a wall. It's beautiful. It's going to be beautiful. It's around $50,000. in value, so we wanted to make sure you knew that. And I'm going to show it to you in a second. We have a mock-up of it, but it's about 84 inches by 120 inches. So there's a nice wall right on the entrance to Merrimack Street that would fit nicely. So let me just give you a glimpse of what it's looking like. All of the plaques will be in bronze. They don't look at it now in this, but there'll be bronze and there'll be mahogany in between everything. But the names or the logos of the sponsors aren't on it. But the ones that are is the seal for the bicentennial and also all of your names. We think that is going to be a fitting remembrance of our bicentennial. I don't think anything else has been done even close to that for the 150th, 100th, or the 50th. But we wanted to make sure it was remembered, not just during it, but long time afterwards, and everybody that was part of it. So I thank you if you will accept this gift. And we are certainly very happy to be able, and proud, quite frankly, to be here to give it to you. Thank you.

Looking for our in-house photographer.

He must be the other way.

All right, councils. Three, two, one.

Three, two, one.

Thank you.

Manager Golden.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, and three to the council. I have to say this is very low. Mr. Pangiotakis, Mr. Kuntzler, and Ms. Mahoney actually approached me. And they said, it's our 200th anniversary. What should we do? What could be lasting? And I'll tell you, we met on a number of occasions. But talk about taking the reins and throwing them over to these three fine people. As everybody knows, Stephen was a state senator, a state representative on the school committee. Michael had a successful business in Lowell, still has a successful business in the area, was a Lowell police officer, dealt with DARE kids. Ms. Mahoney is probably one of the greatest people working throughout our business community and really giving back. And in meeting with them, I think it's important that everybody know that people like this came here to ask how they could help the city celebrate 200 years. It wasn't just one event, as Mr. Pangiotakis and Mr. Kunzel would tell you. The one that Mr. Pangiotakis forgot was the 4th of July. And I want to let folks know. I want to let folks know that the, the doubling of the city's budget, uh, was an unbelievable opportunity. I was there myself, but it is really thanks to these three people that did all of this hard work. And I know they're going to put it on a couple of other folks. Uh, I know that, uh, uh, Mr. Rogers was, was helping where she could and Ms. Hogan was helping where she could. Eileen, Ms. Barabee was helping where she could.

Deandra Silk.

I'm sorry?

Deandra Silk.

Oh, Deandra Silk. Sorry. Sorry. Yep. Ms. Silk was helping where she could. But with the concerts, the music, the festivals, and the organizations that they also donated to, our cultural organizations also received additional money. And this was all happened because three individuals here in the city of Lowell stepped up to help us support our 200th anniversary, our 200th birthday, which happened to be on the 250th. So I want to say to the two gentlemen there in front of us, to Ms. Mahoney, thank you very much from the citizens of Lowell. We appreciate you. We're expecting a huge success at Monster Bash or Oktoberfest and everything else that we're going to be doing.

He's got Taylor Swift coming.

You better not say that. You better not say that. Mr. Panjiotakis, you better not say that. I want tickets to the Taylor Swift concert. That's not happening. I want to put that out there. But it really is what makes our city great is when people step up and do something that we simply couldn't do. So on behalf of the 120,000 residents of the city of Lowell and many people throughout the greater Lowell area that I know are here, thank you, gentlemen, and thank you to Ms. Mahoney.

Motion to adopt by Council Rourke, seconded by Council Robinson. Roll call.

Council Duran. Yes. Council Liang. Yes. Council McDonough.

Yes.

Council Mercier. Yes. Council Noon. Yes. Council Robinson. Yes. Council Rourke. Yes. Council Scott. Council Chau. Yes. Council Nicoto. Yes. Mayor Gitche.

Yes. and yes well we're still under suspension of rules 11.2 miscellaneous viadong park fork fork and mill city request installation of an overhanging sign at 108 merrimack street motion to refer to the law department for report and recommendation by councillor noon seconded by councillor mercier all in favor signify by saying aye any opposed so ordered still under suspension of rules we're going to go to 7.2 7.2, informational reports. 7.2, informational report, TDI, Cambodia Town. Mr. Manager.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. We want to say thank you to, obviously, our folks, our fellow, actually, Erin Padilla. Erin, thank you very much for being here. Everybody, I think, is very familiar with what's happening during TDI. Just down the street here in the Acre Crossing area, we really had a big success for the city of Lowell in TDI. And I'm not going to steal any of the thunder here, because Erin is the one that's going to be pushing us and telling us what to do over in Cambodia Town. So this is Padilla? Is that? Padilla.

I'll lower that real quick. Erin Padilla. Hi everybody. Um, thank you so much, Mr. Mayor and to city manager and city councilors here for, um, your continued acceptance and excitement for mass development's TDI program. Um, as stated, um, I am the new fellow for the new district, which is Cambodia town, and I'm very happy to be in this city and I'm very happy to be working with the stakeholders and the community members and the residents in Cambodia town over the next three years, we are just getting started. So lots to share in the future. But I appreciate the moment to say hello and to work with you all throughout these next few years. Thank you.

Thank you. Motion to accept and place on file by Councilor McDonough, seconded by Councilor Duran. All in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered. Councilor Robinson.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to suspend the rules and allow a resident to address the council.

We just have to do the hearings first at 7 o'clock.

Oh, public hearings, yeah.

Go back in. Thank you. For general public hearings, 4.1 ordinance, amend chapter 266-61, space savers. Give second reading. ordinance an ordinance amending the code of ordinances for the city of lowell massachusetts the code with respect to chapter 266 entitled vehicles in traffic by amending section 61. anyone wishing to speak in favor In favor? In favor? That portion of the hearing is closed. Anyone wishing to speak in opposition? Opposition? Opposition? That portion of the meeting is closed. What's the wish of the body? Councilor Duran.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just had a question about what the fine is. It referred to enforcement and penalties in Chapter 266 and under Mass General Laws, but I didn't see a space saver fine under Chapter 266, so I just wasn't sure what the fine would be. And maybe I missed it, which is fine, but I don't know.

Hmm. Solicitor Williams.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So Chapter 43, with any municipality, fines cannot exceed $100. So unless it specifically states that it is to be less than $100 for something, there's a lot of different scenarios where it might want to be less than that. It's typically $100 is what these types of fines are.

Okay. Thank you. So I assume that is what it will be then in this circumstance and that will be clear in Chapter 266 or somewhere ultimately so people know what it will be.

Manager Golden?

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, through you to the council. This is going to be utilized not to penalize folks maybe the first time out, but as a continued nuisance, if you would, when people are reminded time and time again we're trying to get people to understand that you cannot save spots like that. So I wouldn't want to think that if somebody makes a mistake, there is no intention, at least from the administration standpoint, to hand out a fine or a warning for a violation. So just so that people know that.

Councilman McDonough.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. In addition to the fine, obviously the ordinance says that the space saver is going to be removed. I was over, and maybe function is a little bit of a warning too, not that I have enforcement power, but I was on Prince Ave last week. And there's what would appear to be public parking spaces all over the place. And what is used there, and I've seen it other places in the city, but boy was it a lot on that particular street. It was municipal trash barrels were being put basically in every single parking spot that somebody wanted to use, which meant we now just had trash in the middle of the street. Not the best. In addition to the $100 fine, if you're able, I guess, to figure out who put the cone or the trash barrel there, if we're removing the space saver, something like a municipal trash barrel is used, there'd also be a fee to replace. We're just not going to move the space saver to a yard, right? We're taking the space saver somewhere. OK. So I guess that's one, I wanted to make sure I said it was Prince Ave. And two, I wanted to ask when we're using, you know, it's one thing to put a cone out there and that goes away and it's $15 and it's gone forever. What's the cost to replace the trash barrel and making sure that we're, I guess,

recouping our money so thank you manager golden thank you very much we'd probably fix it to it to the warning I guess and then we would probably end up having to go back when we see the car there to fix it to the vehicle that'd be my guess any other questions motion to adopt by Council of noon seconded by Council of chow roll call

Councilor Duran. Yes. Councilor Leang.

Yes.

Councilor McDonough.

Yes.

Councilor Mercier. Yes. Councilor Noon. Yes. Councilor Robinson.

Yes.

Councilor Rourke. Yes. Councilor Scott. Councilor Chau. Yes. Councilor Decoto. Yes. Mayor Gitche. Yes. And yes.

Councilor Robinson.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to suspend the rules to allow members of the public to address the council. It's an issue that recently happened and they have some questions.

We have to finish the other public hearings. We've got utility public hearings. I thought you were doing something with the public hearings. OK. Motion to bundle items 5.1 to 5.6 by Councilor Noon, seconded by Councilor Mercier. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered. 5.1, Boston Gas, request replacement of 150 feet of existing low pressure gas main on Florence Ave. 5.2, Boston Gas requests replacement of 270 feet of existing low pressure gas main on Nottingham Street in Thompson Court. 5.3, Boston Gas requests replacement of 590 feet of existing low pressure gas main on Marshall and McIntyre Streets. 5.4, National Grid requests installation of one JO pole at 93 Mammoth Road. 5.6, National Grid requests installation of one JO pole at 117 to 125 Perry Street. 5.6, National Grid requests installation of conduit to energize new transformer at 1365 Middlesex Street. We're going to open the hearing up. Anyone wishing to speak in favor? In favor?

Good evening. Diana Cuddy, National Grid 170 Data Drive, Waltham, Massachusetts. And I'm in favor of the bundled grants. I have the three gas grants I can speak on. The one on Florence Street is an undermined gas main near regulator station due to some work by the city sewer. So that is the first one. And the other two are just some small, very leak-prone pipe sections that need to be replaced.

Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak in favor? In favor? Please state your name and address for the record.

My name is Alec Birdsong. I'm here to represent National Grid in the matter, and the address is 1101 Turnpike Street in North Andover. The work requests are needed to provide service to new services that are going in there.

Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak in favor? In favor? In favor? That portion of the hearing is closed. Anyone wishing to speak in opposition? Opposition? Opposition? That portion of the hearing is closed. What's the wish of the body?

Move to approve.

Move approved by Council Rook, seconded by Councilor DeCoto. Any comments, concerns? Roll call.

No roll call, just refer to it.

Oh, refer to the wire inspector for a report and recommendation. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? So ordered. And that is now you. You're up, Counselor Robinson.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to suspend the rules to allow some members of the public to address the council. It's the timeliness of it, an event that just occurred, and they have some questions that they would like to bring forward.

I'll second it. Seconded by Councilor Noon. Motion by Councilor Robbins to suspend the rules to allow the public to speak on an event that just happened and is time sensitive. Seconded by Councilor Noon. All in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered. Councilor Robinson. Please state your name and address clearly for the record.

Terina Pagan, am I addressed, you said?

Name and address, please.

Tarina Pagan, 67 Gate Street. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and the city manager and the councillors for allowing me to speak. My name is Tarina Pagan and I'm here because our community deserves transparency regarding what happened with our Puerto Rican festival and more importantly, a clear path forward. This festival is more than entertainment. It represents our Puerto Rican culture, our families, our history and a community that deserves the same opportunity to celebrate its heritage proudly. We are asking the city to explain why the Puerto Rican Festival was reduced, who participated in making that decision, and what specifically caused the reduction in both days and hours. We also respectfully request clarification regarding a concern that has been raised involving Anabel Dominguez. We would like to know whether she had any involvement directly or indirectly in decisions affecting the festival following an incident within City Hall. More specifically, we are asking the city to determine whether that situation influenced anyone involved in the decision-making and whether the reduction of the festival's days or hours was in any way retaliatory. I want to be clear, we are not here to present allegations or rumors as facts. We are asking questions and we believe those questions deserve transparent answers based on documentation and the actual decision-making process. If there was no connection, transparency will make that clear. If there was, our community deserves to know that as well. But we also want to move forward. We are asking the city to work with us now to establish a clear roadmap for making the Puerto Rican Festival a full two-day festival without unnecessary interruptions or last-minute changes. Tell us what is required, permits, funding, public safety, insurance, deadlines, staffing, or anything else, and allow us the opportunity to meet those requirements. We are willing to do the work. What we are asking for in return is consistency, communication, fairness and complete transparency. We are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for a seat at the table, accountability for the decisions that affect our celebration and a fair opportunity to make the Puerto Rican Festival everything our community knows it can be. Thank you.

And you know speakers Council runs.

And then you know the speakers in the audience don't want to address this. I'm not seeing any.

Manager golden. thank you very much uh mr may three to the council we sincerely appreciate the partnership as everybody knows this city is uh really the city of festivals but i think there was a lot of there was a couple of uh miscommunications uh that were out there um there were some payments that were late so therefore we could not move forward uh from the previous year and everything was finally my understanding was everything was finally rectified three weeks before this was going to happen so with that happening um it was extremely successful event one day event but our staff obviously as everybody knows it is the weekend and sometimes we just can't get staff to do that uh and especially with the cost but it's something that i believe we have a meeting coming up i think a meeting was uh was asked which will be hosted in my office and we'll have that discussion um to move forward in the future but um really just it came to the it being a very successful event, but the LPD was waiting on their payment from last year. So there's a little bit of a delay there. It was three weeks out. And as most people know, we have 20 20 folks that would typically work that. We just came off of Folk Fest, which was extremely busy for our staff, and the electricians, et cetera. So there was no other reason for any of this to happen, but we do appreciate the partnership, and I look forward to talking to you after when we do meet.

Council Robinson.

thank you and uh I'd like to thank the speaker I'm sure myself and many others got calls about this I mean I don't know I don't know what happened here I I know there was money owed I know that was taken care of some of the concerns I have with this though is the dates were selected by the city THE ORGANIZER WAS TOLD THE AVAILABLE DATES BECAUSE THEY LOOKED AT THE BICENTENNIAL AND THE FOLK FESTIVAL AND ALL THESE OTHER EVENTS THAT WE WERE COMMITTED TO. AND THOSE DATES WERE SPECIFICALLY PICKED BY THE CITY BECAUSE THE PREVIOUS YEAR, IT WAS CHAOS. WE HAD FESTIVAL AFTER FESTIVAL EVERY WEEK. AND SO I KNOW THERE WAS A LOT OF DISCUSSIONS INTERNALLY WITH THE ADMINISTRATION AND THE TEAM TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW CAN WE APPROACH THIS IN THE NEXT SEASON. AND THESE DATES, TWO DATES, WERE SPECIFICALLY PICKED BY THE CITY. So to see staffing be an issue when that was kind of a given draft two-date block, that's concerning. Also, the hardship that was faced as a result of this. I mean, there was deposits made on entertainment groups that are non-refundable because the cancellation came in so late, they had to eat that loss, the promoter. In addition to the vendors, the vendors went out and had to secure their materials for a two-day event to be told a week and a half before the event, oh, sorry, and they already had put deposits in a lot of instances. so i just think as you heard from the community they're more than willing to sit down and work with the city and hammer out a definite pathway to do a two-day permanent memorialized festival because as we saw this festival had had changed hands year after year for quite some time to the point where it kind of fizzled out and and that's a sad thing because This is one of the cultural groups that, since day one, has been doing massive festivals in our community, South Common, North Common. I mean, they've been bounced around like ping pong balls as far as a home base for the festival, and they've adapted every time. Last year, was, we can all remember, we shut the street down. They brought in an incredible band. And I mean, I don't think I've seen, outside of Folk Festival, a festival that packed, that many people enjoying themselves in our downtown. And they're bringing people from all over in Worcester, Springfield, Lawrence, Haverhill, you name it. They're just asking for a guaranteed pathway forward to continue that tradition. help us promote and and show all that law has to offer and i think they did a hell of a job last year and they did a great job on the limited time they had this year so please i'm asking the city sit down let's hammer out this this for next year and have so everyone's on the same page what commitments need to happen along the way what benchmarks are set with dates clear dates and and let's hopefully find them a home that can continue for a two-day festival thank you

Manager Colton.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, and three to the council. Council, you're absolutely right. We want to be known as the city of festivals. Last year, we put on so many festivals that we actually, quite frankly, burnt our people out. That's what we did. Our DPW folk that do a lot of this work, we burnt them out. So this year, we decided to try the axis of going every other to try to give that a little bit of relax, you know, a little rest. But I'm very confident that after our discussion, Mr. Rogers, when we do have this meeting, we'll be able to figure this out for the future.

Do we have a scheduled first meeting for the group? Because, again, a two-day festival, especially where the caliber of bands that they're trying to book, I mean, that caliber of band, you almost have to book a year in advance. And so the sooner we can get to the table and start carving this out, the better.

Mr. Rush.

Thank you. So we were in the process of scheduling a meeting moving forward. We've requested to meet with not only the organizer, but the board. So if anybody is in the audience that's on the board, we would like to meet with everybody so that we're all on the same page. As the manager already explained, there was no permit in place for this particular event until July 29th of this year. So that was the problem. Unfortunately, we penciled in those two dates, but we weren't able to give a permit based on our policies, which we just revised. We just went through our entire permitting process, all the policies the past year and a half. We've worked with the law department and all of the departments, the emergency management team, to make sure that all of the festivals run correctly and to make sure that they're successful for everybody, for the vendors, the organizers, and for the city itself. Having said that, our permitting policy is online if anybody wants to check it out. We are not allowed to permit any events if there's outstanding bills from the year before. And this particular event, the bills were rectified about two and a half weeks ago. So that was the unfortunate part of it. Um, but we worked the city staff, um, you know, worked tirelessly and dedicatedly to make sure that this was a successful event. In addition to, even if there were, um, two dates available, um, the weather played a part in that. And also as the manager alluded to, we had the folk festival the week before, and it was very tight to get people on staff. But we are happy to meet with the board and the rest of the team for the festival next year.

Thank you. Councilor McDonough.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First, I guess, adding to my comment, My first question would be just what kind of communication went back and forth? So if the permit wasn't issued until July 28, what did communication with the board holding the fact? And I don't need that necessarily right now. But if we have it, we have it. But what kind of communication was there with the board in presumably we still have that on, OK, they applied for dates. We told them what dates to go. Somewhere along the way, someone thought something was confirmed, and now the city is saying, we didn't think it was confirmed. So I'm curious to see that that was clearly communicated somewhere. And my second point, so that I don't keep talking if that gets an answer, is just this is an issue that... assistant city manager helped me out with a couple weeks ago, which was unrelated, it was a parks event, where people seemed to be thinking, some groups seemed to think that they have reserved space, they've used the online portal or they've used, they've done the emails to get their permission, whether it's for a park or for JFK or for whatever, and they don't seem to understand or the city is not clearly communicating it's if it's now happened twice inside three weeks that if you owe us money this is a penciled in date like you you have not booked this yet um and so I I would just hope across the board that the city is able to try and make that point cleaner so thank you council mcdonough council chow

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and I appreciate everyone, all the members of the community who are here, and to the speaker and to the festival organizers and the board members and the volunteers. I agree with the questions and the comments by my colleague and the city manager and trying to come up with a pathway to move forward. I just want to offer a comment while we're working through these solutions of how proud I am about having so many diverse festivals in our community. And I just wanna, there's a lot of people out there watching. I just wanna approach this from a different point of view as well. So I went to the festival as well, and I want to say that it was very, very successful. Everyone that went there were very happy to participate in different events. listen to music, the food, the celebrity that came on Sunday, he was fantastic. Anthony almost reminded me of Marcus Anthony, the other singer, so very, very entertaining. But I would say 90% of the people that went, like myself, my family, my friends that went, They were very happy and they also saw how hardworking the board members were, the volunteers were, and it was great and obviously it wasn't perfect. That's why we're all here. We want to do better. The city will do better. The organizers and everyone will do better and we all should support this festival because I spoke with a few board members. I was truly impressed at you know, the number of people showed up and definitely there is an identity of this festival and not every, you know, we want to have as many festivals as possible in the city, but definitely this festival was one of the biggest one, was one of, you know, in the true fashions of Hispanics and Latina celebration, right? Music, food, family-oriented, a lot of fun. So I don't want... some of the things that didn't go as planned didn't go right per se a lot of last minute planning and coming together the last minute i really don't want the whole city or the people out there watching say hey it wasn't good as a matter of fact it was great and i will say it was perfect and if you look at it again at just a regular festival goer i don't think there was any complaint at all so i want to thank the city thank the police department the pw the parks By the end, I do want to urge that, and I will participate also, and I hope to hear from the volunteers, the board members, how all of us, the city council, elected officials, the city, can help, can contribute, and we want the Fiesta Boricanas to be very successful going into the future. It is part of law. It is part of law's fabrics. And, you know, I can't thank you enough. I'm very happy to see you here. You know, I don't think of this as a negative conversation. I think of this as very productive. How we can do better as a city and have one community. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Councilor Chow. Councilor Liang.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you to those who are actually coming and speak up today. It's very important to display your cultures and traditions, and I like going out to all the different activities going on, even though I can't go to them all. But I love it when people come up and speak and hold dearly to their culture and tradition, as well as SOME OF THE FOLKS OUT THERE WHO USED TO CELEBRATE I GUESS TWO DAYS PER YEAR BUT UNFORTUNATELY THEY ONLY HAD TO DO IT ONE AND I CAN UNDERSTAND THE FINANCIAL BURDEN AND ALSO THE CONFUSION IN COMMUNICATION AS WELL I KNOW THAT MOVING FORWARD YOU KNOW WE'LL DO BETTER But at the same time, we need to continue educating and also providing constant the new standard operating procedure or the new policy that just went into effect because there's going to be a lot of cultural events going on. And I think by keep telling people the new policy that we, you know, trying to implement that will be a lot of help because I know that they're going to meet with the managers and you, but at the same time, we'll need to do more because there's more cultural and traditions and more event and more activity going on and not many people have access to, I guess, the internet and trying to look for the new policies. I KNOW I GET, YOU KNOW, TALKING TO MR. ASSISTANT MANAGER AS WELL INTO SOME OF THE EVENT. BUT TO THE PEOPLE OUT THERE, SO I GUESS THAT THEY NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE NEW POLICIES AND MOVING FORWARD AND the cultural tradition the date and the time and i hope that you're working together the city and the community because the date the time they're very significant and very meaningful to the community just the way they set it up alone is very important so therefore hopefully the city and the community and the organization can work together and come out WITH A REALLY, REALLY NICE AND COLLABORATIVE SOLUTION. BUT THANK YOU FOR COMING AND I THINK HOPEFULLY MORE PEOPLE ARE COMING AND DISPLAYING THEIR CULTURE AND TRADITION. THANK YOU.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU, COUNCIL YANG. COUNCIL ROBINSON.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU, MR. MAYOR. I WAS JUST NOTIFIED THAT WE HAVE ONE MORE MEMBER OF THE PUBLIC THAT WOULD LIKE TO ADDRESS THE COUNCIL IF POSSIBLE. I WANT TO SUSPEND THE RULES TO ALLOW THEM TO ADDRESS THE COUNCIL.

What's the wish of the body Council Robins spend the rules let another speaker seconded by. Council chow. All in favor signify by saying aye.

I mean we're going to meet and talk about it and we have to do it in public or we should meet and try to figure it out.

Council work is one of 11 so I'll ask you guys all in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed. So ordered. This speaker can speak.

Hi, thank you all. My name is Elizabeth Gonzalez, and I'm the president of Fiesta Borincanas, Inc. I run the festival here in Lowell as of three years, and I want to thank everybody for giving me the opportunity to speak. I'll be very brief. I was notified about this meeting. It was set up through one of the vendors, but I had no idea. Today's my day off and I had no idea I found out through Facebook. So I reached out to Melissa and Roberto and I did schedule a meeting so that we can talk about everything that happened throughout the festival. I'm not prepared as of now with everything that I have, but the little that I have I will share with you because I do want the public to know There's a lot of opinion out there. The festival, like Sakari Chow said, it was very successful. Even though it was switched to one day in the last minute, we did have a good turnout. Everybody had fun. It was a lot of family. And I'm happy that in this short period of time, we were able to make it happen. The only thing I want to clarify, I did have a meeting with the vendors, and we do have contracts with vendors, and I was under the assumption it was the 8th and the 9th, but to rectify the situation, even though our contract says non-refundable, we did break the contract, and me as a president decided that every single vendor will get refunded for one day. So I want to rectify that with everybody. We did not keep the whole deposit. Every single vendor that attended, because we do understand the amount of work that goes into this, the amount of money that they put into this, and these are not all businesses. These are local people in our community that live here, and they just want to be part of it. So we have issued, we are going to be issuing refunds to these vendors. I want to clarify that. the only other thing I want to clarify is yes the payment was done on July 13th it wasn't July 29th it's July 13th just one other thing I want to clarify because we had to pay a detail that had to do with another festival that's not ran by me but by my husband So in order to rectify and be able to hold this festival, I did have to pay that detail to make the festival happen. And that's why it says July 29th. I wasn't going to speak on behalf. I was going to stay quiet. But I have to defend myself, too. I have to defend my family. And I have to defend my organization. There's a lot of hard work that gets put into this. People do not understand the time, the effort that's invested in this, the time that it takes away from your family. But I do this because I want to give back to the community. And I look forward to working with the city in future events. You know, there was some confusion. We did lose money, contracts with artists that we had scheduled for Saturday that unfortunately couldn't make Sunday because we broke the contract. That's a loss that we're taking. But it's a loss that we'll take, and we're going to rectify it with the vendors. We are rectifying with the artists that were not able to perform under contract. We are still liable for that. but I just wanna make you aware of what's going on. Not because like I said, a lot of hard work goes into this. And I am meeting with Melissa, we are speaking. Hopefully next year things can be done better. I was under the assumption it was two days. Unfortunately it was one day, but thank God it was one day. And it was one day that was successful. And I just want to say thank you to all of you.

Thank you. All set, Councillor Robinson. Councillor Noon.

I'm all set.

Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. We will move back to the regular portion of the agenda.

six city council motion 6.1 council dakota request city manager to have the transportation engineer provide an update on safety improvements at the intersection of princeton boulevard and foster street seconded by council duran council dakota thank you mr mayor um i'm still getting an anointing amount of uh calls concerning this intersection i know miss altman is aware of the situation i just hope that there is a resolution sooner than later on that thank you

Thank you, Councillor Dakota. Councillor Noon.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thanks, Councillor Dakota. This corner and the corner of Princeton Boulevard and Baldwin, also a problem too with the city. So the next time maybe if the city engineer was looking at, you know, traffic engineer was going to look at it, look also at the Princeton Boulevard and Baldwin Street as well.

Thank you, Councilor Noon. All in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered. 6.2, Councilor Duran requests rules subcommittee review city council rules and subcommittee structure to offer recommendations, if any, for enhancement for full city council to debate. Seconded by Councilor Leang, Councilor Duran.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. It was the motion that Council Rourke put on the agenda last week that made me think about looking at our rules and thinking about how we might do things better. IN PARTICULAR, WE THINK ABOUT THE STRUGGLES WE HAVE TO FIND TIMES TO HOLD SUBCOMMITTEE MEETINGS. TODAY, FOR INSTANCE, WE HAD A FINANCE SUBCOMMITTEE MEETING AND WE COVERED TWO OF THE THREE AGENDA ITEMS. FORTUNATELY, WE HAVE ANOTHER ONE SCHEDULED IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS. BUT TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW WE look at what we do um it you know looking at our rules there are things in there that we don't actually follow um and so it may be that we should update them or we should follow them um so i think it is appropriate for the rules subcommittee to take a look at them if we do want to make amendments to the rules that does require um that it go through the rules subcommittee first so we might as well have that meeting and then see if something comes of it that we want to present to the full body to consider and of course I would um ask that any counselors you know attend that meeting as other members of the public are also invited to participate thank you thank you Councilor Joanne Council Rook

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So to piggyback off of Councilor Duran's motion, could we take 6.7 now as well? I think they're pretty much one and the same.

Want to just finish this one? I'll suspend the rules and go to 6.7?

If it goes together, whatever you want to do is fine.

All in favor of the motion, signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered. Motion to suspend the rules, take 6.7 out of order, seconded by Councilor Mercier. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered. Councilor Rook. 6.7. 6.7, Councilor Rook, request the City Council look into a pilot program redesigning subcommittees and scheduling to go along with the biweekly schedule for the balance of the 2026 calendar year. Seconded by Councilor Marcia.

Councilor Rook. thank you so much yeah and then you know appreciate Council Jaron's motion as well I think these can actually go to go together uh to some extent um and to her point that was made earlier you know the the subcommittee that was held this evening in finance two out of three um agenda items were talked about, a third of them was not. And we've dealt with that more than normally over this past council term. I think the last council I had, we had 22, 23 subcommittees, a handful of ad hoc subcommittees. And, you know, with the pressing issues we have in the city now, SCHEDULING HAS BECOME ISSUES FOR MULTIPLE COUNCILORS. SPEAKING TO THE CLERK LAST WEEK, I THINK HE STILL SAID HE HAD ALMOST 20 SUBCOMMUNITIES YET TO BE CALLED BECAUSE OF THOSE PURPOSES. THIS IS KIND OF A LOT. had a brief conversation with the mayor about this um you know and with council drawn uh council robinson as well i thank them all for their uh you know for their um advice on it but you know a recommendation would be mr mayor uh we break it down into six subcommittees total it could be finance public safety zoning neighborhoods economic development and municipal matters i think every issue that we deal with as a city council can be fit into one of those six You know, the mayor, if this is something that the council wants to take a look at, could appoint five councillors per subcommittee. That keeps everything even and, you know, fair. And also, you know, it takes away a quorum. We would need three. you know i think there's a lot of good that could happen out of this and what you could do is also is schedule those meetings ahead of time you don't have to wait to be called you know you could have a finance committee subcommittee once a week once a month public safety once a month all these um are very important um you know i can give you a couple examples of you know where i'm coming from on this two meetings ago miss altman was here um and on the agenda for a council meeting We had 21 responses, motions, or votes related to just traffic and calming issues. Just the last meeting alone, we had a motion about data centers. We had a motion about offense. Both conversations took almost 30 minutes to talk about, with one of those motions being sent to a subcommittee. So I think we pre-scheduled the subcommittees. It gives counselors, the public, the administration time to prepare. and to be ready to go. And the problem with Tuesdays is the staff is already here. We're not worried about bringing people in on a Thursday, a Wednesday, talking to the clerk about trying to schedule a meeting on a non-Tuesday. You have your boards, you have your commissions that fill up the schedule a lot for most of the month. So, you know, we don't have to decide about this right now. We do have until the end of September. This is something, Mr. Mayor, that, you know, maybe if we do send this to the Rural Subcommittee as well for further discussion, I think it would be very beneficial to the public and to us as councilors, you know, to really vet and to get into some of the issues that we have going forward in the city that are upcoming. The reason why I picked just to the end of the 2026, it gives us about 90 days to see how it works. You know, and you can... possibly have up to six to eight subcommittees per month. And again, I would wish the body schedule those going out. So if it's every first or every third, Tuesday of the month, you have your finance, your public safety, your zoning, then your other ones, you can do neighborhoods, economic development, and municipal matters, because you do have the ability still to have a subcommittee on a meeting, Tuesday night meeting. So I think the opportunity is there to kind of redefine what we do as a council, how we serve the public. We're still here every Tuesday night as a group, maybe not meeting all together, but under this premise and this idea, I think it's something that's worth discussing. And again, it's a lot. We don't have a decision on this this evening, but if we can get something that comes with the rules before the end of September to really dig in and to decide, I think it's a worthwhile issue. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

motion by council rook to send this to the rules subcommittee seconded by council robinson any discussion all in favor signify by saying aye any opposed so ordered thank you council rook 6.4 council mcdonough requests city manager have the appropriate department provide a report to the council on enforcement of the city's vacancy ordinance at 50 warren street second seconded by council unknown council mcdonough

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So 50 Warren Street is the property formerly known as the Indian Conference Center. The reason I use the address is because I have no idea what we're calling it these days. I know the property has only been vacant, I think, officially at this point about a month, give or take. It takes 90 days for the vacancy ordinance to kick in. So this is not looking for us to go slap a fine on the building tomorrow. This is us. This is me. This is me really looking for us to get ahead of this issue. It's been an ongoing issue. I can't even count how many council motions this council, the last council, have filed over this property. heard some troubling things from around the community. I know that this is a priority for my district. I've had a number of residents reach out who live near the property. I've had other businesses, institutions, et cetera, reach out who are near and around the property. And the troubling piece is just in hearing that there is an impression among some in our community that this is not a priority, that the ICC is not a priority, whether it's not a priority for the city or for the owner or whatever. I think that it is. I think that this council has made pretty clear that it is. And this is really just me looking for an opportunity to say, before we get to the point that we could be talking about the registration fee, we're saying you know we have every intent to to use the every tool in our toolbox to try and get some progress moving at 50 warren street thank you council robinson thank you um

While we're looking at buildings like that, I mean, have we had any movement on a couple of the other big ones in downtown as far as like hook slides or the other one across from Wings Over Low? I know that's another one that we've talked about time and time again on Market Street. it's been sitting vacant and empty and and again and i know we've just i don't know if we lost the economic development person if they've moved on since i i believe they have and so i don't know if there's transition period going on in that department i know she was really working and on top of this so i just hope this isn't going to fall by the wayside because those are two positions that that uh two buildings that for quite some time we've been trying to get movement out of, and I still haven't seen anything yet.

Manager Golden.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. The old foxtail. I want to bring that back for any of you that might know. But the old Foxtail is actually undergoing some renovations for a new restaurant slash pub there. And unfortunately, the other building that you're talking about opted to pay the fine at this point, which, again, will double as we move forward. We've offered, you know, the whole goal here, once again, from this administration standpoint, and I know it's from this council standpoint, we're not looking to fine anybody. We're just looking to ask people to do what is right by the community. So, good to say the usual, the Foxtail, Hooks Light Kellys, et cetera, that should be opening. I don't know if we know the exact date. No, we don't. But there is something going on over there.

And so the one that opted to pay the fine. I mean what recourse do we have as a city is is it just going to be they ignore any request they they give us the yes, yes, yes, they pay the fine and then it's they continue back or does it get to a point where we've leveraged enough fines against a property like that that we can actually take a course action down the road.

Thank you very much, Mr. Vice Mayor. We've had an array of people and answers for that. So we've had folks that families were having some internal discussions, couldn't get to where they needed to, paid the fine. They had told us they won't pay it again. Next year they'll have their affairs in order. There have been other folks that they will double again. So it's not just the regular fine, it's the doubling of the fine. I hope that kind of answers what you're saying. But once again, we're not trying to fine anybody. We're trying to make sure that our first floor retail as well as buildings. I've referred to these buildings in the past as legacy buildings. And at times they get involved in maybe a family squabble or something to that effect. There's so many examples in my head about what has been happening here and there. But it's legacy buildings that it's just always been accepted. When this council put that forth, the vacancy ordinance, we have been acting on that. And as a matter of fact, we'll be looking to go citywide on that as well.

WELL, I GREATLY APPRECIATE IT, AND I JUST HOPE MAYBE IT'S SOMETHING WORTH REVIEWING BECAUSE WE GET IT. YOU'RE 100% RIGHT. I THINK MY COLLEAGUES AND I HAVE EMPHASIZED TIME AND TIME AGAIN, WE WANT TO WORK WITH BUSINESS AND BUILDING OWNERS TO PUT BODIES IN THOSE RETAIL LOCATIONS, GROUND LEVEL, AND HELP YOU BE SUCCESSFUL IN THE CITY. BUT IF YOU'RE GOING TO USE IT AS A TAX WRITE-OFF, SO TO SAY, AND JUST PLAY THE GAME WITH US, can we look at that scarf law property law that we we the council passed last term and maybe adjust time frames so okay first fines issued this and we're finding that people are just eating that and playing the game well then let's shorten the time frame shorten the time frame shorten the time frame to the point where it's very uncomfortable to play those tax incentive games for these building orders it's either you want to do the right thing and and put a body in that first floor ground level retail or you don't I mean the the gray area is where they're thriving it seems like so I think that's something worth reviewing thank you this is the mayor

Thank you, Vice Mayor Noon. I guess there's a major difference between like a Walgreens in the, where the old senior center is and an in-conference center. Through you, Mr. Vice Mayor to Yvonne Baez-Rose, is that area still being maintained by the university or is it all overgrowth and Oh, Mr. Manager, I'm sorry. Thank you very much.

Sorry.

Go ahead, sir. Thank you very much, Mr. Vice Mayor, and through you to the council. I was there last week, and it looked okay. I could not swear of it looking today. As a matter of fact, council, it will be going on Saturday, so if anybody has any things they want me to look at, I'll gladly do it, and we'll put that on the list. But when I was down there, because I'd driven through the... the um lower locks and canal as well the uh parking lot just to check on its cleanliness and things were in better order so but uh that does not mean maybe council mcdonough has more information on a daily basis he's down in that area maybe it's not as clean as it was 10 days ago i guess my question is on gorham street we had the old courthouse how many times did we find them through you mr vice mayor did we find the state

Mr. Manager, any comment, response?

So through the commercial vacancy program, no, we never find the state at the courthouse. I don't know off the top of my head if we find them for minimum maintenance. Any time that we got complaints, the staff reached out directly to DKM and the courts to ensure that they sent somebody out. We've had that same conversation with the Superior Courthouse as well, reaching out directly to the courts and to DKM about those. um the the like heard street location wasn't something that we were looking at for the commercial vacancy program at all mr manager you wish to add go ahead

I guess my question, Mr. Vice Mayor, to the managers, have we had discussions with the owners of that property at 50 Warren? And if we have, where are we in the economic development? And rather than go out and say we're fine, maybe there's someone ready to come in. I don't know these answers. That's why I think that those are important pieces to put together. I know you were in talks for some time with them. And I'm just wondering, are there talks still going on? And are we being updated on where we're going with it? Mr. Manager?

Thank you very much, Mr. Vice Mayor, through to the council. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, for that question. The ICC has been a long road. Currently right now, I think it was a month and a half, if I'm correct, they closed it. Now, this November, now this is not my timeline. I want to be very, very clear. But the building itself is owned by UMBA, which is UMBA, the UMass Building Authority. they have to put it out to i believe dcam that goes back to the state to find out if anybody else wants it which we're under my understanding is nobody does the next step from that perspective is they would offer it to the city similar to the way they offered um herd street to the city and they've also offered superior as everybody knows we did uh participate with dcam and herd street we We do have some activity there, some very exciting stuff that we all know about. Then the ICC is in the same step. So in November of this year, if the UMBA board, UMass Building Authority, vote to get it off their books, quote unquote, then they'll try to sell it from that point forward. So yes, it's been somewhat. a discussion point in this chamber on multiple occasions. However, it just closed in June in all actuality. So we're in pretty good shape. What can happen over there? That would be a great discussion about economic development. What do I see in that area? I think that I've talked to every councilor here about this. I think there's a whole different neighborhood, you know, a downtown growth into that area where currently right now there is no housing. I think we're seeing that with Heard Street. I think we could see that with ICC. I think we could see that with the parking lot in front of the ICC. I also see that our lowest performing parking garage is lower locks and canals. So this could help us in the end of the day. This is the proper planning that we've been looking at, that we've been pushing along with the administration, but also the Healey administration. This is not a secret to the Healey administration. This is not a secret to the Meehan administration from UMass. These are all discussions that are happening. In this manner, I actually feel like I don't feel like we're the superior courthouse at this point. Superior courthouse has been a disappointment to me from the DCAM perspective because it's taken so long. But then again, DCAM did help us over at Heard Street. So I think there's a lot of excitement, and if anyone's listening, what could that neighborhood be, be named? You know, I always, and I've said to most of the council is here, you know, the ink block or something in Boston, what could that be known as, uh, down in that area? And I think it could be a lot of housing and a lot of opportunity.

I think, I feel, Councilor McDonough, is frustration because I think more communication makes it a little bit better. Are we interested in partnering with DCAM on the ICC? Is that something we're thinking about? Or is that something we're not even, and I think these discussions that the neighborhood councilor and the rest of us should have some understanding. It's been some time since we've been updated and I just think that that's the frustration pieces. Are we letting something just fall apart that still has major value to us? are we maintaining it and where are we going with it what's the time frame on it because i feel uh counselor mcdonough's frustration when you watch a beautiful property like that go south mr manager thank you very much mr vice mayor to the council the council is um

The GAN says yes, but it did only close in June. However, there's always another challenge to this, right? UMBA, I'm not going to get into numbers, but UMBA owes so much money on it, x amount of dollars, and it might actually be worth x minus 2. So there's an issue, there's a challenge there that I've been talking to the administration. That's the Healey-Driscoll administration about it, as well as the Meehan-Chen administration. So there's a little bit of a challenge that we're trying to make that bridge. I'll be down there Saturday to check it out and make sure that we're all good. As a matter of fact, we can go over there tomorrow. This Saturday is when I'm going to be driving around. This would be a great point if we want to move this or take this motion and get a formal written piece from UMBA, et cetera, if that's up to the Council of McDonough. Or I apologize. I don't mean to tell you guys. But that's something we could turn around in a fairly timely manner.

I think that's what we're looking for is what's the updates, and we need more frequent updates, especially when they're larger properties like that. And I think Councilor McDonough brings up a great point, is when we see these large, large properties that have major value in our city, we should be updated regularly. And if we can get those updates more frequently, I think that we'd have more say in it on what people are actually doing, because we don't know. We see a property just deteriorating. Government is never good with real estate. They're always losing money in real estate. That's called government. government buys things, we sell it for less, or we have to subsidize it for people to build. But I thank you, and I agree with Councillor McDonough on the point that we have to figure out what the plan is before it deteriorates to nothing. Thank you.

Councillor McDonough, go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. I want to reiterate just that this is not me looking for any sort of special enforcement or stricter enforcement on the university or on Umba, who actually owns the building. This is me, and it's something that I think many on this council have said about, I guess everyone has their pet institution that they say might have Slightly different rule book and that this is me saying it's actually for me It's everyone in the city should be operating under the same rule book You know whether you're the university or you're you're you know building housing or you're a bar I I think if the rule is that we have a vacancy ordinance and as we we got a report a number of months ago now from assistant city manager about the current state of the vacancy ordinance and there was a whole It spelled out in the ordinance and then there was also a whole a whole list of ways In kind of we made an effort and we're trying Attempts that property owners are able to demonstrate to the city to to waive the the vacancy ordinance So I I think if we're gonna say that, you know i i'd love to trust everyone in the city to just do the right thing but i i think the reason you know a couple councils ago we created the the council created the vacancy ordinance was because you know i i'd love to trust you but let's put it in writing um i think that if this this to me is the council stating uh as we already have but now uh making sure that we know all the tools that we have available to us that um this property, like all of our vacant properties downtown, is a priority. It is part of downtown, and it does need to be addressed, especially when you have some institutions that are looking to do increased property development throughout the city. And one of the concerns I've heard is if you have a number of pots on the stove and you're not finishing with what you got. So I just want to make sure that we're saying, we'll waive the fee if you're making an effort, but we want to see this is a priority for us that you're looking to

get this building occupied and used in a productive way so thank you it's okay with the maker of the motion can we change it from vacancy to get a report and then if something doesn't look good in the report we can go back to vacancy

Yeah, I mean, that's fine. The reason I put the vacancy in there anyway, we can't possibly enforce the vacancy ordinance. They're not within the timeline. So I guess my expectation was that we were going to get a report that said, this is how the vacancy ordinance applies to the property. Here's what they're doing that would waive it anyway. So the report, sure, but the report kind of in the spirit of the vacancy ordinance.

Thank you. All in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to suspend. I think we have a speaker here that's registered and they've been patiently waiting. I think there's a registered speaker on motion 6.8, if I'm correct, Mr. Clerk?

Motion by Councilor Robinson to take 6.8 out of order. Seconded by Councilor Mercy. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Any opposed, so ordered. 6.8, Councilor Robinson requests City Manager to have the traffic engineer install a flashing always stop at the bottom of Mount Pleasant and First Street Boulevard.

We have a registered speaker.

Seconded by Councilor Noon. Mr. Clerk.

Ralph Guerin.

Hi, my name's Ralph Guerin. I live on 29 Fiddler Terrace in Lowell, about 14 years. And come off my street, I take a left, I go to the bottom of Mount Pleasant. I've lost track of how many times I stop at the stop sign. proceed and then almost get broadsided because they just don't stop coming off First Street. So I'm requesting a flashing stop sign on First Street. Now, I will admit the stop sign that's there now is not ideal. It's positioning. So I think some people stop. Some people, I think, don't see the stop sign, and I think some people pretend they don't see the stop sign. So, I don't see a lot of those flashing stop signs in Lowell, but I have seen some recently on 6th Street, which gave me the idea to make this request, and I reached out to Council Robinson. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Council Robinson.

Thank you to the speaker. Again, I think also that area is pretty dark, I believe, because of all the overgrowth and the older lighting in that area. So anything the traffic engineer can do, you just heard the testimony, and it's the gift and the curse. We fixed, thankfully, fixed First Street quite a couple years ago, and now we did see an increase in speeds, and it goes hand in hand. But anything we can do to try to alleviate that, we greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Robinson. All in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed, so ordered. 6.5, Councilor McDonough requests the City Manager work with the appropriate department to explore the feasibility of traffic calming measures at the intersection of Chapel and Elm Street, seconded by Councilor Decoto. Councilor McDonough.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is in the running for most complaint about intersection in my district. I hesitate to say it's the most, because then I'm going to get more complaints about the second most. So we'll say it's a tie. But it's probably not a tie. This intersection used to have a really massive natural speed bump, for lack of a better term, which did cause vehicles to do some swerving at high speeds. The city, with localized paving, was able to repair the kiddie pool sized depression in the middle of the intersection, which is great in terms of I think the vehicle suspension, but not great in that now cars are able to sustain incredibly high speeds on Elm Street, which they're using as a cut through. I've stood at that intersection, I've stood at that intersection in the winter, I've stood at that intersection in the summer. Almost any time I go, Elm Street functions as a cut-through between two really high traffic streets in the city. There's a two-way stop currently existing on Chapel Street. compounded by the problems that already that we already know exist in back central with cars parking all over sidewalks which means we have and i understand that a stop sign or traffic calming doesn't address cars parking on sidewalks but when you've got kids trying to walk to a park or school and they're walking in the middle of the street because the sidewalks are full of cars and then we have vehicles using elm street as a speedway i i just i worry that we need to do something before we have a much bigger problem. So whether that be a temporary four-way stop sign to see how that works or other traffic calming, I don't want to be prescriptive, but that intersection needs more than is there right now. So thank you.

Thank You councillor McDonough all in favor signify by saying aye any opposed so ordered 6.6 councillor new and request the city manager provide the City Council with a report on the city of Lowell's current hiring practices as they relate to criminal background checks Corey sorry, and any applicable fingerprint-based checks for positions involving contact with children in vulnerable populations, including but not limited to mass hire, parks and rec, et cetera, including any gaps between current practices and best practices among comparable Massachusetts municipalities, seconded by Councilor Marcia, Councilor Noon.

thank you mr mayor so mr mayor um you know first ask is that to get a current hiring practice for the city in term of is it related to a criminal record check or sexual offender registry check for the positions that somewhat for individuals that employ in contact with children and maybe a vulnerable population. When we talk about it, we talk about school, for example. When you hire people, you do those background checks and probably even more than just that. So you have incidents already happen in a city school. It didn't happen in the school, but it happened in other schools. We should do a good job, a better job at checking that. And then the other thing, too, is that, Mr. Mayor, so for kids who are working or employed by Mass High, right, we match them in a job. Or kids at, say, a vocational school, we match them with education. yes, Mr. Mayor, with employer, you know, with those profession that they are going to vote or going to a job at Mass High, we need to really vet the employer and not just the employer, the people that employer match with the kid out at work, at job site. Because if you don't do that, You know, we get people that got hired that have not been with its background checked by employer. And that's dangerous for young people. uh uh and and so I'm just saying that we need to do a better job at it work with our police department because they are you know uh expert in this area and checking and maybe looking at other municipalities so that do this kind of check and do a thorough check because we don't want incident to blow up in our face in our city thank you thank you Councilor Noon

All in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered.

Mr. Mayor, can I suspend the rules and take motion response A out of order so that Mr. Fox can get home?

motion by Council mcdonough seconded by council yang to take 7.1 motion response a out of order all in favor signify by saying aye any opposed sword 7.1 mode one motion response a prevalence of odors consulate

You got me caught me off guard here. Thank you. Thank you for the report. Thank you to Mr. Fox and his team for the report and also for hosting a meeting for residents on July 7th. I know that the residents who attended found it very informative and unfortunately was raining heavily that night so we couldn't do a tour of the duck island treatment site but i know that mr fox has offered to do tours in the future and we're trying to figure out a time to or end a day to do that in september we'll still have to coordinate some um But I think that would be a great opportunity for anybody who is both either interested in learning more about our water treatment facilities, but also or about the odor situation, what the wastewater folks are doing to address it. I think they'll find it all very informative. And I thank the team for that.

Thank you, Councilor Duran. Motion to accept and place on file by Councilor Decoto, seconded by Councilor Robinson. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Any opposed, so ordered. 6.9, Councilor Robinson, request the City Manager have the traffic engineer look to install flashing LED speed sign on Vonomav, seconded by Councilor Rook. Councilor Robinson.

Thank you. It's again, it's one of the streets that people are bringing to our attention that you're getting high speeds of traffic on. I know the poor traffic engineer probably has a list a mile long of roads that she's getting requests for these. Any help is greatly appreciated. And also, I mean, while we're talking about that area, YOU KNOW OVER IN THE AREA OF UH THE BOTTOM OF TARTMAN AND VONUM IT'S IT'S THAT'S A LARGE BUS STOP SO I DON'T KNOW IF UM I KNOW THERE WAS A MOTION THAT WAS PUT IN AND I HOPE WE GET THAT THAT RESPONSE SOON ABOUT UH PAINTING CROSSWALKS AROUND SCHOOLS OR BUS STOPS BECAUSE WE'LL BE THAT'LL BE ON US ANY DAY THANK YOU

Thank you, Councilor Robinson.

Councilor Rourke. Thank you, Samir. Yeah, traffic motion by Councilor Robinson. This has been on the minds of people. They just paved the street, which is good and bad. The good is that it's brand new. The bad is that people fly up and down it. So, you know, I expect the Councilor Robinson's motion. We can get that speed sign somewhere. And then the crosswalk he spoke of on either side I think would be beneficial. Like he said, there's at least two dozen kids from the vocational school, low public schools that are there every morning catching the bus. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Rourke. All in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered. 6.10, Council Robinson, may I get your request the city manager have the proper department provide the council with a detailed report on what is our current sewer capacity, what are our sewer capacity ranges, such as during school year, during stormwater events, et cetera, and what other communities do we service? No second needed, Council Robinson.

The motion speaks for itself. I'll wait for the report. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Robinson. All in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered. 6.11. May I get your request, City Manager, to provide the City Council with a report on pros and cons of creating an ordinance closing all bars and restaurants at midnight throughout the city? Second. Seconded by Councilor Noon. Motion speaks for itself unless someone has anything to... Councilor DeCoto. Thank you. Now this motion might get out of control. Councilor DeCoto.

uh not surprisingly i received uh many phone calls in the last three days concerning this motion um through you to you mr mayor what what exactly is the intent of the motion i'm trying to understand that it comes off as it comes off as if you're looking to do this and shut everybody down at midnight and i wanted you to speak on behalf of this thank you

Thank you, Councillor Dakota. He was going to say, motion speak for itself. Now, Mr. Mayor, go ahead.

He wasn't going to get off that easy.

Well, thank you, Councillor Dakota. I truly believe that After midnight, most places are closed. And the ones that are open, we used to have in our day a detail with everyone that was open after that. And I think that details should have to come in if people are coming in after midnight. Because right now, we just cut our police force down. We simply don't have enough police officers to take care of all these places that are out of control in certain areas. And the ones that are not doing this, I understand. I get it. But at midnight, the environment changes. And I think that it's time that we look to protect our residents and protect the people in our city and look at the pros and cons of it. The manager certainly can put that report together after asking what ones are even open. Does anybody in here know what's open after midnight?

Quite a few pubs are still open after that time.

I don't know the answer because I'm in bed by midnight.

Actually, if you ask a lot of pub owners, they'll tell you that most of their business is done between 12 and 2.

Of course, because other communities close between 12 and 2. So we're getting people who are coming here. And right now, we don't have the force on third shift to man this. And we saw it when one event happened at one place. There was another event at the same time. And we just don't have the staffing levels to do it. If there's bars that are over a certain amount of people in them, then you should have to have a detail. We had that before. I remember going down the Shamrock. It was always you had to have a detail. You remember going down the Dubliner. There was a detail. There were details at places when we were kids. Bryan's Ivy Hall, there were details. And now all of a sudden, I don't know why the city went away from it. But I just think that we need to look into it. We're putting ourselves in a risky place, and we don't really need it. That's really the gist of it. It's a pros and cons motion. Let's see where it goes from there. And with the council's wishes, it's not something that I'm saying is a hard deadline. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Vice Mayor? Yes. I do respect the mayor's stance on this. My concern here is that for any prospective restaurant or business coming into the city of Lowell, would make me feel like I'm going to go right past a little connector exit and go on to the next city or town. I believe, once again, being a former bar owner myself, that the onus or responsibility is on the owner. And if it can't be responsible and make sure their business is safe, then they shouldn't be in the business. But are we going to penalize the pubs and the restaurants that want to stay open? I mean, I'm not sure where you want to go with this, Mayor, but you could take the Folk Festival into consideration. How about if we shut down all the bars in the city of Lola at 12 o'clock during that weekend? That probably wouldn't have been good. I am looking forward to the report. I will I'll be open-minded about it, but I think my sentiments speak for themselves. Thank you.

I am sure during special occasions you can increase and have the police force like we did during the Folk Festival around. Council Robinson.

THANK YOU I THINK IT'S A GOOD MOTION LOOKING FOR THE PROS AND CONS ON IT ONE OF THE PROBLEMS I THINK WE HAVE AND THIS HAS BEEN FLUSHED OUT ALREADY AND I BELIEVE WE ARE WORKING TOWARDS IT IS THE IDENTIFICATION OF OR SPLITTING THE DIFFERENCES HERE I think there's a major difference where you walk into a bar or a nightclub at 1230 and there's no food and that's typically where we're seeing police activity being called to compared to you walk into an establishment that everybody's sitting at a table and they're having a bite to eat and grabbing a cocktail. I think those are two different environments and atmospheres altogether. You know, I wouldn't want to penalize the places that people are walking into after a show or just get out of work late and want to grab a bite to eat at 12, 12.30, because there are still a few places that do do that. and those aren't places that we would even realize because they're non-problematic and so i i'm looking forward to report to come back i do agree though taking a look at some of the troublesome places is is huge on this if it's okay with the regular motion could we also include or no i'll file something separate to look at out of our bars and restaurants within the city limits the amount of volume of calls in the past say 12 months to all these locations because I think that will also help to give a clearer picture of where are we looking at and what are the troublesome areas when we get this report back as well that should be in the report Council Robinson but thank you Council McDonough

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I also got a number of phone calls about this one. And I did try and reiterate that pros and cons is study time, not act time. But I think a lot of the calls I got had a very similar sentiment to the calls that my colleague got. I really appreciate Councillor Robinson's add about the volume of calls. The other thing that I would be curious to see in this report would be if we're able to get a breakdown on the local receipts so that we can see what kind of economic activity we're having after 12 o'clock. So when we're thinking about the cost here, both the volume of calls and the cost to the city with LPD trying to bounce on a reduced shift all over the place during this time, from the economic angle, if it's even worth it. Or, in addition to, regardless of what local receipts say, maybe we do need to go back to some kind of additional, whether you're paying for a detail or whatever, not in a way that we're trying to... break anybody, but just to be able to recover the cost. The other thing, one person, one bar owner that had called me had said, and we may still be doing this, but they hadn't heard of it in quite some time, longstanding establishment, that we used to have meetings. I know we still have small business meetings, but there used to be... a semi-regular meeting with representatives from the council, from the license commission, from LPD, local bar owners specifically to try and have a dialogue about what was working and not working on both sides of this. I don't know if we are still doing this. If we are, that's great. Maybe publicize it a little bit more since... I would have expected this person to know about it. If we're not doing it, I think this is something that would be a really nice thing, a good idea, at least on a quarterly basis, as we have more bars specifically coming in. They have concerns. The city has concerns and questions that are unique to bar owners, separate from kind of daytime businesses. So I think trying to maintain that dialogue would be good. So thank you.

Thank you. I haven't got one call, and I filed this motion. Councilor Marcia.

thank you mr mayor i i know that we're discussing bars and restaurants so through you to the city manager mr manager two weeks ago i made a motion about if we could separate bars from restaurants there are no bars according to the rules now and i referred it to the solicitor as well as to the license commission Now, I need some clarification as far as the License Commission is meeting, is it tomorrow? It's tomorrow. It's Thursday. And what time is the License Commission meeting? Six o'clock? Do you have to register in advance for that? And I'm wondering if my motion was referred there, because they have that very issue on the agenda. And I felt compelled to be there to speak, but I didn't know what time it started. 6 o'clock Thursday? And who do I contact to speak at that meeting? Who's the chair?

Counselor, you're just the Secretary of the License Commission.

It's open to the public. You don't have to register to speak. It's open to the public. You can just speak. Okay. That's what I wanted to do. Thank you. Thank you, Counselor Murcia.

Counselor Chow.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate the intent of the motion and also think it's timely, especially when there's talk at the state level about going the opposite direction of what the motion here listing as midnight. The state is talking about much later into the morning. um but i you know i appreciate my colleagues talk uh talking about how this would impact the small businesses uh in our city and this motion kind of bundle what um council rita was talking about i want to bring that up too about bar bought to serve alcohol only or bought to serve with food. And definitely restaurants that serve alcohol, I think those would be in different category. I think they, you know, I look forward to the report, so I hope that will be included to be treated separately in the report, how that will affect, you know, public safety, the residential safety and so forth. But, you know, I look forward to it, but I do think that it should be treated differently, more that, as Councilor Robertson mentioned, maybe a nightclub style versus, like, a family restaurant that happens to serve alcohol after midnight. Those are entirely different, different environment, different settings altogether. So I look forward to the report. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Chau, Councilor Rourke. Councilor Rourke's all set. Roll call, Mr. Clerk.

Councilor Duran. yes counseling yes council mcdonough yes council mercia yes council noon yes council robinson yes council rourke yes council scott council chow yes council dakota yes May I get you?

Yes.

And yes.

Thank you, Mr. Clerk. 6.12, may I get your request? The city manager work with the National Park Service to have the Latin Whitney Monument recognized as a National Historic Landmark. Second. Seconded by Councilor Noon. Thank you, Councilor Noon. Motion speaks for itself. Wow, thank you. All in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered. 6.13, Mayor Gitcher requests the City Manager work with the Lowell Historic Board to restore and enlarge the portrait of Mayor Charles D. Palmer to recognize his work and effort he did in advocating for the construction of our historic City Hall building in the Pollard Memorial Library. Seconded by Councilor Robinson. Motions? Councilor McDonough.

Mr. Mayor, thank you. I just wanted to say that they're there, and I made a joke with you earlier. There has been a theme in the last couple of meetings on these historic preservation ideas, the history of the city. Part of it's the bicentennial. Part of it is we live in a really cool old city. i would just take this opportunity to to just say again that uh i miss having a dedicated person on so we can't i can't do anything about it i'm just voicing my opinion i do miss having a dedicated person on staff who who is able to you know be specialized and work on these kinds of uh important historical things so thank you thank you council mcdonough if no one has an objection i just would like to make a statement from up here about this whole um motion seeing no objections

So Charles Palmer was in charge of the building committee, and he went against the city council to have a building committee put together that actually built City Hall. The largest portrait we have of Charles Palmer is this. my that's it and you know when you come in and you look at the thing you're just like why wouldn't we have something for someone who did so much at the time for this building and it was memorial hall next door so that was the reason why and you know council mcdonough i don't disagree because i'm not really this much of a historian but when you sit in the mayor's offices council rook can attest to council mercia can attest to council chow can attest to You look out a window, you see the Latin Whitney Monument. You go through all this stuff and you're like, why can't we do better? There's another motion going to come forward that's going to put protective glass over some of the mayor's portraits that are out there now and start investing in that because they need to be purified in like Council of Rooks is or... mayor kennedy's was i think they're important pieces of our history and we should try to keep them the way they are like council mercies doesn't have any protective glass on council charles doesn't have any protective class on it i think that if it would be up to them to do that but if they wanted it we should have funding sources to do it council marcia i think that this city hall is a beautiful building

but I think it's lacking a very important component and that is security cameras on this floor. I really believe that because I'm gonna tell you without getting too involved in it, I have a glass case out there. All the stuff that's in it is not mine. It was given to me when I was the mayor, so it belongs to the city of Lowell. I made the motion when Kevin Murphy was the manager, and he got one for me, and he got one for Councilor Elliott. But the motion that I made was for every mayor to give them the opportunity to have a glass case. And if we had to buy it, so be it. I would have done it. But I had all my memorabilia that was given to me. You couldn't fit a toothpick in between each item. And I thought to myself, gee, thank God I didn't get anything else. I wouldn't know where to put it. Look at it now when you leave this building, and you will see that you could put your fist, your arm in between. And my name plate was like this, ready to fall. I know who did it. I can't prove it. There's no camera. I wish we had a camera. Aw, stupid me. I wish I took a picture in advance to say this is what it looked like when I put it together. Now look at it. Where's the stuff? Only one person had the key at the time and blamed somebody else. I won't get into it, but we need cameras here. There's vandalism that takes place, and we have no proof of anything. So if you're talking about glass for my picture, I don't care what they do to it. Put a camera there so I can catch the person that's going to do it. That's the way I look at it.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Marcia. All in favor of the motion, signify by saying aye. Any opposed, so ordered. Seven, communications from the city manager. 7.1, motion responses.

motion response b monument committee we have four different people council mercy council duran council dakota council rooks who wants to go first council mercy thank you mr mayor my comment for all those requests for various remarkable people at the different locations were all thought out brilliantly and to all those involved in this tremendous undertaking we thank all of you who are involved the Monument Committee, the Lowell Garden Club, the different neighborhood groups, the 911 Never Forget Committee, and the local florists, the Lowell Parks Department, and the Board of Parks, and the City Manager's Office, all the people that work there that took part. We thank you all for your dedication to our city, and I'm very grateful because we got a good report on all the different councillors that made motions on benches for different remarkable people. Thank you. Thank you, Council Mercia. Council Dakota.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Kudos to Mr. Expedia for helping facilitate the process with Bernie and Nancy Judge's monument. We should have it completed very soon. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Council Dakota. Council Rook. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Manager, I think the mayor and myself are looking for more like a DPW truck with New Hampshire plates on it for Bo Jeans. So if you can make that fixed, that'd be great. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Rook. Councilor Durant.

uh thank you mr mayor um with respect to the garden of peace at the top of fort hill park um i just wanted to confirm and i appreciate the uh importance of having a place for families to honor their loved ones who have been um who have suffered. Just curious, because I do think a lot of people bring their dogs up to Fort Hill Park, up there to walk them around, and I don't view that as being disrespectful, but I would want to make sure that people don't lose that opportunity. I think we have, a number of our parks are so passive that we are losing the ability to just sort of be in them. So I'm curious if there is what sort of if what the expectation is, I guess.

Thank you very much, Mr. May, through to the council. Counselor, I apologize. You're talking about the Garden of Peace, correct?

Yes, for the moment, yes.

I know that the folks that are trying to start the garden piece, they picked the location. And Mr. Rogers, we had this meeting together, so I'm going to rely on you a little bit more here.

Sure. So to answer your question, I think what you're asking is whether or not people would still be able to use that as a park, like a passive park and walk their dogs and walk through it. And yes, that would definitely be the case. We've gone up, we've looked at the space. It's fairly large. It's not permitted by the Board of Parks for anything else in terms of like events or games or any of that sort of thing. So when we brought the families up there to kind of check that space out, It's quiet, it's a nice place for reflection, and they loved it. So we just thought that would be a nice area. But it would definitely not, we wouldn't restrict anybody else from using it.

Okay, yeah, because I think that's important that we allow people to use parks in all the good ways that they can be used. Thank you.

Councilor Duran, there is an ordinance on the books that dogs can't be in parks, so we might want to revisit that. okay yeah it might be something that you want to put in them yeah maybe that makes sense thank you thank you motion accept and place on file by Councilor Noon seconded by Councilor Rourke all in favor signify by saying aye any opposed so ordered motion 7.1c Bicentennial Park Councilor Mercy or Councilor Duran Council Duran

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I actually had a similar comment here. So the Jackson Street Pocket Park is the location for this bicentennial park. And I know that the motion talked about having this be a passive park. And I've looked up passive and active, which I thought I understood, but I understand now better in terms of parks than I did even a couple weeks ago. The Jackson Street Park is supposed to be, and I quote from the city's website, a new intergenerational playground slash park, and it goes on. so it is a place where people can play and kids can play and it has that kind of it has picnic tables benches etc so i view this as um something where people are going to hang out and are going to learn about you know the women who are in have been in lowell um as a result and i just wanted to confirm that that is how this park will be used that it's not going to be just you know closed off and and won't have laughter for instance in it

Manager Golan?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, through you to the council. Council, that is correct. I was looking for my assistant city manager, but she stepped out for a moment. But that does passive in the sense of, yes, small kids, playgrounds, stuff like that, not basketball courts, baseball, or anything like that. Not that it's large enough, but that's tend to be how we look at that.

thank you and then um and i appreciate the work that the uh library has done and others to identify some of the women who might be honored there i think there are many women both past present and in the future uh who we want to honor there i thought about um you know and and i think we should be very thoughtful about being inclusive of folks like um you know caroline von vronker who is the first woman at lowell high to integrate and make that a co-ed school um but others from the past and you know we may want to be thoughtful about or careful about including current people but um i think it could be broad it should be broadly inclusive um perhaps with a focus on Jam area folks but since this is the only park in the city it should really be inclusive of women throughout the city and um just as we talked a few weeks ago about the monuments around city hall and having maybe a qr code as a way to gather the info so it doesn't go stale and it can be expanded this might be an opportunity to do something similar where you know we don't just honor five women but there is more information that could be accessible to folks

through the internet shockingly manager thank you very much mr may through the council council that's exactly what we've been talking you know that's our thought process that this is something that's going to grow as we look through the city we've named parks after a whole bunch of things uh But we never really, we wanted to take the opportunity when I was talking to Councilor Mercy about this, to have a place where we're honoring the women of Lowell. So today it starts with three, four, five, six. It could be whatever this council or the parks and the monument committee wants it to be in the future. But definitely it would be inclusive of, I think, everyone throughout the city of Lowell. That's the initial intent. I don't want to speak for the councilor.

And thank you, Mr. Mayor and Mr. Manager. And it isn't just about women of today. It's women in the past. It doesn't have to be women veterans or whatever. But I'm thinking of a woman that came from the Acre, born and bred. Margaret, we called her Peg. And I know that Danny Rourke knew her very well. Could you just say something?

about this thank you council members there and the motion when filed by council scott geron and marcia i i thought it was you know more than just it was appropriate it needed um you know you know i did have a couple of conversations and uh you know but you know my grandmother um peg rock she was part of the first uh navy uh unit that broke code during world war ii It was an all-female unit, and that's all they did. You know, she served on naval warships. And I think, you know, my family, and it would be a great honor if she could be a part of it. I know it's very pro-girls to me, but, you know, who cares? i appreciate uh council mercia for for uh for bringing her up um you know my grandfather and grandmother are huge fans of council mercia as well so i think they'll be touched knowing that this happens thank you that's what it's all about these are a remarkable woman in this city thank you council mcdonough

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. It had nothing to do with this motion, but the park is on Jackson Street, and I really like it. So I wanted to just say, one, I walked by the other day. It certainly redefines my understanding of a passive park in a good way. It looks like it's going to be very fun. I was a little skeptical of the layout of that park even a year ago, but seeing it start to get built, it looks fun. My only question, and I fully admit I should have said this when the motion was made, but I wasn't really visualizing what this was going to look like, is one idea, and it's okay if everybody else hates it, it's okay if the manager hates it, would be that the Lawrence Mills Park might serve just hearing how many women and how much is going on and Just from a sizing Thought here is that this Jackson Street Park doesn't actually have a lot of space Lawrence Mills is on the Riverwalk in Yeah, so my thought just and it's not it's not at all where the moat and so I don't I'm not trying to be prescriptive at all I'm just thinking hearing about how many important women there are, and I'm trying not to limit us to what is effectively half of a normal building. That Jackson Street Park is incredibly small. I love it, but it's very small. The Lawrence Mills Park has a lot of open space where you know, all of this interpretive material and stuff could be. Just a thought. We don't need to talk. We don't need to debate it. We don't need to vote on it. I just wanted to make the suggestion. So thank you. Council Marcia.

Yes, thank you. That is a good suggestion. I'm not saying that what we have is set in stone, but we can investigate and look and compare because, you know, we might think there's probably a handful of women and there's probably more than that. You know what I'm saying? Thank you. Yeah, good idea. If you don't mind, we can investigate.

Motion to accept and place on file by Councilor Mercier, seconded by Councilor McDonough. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered. 7.1, motion response D, CPA funds. Councilor Noon.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. CPA fund is very popular. Everyone want a piece of it, okay? So, Mr. Mayor, I appreciate the report and I thank you for the CPC committee for volunteering their time. I noticed that report, at least between FY 2021 to 2026, almost quarter million dollars state matching fund. From the report 2022 to 2026, I noticed that especially 2024 and 2025 in second page, you have about 56 and 2025 is 70% is going to historical preservation. It's good to restore the historical building and all that. I'm all for it. Mulford, especially, Mr. Mayor, your motion earlier with the former mayor who is very instrumental in building this city hall and the library. Right, Mr. Mayor? former Mayor Charles Palmer.

Mr. Palmer, yep.

Yeah, yeah. So, yes, going to that, you know, historical. Use that for that. I would say this to the CPC member. Please put a break on at least a couple years on funding or do funding less on the historical building that has to do with mill, smokestack restoration. You look at one over there near the ballpark and one over there. This is privately owned. Privately owned. Condo privately owned. Yes, I understand historical. They are eligible for that. They can get that. That's one of the pieces that they can get. I suggest that going forward, given that we have budget issues next year and the year after, put more on open space and recreation as well as the affordable housing, or maybe put a break on at least a couple of years on historical preservation, with the exception of the big plaque for former Mayor Palmer. So I urge the committee to do that, to bring more on the other side to this council for approval going forward the next few years. I hope the committee listens. I do care about historical, but historical that owned by condo owner, private condo owner, and have us being paid for that. Come on, please.

Thank you, Councilor Noon. Councilor Dakota.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Through you to either CFO Baldwin or Assistant Manager Baez-Rose. In the report, it shows that We, therefore, the balance remaining unused will be $809,000. Why do we have such an amount of that? I mean, why aren't we using those monies?

CFO Baldwin.

Thank you, Ms. Mayor. So, $809,000 is the amount remaining. So, and just to walk through the report, it takes the undesignated fund balance and reduces it by the projects that were approved just about a month ago or so. There is a minimum under the community preservation law that 10% must be allocated to the certain categories, open space, historic preservation, community housing. There is not necessarily a requirement to use all of the money every year, and I think although I certainly don't want to speak for the Community Preservation Committee, that it has been their practice to keep an amount in reserve because when they get, there is always more requests than they have money. And so it provides the flexibility to fund some projects in excess of what may be a standard minimum. I guess my question, what is the standard minimum?

yeah it's really a matter that the community preservation committee um considers and and decides so i i i can't speak to their i mean i do understand and there's so many requests for the monies that why aren't we using the monies to to help them is like maybe that's my

CFO Ball?

Perhaps I would only offer that, you know, and this is listed on the first page of the report from the auditor, the state match is variable, and it is dependent upon the real estate market, and so you see in the report that during the, right after COVID, when sales were still happening, but more importantly, a lot of people were refinancing their Their mortgages and so the fee that was recorded and then put into the state bucket that funds it was higher It may be that the CPC is Guarding against future downturns in the economy It would not be it would be a prudent if they were doing that so that in future lien times, they would have that available balance. But, uh, that's the best I got counselor. You'd have to ask them. That's good enough. Thank you.

Thank you, Dakota. I would think that the applicants don't warrant the money's expenditure. You just don't throw money at things unless it warrants what they want expended. So that's why there's extra funding. I would think, I would think you're not just going to give somebody $800,000 just because you want to get it off the books. You want to make sure it meets what you feel is good.

Understandable. I get it. It just seemed like close to a million dollars here. That kind of caught my eye. Thank you.

Councilor Duran. Thank you very much. First, to Councilor Noon's concern about how the money has been allocated, I did quickly look at it. It looks like over the four years, $2.26 million went to open space, $2.7 went to historic, and $2.4 to affordable housing. So we're talking about roughly a third-ish to each. I appreciate it's not exactly that. And I am of the view that all this money should not be allocated or spent every year. I think this is, in effect, a savings account for the CPC to use. And if we just dribble it out on an annual basis, even though there are important projects, and I know open space has gotten a lot of attention, but there are a lot of other needs in this city. If we are ever faced with the opportunity to do something big, the money won't be there if we just spend it on an ongoing basis. So I respect that the CPC is independent and should be taking those things into account. My only question is that some of the projects that were approved in past years, including as far back as 2022, have not yet been started. and so that makes me wonder what's going on with the money and um i would like to understand how we deal with that um because the money shouldn't just be sitting there unused um i don't know if there is something that the city can address or how that gets managed thank you

thank you very much uh mr may three to the council council we could try to give them a call and ask but i know that coming from the state side typically um and i'm looking at one right here sorry The housing. Sorry about that, guys. This is what, don't go blind. The Hadley housing.

I could read them to you if that's helpful. Sorry about that.

So, I mean, 150,000 for Hadley housing. We've been trying to do that for, I can't tell you the number of years we've tried to do it because I know that they're looking for other monies. That's on round two approved in 6-27-23. So I know that they're waiting for other monies to come in from the state. in that, or the federal government. So that's kind of probably one of the reasons. But I can follow up with them, if you wish, to ask them which ones haven't started and for what reason.

Well, I mean, so this shows, for instance, one is a city hall project. The stained glass restoration is sitting there. but that one i feel less concerned about because in a sense it's in our your hands um but there are ones that are whistler house landscaping um downtown lowell building restoration loan fund the first united church bell and wheel replacement um though you know some are for bigger and smaller amounts but they have been sitting it appears for four years manager gold

Thank you very much, Mr. May, through the council. Council, you bring up a great point with the stained glass. That's another one. We did put it out to bid, but we didn't get any bidders back. So we're probably going to end up putting it back out again, which is kind of surprising to us. We want to keep the stained glass that we have. I'm not so sure who does that type of work. But once again, working with the state in years past, Getting someone to do this type of work isn't exactly the easiest. But I'll have, we'll reach out to the CPA, the CPC committee, and ask them if they could just give us an update on every project. Those are the two that I know of just off the top of my head. But we'll get a not started, why are they not started, and get it over to the council.

OKAY, GREAT. AND THEN LAST QUESTION IS BECAUSE THERE IS SOME MONEY SITTING THERE, YOU KNOW, WAITING TO BE ALLOCATED WHEN IT'S APPROPRIATE. IS THAT MONEY INVESTED? IS THERE SOME RETURN THAT THE CITY GETS ON THAT? THANK YOU.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yes. The answer to your question is yes. It's a special revenue fund pursuant to Chapter 44B. All of the interest earned on the cash in the fund is credited to the fund. And if I may, Mr. Mayor, there are two projects on here that are different than the others. And the council and the CPC have this ability, and it maybe isn't straightforward. But for Rowley's Farm and the City Hall stained glass, project those were funded through a loan order so the the community preservation committee although it requires a council vote as well can borrow money for projects so the 1.5 million dollars which is the one that's complete that was a loan order that was issued and we borrowed the 1.5 million and then it's paid back each year by that portion of the uh the funds for open space so it shows as a 1.5 million dollar expenditure but it wasn't using 1.5 million dollars in cash from the fund that year and sort of on the other side although related the city hall stained glass project was also a loan order those are the only two and we did them right away when we first started the community preservation act when it was first adopted in lowell those were our first two experiences but they are sort of different so i just wanted to point that out thank you

Thank you, Councilor Duran. Councilor McDonough. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

I just want to say that I thank Councilor Noon very much. I agree with him wholeheartedly. I support this idea. I want to echo my own support here and hope that the Community Preservation Committee can start looking at more open space projects and considering when we say historic preservation, it's a really big umbrella. So is this a super large apartment building? Is this a smaller structure? Whatever. And the other thing is just that while I understand that the overall breakdown comes out to being roughly a third, a third, a third from 22 to now, is that open space is not Open space is not a need that is equal across the city in the amount of need for open space. I think if you, you know, I could rattle off a list. I'm sure that the councillor from the acre could rattle off a list. I'm sure the councillor from Centerville could rattle off a list. I'm sure if councillor Scott were here in Southwell and the other half of back central, she could rattle off a list that in the core of the city where we have in some of these projects that are funded. We have increased density, which is great, and more people is great, and more housing is great, whether it's in a historic building or it's affordable housing or it's market rate, whatever is great, that we don't have yards. If we have a yard, it's a postage stamp. We don't have a park. The nicest parks in the city, and I love Raleigh's Farm, but the nicest parks in the city are on the outskirts of the city. Shed Park is out. We don't own the state forest, and I get that, but you can live in Pawtucket. You got a house in Pawtucketville. You can be right up on that state forest line. You have lots of open space, which is phenomenal. I'm very jealous of you. And you get Raleigh's Farm. I'm incredibly jealous. And this is not, I'm not attacking anyone from Pawtucket. This is just saying, I want to be super clear. I wish I had your house. random Pawtucketville person who lives near the state forest. In the center of the city, we don't have that. We don't. We're getting a Jackson Street Park, which is great. It has a slide. I'm excited. The Acre has North Common, but increasing open spaces, as we increase people, people need more than a place to sleep. They need more than a place to buy a cup of coffee. They need a reason to go outside. They need a back porch that we are sorely missing throughout the dense part of the city. So while I understand And I appreciate the concern from other councilors and the priority that it sounds like most of this council has on open space. I would just ask that we remember that all open space spending, and I'm very happy with Raleigh's Farm, but that open space spending on the perimeter of the city where people do have yards and have existing nice parks, those... That shouldn't be used, I don't think, should be used as an offset to the spending on the kind of usable space that people living in the urban core should also have access to. So thank you.

Councilor Rook. Mr. Mayor, I told you the South Common is in the Highlands. I told you that was the matter.

I'm working on it. Councilor Robinson.

thank you um i do agree with some of the things that were mentioned it's it's clearly with with the community preservation not all open space projects are equal just like not all historic preservation projects are equal and just not all community housing projects equal um i'm hoping that the council gets a list presented coming up sooner rather than later some of the at least smaller projects that that we're going to be pursuing internally for open space on the next allocation for next year because i understand we held off pursuing it due to arpa but now i think there are some pieces that would really accentuate some of the projects that we've already taken on and and in some cases installed a perfect example that I could point to over in Centerville the the residents are absolutely loving and thrilled with the Splash Park the playground I think the team of um economic development and DPD did an amazing work what the plan is and everyone that made that happen But now that it's open, some of the things that stand out is the lack of shade. Maybe a couple picnic tables, and I've seen in other places where they run wiring with an awning over it for some kind of shade. Or even... a restroom facility you know those are two things that jump out uh there's small things that I think are necessary as a result of some of the larger projects and with open space since we've been so kind of easy on that and not not pursuing it aggressively I hope we get a list of some of the smaller pet projects that we're going to be pursuing for next year thank you

Motion to accept and place on file by Councilor Chow, seconded by Councilor Decoto. All in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered. 7.1, motion response E, grant expenditures. Councilor Newham.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to thank some assistant city managers for fiscal affair, Connor Baldwin for the report. If I could, I want to know, give me a synopsis of, say, school lunch program. a synopsis as how do a school lunch program adhere to a federal compliant with you working with the auditors and the school department? Go ahead.

CFO Baldwin.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So the report provides a summary for the council. And as of our last completed SIFA schedule of expenditure for federal awards, which was fiscal year 2025, of all the federal funds that flow through the general ledger, which in total were just under $82 million, specifically The amount of federal money that comes to the city touches a lot of different departments, generally speaking. It is concentrated in the education field. And there are a number of grants from the Department of Education, special education type grants from the IDEA, et cetera. And then there is also, it flows through the Department of Agriculture, the school lunch program. Now, the number for FY 2025 is $13 million that was spent. And the oversight and regulation of the funds and adherence to federal protocols, we have our own, you know, we have to abide by the federal policies. We have our own, and it's attached with the report, COSO policy. Those funds are administered by the school department. They have a contract with Aramark that helps them with compliance and filling out the appropriate paperwork and maintaining the proper internal controls. And that number is just just over $13 million for FY 2025. All of these grant programs are administered by the department. So the police department administers grants related to the Department of Justice. Department of Health and Human Service, through our Health and Human Service, et cetera. And so those finance officials in the departments administer sort of the day-to-day. There is the additional check and balance of my office and the city auditor's office provides an internal audit function. I hope that provides some information towards your question.

Thank you. So you notice in your report, third page in your report, you said that the result, there's four findings. that the city council should be aware of. And you said that you're working with the administration, the school, to address it. Should the council be concerned of that?

CFO Baldwin?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yes. The concern, to the extent that it should be monitored, we are working with the schools on the findings. And just to provide some explanation, as part of the engagement with our audit firm, they provide us with the basic financial statements and then the schedule of expenditure for federal awards that I mentioned, the SIFA. Part of that is that if there are any findings, they write them up, they give them to the city. That is what is referenced in the report. There were four findings for our 2025 SIFA, all of which were related to school department grants. I think three of the four of them are related to special education grant funding. Things like what they call time and effort, reporting, and some of these are repeats. Those, I think, would be the ones that are the most concerning, as they've provided a finding, we've provided a response, and then they've, meaning they've appeared prior to 2025. So they've been on the 24 report, and I think some of them have appeared prior.

So step being taken to address it and closely monitor, Is that correct?

That's right. And part of the engagement, the school department provides a written response to the findings. It's not included here in this report, but it is available publicly. And that is the action plan or there's a specific name for it that escapes me at the moment, but like remediation plan. The schools have been doing a better job. This is something that has plagued the school department for many years in different areas. Many years ago, I'm gonna guess to say five or six years ago, there were issues with the school lunch program, so much so that we were designated as a high risk awardee, which places us in a different category and requires additional audit work during the audit. Things have gotten much better since then. We are working with the school business office on these issues. We meet monthly, all of the finance team members, and this is one of the topics we do cover and will continue to monitor.

So you will continue to update this council of this progress, this four-item finding, is that correct? That's right, Councillor. Mr. Mayor, I've noticed that in this report, or those, the report period is 2025. It's interesting that, you know, we do need this money, $8.2 million, in addition to the, you know, the F5-2027-6 hundred and fifty four million dollar i think without this 81 you know the the public need to know without this tell you we will have much much trouble in terms of uh finance for the city so uh i know that this is only for 2025 do we have uh 2026 uh period report cfo ball

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. It is underway. So the engagement takes several steps. They have begun the 2026 audit. Of course, we're only about one and a half months removed from the conclusion of FY26. In a normal course of business, we would look to be completed before March. There's a filing deadline that happens in March for the prior year. So to answer your question, we are underway on the FY26 audit. The SIFA is part of that engagement. And although it has taken longer the last few years for a number of reasons, one of which is that our audit firm was bought out twice, We do expect by the early winter of calendar year 2027, we will have completed the 2026 SIFA, and we'll have that report to share with the council, and the proof will be in the pudding at that point.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Councilor Noon. Motion to accept and place on file by Councilor Robinson, seconded by Councilor Marcia. All in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered.

7.1 motion response f no fy 27 reduction in force council geran thank you very much mr mayor um i know the layoff was a tough situation for everybody in the city residents employees administration uh to go through and I appreciate the analysis and what we learned. First, I think it's important for residents to know that about 88% of the city's budget includes non-discretionary costs, and so that there's not a lot of leeway there. I THINK IT WAS I APPRECIATE THAT 12 UNIONS COOPERATED IN TRYING TO ADDRESS THE CITY'S BUDGET CONCERN BUT IT SOUNDS LIKE THREE DID NOT AND SO THAT'S UNFORTUNATE AND IF I UNDERSTAND CORRECTLY THE UNIONS THAT DID COOPERATE DEFERRED THE TWO PERCENT COLA THE ONE THAT WAS IT'S DUE FOR FISCAL YEAR 27 UNTIL JUNE OF 2027 SO DEFERRED IT FOR 11 MONTHS AND IN RETURN Received five paid days off. Okay, so I am interpreting that correctly the document mentioned six dates or days so I don't know if they're if Like I think yeah, maybe you could explain the difference there manager golden.

Thank you very much. Mr. Mayor three to the council So you are correct. We had a number of vast majority of our unions participated in trying to save some positions. And the reason that we have six days is because there are two days that are Fridays and it's only eight to 12. So, and we tried to take it, you know, working here now for the last four and a half years, This couldn't have worked out any better, to be quite frank with you. July 2 happened to be before the holiday. July 2 was a Thursday. The holiday is actually the 3rd, which was a Friday, and the 4th was on a Saturday. So it was kind of a nice opportunity for everybody here. And then you could just go along and continue. You know, December 24th, quite frankly, counselor, tumbleweeds are here. So we figured if we gave everyone enough time, enough opportunity, and the unions really appreciated that. And November 25th is the same.

No, I understand. Thank you.

So that's what we've tried to be cognizant of, and we're very thankful for those unions that helped to participate.

Thank you. And so it looks like there was supposed to be initially or the need to save $7 million initially from the report. But the actual net savings was $1.9 million. So trying to understand how that worked out.

CFO Baldwin? Yeah.

It's significant discretionary funding, right, that was cut. Things that we've normally been able to do on a fairly regular basis, we are going to see that it's going to get a little bit tighter, a little bit tougher. You know, I was just texting with one of your colleagues, and we were talking about new park benches, right? Great idea, but in years past, it was something we could do. This year, maybe. Sure, it's a park bench. Can we get it done?

Sure.

At one point in time, the city manager had a discretionary fund that would come to the council and ask to move money from the discretion, uh, the managers contingency fund, excuse me, manages contingency fund to go fund, uh, you know, an item or something. We don't have a manager's contingency fund anymore. So that's where some of the scale backs have, uh, have happened. Um, from, from that perspective, uh, we took the worst case scenario. And if people remember, we got hit again, um, I really would prefer to forget this timeframe, but the House budget at the end of, I believe it was April, hit us with a substantial, Uh, gut punch, if you would. And then by this, by the time the Senate came in, we still ended up losing a little bit of money. Um, and traditionally, and I would leave this to the CFO as well, but, um, we try to, we try to be as conservative as possible on revenue collections. Um, you know, the budget that we put together every year, uh, right now it's stagnant. It's out there, people see it, but it's stagnant. Those revenues that we're hoping for are conservative enough, although I know that we did raise them a little bit, Um, that if for instance, excise tax don't hit a percentage that could create issues in the future. Um, but we're hoping with the conservative approach that we've normally taken, we should be okay. I hope that's, but that's where, where we, that's where the toggles are. CFO can speak to this. There are many different toggles through that debt, through our, through our revenue side of. Are we comfortable going a little bit more on excise tax because of the years past? And I will tell you, in the legislature, we ran into this problem years ago when we were accepting capital gains tax. We went down this road of always saying, oh, wow, we're going to always get $3 billion, I think. And it tanked one day. And we were in the hole. So that's why here, from past practice, we try to be as conservative as possible. But we did goose them up a little bit.

OK, and thank you. And it looks like the initial plan was that the city might have to lay off 50 employees, but that the end result was 23 employees were laid off. And was that, I mean, did the COLA deferral, was that really, what was the reason for that difference in what was initially expected and where it ended up?

Thank you very much. The COLA deferral would be approximately, I think it was $1.7 million, $1.8 million. I apologize, 1.4. We know the exact numbers. And that really just helped us to lower the amount of people that potentially would be laid off. And that was when we really got to the end with the unions that participated, that there was a $1.4 million savings. And I thought it was important that We only, I guess, enjoyed 11 months, if you would, of that, where people got it before the next CBA, the Coalition Bargaining Agreement, which we'll be into in 2027. I think it was important not to zero it out, but to say thank you very much. taking the 11-month hiatus or pause. And thank you for doing that. And here are the six days off, really equate to five, but with the four hours. I hope that answers your question.

Yeah, I think so. It sounds like employees were actually left the building the day they were notified, and I was just curious about is that best practice. It's been a long time since I've had to deal with layoffs personally, and that's not how it was done decades ago, but I know the world has changed, so I'm curious about that.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, through to the council. Council, I believe it was May 11th and 12th because the evening of the budget was May 12th when it was going to be put forth. And the council would see an actual budget. And for instance, if Tom Golden's name was not in it, we didn't want people to learn at that time. So we brought everybody in on May 11th and May 12th to have those discussions and then allow them the week to think about what the next bumping. And we had union issues with bumping and non-bumping, et cetera, which we did fix. But we also gave, people didn't, they were given till May 29th. May 29th. So we gave about a two and a half week severance. If you want to look at it that way, I'm trying to let people know, but I really felt strongly. And it was a comment that was made by a council here that talked about It's just ending. And it was very cognizant about trying to give some type of severance, even though we didn't have to. But I thought that that was important, to allow people some running room. As everybody knows, it was a completely uncomfortable time frame, but it's unfortunate. We're still, we're still, Concerned about the following year's budget. And, uh, you know, we hope that, you know, our predictions really is what it is with revenue and, um, and, um, uh, expenses stay where they are. And quite frankly, revenue goes up, uh, expenses would go down. I hope, but, um, I hope that answers that portion of the question.

THANK YOU. MY LAST POINT IS IN ADDITION TO MY LAST POINT IS IN ADDITION TO THE LESSONS LEARNED THAT WERE THE LESSONS LEARNED THAT WERE MENTIONED IN THE REPORT, I MENTIONED IN THE REPORT, I APPRECIATE THE EMPHASIS ON APPRECIATE THE EMPHASIS ON LEARNING AND CROSS TRAINING IN LEARNING AND CROSS TRAINING IN THE CLOSING NOTE. THE CLOSING NOTE. I THINK THAT'S AN INVESTMENT I THINK THAT'S AN INVESTMENT THAT INDIVIDUALS AND THE CITY in each other in effect to help the individuals to be able to take on new roles and preserve jobs if things get tight but also the city as people will have additional skills so I just want to always emphasize that that's something we should all keep in mind thank you

You all set?

Yes, thank you. Sorry.

Thank you. Motion to accept and place on file by Councilor Yang, seconded by Councilor Noon. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Any opposed, so ordered. 7.1, motion response G, process for revolving claims, potholes, plows. Plow damage, et cetera. Councilor Duran.

Thank you very much. Thank you for this report. I think it's and I would direct all residents to read it to understand the process so that they know what to do and don't feel frustrated by it. I think it's important to understand the difference between city maintained roads and state maintained roads, which I hadn't appreciated until reading the report and that the city has no liability for car damage from potholes on state maintained roads and neither does the state so um And I think what's also interesting and maybe a good reason for people to use the 311 system is that claims that a pothole on a city maintained road has damaged a car requires that the city be on notice of the pothole. And so the 311 system and putting pothole notices into that is important. It's a good way to keep the data up to date and also for residents who might be impacted to realize the city would be on notice. And claims must be submitted within 30 days of the incident. So again, I'm just trying to sort of give a quick summary for folks. And just wanted to make sure that the other part of the report, which was that plow damage to real or personal property from plowing or paving work, like to lawns and cars and plantings that those are covered in the second part of the report um I I think it referred I've got to pull it up again but it referred specifically to oh goodness I'm sorry to um I JUST WASN'T SURE THE EXAMPLES DIDN'T INCLUDE THAT BUT I'M ASSUMING THAT PART C OF THE REPORT DOES INCLUDE FOR INSTANCE CLAIMS BY A RESIDENT IF THEIR PROPERTY THEIR LAWN OR WHATEVER WERE DAMAGED BY PLOWS AND I SEE THE CITY SOLICITOR NODDING SO I WILL TAKE THAT AS A YES Thank you.

Cool. I'm set. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilor Duran. Motion to accept and place on file by Councilor Robinson, seconded by Councilor Chau. All in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed? So ordered. If it's the wish of the body, if we could take each next and two weeks from now when Councilor Scott is here, because this is Councilor Scott's responsibility. So you want to take it up? Okay. 7.1, motion response H, budget successor in legislative relief. Councilor Scott is not here. Does anybody have any comments? Councilor Decoto.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I feel like I'm living in the movie Groundhog Day. I believe, CFO Baldwin, this will probably be the third letter that we send to our representatives. Is that correct? I've been hopping on this for a few years now.

CFO Baldwin.

Counselor, I think there have been more. I've been doing this for about 14 years now, and it has come up before that we have petitioned the legislature regarding a number of these issues, but at least, yes, a few times before.

So it's my hope that the three new representatives that get into the State House will take this serious. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Dakota. Councilor Duran.

Thank you very much. I do want to just mention that the Finance Subcommittee meeting, which we held earlier today, there was quite a detailed discussion about these points by the CFO, and they will be attached to the minutes, the presentation that was given. So just wanted to also point people who want more information to that material. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Duran. Councillor McDonough.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I spoke about this at the subcommittee meeting, but just to say one more time, I think I've put a finer point on what I was trying to say in the subcommittee meeting. In looking at the charter reimbursement and sharing some of Councillor Dakota's frustration, Part of the conversation was in trying to think about what are things that we can do without our state representatives, what tools are available in the municipal toolbox. With my focus here being how can we treat charter schools the same way that we treat the low public schools as far as net school spending goes. if we're able to, if it's legal, and then if we can get the number. And even if it's not legal, if we can get the number and throw that at our state reps and let them know how much money they're costing us. For the municipal services that we right now, the city is paying for in addition to cash payment, where when it's the low public schools, if the fire alarm goes off at the low public schools, we charge that fire drill to their net school spending. Right now, the understanding is if one of the charter schools in the city has a fire drill, they don't have to pay us, and also we give them the check for all their money. And that's one of many examples, but just trying to see what kinds of municipal services that we are providing to these charter schools so that we can try and recoup some of that cost through net school spending the same way we already do it. So thank you.

Thank you, Councilor McDonough. All in favor, signify. Motion to accept and place on file. Councilor Mercier, seconded by Councilor Yang. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered. 7.2, information reports. Transportation, Manager Golden. Very briefly.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. I apologize. I thought we, never mind. Transportation Department, is there any questions on this just as regards to the LEAP program with technical assistance in the high crash areas? This is really just letting everybody know as to what we have been doing with Liz Altman in that area. Any thoughts, concerns, please let us know.

Seeing none, motion to accept and place on file by Councilor Rook, seconded by Councilor Duran. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Any opposed, so ordered. 7.2, information report, initiation of city's cable licensing processing. Mr. Manager.

Thank you very much, Mr. May, through to the Council. Councilors, this is just, we're in the first inning of this, maybe the second inning. This is hopefully looking to potentially bring in competition with the current vendor. So as I was saying, we're in the second inning of a nine inning game here, but we just wanted to let folks know what is happening as of now.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, through you to the city manager. On the fourth paragraph, it said, according to the city cable licensing process, no members of the public, interested parties, or potential applicants appeared to offer comments. Of course not. Are you surprised to see that? When we had such a thing sometime many years ago, RNC wanted to be a competitor. Next thing you know, they were nonexistent, because it almost seemed like whoever was monopolizing the thing paid them off to go away. So what kind of a person is going to want to waste their time knowing that the same thing could possibly happen? I mean, I think competition is healthy, especially for the ratepayer, but let's be honest. There's a monopoly so strong that there's not going to be any competition here. That's my personal opinion. It's not what I'm told, but it's what I'm observing. Mr. Manager.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, through the council. Council, we are actively pushing to hopefully get a second party interested. That may or may not happen, but we're actively going after that.

I mean, you're doing your job, but it's an effort in futility, isn't it? Don't answer. I'm answering for you. That's exactly what's happening. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Marcia. Councillor Duran.

Thank you very much. I wasn't actually aware of the public hearing on July 21st, and I don't know if I'm the only one who missed that message, but I certainly didn't know it was going to happen, and I might have been there if I was. well you would have been the only one there i might have been the only one there but i've been there in the past for those meetings so i when i was the only i think person so i i just think i'm not sure the communication was as thorough as the memo implies so i would request that we make sure it is really publicly announced in the future. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Duran. Motion to accept and place on file by Councilor McDonough, seconded by Councilor Chau. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Any opposed, so ordered.

Mr. Mayor.

We need a motion to bundle 8.2 to 8.8 by Councilor Mercy, seconded by Councilor Robinson.

Absolutely.

And I just want to say that 8.7 requires eight votes, so I don't know how we're going to do that. You taking that out?

If somebody has an objection, 8-7, we can take it out. OK, fine. OK. All in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed, so ordered. 8.2, vote accept, expend $1,048.95 State 911 Department Emergency Medical Dispatch Grant. 8.3, vote accept, expend $25,000 MCOA grants. 8.4 vote accept expand 40 000 eotss grant 8.5 vote accept expend fifty one thousand four hundred twenty four dollars and seventy three cents state nine one one department training grant eight point six vote accept expend five hundred forty thousand four hundred and ninety six state nine one one department support and incentive grant 8.7 vote authorized city manager execute lease agreement with denmark development corporation 8.8 vote authorized city manager expend npa with mass dot brook bridge motion to adopt by council of rock seconded by councillor robinson any questions council joran

Thank you very much. Just a quick question on the Rourke Bridge non-participating agreement. I understand the goal is so that water pipes can be added to the bridge, but the documents all refer to dates in 2024, like the agreement date. So is this retroactive? I'm just trying to, I'm confused.

CFO Baldwin?

to make sure the water was running.

So I can speak to the financial components of it. The agreement, we've funded the pipe from the capital improvement loan order with the water utility. It is my understanding this is a pretty standard agreement with the state for bridges. It's been, well, I guess it hasn't been that long since we built a new bridge, but it's been a long time since I've seen one of these. The engineers from MassDOT informed us this requires a vote, so we've brought it forward. But as to the dates, I think they were all relative to the beginning phases of the Roark Bridge, and that's the best I can do.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Councilor Duran. Roll call.

Councilor Duran.

Yes.

Council Lien. Yes. Council McDonough.

Yes.

Council Murcia. Yes. Council Noon.

Yes.

Council Robinson.

Yes.

Council Rourke. Yes. Council Scott. Council Chow. Yes. Council Dakota. Yes. Ed Gitche.

Yes.

Sanchez.

Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Nine orders from the city manager. 9.1 order, 60-day trial. Wait for reading and second reading by title. 9-1.

Thank you, Mr. Clerk.

Order pursuant to Chapter 266 of the Code of Ordinances, City of Lowell, Massachusetts, concerning Section 266-6, therefore entitled Temporary Experimental Regulations. Temporary traffic regulations are hereby implemented for a period of up to 60 days. Motion to adopt by Councilor Noon, seconded by Councilor Duran. Any questions? Roll call.

Councilor Duran. Yes. Councilor Liang. Yes. Councilor McDonough.

Yes.

Councilor Murcia. Yes. Councilor Noon. Yes. Councilor Robinson. Yes. Councilor Rourke. Yes. Councilor Scott. Councilor Chau. Yes. Councilor Dakota. Yes. Mayor Gitche.

Yes.

Ten years.

Ten reports, subcommittee. If any, 10.1, non-profit organization, subcommittee, July 28, 2026. Councilor Liang.

I would refer as a summary to the report that's attached.

Two weeks? Okay. Thank you. Motion to accept the report is attached by Council O'Rourke, seconded by Council Robinson. All in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered. 10.2, Finance Subcommittee, August 11, 2026.

We'll wait for the minutes, but I'll mention that, as I said earlier, we'll have another meeting of the Finance Subcommittee on September 8th, at which the city auditor will give a year-end analysis, but we'll also cover the one topic that we didn't get to today.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Duran. 10.3, Wire Inspector Reports. One, National Grid requests installation of utility pole at Westford Street and 15 Technology Drive. And two, National Grid requests installation of utility poles, one at 1270 Westford Street and one at 1299 Westford Street. Motion to accept and adopt the orders by Councilor Mercy or seconded by Councilor McDonough. all in favor signify by saying aye any opposed so ordered 11 petitions 11.1 claims three property damage most referred to law department for report and recommendation by council dakota seconded by council joran mr mayor there was a registered speaker and i don't see him but i'll just call his name david cochran okay all in favor signify by saying aye any opposed so ordered 11.3, miscellaneous, Kelly Felicia, request traffic safety improvements along Whipple Street. Motion to refer to the transportation engineer for report and recommendation by Councilor Noon, seconded by Councilor Liang. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Any opposed, so ordered. 11.4, miscellaneous Maureen Gilbert, request installation of a speed bump on Laurie Lane. Motion to refer the transportation engineer for report and recommendation by Council Robinson, seconded by Council Marcia. Council Marcia.

Yes, I did read her report and her request for the speed bump, and I didn't realize that she had called me, so I called her to find out and apologize why I didn't call. She was very upset to think that there's such excessive speeding going down the hill, down Laurie Lane. She's tried many times to slow people down, And what is the status with the speed bumps? Are we all through with that for this year or something? And are we going to have a list? Because this woman really is praying, more or less, for a speed bump. People are coming from Coburn Drive, New Bridge, Athens Drive, and places up on top of the hill. And they're coming down at an excessive speed. And it's frightening her. Are we going to get a list together? I thought Elizabeth Artman would be here, but she's not. That's all right. If we could have put this on the list or something so that she does have a speed bump on her street.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, through to the council. I will ensure that we'll reach out to have that discussion. For the edification of the Citizens, sometimes speed bumps can't be put on, depending on the topography of the road. But in this matter, I know the area pretty well. I'll make sure that we call them tomorrow.

Because what I was telling her, and I might be wrong, but when this idea first came out, people weren't aware of it. And then when we put some in the area of Douglas Road, Fairmount, or whatever, the different places like that, They became so popular and it did slow the traffic down that now everybody seems to want one. So I don't know if it was just an experimental thing and we're going to have a list or whatever. And if there is such a thing that we do have a list, if we could put Laurie Lane on it for her. Thank you. Councilor Duran.

yeah i do just want to point everybody back to the july 14th report by ms altman about speed humps and how they are dealt with in the city we have a traffic calming program there's a number of factors that are relevant there and i mean Frankly, people want them on almost every street, and they want to move them from one street. They want to move the traffic from one street to the other. So it is something that I think needs a holistic view, which is the view that I think Ms. Altman takes in terms of dealing with all this. Thank you.

We used to have potholes. Now we don't have them anymore. Well, we have less. We have less. All in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered. 11.5, National Grid requests installation of a new utility pole at 480 Westford Street. Give first reading. Motion to refer to public hearing on August 25th, 2026. It's 7 p.m. by Councilor McDonough, seconded by Councilor Liang. All in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed? So ordered. Announcements 12. Councilor Marcia.

So on August 15th, the Lowell Heritage State Park on 160 Pawtucket Boulevard from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. It's a free event. It's the Lowell Southeast Asian Water Festival. Just thought that every year we go, it's just a great time for everyone. So if we could just make that announcement so people are aware of it if they're still up watching this council meeting.

which I'd be in bed by now, but that's all right. Councilor Mercy, you're 25 minutes early. I know. Any other announcements? Motion to adjourn by Councilor Mercy, seconded by Councilor Rourke. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Any opposed, so ordered. Good night.

Good, good, good. How was that? Good.