At the August 25th Lowell City Council Meeting, Assistant City Manager and Department of Planning and Development Director Yovani Baez-Rose provided an update on the city’s progress on creating zoning regulations for data centers.

In March of this year, the Council unanimously passed a “360-day moratorium on the expansion of existing data centers, and the construction of new ones.” The moratorium was initiated by a motion from City Councilor Kim Scott, who represents the Sacred Heart Neighborhood – a dense residential neighborhood that is also home to the controversial Markley Data Center.

The goal of the moratorium is to give the City the time to understand the impacts of data centers on city infrastructure and quality of life, and to work with experts to propose revisions to Lowell’s zoning code that could protect residents from any negative impacts (pp. 1-2).

In order to make sure that this process is transparent to Lowellians, Councilors Belinda Juran and Kim Scott made a motion on March 24th requesting that the City provide updates on this process “at least every two months.” Councilor Rita Mercier issued a follow-up request for information on July 28th, 2026.

As a result, we have Tuesday’s update.

The update includes a list of some of the specific regulations being considered, model ordinances from other communities, as well as a timeline of future community input and decision making. I will provide an overview here.

In addition, I will analyze the lay of the land when it comes to the public discourse about data centers in Lowell over the last few months.

Potential Regulations

The update provided a list of several types of regulations that are being considered for data centers, as well as model ordinances from other communities that have already created regulations.

Here are the model regulations as described in the update:

“Mansfield, Massachusetts: Mansfield’s recently approved data center ordinance regulates data centers based on electrical demand and permits only facilities with an electrical demand of less than two megawatts (MW). This approach provides a clear threshold for distinguishing smaller facilities from larger-scale data center uses.

Holyoke, Massachusetts: The Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC) provides an example of how a data center can incorporate renewable and other green energy strategies to reduce environmental and community impacts. Its approach demonstrates potential strategies for addressing energy consumption and sustainability.

Loudoun County, Virginia: Loudoun County has permitted a significant number of data centers and has established regulations addressing potential impacts, including minimum separation distances from residential uses, visual buffers, noise standards, and other site and building requirements. This provides an example of how communities can allow data centers while implementing measures intended to mitigate their impacts” (p. 4).

Given these model policies, as well as research reviewed by the Steering Committee, “The City and CommunityScale [an Urban planning consultancy] are evaluating a range of potential regulatory tools, including:

• Size thresholds based on electrical demand

• Definitions and use-specific zoning provisions;

• Setbacks and separation requirements;

• Landscaping, screening, and visual buffers;

• Building design and site requirements;

• Noise and other operational standards;

• Community benefits;

• Energy use and environmental impacts; and

• Other zoning and policy provisions designed to address the unique characteristics and potential impacts of data centers. (p. 4).

Community Input

The update includes information about past community input, as well as a timeline of future opportunities for community input (see the very end for this timeline).

One way that the City has already solicited public input is by hosting a “Data Center specific outreach forum on June 29th at the Butler School” (p. 3). There was a significant crowd at the event, nearly filling up the auditorium. You can see a recording of the forum here. (Shoutout to Stephen Malagodi, who recorded it!).

At the event, staff from the Department of Planning and Development listed the most frequent concerns that they had heard prior to the meeting (see below), and then invited people to give feedback and add detail to the specific concerns that they have about data centers (9:21). People wrote their ideas on sticky notes, spoke verbally about their concerns, and sent additional comments via email to DPDProjects@lowellma.gov.

Deputy Director Camilo Espitia also gave a brief presentation about what exactly the City can control through zoning. “Through zoning we can control what a building looks like, what type of architecture it has, […] the size of the building, how far it sits from the setbacks, where it can be located in the entire city, how far it should be from residential neighborhoods, how far it should be from water sources, […] and even control how utilities are used, whether it’s solar power, water usage, and the output of the building as well. We can control all of that” (12:56).

In addition to the areas listed above, Espitia provided a list of additional topics to consider to help residents think of comments they want to make (see below) (13:52).

Next, I will provide an overview of residents’ concerns.

“No Data Centers”

During the public forum, many people said that they were against data centers in general. It was not necessarily mitigating specific neighborhood impacts that they were concerned about, but rather stopping the growth of data centers as an industry.

One of the reasons people were categorically opposed to data center expansion is the feeling that the data itself is being used for unjust ends. Residents specifically mentioned defense contractors and mass surveillance. For example, Lowell resident Sienna stated that “Markley Data Center does and will continue to house government contractors that are complicit in the killing of innocent civilians abroad and the over-policing of American citizens at home. We have an obligation as residents to fight back against that” (22:30).

The US military spends $9 billion on data centers and computing capabilities that are the “infrastructure that keeps the military’s AI and tech systems online.” However, while Jake Fortes of Honest Future for Lowell has alleged that Markley has a relationship with Defense Contractor Draper Labs, neither Markley nor Draper have publicly confirmed any relationship. At the public forum, an employee of Markley emphasized that some of Markley’s clients are education institutions like Harvard University (28:50). Nonetheless, it is possible that future data centers could be used for Defense purposes.

Similarly, there is no public information about whether Markley data center is involved in mass surveillance such as controversial Flock cameras. It is true, however, that Flock data is stored in Amazon Web Services cloud storage data centers, and it is possible that future data centers in Lowell could be used for that purpose.

All that said, several people’s comments spoke to the idea that the data center buildout is happening very fast, that it is out of control, and people are worried that the data is going to be used for nefarious purposes. One man, for example, said, “They were speaking about the defense companies, the colleges, things like that. We as a community can’t automatically decide who these data centers are profiting” (39:10).

This anti-data center energy came to a climax at the end of the forum when a fourteen-year-old Cambodian-American girl, a rising freshman at LHS who attended the event on her own, stood up to shout her beliefs about data centers:

“Everyone. Everyone. I understand that you said that was the last question, but I urge you to please listen to me. You’re free to leave while I speak, but I am 14 years old. I just graduated from Stoklosa Middle School. I am the future …”

This led to significant disorder in the room, and she was ushered out by Lowell Police (51:56). A video of the incident went viral on TikTok and sadly, after the event, she faced comments targeting her ethnic background. According to the Lowell Sun, the girl is still shaken up by the experience.

“I’m still jumpy about what happened,” she said in a shaky voice. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment, but I know that shouldn’t stop me from standing up.”

Energy Concerns

Jon Grossman, a volunteer with 350 Mass Lowell brought up issues related to energy, the use of fossil fuels, and climate change (34:42).

According to a 2024 report from the US Department of Energy, data centers made up about 4.4% of US energy use in 2024, and that number is projected to “double or triple by 2028.”

Grossman pointed out that the Markley Data Center “uses diesel back-up generators and has recently bought a natural gas burning power plant – the Tanner Street plant [in Lowell] – and they refuse to acknowledge what they’re going to do about it […] but either way, both uses add tremendously to greenhouse gas emissions” (35:05; see also 42:33).

The Markley Data Center currently uses diesel generators as a form of back-up energy. Data centers need back-up energy in emergency circumstances, such as reducing stress on an electrical system during a heat wave, or maintaining operations during a grid failure. According to Inside Climate News, outside of emergencies and routine testing, “diesel generators are federally limited to 100 hours” of operation per year.

That being said, there is ongoing conversation about how to push for cleaner alternatives to diesel as a back-up power source. In addition to climate concerns around diesel energy, several residents expressed concerns about the health consequences of diesel emissions (41:04; 31:43). At a Lowell City Council Environmental Subcommittee meeting on September 30, 2025, a Markley representative stated that at that time, diesel was the “safest and most reliable” back-up energy option (17:42).

At the public forum, Neil Dale from 350 Mass Lowell said that “there are battery technologies now that are better than any diesel, better than lithium. There are sodium, iron batteries that are non-flammable, cheaper, and better in this environment than anything they’ve got.” (42:54)

My understanding is that an Battery Energy Storage Systems are an emerging alternative to diesel, and that they are a likely future source of back-up energy. Data Center demand for Battery Energy Storage Systems is projected to grow significantly from now to 2030 (see below). I am not sure if the technology is at a point where Lowell zoning could require future data centers to use Battery Energy Storage Systems instead of diesel, but moving forward, it is something I would encourage the city to consider.

In addition to the issue of back-up energy, I have a few categories of concerns with regard to energy and data centers:

• How do we make sure that this explosion in energy demand from data centers does not strain our energy grid?

• How do we make sure ratepayers are not forced to pay higher rates because they are competing with these data centers for a limited supply of energy?

• How do we make sure that this explosion in energy demand does not contribute to climate change by expanding our use of fossil fuels?

• How do we expand the supply of clean energy – like offshore wind – to accommodate this additional demand?

Some of these issues are outside the realm of local zoning, and will require action from state and federal governments, as well as energy system operators. In a recent interview with the CommonWealth Beacon, Dr. Vamsi Chadalavada, president and CEO of ISO New England, the operator of the region's energy system, described how ISO is thinking about data centers and energy (To learn more about this, see the 31:13 mark).

Neighborhood Concerns

While local neighborhood concerns were not major themes in the public forum, they were a large part of the public conversation before the forum.

One of the neighborhood concerns have to do with the aesthetics of the Markley building, which some have called the “dungeon over Lowell.”

Zoning can be used to address aesthetic concerns about data centers. A draft ordinance from Loudon County, Virginia includes significant requirements about the appearance of buildings. For example, it requires any mechanical equipment to be “partially or fully visually screened” so they can’t be seen from outside the property (p. 44). It requires to buildings to either have windows or a “Green Wall” of plants over a certain percentage of the building (p. 43). It goes so far as to require that the main entrance to the building be lined with specific plants, including “a mix of evergreen and deciduous shrubs, grasses, and/or perennials for a minimum of 50% of the length of the Principal Facade(s)” (p. 44) (See more plant requirements on page 46.)

Another concern has to do with light pollution. Both the Mansfield and Loudon County ordinances place restrictions on lighting, with Mansfield requiring exterior lighting to be “designed to prevent light spillover beyond the site” (p. 6) and Loudon County requiring that “Any exterior lighting must direct light downward and into the interior of the property, and away from adjacent existing or planned roads and adjacent properties” (p. 44)

Another major concern has to do with sound. In an interview with Boston 25, Honest Future for Lowell member Jake Fortes said that living next to the Markley Data Center has led to “constant sleepless nights because of the noise” (00:39).

City zoning can be used to mitigate sound concerns. Mansfield’s policy, for example, includes language around how loud operations can be at different times of day, and allows for “sound monitoring” to verify compliance with local and state noise standards (p. 5).

There is also the question of whether data centers should be placed in residential neighborhoods at all. Fortes, for example, argues that the Markley Center “should have never been allowed to be put into a residential neighborhood” (1:22).

At the data center public forum, Assistant City Manager and Director of Planning and Development Yovani Baez-Rose told community members that “one of the options that people are going to say about zoning is just ‘Zone it out. Just do not make it an allowable use.’ So that’s a conversation that we know and that’s an option that we can present to the City Council. There are potentially other options that we could also present to them” (2:10).

The Loudon County draft ordinance provides some alternatives as a middle ground between outright banning data centers and having no regulations. It requires any structures next to residentially zoned lots to be “setback at least 100 Feet from the property line” (p. 45) and similarly requires mechanical equipment to be “setback a minimum of 100 feet” from any property that is zoned for residential use (p. 44).

Benefits

There are many possible negative impacts of unregulated data centers. However, if data centers are regulated appropriately, it is possible that they could bring potential benefits. Deputy Director of the DPD Camilo Espitia made the point that, if the community should decide to allow more data centers, the community needs to decide what to do with the additional tax revenue: “What benefits do we want to get out of it? Do we create a pool for additional open space that they could help us fill? Do we create a pool for affordable housing?” (14:52).

The Markley Data Center – even with its substantial (one could argue excessive) $77 million tax break over 20 years – is still expected to net the city a modest “$12 million in taxes compared to an underutilized site, over the lifetime of the tax agreement.”

Back in 2015, the Lowell Sun outlined how part of the rationale for attracting a data center like Markley was that data centers can have positive spillover effects on the rest of the local economy:

“signing on a major player like the Markley Group gets Lowell’s foot in the information technology door, with the expectation that other IT firms will follow. It might also encourage other start-up businesses, like those nurtured by UMass Lowell’s incubator program, to stay in the city when they strike out on their own.”

Mary Burns, chair of the UMass Lowell Building Authority has said that Markley’s presence helped to attract key firms in the Lowell Innovation Network Corridor (LINC) project: “In order for LINC to happen, we need Markley.” The LINC project is projected to create 2,000 permanent jobs and $4-6 million in annual revenue for the city.

Beyond tax revenue and economic development, there are other ways a community can arrange to benefit from a data center. Deputy Director of DPD Camilo Espitia described how other communities incorporate the waste heat from data centers into their thermal heating networks. Communities in Stockholm, Finland, Ireland, Paris, Ohio, West Virginia and proposed projects in Virginia “capture waste heat from data center cooling systems and use thermal energy networks to heat nearby homes, public facilities, and factories” (16:55).

Public Comments Posted Online

After the public forum, a list of the public comments, as well as questions and answers were posted on the city’s website, on a newly created page called “Data Centers.” (Thank you to Lowell resident and Honest Future for Lowell member Mary Wambui for requesting this transparency of public comments at the end of the forum [49:26].) There is also a community engagement page with information about how to make additional comments about data centers and the zoning rewrite.

Future Opportunities for Public Input

Moving forward, the update provides a timeline for how people can have their voices heard (p. 5):

• Any time – email comments to DPDProjects@lowellma.gov

• Early October – DPD will publish online engagement materials, including a draft ordinance and an interactive map and online comment form.

• Mid-October – DPD and Community Scale will present two different policy options for the City Council. The update says that “If the Council would like to discuss the proposals in greater detail at a Subcommittee meeting, staff would be happy to coordinate with CommunityScale and arrange a presentation and discussion” (p. 5). In my opinion, an additional subcommittee meeting would be a great way to create space for further community input.

• Mid-to-late October – the DPD plans to have a “Citywide Community Engagement Event (with presentation)”

• Early-Mid December – Final Draft of Zoning Ordinance sent to Council

• Early January – Planning Board hearing

• Late January – City Council Public Hearing and Vote (p. 5)

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The Massachusetts State Primary Election will be on September 1st. Make a plan to vote!

To check your voter registration and see your ballot, see the State of Massachusetts’ Elections page here.

Below, you will find interviews with State Representative and Senate Candidates from each of Lowell’s districts (16th Middlesex, 17th Middlesex, and 18th Middlesex), as well as links to the candidates’ campaign websites. I will also list their endorsements and analyze one or two salient differences in policy positions between the candidates based on the public interviews.

Happy voting! 🗳️🇺🇸

16th Middlesex State Representative

The two candidates for the 16th Middlesex seat are Lorena Betts and Corey Robinson.

Endorsements

Lorena Betts has been endorsed by Lowell Together, the Working Families Party, Human Service Workers and Educators Union SEIU Local 509, Act on Mass, Massachusetts Peace Action, Progressive Massachusetts, Jess’s Progressive Picks, Reproductive Equity Now, and Sierra Club Massachusetts.

Corey Robinson has been endorsed by SEIU Local 888, Iron Workers Local 7, Bricklayers and Allied Craftsmen Union Local 3, and Chelmsford Firefighters IAFF Local 1839.

Housing

In their public statements, Lorena Betts has been more supportive of the state government taking action to increase housing supply. Betts said she is supportive of what she calls “smart growth,” whereas Councilor Corey Robinson has emphasized that he supports “local control.”

In the candidate debate, Robinson positioned himself as an opponent of state policies that would allow the construction of new housing by reducing the use of restrictive zoning (7:18). “I will not support any by-right legislation. Any legislation that aims to pull local control out, I will not be supportive of” (32:43). Similarly, as a City Councilor, in October of 2023 Robinson voted against allowing Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) citywide (2:18:21).

When asked whether he would support allowing two-family zoning by right across the state, he said, “I’m an absolute no, if I had the opportunity to vote on that” (16:15). He suggested that allowing two-family construction would “remove that single family opportunity” and that “if you want a single family, you might start looking in New Hampshire.”

It is important to note that under zoning that allows duplexes, single family houses can still remain, and new ones can still be built. According to the Northern Middlesex Council of Governments’ Housing Production Plan, young families are already moving out of Lowell and into New Hampshire, partially out of a desire for more affordable housing (p. 17).

Betts argued for what she called “smart growth,” saying that “we do need smart growth in housing. I’m not saying a one-size-fits all bill to build more housing, but we also cannot use this issue to stonewall building because we need more housing. That’s just plain and simple” (10:42). When asked whether she would support allowing two-family zoning by right across the state, Betts said that she would work with colleagues to make amendments to the bill to make it fit local contexts: “you talk with colleagues and see what’s going on in their communities and what’s the uniqueness of each neighborhood in that district so we can file amendments to protect each neighborhood” (18:30).

These responses were similar to Betts’ response about housing in my interview. She described a dynamic in which she wanted to balance community members’ desire to protect neighborhood aesthetics with the need to construct new housing: “There are ways to do it where we have input from the community […] Being from Chelmsford, people are very passionate about what it looks like to have something new built, how is that going to change the look of the area? Let’s have some input on that. But I don’t think we have to pick either have new housing or change the look. I think we can have something that looks good and still be able to house our unhoused neighbors or new families who are looking to buy new homes and are unable to do so” (36:03).

17th Middlesex State Representative

The three candidates for the 17th Middlesex seat – in alphabetical order by last name – are Harini Aiyer, John Drinkwater, and Anthony Leite. See their respective interviews below.

Bios & Endorsements

Dr. Harini Aiyer is a former cancer researcher and entrepreneur who moved to Lowell in 2021. Pointing to her own run-in with housing instability, she says that she advocates for progressive policies “because those progressive policies helped me when I needed it” (16:47). Aiyer has been endorsed by Lowell Together, Solidarity Lowell, Progressive Mass, Reproductive Equity Now, and the Sierra Club Massachusetts.

John Drinkwater is a former Lowell City Councilor at-large. He frequently touts his time working as a labor leader in the State House, where he helped pass legislation on “earned sick time, higher wages, and paid family and medical leave.” Drinkwater has been endorsed by the Working Families Party, Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts, Mass Alliance, Massachusetts AFL-CIO, Massachusetts American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Massachusetts Teachers Association, Jess’s Progressive Picks, the Environmental League of Massachusetts Action Fund.

Anthony Leite is a former Marine and current Lowell Firefighter and Union President of Local 853 Lowell Firefighters. He describes himself as someone who used to be a Democrat, but became unenrolled because “I felt certain parts of that party left me before I left it.” He said he will proudly be running as a “conservative Democrat that believes in small government, lower taxation, transparency, and we can go on and on” (11:56). Leite has been endorsed by Tewksbury Firefighters Local 1647, and Dracut Firefighters IAFF Local 2586.

Housing Supply

When asked whether she would support allowing duplexes by right across the state, Aiyer said that duplexes “can be a great way to solve the housing crisis” (35:52). She said, “We need to create housing that is affordable for a small single family to move in and make it their own. Duplexes make great entry-level housing.” While she cited the benefits of duplexes as opportunities to build wealth and to live next to aging loved ones, she said “we don’t know what the final version of the bill is going to be, so I am going to reserve my right to comment about that” (35:45). She said that lots that are less than 10,000 square feet should not have duplexes (36:13).

On the topic of housing supply, Drinkwater said in the Inside Lowell debate that he believes it is better to address housing affordability through “natural measures – supply and demand – as opposed to subsidization. I’m not opposed to subsidizing costs to help working families get by, to promote affordable housing, public housing. I’m not opposed to that at all. But it’s got to be a multifaceted approach” (28:05). He said that “finding ways to address the supply issue that doesn’t involve directly funding or subsidizing that is ideal.” He said he wants to expand the availability of starter homes through changes to zoning regulations (29:00). This stance aligns with Drinkwater’s support for the ADU ordinance when he was a City Councilor in October or 2023. During debates on this ordinance, he was the most vocal supporter on the Council (see his remarks at 1:58:37).

On the topic of expanding the housing supply, Leite framed the statewide legalization of ADUs as hasty policymaking, or “putting the cart before the horse” (30:57): “We need to make sure that this is sustainable. Not only just creating housing, but we’ve got to start from the bare bones. What is the infrastructure? What is the parking? Same thing that happened with ADUs. Are we going to just put again the cart before the horse, or are we going to start from the bottom up? Let’s see can we support this with all the infrastructure, can we support this with additional parking?” (31:04). When asked whether he would support duplexes by right in Massachusetts, Leite said “I am not entirely a proponent for it” (33:16). He said that allowing duplexes by right would be “taking that opportunity away from somebody” (34:00) to own a single family home. It is important to note that under zoning that allows duplexes, single family houses can still remain, and new ones can still be built.

Rent Stabilization

Harini Aiyer has said that she supports a “quick rent freeze” that is “time limited” while legislators work to understand what needs to change in terms of housing costs: “What is going on that is causing the rents to skyrocket? Is it simply supply/demand, or is there more to it?” (26:31).

John Drinkwater responded by saying that “There was a ballot question this year that would have enacted a statewide rent control measure. I am convinced that that would have passed because renters are just being so crushed out there with the year-over-year rent increases, they’re fed up, they can’t keep up, they’re struggling to pay for their housing, never mind everything else. So I’m convinced that would have passed. It wasn’t a perfect measure, and my fear with that was that it could have potentially hindered some of the new development we need, potentially even development of affordable housing that has relatively small margins. So I just want to emphasize that it is critical for the next legislature to get to the table and find some kind of compromise measure that gets to rent stabilization to prevent some of these year-over-year increases. Otherwise we’re going to end up with a blunt instrument at the ballot […] I am committed to finding a compromise resolution that will stabilize rents for people out there and help them with those year-over-year costs” (25:38).

On the topic of rent stabilization, Anthony Leite said that “you have to look at every aspect, how is it effecting us, before you do a dramatic freeze or something that’s going to not only potentially help the renter but also be a detriment to the property owner.” (32:15).

18th Middlesex State Representative

The two candidates for the 18th Middlesex seat are Sokhary Chau and Tara Hong.

Endorsements

Sokhary Chau has been endorsed by SEIU National Association of Government Employees (NAGE), former 18th Middlesex State Representative Kevin Murphy, and State Auditor Diana DiZoglio.

Tara Hong has been endorsed by Lowell Together, the Working Families Party, 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, 350 Mass, Mass Alliance, Massachusetts AFL-CIO, Massachusetts American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Massachusetts Teachers Association, Environmental League of Massachusetts Action Fund, Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts, Jess’s Progressive Picks), Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund of Massachusetts, Reproductive Equity Now, and Massachusetts Voters for Animals.

Housing Supply

In their public interviews and actions, Tara Hong has been more consistently supportive of expanding the housing supply.

In the Inside Lowell debate, Sokhary Chau expressed support for expanding the housing supply: “I support housing supply, housing production. […] You have more houses, you bring the rents down, that will allow people to have a pathway to buy a house a lot earlier. I know this from my days being a mortgage broker” (24:11).

However, in the past, Chau’s support for expanding housing supply via zoning changes has wavered. In 2023, when the Lowell City Council was considering an ordinance that would have allowed Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) by right, Chau was originally supportive of the ordinance. But at the October 17th, 2023 City Council meeting, when many single family homeowners came in to speak against it, Chau changed his vote and voted against ADUs (2:18:07).

At the same Council Meeting in 2023, Tara Hong spoke as a resident, saying, “ADUs are one of the small steps, with many other solutions along the way, that can help the housing crisis” (58:15). As a State Representative, Hong has supported several bills that would increase the housing supply, co-sponsoring H.2347 An Act to Promote Yes in God’s Back Yard, legislation that would “allow religious institutions to build multi-family housing by-right on property they own” (p. 1).

Hong expressed support for expanding housing supply in my interview: “To be able to bring down the cost for renting or owning your own home, we need more housing […] The less housing you have, the price is going to go up because everybody is competing for that thing, right?” (12:03). When I asked whether he would be supportive of increasing two-family and multi-family zoning in some towns and cities, he said, “I would say so. Yes” (18:15). That being said, in the Inside Lowell debate, when asked if he supported two-family zoning as-of-right state-wide, he said, “I do not support the idea of by-right duplexes […] allowing two family housing everywhere across the Commonwealth” (36:53).

Rent Stabilization

In public interviews and actions Tara Hong has been more supportive of rent stabilization than Sokhary Chau.

At the beginning of the 2025-2026 legislative session, Tara Hong filed a bill called “H.1526 An Act establishing a rent stabilization commission.” In a recent debate, Hong said, “I support rent stabilization, but I want to see more studies on how it can be implemented and how it can work in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts” (38:30). This stance is similar to what he said in my interview with him as well (16:44).

Chau has been more critical of rent stabilization, and replied Hong in his interview response: “The incumbent also campaigned on this almost two years ago, so I don’t think he needs any more time to study on it. There has been plenty of debate and resources and information out there. As I said before, I support housing production, increasing housing supply, but not cost control. And cost control also means rent stabilization. We know that it does not work. It will limit the housing supply. As you know, it’s basic economics. Lower supply means higher rents, which makes it more difficult for young families or any working families to really have a pathway to buy a home” (39:53).

Audit of the State Legislature

Sokhary Chau has been a supporter of the State Auditor’s right to audit the state legislature, and he has been endorsed by State Auditor Diana Dizoglio.

The audit of the State Legislature has become Sokhary Chau’s main critique of State Rep. Tara Hong. Chau waged this critique in his March interview on Inside Lowell (9:55), Hong responded to those critiques my interview with him in May (1:00:10), and Chau raised the issue again at the very beginning of the debate (4:06).

The drawn-out and convoluted story of the audit has been something like a political soap opera on Beacon Hill.

The debate between Sokhary Chau and Tara Hong has been largely about whether “the audit” should happen. Using this general phrase “the audit” obscures many of the nuances of what specific kind of audit is being conducted (financial or ‘performance’), what kinds of documents are being requested, and whether the auditor has the authority to conduct a “performance” audit of the legislature.

We are still waiting to hear what the Supreme Judicial Court says about the Auditor’s case regarding this separation of powers.

1st Middlesex Senator

State Senator Vanna Howard is running uncontested in the September Primary.

Conclusion

To check your voter registration and see your ballot, see the State of Massachusetts’ Elections page here.

Happy voting! 🇺🇸 🗳️

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On June 24, 2026 the Northern Middlesex Metropolitan Planning Organization (NMMPO) voted to endorse the Greater Lowell Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan. This plan is the result of a collaborative effort with many stakeholders in the region including significant public engagement (p. 23).

In this piece, I will outline how the priorities of this plan could shape our bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure.

The plan lays out six overarching goals for improving Greater Lowell’s bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. Those goals include developing a cohesive and connected network, promoting safe and comfortable facilities, increasing walking and bicycling for both recreational and utility purposes, ensuring equitable and accessible access to active transportation and transit facilities, educating the region on safety practices for walking and bicycling, and supporting and enhancing housing and economic development in town/city centers (p. 8).

When implemented, the Greater Lowell Bicycle and Pedestrian plan will increase bicycle infrastructure in the region from 37 miles to 154 miles, and sidewalks will increase from 314 miles to 449 miles. The final plan also includes 70 policy and program actions to complement the infrastructure recommendations, along with 21 networks around town centers and key destinations (p 4).

Future projects are categorized into short, medium, and long-term projects.

Rather than try to summarize the plan for the entire region, in this piece I will focus on the short-term priorities in Lowell.

Pedestrian Infrastructure

As seen in the map above, there are short and long term plans for pedestrian infrastructure improvements.

The long term plans are the purple lines around the periphery of the city, largely in Belvidere, the Highlands, and Pawtucketville.

The shorter term plans are both the shaded red section labeled “continuous” and the two red parallel lines at the bottom of the map.

Below is a close-up on those two parallel lines.

My understanding is that the goal with this plan is to better connect the Sacred Heart and Highlands neighborhoods. These two neighborhoods, while geographically close, are bisected by the Lowell Connector, which creates an artificial barrier between them.

Creating some form of pedestrian infrastructure over or through the Lowell Connector could make it easier for people in Sacred Heart to walk to Crosspoint Towers or any of the surrounding businesses on Chelmsford Street. It could also make it easier for people in the Highlands neighborhood to access the Saint Patrick Cemetery, the Shaughnessy Elementary School, or Butler Middle School.

Bicycle Infrastructure

Above is the overarching Bicycle Network Prioritization map. The map is color-coded, with long-term priorities in purple, medium-term priorities in yellow, and short-term priorities in red. The intent behind this phasing is to prioritize segments that will close gaps or improve connections between bicycle facilities in the region’s existing network, and in the medium- and long-term expand that network to provide greater coverage across the region.

Here I will break down some of the shorter term priorities, beginning in the Acre neighborhood.

Most of the short-term priorities I will describe are projected to be Separated Bike Lanes (see color coding on page 75). Here is how Separated Bike Lanes are defined in the plan:

Separated Bicycle Lane: “Bicycle lane that is physically separated from vehicle traffic with a horizontal buffer and vertical raised elements like concrete curbs, bollards, or planters (rare). Separated bicycle lanes can be designed as one-way facilities on either side of the street or as a consolidated two-way facility on one side of the street.

Separated bicycle lanes can be “full construction” – separated from vehicle traffic with permanent curb and implemented by completely reconstructing a street that may involve rebuilding sidewalks and relocating drainage structures. Or they can be “quick-build” – separated using modular, flexible materials including flex posts; or movable concrete curbs.” (p. 70)

One of the short term priorities highlighted in this plan is to create a separated bike lane along Broadway street.

Creating infrastructure here could make it easier for Lowell residents in the Acre to bike to South Campus of UMass Lowell, which is just offscreen on the left side of this screenshot. It would also make it safer for residents of the Highlands to bike to Murkland Elementary School, which is toward the top of the screenshot.

The next short-term priority is creating a separated bike lane along Gorham Street between the Back Central and Sacred Heart neighborhoods.

Creating bike infrastructure on Gorham Street would make it easier for residents in Back Central to bike to both Shaughnessy Elementary School and Butler Middle School. It would also make it easier for residents in Sacred Heart to bike to the STEM Academy as well as open spaces like the South Common. From an economic development perspective, not only will this bike infrastructure increase the businesses downtown, but the Hamilton Canal Innovation District (HCID) and the Jackson-Appleton-Middlesex (JAM+) areas are both poised to see significant investment in future years. This bike infrastructure could allow people who live in Sacred Heart to commute to work in those areas by bike.

Similarly, the small bike connection on Rogers Street would allow residents of Back Central safer bike access to both Moody Elementary School and the open spaces at Rogers Fort Hill Park and Shedd Park.

The next short-term priority for bicycle infrastructure is in Pawtucketville. In this area, the plan recommends a separated bike path along Varnum Avenue between Lowell General Hospital and the UMass Lowell North Campus.

This infrastructure could improve the ability of both Lowell General Hospital employees and UMass Lowell employees to bike to work. From an economic development lens, It could also make it easier for residents of Pawtucketville to frequent the restaurants on University Avenue.

As Varnum heads northeast and becomes Riverside Avenue, the added bike lanes could make it easier for Pawtucketville residents to bike to Dracut. When I lived in Pawtucketville, I would have loved a path like this to be able to safely bike to Planet Fitness.

As someone who currently lives near North Campus, I am also excited that I may some day have a safer route to bike to the Vandenberg Esplanade – the trail by the river in Pawtucketville.

The final short-term priority in Lowell is in the Centralville neighborhood. This projected separated bike path would increase Dracut and Centralville residents’ biking access to UMass Lowell East Campus. This area is poised to see significant development due to the Lowell Innovation Network Corridor, which is going to bring both industry and additional professional and student housing to the area.

Given that there is current construction on a separated bike path along Father Morissette, this additional bike lane could increase Dracut and Centralville residents’ biking access to businesses in Downtown Lowell as well.

On the flip side, this planned bike lane could also allow residents of the Acre and Centralville to more safely bike to Dracut on Lakeview Avenue, whether making a trip to Frosty Boy for an ice cream or commuting to work at Dracut High School.

Conclusion

Needless to say, I am very excited about these plans for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. I think these plans will make our streets safer, improve quality of life for people in Lowell, and support the economic development of the region.

You can find the rest of the plan here.

According to the August 2026 NMCOG Newsletter, the next steps for the organization will be “working with staff from Tyngsborough and Lowell to develop conceptual designs for two priority links in the GLBPP network. Additionally, NMCOG will be kicking off plan implementation by initiating two multimodal studies: one to identify safety improvements at shared-use path crosswalks across the region and the second to locate existing bicycle parking areas to better make recommendations for new bicycle parking facilities.”

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The City of Lowell is in a budget crisis. A corporate-backed ballot initiative could make it even worse.

According to the Lowell Sun, the FY27 budget included red ink “across almost all departments with 50 immediate reductions of personnel.”

According to the City’s FY27 Budget, this crunch is the result of a decades-long trend of “Fixed costs [rising] faster than our ability to grow revenue” (p. 15).

On the costs side, the City has “five structural cost drivers — growing pension obligations, rising debt service, increasing charter school assessments, escalating health insurance costs, and volatile energy expenditures” (p. 33).

On the revenue side, not only is the City impacted by steadily decreasing Unrestricted General Government Aid (UGGA) from the State (p. 16), and not only is it limited by constraints on property taxes under Proposition 2½ (p. 15), but now we are facing a federal funding cliff as Biden-era ARPA funds dried up this year (p. 13).

This toxic cocktail of rising costs and limited revenues is leading to drastic cuts across the board.

At the City Council meeting on May 19th, 2026, City Manager Tom Golden gave what the Lowell Sun called a “table pounding defense of his responsibility to protect the long-term financial stability of the city.” While much of the public attention about the meeting was focused on a conflict between the City Manager and the Fire Fighter Union, what drew my attention was a future threat that seemed to be on the Manager’s mind.

Manager Golden gave a dire warning about a ballot initiative that will likely be on the ballot in November 2026 that would reduce the State Income Tax from 5% to 4%.

“I have to stress caution.” He said. “The caution that is going to be happening this November with a vote on the income tax cutting it from five percent to four percent. This vote, if it goes through – and I’ve never asked anybody to vote for or against this – but the truth will be this will exacerbate our situation here and every other municipality” (1:49:25).

I believe that this ballot initiative, backed by a coalition of large corporations, is the biggest looming threat to public services in Lowell.

Experts estimate that lowering the income tax would cost the state government $5 billion a year, forcing deep cuts to education, health care, and aid to cities and towns. On average, the wealthiest 1 percent would get back more than $30,000 on their taxes, while the bottom 80 percent would only get back a little more than $500.

While at first glance, I think most people would be happy to get $500 more dollars in their pocket, it is important to consider how much the cuts in services will impact people and how much we stand to lose.

Given the initiative’s threats to Lowell’s public services, today I aim to help readers understand it.

First, I’ll look at the text of the ballot initiative, the impacts it is projected to have, and the current discourse surrounding it.

Then, I’ll analyze some of the “faux populist” messaging from the ballot initiative campaign.

Finally, I’ll look at possible steps that can be taken to protect public services and defeat this initiative.

The Ballot Initiative to Cut the Personal Income Tax

Let’s start by dissecting the text of the initiative and who is behind it. Here is the text of the official ballot summary, written by Attorney General Andrea Campbell:

“This proposed law would, over a period of three years, lower the tax rates on (1) personal taxable income consisting of interest and dividends, and (2) personal taxable income other than interest, dividends or capital gain income, such as wages and salaries. Both tax rates were 5.00% for tax year 2024. The proposed law would set both tax rates at 4.67% for tax year 2027, 4.33% for tax year 2028, and 4.00% beginning in tax year 2029.” (p. 1)

Who is Behind this Ballot Initiative?

The ballot initiative is supported by the newly formed Massachusetts Opportunity Alliance, a “business coalition that doesn’t disclose its donors.” It is also supported by the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, which describes itself as a group of “chief executive officers of some of the Commonwealth’s largest businesses.” It is supported by the libertarian-leaning Pioneer Institute. Finally, it is supported by the Massachusetts High Tech Council – a council of high tech companies, financial institutions, and universities – which has taken down its membership list after a public campaign to pressure organizations to leave the council.

The MHTC has a long history of promoting tax cuts. In 1980, the MHTC helped fund the campaign for Proposition 2 ½, which limited local property taxes. In 2000, they helped fund Republican Governor Paul Celluci’s ballot initiative campaign to reduce the income tax from 6% to 5%. In 2017, they tried to block the Fair Share Amendment (or the “millionaire tax” as it is sometimes called). And now, in 2026, they are spearheading a ballot initiative to reduce the state income tax from 5% to 4%.

Next, let’s turn to our attention to articulating the projected impacts of this initiative, including how much state revenue will be lost, which state services will be impacted, and who will benefit the most from this cut.

How Much State Revenue Would be Lost?

While it is impossible to say for sure, most estimates place the loss to state revenue at around $5 billion per year. The State’s current FY26 budget is $60.9 Billion.

According to a March 2026 report from the Center for State Policy Analysis, if this initiative were to pass, “income tax collections would fall by nearly 20 percent and total state tax collections by roughly 10 percent, or $5.1 billion per year. A cut of this size would more than offset the revenue gains from the millionaires tax and imperil efforts to balance the state budget and sustain core government programs moving forward” (p. 2).

A January 2026 report from Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center similarly found that the initiative would “cut revenue from the state income tax annually by about $5 billion” (p. 1).

A March 2026 explainer from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation put the number at $5.4 billion, although their estimate does not take into account behavioral changes resulting from the reduced tax rate. Therefore, it is probably an overestimate of the impact.

It is worth noting that, in contrast to these multiple reputable projections, the Massachusetts Opportunity Alliance (the organization behind the initiative) frequently posits that the ballot initiative would only result in a loss of $680 million per year for the first three years, and would somehow actually increase revenue after that. Given how much this contrasts with other experts’ perspectives, and given the MOA’s clear conflicts of interest, I am skeptical of this claim.

Which State Services Would Be Impacted?

Due to the way the State Budget works, it is hard to know exactly which services would be impacted. But based on past experiences with revenue shortages, the impacts will likely be far-reaching.

The Center for State Policy Analysis’s report explains that “It is not possible to map income tax collections to specific state programs, as there is no formula saying: this dollar must support flood protections, or this must help with school renovation. But the money is central to all manner of state spending. Last year, our 5 percent income tax generated nearly $24 billion in revenue for the state, most of which went to the general fund and was then appropriated for specific uses based on lawmakers’ sense of need and priority” (p. 2).

That being said, “a $5 billion tax cut would require a budget cut of 7–10 percent, far larger than can plausibly be addressed by tackling inefficiencies. Five billion is more than we spend on our entire court system or our whole child welfare infrastructure, more than we spend on transit and transportation, and more than we spend on public colleges and early education combined. On top of that, it’s vastly more than we spend on environmental programs, legislative salaries, or elder services. No doubt, if this tax cut passes, the state will find ways to adapt — but that adaptation will require a real narrowing of our public programs.” (p. 6).

According to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, about 40 percent of the state budget is discretionary (p. 9), meaning that money is not earmarked for specific programs, and instead legislators have the choice of where to allocate the funds. Since much of the State Budget is discretionary, it is useful to look at the recent past to understand how state lawmakers handled previous situations when the State faced declining tax revenue.

In past situations, according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, “When cuts do occur, they are typically concentrated in discretionary spending and this is reflected in the last two downturns where consistent areas of nominal cuts were unrestricted local aid, direct support for higher education campuses, discretionary human services programs, and K-12 support funds.”

Mass Budget’s Analysis of the State’s response to the Great Recession of 2007-2009 found that the state made “deep cuts in government funding for education, health care, public safety, safety net programs, and other services that people count on” (p. 1). That included:

• $453.4 million cut to Unrestricted General Government Aid to municipalities (p. 31), which is money the state gives to local governments to use as they see fit.

• Tens of millions in cuts to early childhood education and care (p. 4)

• Hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to K-12 Education (pp. 9-10).

• “$171.2 million, or 15 percent” cuts to public higher education (p. 12), pushing the costs of higher education onto students.

• “$74 million, or 11 percent” cuts to mental health services (p. 18).

• $21.7 million in cuts to elder home care (p. 20)

• $27.4 million, or 10 percent cut to Department of State Police operations (p. 27).

• $8.9 million cut to gang violence prevention (p. 27)

• $5.7 million cut to the Department of Fire Services Administration (p. 29)

According to the analysis of Doug Howgate, the president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, one of the first things to go is Unrestricted General Government Aid to municipalities (UGGA).

As many Lowellians are likely aware, Lowell’s Annual City Budget is significantly supported by the State, as “approximately two-thirds of the entire city budget comes from the State budget” (p. 18). A large portion of that state support comes in the form os Unrestricted General Government Aid (UGGA). In Fiscal Year 2027, Lowell is receiving $32,137,740 in UGGA, making it the fifth highest recipient in the state.

UGGA funds are spread through the entirety of the City’s budget. In FY2025, that meant $1,220,325 for the Police Department (p. 23), $2,509,816 for the Fire Department, $616,602 for parks (p. 274), $313,310 for recreation (p. 312), $571,017 for the Library (p. 319), $7,469,390 for health insurance (p. 332), and $5,270,721 for pensions (p. 334).

UGGA funding has already been decreasing. The FY27 budget explains that since 2002, UGGA has “fallen 25 percent in real, inflation-adjusted terms” (p. 16), meaning that “state aid is not keeping pace with municipal cost growth” (p. 71).

Reducing the state’s income tax rate by 20% would likely reduce UGGA and significantly hinder Lowell’s ability to provide basic services to its residents.

Who Benefits Most from The Tax Cut?

This income tax cut would disproportionately benefit the rich.

Mass Budget projects that “Seventy-six percent of that tax windfall would be taken by the highest-income 1 percent of households. The bottom 80 percent of households by income – the vast majority of middle- and low-income households – would receive, collectively, only 4 percent of the benefits.”

To put a dollar amount to it, they reported that “the highest-income 1 percent of households (with average incomes of $3.9 million) would receive, on average, a tax break of $31,600 annually. Meanwhile the bottom 80 percent of households by income – the vast majority of the state’s population, all with incomes below $187,500 – would see an average break of only $534. The lowest income 20 percent of households would receive an average tax cut of only $44 a year.”

Part of the reason these cuts disproportionately benefit the wealthy is that they include cuts to taxes on investment income.

Investment income includes “dividends, interest, and long-term capital gains (the profits from selling assets held for more than a year). These sources of income are heavily concentrated in the highest-income, predominantly white, households. Under the ballot initiative proposal, the average household in the top 1 percent would receive an average tax cut on these capital gains of approximately $8,345 annually, while the bottom 80 percent of households, representing the broad middle class and low-income residents, would receive an average tax cut of only $6” on capital gains income.

How would it impact the economy?

The Center for State Policy Analysis found that “If voters endorse this income tax cut, the impact on economic growth is likely to be small. The fact that income tax cuts are fundamentally a transfer of money from public coffers to private pockets makes it hard for them to boost the overall state economy — especially when we’re talking about shifting $5 billion in a state where total economic activity amounts to roughly $700 billion.” (pp. 6-7).

Many might believe that tax cuts would attract “more workers to Massachusetts — or discourag[e] out-migration. But the research on migration suggests that even larger rate changes, like the millionaires tax, have a surprisingly small impact on interstate moves” (p. 7).

The Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation argues that while income tax cuts can “provide some level of increased economic activity that would not otherwise occur,” there are caveats. For example, income tax cuts also decrease state spending, which “has its own economic impact.” Furthermore, “national and international economic trends often overwhelm the impact of state policy, especially in the near-term. The aftermath of the successful voter referendum from 2000 to lower the income tax rate from 5.95 percent to 5 percent demonstrates that in spite of lower tax rates, the state’s economy still reeled as a result of a national recession” (p. 3).

According to Mass Budget Policy Director Phineas Baxandall further cuts to Massachusetts’ income tax could actually damage the state’s economic position, saying that “It would be strangling our competitive advantage as the most educated state in the U.S.”

Public Perception of the Ballot Initiative

Next, we’ll turn our attention to how this proposal is being perceived. In short, it is supported by the public (at first glance), opposed by universities and unions, and mixed in the business community.

The Public Supports It (Until They Hear the Details)

Current polling suggests that, at first glance, this ballot initiative is popular with the general public.

In August of 2025, Massachusetts Opportunity Alliance released polling data finding that 74.8% of Massachusetts residents would support the policy, with higher rates of support among people with incomes above $100,000 (p. 4). (It is important to note that the sponsor of this poll, MOA, is the organization sponsoring the initiative).

A February 2026 poll from the University of New Hampshire Survey Center put public support at around 58%, while a a May 2026 poll from MassINC finds that, upon first ask, two thirds of people support the initiative.

However, it is important to note that the MassINC poll found that “after messaging on the tax cut’s budget impact and the distribution of savings, 50% oppose the question” (p. 13). The pollsters told people that “experts estimate that lowering the income tax would cost state government $5 billion a year, forcing deep cuts to education, health care, and aid to cities and towns. On average, the wealthiest 1 percent would get back more than $30,000 on their taxes, while the bottom 80 percent would only get back a little more than $500” (p. 13), and this messaging led people to oppose the initiative. People who were most likely to shift toward opposition were disproportionately Democrats, women, and non-white (p. 14).

This suggests that in order to stop this ballot initiative from passing, it is important for people to understand the impact on the state budget as well as the disproportionate benefits from the initiative.

Opposition from Unions and Public Universities

The largest organized opposition to this ballot initiative is a coalition called Protect Massachusetts’ Future. The organization’s largest donors are labor unions (see the bottom of their website). The organization is chaired by Harris Gruman, executive director of the SEIU Massachusetts State Council.

They have been funding advertisements highlighting the negative impacts of the initiative. They have also been publicly pressuring members of the Massachusetts High Tech Council to leave the organization in protest.

Many universities did just that.

In February of 2026, the Boston Globe put out an article titled, “Mass. High Tech Council is losing higher-ed members amid its income tax rollback push. Why?”

The answer, according to UMass Lowell Chancellor Julie Chen is simple: “when it seems like a group’s primary focus could harm the organization you represent, it’s hard to justify sticking around.”

Chancellor Chen pointed out the irony that by reducing income taxes, they will likely defund the very institutions like UMass Lowell that educate their future employees: “Cut funding for higher ed, she says, and you cut into the quality of talent you can recruit here.”

A Divided Business Community

When it comes to the business community’s perspectives, the title of a Boston Globe article from March of 2026 pretty clearly sums it up: “As debate heats up about Mass. income tax cut, the business community is divided.”

The article explained that because of that division, “none of the Big Four business groups — the Mass. Taxpayers Foundation, Greater Boston Chamber, AIM, and the Mass. Business Roundtable” had taken a formal position.

Some in the business community point to the way cuts would gut public spending. Bob Rivers, executive chair at Eastern Bank “[decried] the impact that the resulting loss of state programs could have on the communities his bank serves.” Tamara Small, the chief executive of developer group NAIOP Massachusetts, said that “this is a bad time for a significant cut in state revenues, particularly revenues that support public investments in infrastructure, housing, and key services important to businesses. If those get cut, she says, it would hurt the state’s economic stability and make it less competitive.”

On the other hand, they point out that “small-business champions Jon Hurst, of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, and Chris Carlozzi, of NFIB, lean toward supporting the tax cut. The ballot question, from their perspective, would particularly help self-proprietors who pay their business taxes via their personal income filings.”

The silence of the “Big Four” business groups changed in May of 2026 when the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation was the first major business group to oppose the income tax proposal.

It is still unclear where some in the business community will land on this initiative.

Then and Now: Comparing the MHTC’s Tactics

To understand the playbook the Massachusetts High Tech Council has employed this election cycle, it is instructive to look at the tactics they used way back in 1980 (46 years ago!) during the campaign for Proposition 2 ½ (a ballot initiative that limited property taxes in Massachusetts).

The story of Prop 2½ is described in detail in Lily Geismer’s sweeping analysis of post-New Deal Massachusetts politics, Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party. Geismer looked not only at the details of the Prop 2½ policy, but also at the political tactics used in the campaign.

Here, I will break down how their messaging in the Prop 2½ campaign compares to the campaign today. Understanding how history is repeating itself can help us to better understand how to protect public services.

“Faux Populism”

According to Geismer, “Political scientist Daniel Smith would later characterize the Proposition 2½ campaign as ‘faux populist’ because of the influential, but invisible role of the high-tech executives” (p. 262). Populism is an approach to politics that pits ordinary people against elites who are often painted as corrupt. It is somewhat ironic that coalition of corporations would paint itself as populist, but in the Prop 2½ this strategy was effective.

One reason the Prop 2½ campaign was able to fashion itself as populist is that it was able to lean on Barbara Anderson, “A Marblehead housewife turned outspoken antitax crusader, who served as the public face of the organization.[…] Anderson’s image as a suburban mom enhanced the homeowner-driven portrait of the campaign she led” (p. 261). Anderson was the executive director of Citizens for Low Taxation, a grassroots anti-tax group that worked in coalition with the MHTC.

Anderson argued that “‘homeowners need protection,’ particularly against the ‘special interest groups.’ At the same time, these rallying cries downplayed the role of ‘special interests’ in [Citizens for Low Taxation]’s own campaign.’ […] While Anderson later admitted that Proposition 2½ would not have passed without the money raised by the MHTC and the advertisements it sponsored, she also countered accusations that she merely operated as a ‘populist front’ for the political agenda of the high-tech industry, calling her relationship with the MHTC ‘symbiotic.’” (p. 262).

In addition to Anderson’s role as the public face of the organization, the Prop 2½ campaign was also able to fashion itself as anti-establishment because of the way government officials – often considered ‘establishment’ figures – reacted to it:

“Local officials immediately spoke out against the measure with warnings about the devastating effects of such a proposal on the ability to adequately manage municipal governments, especially in populous, low-income areas […] the mounting opposition helped proponents of the measure fashion a populist-laden campaign as the underdogs, which would prove pivotal to their eventual success” (p. 261).

Reflecting back on Manager Golden’s recent warnings about how this tax cut will impact Lowell, as well as the Massachusetts Municipal Association’s opposition to the ballot question, it is uncanny how much history repeats itself.

And today, much like in the ‘80s, the MOA is attempting to frame themselves as in opposition to two “establishments” – unions and the Governor.

In an opinion piece in the Washington Post, Chris Anderson and Jim Sturgis of MOA argued that “State labor leaders” are the ones concerned about holes in the budget, while “[t]heir members are less skeptical, with over 80 percent of union members supporting the policy.” This framing suggests that state labor leaders are establishment leaders leading their members astray.

The MOA has also framed itself in opposition to Massachusetts’ Governor, Maura Healey. I was recently fed a Facebook advertisement from the Pioneer Institute saying that “The Governor opposes a tax cut that would put money back in your pocket, create businesses, and tens of thousands of jobs […] She thinks it’s a ‘Bad’ idea to put $1,300 back in the pockets of the average taxpayer.”

While not about this particular campaign, the MOA has recently posted videos framing itself as anti-establishment and wanting to protect working people from the over-extension of the government taxes: “Massachusetts has taxes on everything. Your house. Your car. Your beer. Now, they even wanna tax your candy? That’s right. The governor has proposed lifting the state sales tax exemption on candy.” Notice the use of “you” here. The way this ad speaks directly to “you” and critiques how “they” want to tax “you” creates an sense of intimacy with the listener and a sense of in-group and out-group dynamics that makes listeners distrust “them” – in this case, the Governor.

In an attempt to relate to Bruins fans, the MOA even went so far as to release a video quite seriously arguing that Massachusetts’ oppressive taxes are the reason why the Boston Bruins have not won as many Stanley Cups as teams in Florida: “It’s not a coincidence that Florida teams have won three of the past five Stanley cups.”

How we frame an issue matters. In order to successfully defeat this initiative, we need to change the way we frame the debate. Whereas the MOA wants to frame the debate as government unfairly taking people’s taxes, we need to frame it in terms of what it is – tax cuts for the wealthy to benefit large corporations and hurt everyone else. I think Harris Gruman of the SEIU effectively did this in a recent interview with Progressive Massachusetts. “The Tech Billionaires are coming for fair share. Here’s how we fight back.”

Affordability for Working People

Another line of similarity between the Prop 2½ campaign and the 2026 ballot initiative is the messaging focused on affordability. In both cases, they have framed the proposed limit on taxes as a way to make life more affordable for working people.

In the Prop 2½ campaign, the high tech industries of the MHTC argued that because of Massachusetts’ higher taxes compared to some other states, their potential employees did not want to live here. “‘We offer a guy a job and the first thing you hear is taxes,’ bemoaned Hrebert Roth, the president of a Waltham-based electronics companies. Some companies, including Data General, had already moved part or all of their operations out of state, particularly to North Carolina, which held out to workers a 20 percent cost-of-living difference through a combination of taxes, insurance, food, and lower home-heating prices. […] ‘This is not our choice,’ de Castro maintained, ‘but one of the potential employees we are trying to recruit’” (p. 260).

While the MHTC was attempting to argue for tax cuts “on behalf of their employees […] The anti-tax pro-Sunbelt archetypal engineer that the MHTC frequently invoked, nevertheless, did not uniformly describe the worldview of the people who worked at its companies. As Tracy Kidder portraied in The Soul of a New Machine, when Data General decided to move one of its big minicomputer projects to North Carolina, many of its employees refused to relocate and felt in competition with those who had left. ‘I thought North Carolina sucked,’ one engineer candidly exclaimed. It was ‘not a place where I wanted to bring up my wife and family. […] In deviation from the MHTC’s campaign, Paula Leventman, who conducted interviews with professionals at the Route 128 firms in the late 1970s, found that the majority were skeptical of solutions similar to Proposition 13 [a similar tax cut ballot measure in California] because they recognized that the maintenance of many municipal services, such as quality public schools, parks, and other amenities that made their suburbs desirable places to live, depended on taxes” (p. 260).

Along similar lines, the MHTC / MOA continues to claim to care about working people today. Recognizing that “affordability” is a 2026 buzz word, the Mass Opportunity Alliance (which MHTC is part of) seems to be repeating this faux populist past and arguing that cutting taxes would make life more affordable in Massachusetts. I was fed an MOA Facebook ad on May 29th which argued that income taxes were “driving people and businesses out of [the] state.”

What is Development?

The Massachusetts Opportunity Alliance attempts to frame its ballot initiative in terms of “competitiveness” with other states. It tries to suggest that reducing Massachusetts’ income tax would contribute to the state’s economic development.

One data point they like to look at is the state’s Gross Domestic Product, or GDP: “Following full implementation, economic growth is expected to increase state GDP by as much as $17 billion, contributing to faster revenue growth long term.”

Here, I think it is important to question what exactly we mean when we talk about “development.”

In his 1999 book Development as Freedom, Nobel-winning economist and philosopher Amartya Sen brought forward an expanded definition of development. He argued that historically, we have had a narrow view of “development” solely in terms of increasing certain economic indicators like GDP and Gross National Product GNP.

But taking a broader lens, Sen argues that “Development can be seen […] as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy” (p. 3).

He is quick to point out that “Growth of GNP or of individual incomes can, of course, be very important as means to expanding the freedoms enjoyed by the members of the society. But freedoms depend also on other determinants, such as social and economic arrangements (for example, facilities for education and health care) as well as political and civil rights (for example, the liberty to participate in public discussion and scrutiny)” (p. 3).

In this new and expansive view, “Development requires the removal of major sources of unfreedom: poverty as well as tyranny, poor economic opportunities as well as systematic social deprivation, neglect of public facilities as well as intolerance or overactivity of repressive states. Despite unprecedented increases in overall opulence, the contemporary world denies elementary freedoms to vast numbers-perhaps even the majority of people” (pp. 3-4).

So sure, this ballot initiative might slightly raise the state’s GDP.

But if we truly care about Lowell’s economic development, we need not only to increase GDP, but also to fund our public goods so that people in Lowell have access to high quality education, healthcare, housing and parks!

People in Lowell deserve a high quality of life. Not a world where wealthy people pay less in taxes and ordinary people are left fighting over scraps.

How to Stop this Ballot Initiative

If you would like to help stop this ballot initiative, as shown by the polling data above, it is important that you spread the word about how:

1. The rich disproportionately benefit from this cut, as the wealthiest 1 percent would get back more than $30,000 on their taxes, while the bottom 80 percent would only get back a little more than $500.

2. It would cost the state government $5 billion and force deep cuts to state services like education, health care, and aid to cities and towns.

If you would like to see campaign materials or learn more about the campaign to stop this initiative and how you can get involved, you can see the Protect Massachusetts’ Future campaign website, as well as their MHTC membership directory, which is focused on pressuring MHTC members to resign from the organization in protest.

To learn more about how to get involved, reach out to Raise Up Massachusetts at info@raiseupma.org.

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State Rep Tara Hong and I discuss his campaign for re-election for the 18th Middlesex District seat in the September 2026 Democratic Primary.

We discussed his backstory, his platform, and how he contrasts himself with his challenger, City Councilor and former Mayor Sokhary Chau. Then, we explored issues including housing affordability, good governance in the statehouse, taxation, immigration & ICE, homelessness, Cambodian government & politics, the audit of the state legislature, and climate change.

I also aim to interview his challenger, City Councilor and former Mayor Sokhary Chau.

To learn more about State Rep. Tara Hong:

• See his campaign website

• See the bills he has filed on the Massachusetts State Legislature website.

• See his social media pages including Instagram, Tiktok, and Facebook.

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When I was a kid, my parents would tell me stories about their first “starter home” – a small house they could afford with the meager income of young adults in their mid-20’s.

Investing their housing money on owning a home (rather than renting) was a pathway to building wealth and a ticket into the middle class.

I grew up with the idea that I would some day follow their path, but, as a young professional who continues to rent an apartment into my late 20s, I can tell you: In 2025, there are no starter homes in Massachusetts.

From 2016 to 2024, the average cost of a home in Massachusetts went from $367,850 to $640,931 – an increase of 74%.

Over the last 40 years, the average cost of a home in Greater Boston has far outpaced the average wages in Massachusetts. In 1980, the ratio between the average cost of a home and the average wage was 1:3. In 2023, that number was as high as 1:6.

As I understand it, there are many reasons why home ownership is out of reach for many people. Part of that has to do with wage stagnation. The New England Public Policy Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston pointed out that “Rising population alongside falling per capita income are putting mixed pressure on housing demand across New England” (p. 6).

Rising housing costs are also a result of the mismatch between the high demand for housing in Massachusetts and the limited supply.

In the process of writing this piece, I decided that in order to fully understand the data, I needed to hear directly from experts in the field of housing and urban planning. I reached out to Jenny Raitt, the Executive Director of the Northern Middlesex Council of Governments (NMCOG), not only because of her current role, but because of her work with the Massachusetts Unlocking Housing Production Commission, and her previous work as the Director of Planning and Community Development for the town of Arlington. Raitt’s participation in this article was intended to provide research-based and professional planning context regarding housing production and zoning policy, not to advocate for or against the proposed ballot initiative.

Raitt told me that “The Greater Lowell region and Massachusetts more broadly face a longstanding mismatch between housing supply and demand.”

In particular, she pointed to a shortage of housing supply. “Decades of underproduction, particularly in high opportunity and job-rich regions, have contributed to the rising rents and home prices that we see today. […] In Greater Lowell, these pressures are compounded by the shortage of starter homes and family-sized units.”

Today, I aim to outline how one specific policy – large minimum lot sizes – raise housing costs in Massachusetts by (1) artificially inflating the cost of individual homes, and (2) artificially limiting housing supply and driving up costs in general.

Then, I will outline how a 2026 ballot initiative to reduce extremely large minimum lot sizes could help us to take a small step toward bringing homeownership into reach for young people with moderate incomes – like me.

What is a Minimum Lot Size Requirement?

Before getting into how minimum lot sizes inflate housing costs, let’s start with a quick definition. A minimum lot size is “the smallest permissible area for a single parcel of land on which a building or structure may be constructed, as dictated by local or state zoning ordinances.”

In Massachusetts, municipalities can say that in certain zones of their city or town, you can only build one single-family house per x amount of land.

An important piece of background is understanding the context in which minimum lot sizes were enacted. Historically, Jenny Raitt told me, regulations like minimum lot sizes “were often justified as tools to manage growth, protect public health in areas dependent on septic systems, to protect open space, and to limit fiscal impacts on municipalities.”

A 2023 Boston Indicators report titled Exclusionary by Design outlined how minimum lot sizes largely appeared during a period known as “The Big Downzone,” in reaction to fears of rapid suburbanization and runaway development in the 1960s-1970s.

We are now seeing how these strategies to limit growth are playing out across the state.

Raitt pointed me to a report from the state’s Housing Production Commission. “that report identified minimum lot sizes as one of the key contributors to the Massachusetts housing shortage, and recommended as a solution to reduce or completely eliminate minimum lot sizes.”

According to a 2025 report from the Massachusetts Unlocking Housing Production Commission, “There is no established health or safety justification for minimum lot sizes; other dimensional controls, such as setbacks, can ensure adequate separation between structures while maintaining public health and safety standards” (p. 41).

One of the measures of the health of housing market is called a vacancy rate. The vacancy rate is the percentage of the total housing stock that is currently vacant. Experts seem to agree that a healthy ownership vacancy rate is somewhere around 1.3-2%. Significantly lower than 1.3% means there is not enough supply and housing costs rise. Significantly higher than 2% can lead to other negative impacts. The ownership vacancy rate across Massachusetts was just 0.6% – less than half of a healthy rate.

It seems that the solutions of yesterday are becoming the problems of today. In our attempts to stop runaway development, we have created a world in which it is impossible to build the homes that we desperately need.

Large Minimum Lot Sizes in Greater Lowell

Minimum lot sizes can vary widely between communities.

Lowell’s largest minimum lot size lies in its Suburban Single Family neighborhoods, which make up about one third of the city’s land (p. 90).

The largest minimum lot size in Lowell is 10,000 square feet, or about 0.23 acres (p. 35). By contrast, much of the land outside of Lowell has a minimum lot size of one acre (40,000 square feet) or even two acres (80,000 square feet).

That means that the towns outside of Lowell have large swaths of land with minimum lot sizes four times or even eight times the size of Lowell’s.

According to a 2023 analysis by the Boston Globe, “More than half of cities and towns in Eastern Massachusetts mandate that some lots for single-family homes be at least one acre […]. Some require a baseline of two acres, one and a half times the size of the playing field at Gillette Stadium, per house.”

Below, I have placed two images. The first is of Gillette Stadium. The second is of a large swath of land in Dracut with a minimum lot size of 2 acres.

According to Dracut’s 2024 Housing Production Plan, “Dracut’s zoning bylaw most strongly supports single family dwellings on 40,000 square feet, with 75% of land area allowing this use by right“ (p. 62).

Similarly, Westford’s 2021 Housing Production Plan describes how “85.2% of Westford’s land area [is designated as] Residence A District [which] requires a larger minimum lot size of 40,000 square feet” (p. 49).

In Tewksbury, “75.9%” of land “Allows only single-family detached dwellings” (p. 80), with a large part of that being zoned as R40, which has a minimum lot size of one acre. “The minimum lot area allowed within the R40 District is one acre. Notably, many existing nonconforming homes in the R40 district have lot sizes ranging from 0.15 to 0.3 acres” (p. 81).

Here’s what I’m getting at. Large minimum lot sizes are pervasive in Greater Lowell,

What is the Problem with Large Minimum Lot Sizes?

As I see it, the problems with large minimum lot sizes are twofold: (1) the cost of homes, and (2) exclusion.

Let’s start with how large minimum lot sizes make housing more expensive for people all across the state.

In my interview with Jenny Raitt, she told me that the study that led to the Unlocking Housing Production Commission’s report found two ways that large minimum lot sizes raise housing costs.

“Large minimum lot sizes limit how efficiently land can be used and often make it impossible to build smaller, more attainable homes. When you allow homes on smaller lots, you modestly increase housing supply. You also reduce per-unit land costs and enable more incremental, context-sensitive growth.”

For those who would like to read the original text of the report, it says that large minimum lot sizes “significantly hinder housing affordability. By requiring excessive amounts of land per home, these regulations inflate housing costs [and] limit the availability of buildable land” (p. 41).

Let’s break down the two ways large minimum lot sizes make housing more expensive: inflating the costs of individual homes and restricting housing supply so it cannot keep pace with demand.

Inflating the Cost of Individual Homes

The first way large minimum lot sizes raise housing costs is by increasing the costs of individual houses. One of the biggest factors in the value of a home is simply the value of the land on which it is built. More land means a higher price.

Even when minimum lot sizes were first being developed, municipal leaders were aware that they would increase the cost of housing. As early as the 1960s, the towns of Wenham and Littleton noted how their minimum lot sizes drove up costs:

“Wenham’s 1962 Comprehensive Plan, for example, explains, ‘The average cost of residential construction has risen to over $20,000, primarily as a result of the 1955 minimum lot size increase.’ Littleton’s 1964 Master Plan advises that: ‘Future residents will have to face the prospect of paying a high price for their housing, especially since present Town subdivision regulations require building lots to be at least one acre in size’” (Exclusionary by Design, p. 11) .

This dynamic of home values being inflated by the large lot they are on can still be seen today. Take, for example, the home below in Tyngsborough. While the home is only 1,666 square feet, it is on a 2.82 acre lot, likely inflating the cost of the house itself to a listing price of $699,000 (as of January 7th, 2026).

Large lot sizes put families in a strange predicament. There are many people who want to have enough square footage for their children, and a yard for their dog. But if the only houses available are on these expensive, large, one-acre lots, that dream will remain out of reach for many.

Inflexibility in the Housing Market

Another negative impact of large minimum lot sizes is that they “reduce housing diversity” (p. 41).

Large minimum lot sizes is that they create an artificial – and I would argue unnecessary (p. 17) – distortion in the housing market. These policies make the housing market inflexible to the needs of consumers.

Take Tyngsborough’s housing supply for example. According to Tyngsborough’s 2025 Housing Production Plan, “there is a huge mismatch between supply and demand when it comes to lower-cost, market-rate housing. There is not nearly enough supply to meet demand for ownership housing valued at under $300k, while there is plenty of housing valued at $400k or more that there is little demand for” (p. 55).

I think this bears repeating. Tyngsborough zoning allows the construction of expensive homes, even though there is no demand for them. But the zoning code does not allow for lower cost market rate housing, even though there is high demand.

Imagine, for a moment, how bizarre it would be if we had a regulation that said that car companies were only allowed to sell SUVs, even though there is demand for smaller cars like sedans, coupes, and hatchbacks. Clearly, owning a car would become out of reach for many people.

Allowing single family houses on smaller lots across Massachusetts would allow for more moderate-sized homes on reasonably sized lots to be built.

Just imagine – with more housing options, not only could people afford the homes they want, but they could also start investing in their home and building wealth.

We’re Running Out of Land

Not only does the mere cost of land inflate the price of individual homes, but large lot sizes mean that, sooner or later, you’re going to run out of land. Eventually, the shortage of developable land means supply cannot keep pace with demand, and housing costs soar.

Tewksbury seems to have run into this problem. According to Tewksbury’s 2023 Housing Production Plan, the land that is zoned for “one unit per acre suburban development [..] is largely but not entirely covered by existing housing” (p. 80).

Lexington ran into a similar problem way back in 1976. According to their Growth Statement from that year, “Because Lexington’s developable land is largely used up, growth is expected to be limited in the near future. […] Clearly this predicates a town in which only the affluent can afford to live, a growth expectation in conflict with the expressed values of many on the committee” (p. 28)

When towns begin running out of developed land, they start infringing on forests and wetlands. The large footprints of one-acre lots mean that, as we try to build enough housing, we are also destroying our forests at an unsustainable rate. According to the Boston Globe, in 2017, New England’s suburban sprawl was eating up “65 acres a day of woodlands.”

As a result of supply shortages, housing costs are on the rise in Massachusetts and in Greater Lowell.

The municipalities with the most land zoned for one acre lots are also those with the highest median home sale prices. Westford, with “85.2%” of its land dedicated to 40,000 square foot per house, had one of the highest median home sale prices in the region in both 2021 and 2024 (see below).

If we want homeownership to be affordable, then we need to build more supply of houses.

One way to unlock more housing supply would be reduce minimum lot sizes. By bringing our housing market to a healthier equilibrium of supply and demand, we could reduce competition for houses and bring down housing costs.

Exclusion

Another problem with large minimum lot sizes is that they “contribute to exclusionary zoning practices” (p. 41).

According to a 2021 review essay in the Journal of the American Planning Association, “Exclusionary zoning refers to local land use zoning practices that effectively bar low- and moderate income households from finding adequate housing” (p. 167).

Jenny Raitt pointed to the Exclusionary by Design report, which showed that the restrictive zoning practices (like minimum lot sizes) in Greater Boston “had exclusionary effects that restricted housing diversity and access to communities, even where the original public health or infrastructure justifications no longer apply, those zoning rules are still in effect.”

It is easy to see that if the only homes that are available are homes on large, expensive lots, families with less money will not be able to live in that place.

Given the racial wealth gaps in the United States, policies that restrict housing options for low and moderate income families can, intentionally or unintentionally, lead to racial segregation. In the United States between the average White family and the average Black and Latino families, as well as the average families from some Asian origin groups. This means that, disproportionately, those racial groups are affected by the exclusionary impacts of large minimum lot sizes.

As far back as 1954, local planning board members in Framingham released a statement about the potential exclusionary impact of a proposed increase to minimum lot sizes:

“Framingham does not want to exclude the working man, and the young couples who want a home…. All of the Planning Board members are fathers and we are reluctant to recommend a zoning program that makes it too expensive for their own children to build their home in Framingham.” (Exclusionary by Design, p. 14)

This economic and racial segregation is still with us today. Take a look at the two maps below. The top is a map of the municipalities in the Northern Middlesex region. The bottom is the same map color-coded by race. As you can see, communities in Greater Lowell with large minimum lot sizes are disproportionately White. Lowell, on the other hand, with its small minimum lot sizes (as well as multi-family housing, rental properties, and Subsidized Housing Inventory), is much more socioeconomically and racially diverse.

Allowing single family houses on smaller lots across the state would not solve our economic and racial segregation entirely, but I believe it would be one step in the right direction. It would not lead to more multi-family homes, or Subsidized Housing, which would further increase economic and racial inclusion, but it would allow moderate income families the ability to choose where they want to live.

The Case for Minimum Lot Size Reform

Given the all of the negative consequences of large minimum lot sizes, I believe reducing minimum lot sizes would help to bring down housing costs and make sure we build inclusive communities.

I asked Jenny Raitt whether reducing minimum lot sizes could bring down housing costs. “When you allow homes on smaller lots,” she told me, “you modestly increase housing supply, you reduce per-unit land costs, and allow more incremental, context-sensitive growth.” (I want to be clear that she was speaking in general terms here, and not about the specific ballot initiative I am personally advocating for).

In February of 2025, Massachusetts Unlocking Housing Production Commission recommended that “The Commonwealth should eliminate minimum residential lot sizes statewide except in environmentally sensitive areas and on excluded lands. Eliminating minimum residential lot sizes would allow for the construction of single or multifamily dwellings on any lot in areas zoned for residential use. Housing would still have to meet all other building, health and safety requirements. Splits, mergers and building on substandard lots would not be allowed on sensitive or excluded lands” (p. 42).

Similarly, in a 2025 report, the Joint Center for Housing Studies recommended that the state “Reduce minimum lot size requirements” (p. 18). They made the case that “Reducing the minimum lot size to 2,000 square feet or less will enable the construction of smaller, starter-scale homes that would otherwise be unbuildable. Smaller lot sizes are like missing middle housing itself: often allowed before the onset of zoning, now reintroduced” (p. 18).

The same report pointed to Durham, North Carolina as a success story for how reducing minimum lot sizes can make homeownership more affordable.

“The Small Lot Code, which reduced minimum lot size across urban zoning districts by 60 percent, is a missing middle-specific reform with huge potential for accommodating smaller units and accessory dwelling units. Minimum lot sizes dropped from a previous average of 5,000 square feet to a new minimum of 2,000 square feet, provided the home built is 1,200 square feet (an ideal missing middle size). […] The result? Durham has brought back its starter home market, with 120 new detached homes under 1,250 square feet selling for less than $500,000 since 2020, while the other cities in the Research Triangle struggled to produce similar results: Raleigh sold ten such homes, and Chapel Hill only one (Figure 4)” (p. 19)

I’d like to add one last point. We still need to be smart about the way we build. If we reduce minimum lot sizes carefully, we can both protect the environment and reduce the cost of living in Massachusetts.

Jenny Raitt told me that “the Building for Tomorrow report underscored that zoning flexibility is something that should be paired with thoughtful local planning and standards and also infrastructure investment.”

The 2026 Ballot Initiative

Now that I’ve explored the recommendations of experts, I’d like to turn toward a specific ballot initiative that is currently collecting signatures to be on the ballot in November 2026. The initiative is titled “25-03 Initiative Petition for a Law to Allow Single-Family Homes on Small Lots in Areas with Adequate Infrastructure.” Here is a summary of the proposed law that we will be voting on in November of 2026.

“This proposed law would allow single-family homes to be built in a residentially zoned area as long as the land on which it is to be constructed is at least 5,000 square feet, has at least 50 feet of land bordering the street, road, or public way that it faces, and has access to public sewer and water services.

The proposed law would allow cities and towns to reasonably regulate certain aspects of those single-family homes, including their height, distance from neighboring buildings, open space, parking requirements, and whether they can be rented out on a short-term basis. The proposed law would also allow the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities to issue guidance or regulations to administer the proposed law.”

Here is my understanding of what this proposed law would and would not do.

That being said, this ballot initiative would:

1. Allow for more modestly sized single family homes to be constructed all over the state.

2. Bring down the overall cost of single family homes in Massachusetts by creating more housing supply to meet demand.

3. Allow more moderate income families to build wealth by making homeownership more accessible. People could invest in their housing money into the equity of their home rather than paying rent.

4. Address the exclusion of moderate income families from some communities. Some municipal employees, for example, could actually live in the towns where they work.

This ballot initiative would not address the need for more “missing middle” housing or affordable and supportive housing (p. 9) throughout the state. It is specifically targeted at lot sizes for single family homes. It also would not address the exclusion of low income and extremely low income families from various communities, as these populations in aggregate cannot afford a single family home.

As Jenny Raitt told me (speaking broadly about zoning), “Zoning reforms alone cannot overcome other barriers to housing production, including things like high construction costs, financing barriers, labor shortages, or limited public subsidies. Zoning reform needs to be paired with complementary policies if we want housing to be within reach for more households.”

She pointed to a a wider, comprehensive approach to housing policy. She pointed to zoning to allow more missing middle housing, “increasing funding for the construction and preservation of affordable and deeply affordable housing, streamlined and predictable permitting and approval processes, incentives for adaptive reuse of underutilized buildings, infrastructure investments that would support growth, and regional planning approaches that more equitably distribute housing production across communities, and being mindful of tenant protections and housing stability measures.”

This ballot initiative would not fix all of Massachusetts’ housing problems, but I believe it would be one step in the right direction.

How to Support this Ballot Initiative

In order to get this ballot initiative on the ballot in November, the campaign will need to gather 12,429 signatures in support of the initiative by June 17th, 2026.

I have signature sheets! If you would like to sign or help gather signatures, you can reach out to me by messaging me on Substack. You can also contact Andrew Mikula, one of the primary organizers of the campaign at andrewmikula@gmail.com.

If and when the ballot initiative is on the ballot, attention will then turn to building support among voters through canvassing, phone banking and more.

According to the campaign’s Op-Ed in the Boston Globe, “A May 2025 Abundant Housing Massachusetts/MassINC poll found that 78 percent of Massachusetts voters support “allowing homes to be built on smaller lots.”

Whether this translates into substantial support for the initiative remains to be seen.

To learn more about the campaign, see the website here.

Further Reading

For more on the complicated politics of residential (class and racial) segregation in Massachusetts, see Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party by Lily Geismer. See also the Exclusionary by Design report heavily referenced in this piece, as well as a 1975 report titled Route 128: Boston’s Road to Segregation. See also the PBS documentary The Bussing Battleground.

For more on the topic of how government policy led to racial and class segregation across the US, see Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law and Just Action. See also the PBS Documentary Redlining: Mapping Inequality in Dayton and Springfield.

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Are you interested in the future of parks and open spaces in Lowell?

Lowell’s Department of Planning and Development (DPD) is in the process of creating its next Open Space and Recreation Plan (OSRP). The results of this plan will help the City of Lowell to “prioritize the next 10 years of open space improvement projects.”

The newest way to have your voice heard is to add comments to the DPD’s new “Crowdsource Map.” According to a recent newsletter from the OSRP team, on this map you can “Tell us what you love about Lowell’s parks and open spaces, what you would fix, and pin it to the map. This will help the planning team prioritize where to focus investment.” You can also like other people’s comment (see below).

Looking for more ways to contribute? You can also:

1. See opportunities on the Open Space and Recreation Plan website.

2. Attend one of the upcoming OSRP events:

   

3. Sign up to get updates from the Open Space and Recreation Plan newsletter.

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It is no secret that Massachusetts has a housing affordability crisis. Massachusetts consistently ranks among the states with most expensive housing in the country.

I have felt this personally, watching my rent climb and waiting patiently as homeownership remains out of my reach. Whereas historically, homeownership has been a ladder to the middle class, that ladder is further and further out of reach for many people.

One of the core problems in Massachusetts’ housing market is that the process of constructing new housing is simply too expensive. Boston.com reported that “The average construction cost per new housing unit in Massachusetts […] makes it the third priciest in the nation.”

In a 2023 article, The Boston Globe called this the “The $600,000 Problem.” According to the article, “New housing often costs $500,000 to $600,000 per unit to finance and build, with high-rises closer to downtown Boston costing even more.” And this problem is not restricted to market rate housing. MassBudget found that in 2023, even Affordable Housing costed an average of “$497,000 per unit.”

The high cost of construction then leads to higher rents: “Those numbers are baked in from the start, setting a floor on future rents before the first shovel even hits the ground.”

When the cost of construction is too high, it also prevents some projects from ever being built, limiting housing supply and raising prices across the board.

So why is it so expensive to build in Massachusetts, and in Lowell more specifically? According to NMCOG’s 2025 At Home in Greater Lowell report, there are a wide array of factors:

“Rising construction costs, driven by increases in labor, materials, and regulatory expenses, have significantly raised average development costs in recent years. These “hard costs” now account for nearly 80% of the total cost of new developments. In addition, “soft costs” such as permitting fees, design, and financing, further add to the financial burden. Local regulatory barriers often exacerbate this gap, limiting the feasibility of both affordable and market-rate housing projects” (p. 24).

Today, I am going to focus on just one of the “soft costs” that can make it expensive to build in Massachusetts – the Site Plan Review process.

First, I will define site plan review. Then, I will explain how current site plan review processes create bottlenecks to housing production, leading to higher housing prices. Finally, I will point to how a bill in the MA State House – “H.2298 An Act facilitating site plan review” – could help make those changes. (It is worth noting that this bill was sponsored by Lowell’s own State Rep. Vanna Howard before she transitioned to being a State Senator.)

By making the Site Plan Review process more efficient, hopefully we can make housing less expensive to build, and, therefore, more affordable for families in Massachusetts.

What is Site Plan Review?

Firmly defining site plan review in Massachusetts can be challenging because there is so much variety across different municipalities.

According to the Citizen Planner Training Collaborative, there is currently no state definition or guidance for site plan review: “Mass. General Law chapter 40A, the Zoning Act, contains no reference to site plan review. Site plan review is entirely the creature of the cities and towns that use it, and the courts that have endorsed it” (p. 1).

That being said, here is a useful working definition from the same document:

“Site plan review establishes criteria for the layout, scale, appearance, safety, and environmental impacts of commercial or industrial development, in an attempt to ‘fit’ larger projects into the community. Site plan review usually focuses on parking, traffic, drainage, roadway construction, signage, utilities, screening, lighting, and other aspects of the proposal to arrive at the best possible design for the location. In the usual situation, site plan approval must be obtained before the building or special permit is issued” (p. 1).

So basically, before developers can get a permit to build, they need to submit a site plan to be reviewed by a designated entity in each municipality.

The process might include a public hearing about the project. According to the City of Lowell’s website, right now, all site plan reviews “are subject to a public hearing before the board, and are subject to notice requirements set forth in M.G.L. Chapter 40A Section 11.”

With this basic understanding of site plan review, let’s look at how inconsistencies and inefficiencies in site plan review across municipalities can make housing more expensive, and how this bill in the State House help to address those challenges.

How does Site Plan Review Drive Up Housing Costs?

As I understand it, Site Plan Review can lead to higher costs through (1) the cost of time and (2) the cost of confusion.

The Cost of Time

One way that Site Plan Review drives up the cost of production is by creating “unnecessary delays” (p. 33) to construction.

As a 2023 study from the Journal of the American Planning Association puts it, “If time is money, the speed of development permitting matters. Faster and more certain approvals can reduce carrying costs, help developers secure financing, and allow developers to bid more for land or budget for lower returns, all of which can help projects pencil and increase the supply of new housing overall” (p. 345).

According to a 2023 article from The Boston Globe, one of the ways Site Plan Review can drive up costs is by increasing the time it takes to get approval to actually start building.

Every month a project waits for zoning approvals means more interest on loans. Every time a planning board orders up revisions means bigger bills to architects. All of it pushes out the date when the rent checks start flowing in to pay everything back.

“Our projects take three or four years,” said Bruce Percelay, chairman of the Mount Vernon Co., a prominent Boston landlord and developer. “You’re carrying all that expense over a long period of time, and you’ve got to apply that into your loan, and therefore numbers trickle down into rents.”

Nearly every large building in and around Boston needs a zoning variance or special permit, which in turn requires a series of public meetings and votes. This can take months, even years, and often forces changes to the original design or kills a project entirely.

A 2025 letter from NMCOG echoed the idea that unnecessary “public hearings and added process […] may impact project timelines and extend the duration of local permitting” (p. 1).

According to Ted Tye, managing partner of Newton-based builder National Development, long and complicated permitting processes can lead to projects being stalled, or never happening:

Those changes may result in a better project, developers acknowledged, but they also take time. Clearer, cleaner rules on what can be built where would make a big difference, Tye said.

“There have been very few communities where there is a very clear path to permitting and approvals,” he said. “For a lot of projects, they entered the permitting process in one economic cycle. They emerge out of it in another.”

So even though they might have permits, no one will finance them. Tye has a project like that, the old Midtown Hotel on Huntington Avenue, where the city approved 325 units in 2021. But until financial markets improve, he said, those 325 apartments are on the shelf, along with almost 23,000 others around the city that have been approved but not yet built.

By increasing developers’ interest on loans, as well as preventing some projects from being built, the lengthy Site Plan Review processes in some municipalities is making housing more expensive for Massachusetts residents.

The Cost of Confusion

One of the biggest problems with the Site Plan Review process is that it is not explicitly defined by state statute. This can create “uncertainty, and inconsistent application of zoning laws” (p. 33).

A 2025 Policy Brief by the Pioneer Institute argued that “site plan review is not defined by Massachusetts statute, so its parameters are vague, leading to a long string of court cases.”

NMCOG’s letter similarly said that in Greater Lowell, “A consistent challenge across many municipalities can be the lack of clarity and predictability in local site plan review processes, which results in delays, uncertainty, and additional costs for both municipalities and applicants’ (p. 1).

According to The Boston Globe, this lack of clarity can lead to an increase in so-called “‘soft costs:’ architects and engineers, lawyers and consultants, plus insurance, financing, and the fee developers take to cover expenses and pay their staff, typically 2 to 3 percent of the overall budget.” As the article went on to explain, “Every time a planning board orders up revisions means bigger bills to architects.”

The Massachusetts Unlocking Housing Production Commission agreed that “In some cases, site plan review is treated as a discretionary process, even for by-right projects, leading to additional layers of subjective review beyond what zoning regulations require” (pp. 33-34).

The lack of a clear definition of Site Plan Review in state statute is holding back housing production by making site plan review unpredictable and driving up soft costs. This increase in soft cost is leading to higher housing costs for Massachusetts residents.

How H.2298 Reforms Site Plan Review

Now that I’ve outlined some of the problems with site plan review as it stands today, I will lay out how Vanna Howard’s bill, H.2298 An Act facilitating site plan review, addresses these issues.

Reform 1: Clarity & Transparency

One major reform supported by experts is to explicitly define Site Plan Review in Massachusetts state statute and make sure it is based on clear, objective measures.

Lowell’s 2024 Housing Production Plan found that “Predictability is the most important consideration for developers in Lowell, with a desire for transparency in decision criteria and priority sites,” including “clear criteria for site plan review” (p. 83).

The 2025 Policy Brief suggested that to remedy the inconsistent application of zoning laws across the state, the state should limit site plan review to specific “issues such as traffic circulation, stormwater runoff, and building placement” (p. 5).

A December 2025 report from the The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies suggested that one way to improve the site plan review process would be to create “user-friendly development standards; clearly outlined the development and site plan review process so developers, especially small-scale ones, can follow a transparent, predictable, and frictionless approvals process; and identified development-ready sites” (p. 13).

The bill in the Massachusetts State House, H.2298 An Act facilitating site plan review, tries to bring clarity to the site plan review process, defining “Performance Standards” as “reasonable municipal zoning regulations, and published industry standards and best practices, applicable to site plans and relative to traffic circulation and safety, pedestrian safety and access, off-street parking and loading, emergency vehicle access, stormwater drainage, screening, bulk and height of structures, exterior lighting, and storage or other outdoor service areas.” (p. 2).

The bill would require that “Performance standards must be reasonably definite and objective so that any petitioner has knowledge of such standards prior to application submittal” (pp. 2-3). It also clarifies that “A site plan application may be denied only on the grounds that: (i) the proposed site plan does not meet the specific requirements set forth in the zoning ordinance or by-law” (p. 4).

The bill states that that “No zoning bylaw or ordinance may include performance standards governing the aesthetics of structures” (p. 3). Some argue that aesthetics should not be included in Site Plan Review. I have come to think that communities should have some say in the aesthetics of their neighborhood, so long as community preferences are clearly and objectively communicated, so that it does not add additional time or costs to production.

NMCOG expressed support for these elements of the bill, saying that “By clearly defining “site plan review” and “performance standards” in Chapter 40A, the legislation will ensure transparency, efficiency, and fairness in the review process” (p. 2).

Bringing more clarity to site plan review could lead to lower “soft costs” for developers, and therefore lower housing costs for residents.

Reform 2: Clearly Defined Decision-Making Timelines

According to The Massachusetts Unlocking Housing Production Commission, “undefined limits on decision-making timelines […] contribute to inefficiencies that hinder housing and economic development” (p. 34).

Because there is no clear statewide limit around how long Site Plan Review can take, lengthy Site Plan Review can often lead to inefficiencies, driving up construction costs, and therefore the cost of housing for residents.

The bill in the Massachusetts State House, H.2298 An Act facilitating site plan review, sets a clear decision-making timeline for site plan review “not to exceed 90 days from the date of filing of a complete application or such extended time as may be agreed in writing by the petitioner” (p. 3).

Furthermore, the bill places limits on when appeals can be made: “appeals, if any, […] shall be filed within twenty days after the date of filing of such notice in the office of the city or town clerk” (p. 5).

NMCOG’s perspective was that “Establishing predictable timelines and objective standards will help municipalities better manage growth while also giving applicants a clearer understanding of requirements at the outset” (p. 2).

Creating a clear decision-making timeline for Site Plan Review could reduce the cost of construction for developers and bring down housing costs for residents in Massachusetts.

Reform 3: Streamline the Review Process for Smaller Projects

If Massachusetts wants to build enough housing to meet demand, many experts say we need to build what is often called “missing middle” housing.

“Missing middle housing—a term referring to the building types between a single-family home and a midrise apartment building—is increasingly viewed by policymakers, housing advocates, architects, land use planners, and developers as one possible solution to the affordable housing crisis in Massachusetts and across the United States. This scale of housing is ideal for urban and suburban infill sites, fits a wide range of housing preferences, phases of life, and budgets, and is often built by developers invested in their local communities.” (p. 1)

One of the problems for building “missing middle” housing is that “missing middle developers are often small shops without the capacity for lengthy and burdensome review processes” (p. 21).

Whereas single family homes can often be built without triggering site plan review, Multifamily construction, where allowed, typically requires site plan review, special permits, or variances—creating multiple opportunities to block or stall development.” (p. 38)

Site plan review can be a barrier, not only for large scale projects, but also for two- or four-family units.

According to The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, “There are fundamental differences—in size, scale, and complexity—between missing middle housing projects and large-scale multifamily or mixed-use developments, but these differences are not often reflected in the development review process. This means that smaller-scale, community-oriented developers are navigating the same byzantine, lengthy review processes as more advanced and larger developers, incurring disproportionate per-unit development fees, while simultaneously being excluded from certain development incentives geared towards scaled projects” (p. 21).

This combination of high costs and less eligibility for development incentives ties the hands of smaller developers that want to build missing middle housing.

This has led to many experts calling for expedited review processes for smaller developments. A February 2025 report from the Massachusetts Unlocking Housing Production Commission also called or “tiered review systems depending on project size and scale”(p. 35).

Similarly, an August 2025 report from the The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies suggested that the municipalities “Differentiate the review processes for missing middle and larger-scale multifamily developments. […] including reducing development fees proportionally for smaller-scale projects, fast-tracking reviews, offering permit navigation services, and utilizing online portals for development review documentation.” (pp. 21-22)

A 2025 Policy Brief from the Pioneer Institute suggested that Massachusetts “Define site plan review as a technical, administrative process. […] And the review must be performed administratively, usually by municipal staff, without a board vote. Relatively small projects should be eligible for review without a public hearing” (p. 5).

Some cities in the US have already made this reform. Austin, Texas – one of the few cities to see rents go down in the last few years – created a system called “Site Plan Lite”:

“Under the ‘Site Plan Lite’ initiative, which passed in 2023, missing middle homes of up to four units do not require site plans, and will be treated the same as single-family homes; site plan review adds time, cost (including hiring outside consultants to design the site plan), and bureaucratic hassle to the development process. In March of 2025, “Site Plan Lite 2” passed, bumping up streamlined review to sixteen-unit structures.” (p. 23)

In an attempt to address these concerns, Vanna Howard’s bill in the Massachusetts State House, H.2298 An Act facilitating site plan review, would empower municipalities to create categories of projects that are eligible for streamlined processes:

“A zoning ordinance or bylaw may establish applicability standards for projects that are subject to site plan review, which may include a category of projects that are subject to a minor or administrative site plan review process. The zoning ordinance or bylaw may require a public hearing in accordance with section eleven for projects that meet or exceed specified thresholds under the zoning ordinance or by-law.” (p. 3)

In NMCOG’s letter of support for this bill, they explained how they had worked with Westford and Billerica to create a similar “tiered” system, but that drafting one from scratch was labor intensive and complicated. “If the framework proposed in H.2298 had been in place, Westford and Billerica would have been able to rely on clear statutory direction for defining site plan review, establishing objective performance standards, and setting timelines for decision-making. This would have reduced the burden on local boards and staff, streamlined the update process, and improved transparency and predictability for applicants. Most importantly, it would have helped build greater public trust by ensuring that site plan review is conducted fairly, consistently, and with clear statutory authority in communities across the state” (p. 2).

Streamlining the site plan review process for smaller projects could unlock missing middle housing and make housing more affordable for residents in Massachusetts.

Conclusion

While this bill is certainly not a universal solution for all of Massachusetts’ housing needs, I believe it will be a great step forward. Making site plan review clearer and more efficient will reduce the costs of construction and bring down the cost of housing for people across the state. It will also make sure that state subsidies for Affordable Housing are spent efficiently on the actual costs of building housing rather than on endless red tape and procedures.

Making housing abundant and affordable is one step to make it easier for people to build wealth and find a sense of financial security.

How to Support H.2298 An Act facilitating site plan review

If you would like to support this bill, here are some steps you can take.

This bill in the Massachusetts State House is currently in the House Ways and Means Committee. If you would like to help it pass, you can contact your state legislators and ask them to encourage the House Ways and Means Committee to to pass H.2298 An Act facilitating site plan review favorably out of committee.

One of Lowell’s State Representatives, Rodney Elliott, is on the House Ways and Means Committee. You can contact him at Rodney.Elliott@mahouse.gov.

Find your state legislators here.

Note: A previous version of this post suggested that the aesthetics of buildings should not be included in site plan review. After getting some feedback, I think that it is reasonable for communities to have a say in the aesthetics of a building, so long as the community preferences are communicated objectively and clearly so that confusion does not add additional time and costs.

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Everyone deserves to feel financially secure. If we want to help people in Lowell feel financially secure, we need to be thinking about Lowell’s economic development.

Chris Hayes is the Director of Housing and Economic Development for Northern Middlesex Council of Governments (NMCOG).

In November of 2025, he helped to collaborate with local stakeholders and create a report titled “Greater Lowell Stronger Together: A 2025-2030 Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS).” Throughout the process, he and the planning team worked with all kinds of stakeholders from across Greater Lowell to put together a plan for how to improve the region’s economy.

I invited him to talk about the plan, and to get a sense of how he thinks about economic development for the region.

Read the report here.

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I’d like to thank Indivisible Lowell for organizing the No Kings event on March 28th 2026. I asked people why they decided to attend. Here’s what they said.

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In his 2013 TED Talk, mayor of Bogotá, Colombia Enrique Peñalosa said that "An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport.”

A fast and efficient public transit system is a sign of a healthy city. Ideally, transit can get you where you need to go faster, particularly across short distances in city centers with high population densities (p. 6). Effective transit means you spend less time on your daily commute and more time living your life.

Not only is public transit safer than driving in a car, but it is also more sustainable.

I am hopeful that with the right data and a spirit of collaboration, the City of Lowell can make public transit fast, free, and frequent for all Lowellians.

While there is certainly room for improvement, a recent report from the Northern Middlesex Council of Governments provides some specific steps the LRTA could take to make transit better.

The 2025 Jobs Accessibility Analysis ran simulations based on people’s home address and the address of their workplace to test how long it would take them to take the bus to work. The analysis pointed to bus routes with high potential for boosting ridership.

The analysis also compared the services of the LRTA in Lowell to other “peer agencies” outlining how well each of them have recovered since the pandemic. The comparison points to changes that could make the LRTA more productive.

These peer agencies (BAT in Brockton, MeVa in Lawrence, and WRTA in Worcester) were selected as peers because they had similar ridership, and they were all gateway cities in the Boston region with a “post-industrial old urban core.”

In this piece, I will outline the findings of the report, including which agencies recovered fastest after the pandemic, how those agencies boosted productivity, and how the LRTA could follow their lead.

In short, the report found that agencies that increased bus frequency on key routes were able to induce new demand and boost productivity.

Before digging in, I’d like to thank Blake Acton, Transportation Planner for NMCOG for putting together this report. I hope that this summary will help the report find a broader audience.

While I am writing about the NMCOG report, I’d like to be clear that this Substack reflects my thoughts, and does not reflect the beliefs of NMCOG.

Recovery Since COVID

During the pandemic, all public transit agencies saw a massive drop in ridership and productivity. Since then, agencies have slowly recovered. The report outlines which agencies recovered faster and why.

One of the metrics used to measure productivity is called “passengers per vehicle revenue hour (VRH). […] Simply put, this metric is the average number of passengers who board a bus in an hour” (p. 10).

Looking at the graph below, one can see that in 2020, there was a massive drop in productivity due to the pandemic. Fewer people were riding each bus per hour.

But starting in 2021, the various RTAs recovered at different paces.

Since 2019, two RTAs in particular had significant boosts in productivity: the WRTA and MeVa. The WRTA saw a 52.2% increase in productivity, going from 18.2 to 27.7 passengers per VRH. MeVa saw a 20.5% increase, going from 15.1 to 18.2 passengers per VRH (p. 11).

The LRTA, on the other hand, saw a mere 0.7% increase in productivity, going from 14.5 to 14.6 passengers per VRH.

Whereas the LRTA has recovered to pre-pandemic productivity, the WRTA and MeVa have exceeded pre-pandemic productivity.

According to the report, “The growth in productivity observed in WRTA and MeVa is a strong indicator that these agencies have successfully induced new demand for transit service. […] Both agencies have crossed a threshold where many residents are now able to use transit more frequently for their everyday travel needs, resulting in new and sustained demand for transit” (p. 11).

The report notes that “the consistent finding that peer agencies have been able to recover and expand service more rapidly than LRTA despite similar funding mechanisms and operations warrants additional investigation” (p. 19).

As I see it, this comparison suggests that if the LRTA could emulate these peer agencies, it could be just as successful in boosting ridership and productivity.

So what is it that set the WRTA and MeVa apart? How did they increase productivity? And how can the LRTA do the same?

How the WRTA and MeVa Induced More Demand

One of the ways the WRTA and MeVa induced more demand for buses is by making it easier for people to commute to work on the bus.

The report measured job access by bus using what is called an alignment score: “the share of workers who both live and work within an RTA’s fixed-route municipalities and can reach their jobs within a specified time budget” (p. 18).

“In this study, we emphasized a 45-minute budget, reflecting the average commute time for Massachusetts transit users reported by the U.S. Census. We selected 45 minutes because it better reflects observed rider behavior and rewards frequent, fast, and well-connected service” (p. 5).

So what made people more likely to take the bus to work?

Two words: Bus Frequency.

Put simply, when they increased frequency and connectivity on routes with high potential ridership, people were more likely to take the bus to work.

Here is how the relationship between frequency and job alignment is described for the WRTA and MeVa:

• “Notably, between 2021 and 2022, WRTA’s 45-minute alignment increased sharply (+1.6 percentage points), coinciding with frequency improvements on key routes and resulting in over 1,600 additional workers gaining access to jobs within 45 minutes” (p. 13).

• “MeVa stands out for its steady, incremental improvement after 2020. The results highlight MeVa’s years of gradual improvements in frequency, span and route alignment have clearly paid off. Though it started with the lowest 45-minute alignment (1.6% in 2019), MeVa’s figure increased to 5.6% by 2025, marking a 250% improvement in jobs alignment over 2019” (p. 13).

All in all, “These trends signal a growing share of jobs being brought within practical reach as agencies improved service and streamlined their networks” (p. 14).

NMCOG is not alone in attributing increased ridership to increased service frequency. A 2025 presentation from MeVa Transit reported that “A proportion of the observed increase in ridership is likely due to increased service frequency over the past three years” (p. 73).

So if the LRTA wanted to follow the models of MeVa and the WRTA and boost productivity by increasing frequency, which routes should it prioritize?

Routes with High Potential for Increasing Ridership

The report highlighted several routes with the most potential for increasing ridership. “LRTA’s job accessibility metrics, both regionally and by individual route, indicate that strategic service expansions and better transfer coordination especially on high-potential routes (7, 10, 13, 14, 15) could unlock additional demand and lead to significant ridership growth” (p. 18).

Let’s look at why these particular routes were chosen.

Routes were considered to have a high potential of unlocking more demand if they had a high ratio between people who can access their jobs by bus in 75 minutes vs 45 minutes. “When alignment is relatively low at 45 minutes but higher at 75 minutes, this suggests latent or unmet demand and the potential for ridership growth if service is improved. (pp. 5-6).

The idea is if you could improve frequency and connectivity for routes with high ratios, many of those people in the 75 minute camp would then be able to access their job in 45 minutes, and would be more likely to take the bus (p. 2).

Route 7

The report found that “Among all LRTA routes, Route 7 stands out as a clear leader in job accessibility potential. With 30- minute frequencies and a relatively short end-to-end travel time of 32 minutes, Route 7 [currently] enables 228 workers to reach their workplace within 45 minutes making it the second-highest value among all routes. This strong performance is largely due to the high concentration of jobs located along the route at short travel times, including major destinations such as UMass Lowell (within 10 minutes) and Lowell General Hospital (within 20 minutes). When the travel time window is extended to 75 minutes, Route 7 emerges as an even greater outlier: 1,166 workers are able to reach their workplace, by far the highest among all routes. These results indicate that Route 7 has the greatest untapped potential for new ridership among LRTA services, with a large pool of workers who could access jobs if modest improvements were made to frequency or connectivity” (p. 16).

Based on these findings, the report recommends “increasing Route 7 frequency to every 20 minutes. Simulation results show this corridor has the highest latent demand and could deliver the most immediate impact on ridership and job access” (p. 18).

Routes 10 and 13

The report found that “Routes 10 and 13 stand out among LRTA’s suburban services for their combination of relatively short end-to-end travel times (32 minutes each) and high untapped potential for job access. Route 10, which operates along the Bridge Street and Lakeview Avenue corridors, connects Centerville, Dracut, and Tyngsborough. With 50 workers able to reach their jobs within 45 minutes and 690 within 75 minutes, Route 10 has second highest alignment ratio systemwide. Similarly, Route 13, connecting Lowell with Westford (which includes areas rezoned under the MBTA Communities Act, within which 500+ new housing units are as of the writing of this report proposed for development), enables 80 workers to reach jobs within 45 minutes, jumping to 717 within 75 minutes with the third highest alignment ratio. Their high alignment ratios, despite their shorter travel times, highlights that these routes’ potential are significantly impacted by their low service frequency (approximately one trip per hour) and that substantial gains that could be realized with additional frequency” (p. 16).

Routes 14 and 15

The report found that “Routes 14 and 15, while characterized by long end-to-end travel times (50 and 45 minutes, respectively), also exhibit pronounced gaps between the number of jobs accessible within 45 and 75 minutes. For Route 14, 179 workers can reach jobs within 45 minutes, rising to 931 at 75 minutes; for Route 15, the corresponding figures are 47 and 699. Although their high alignment ratios are partly a result of the long in-vehicle travel times, these results indicate that improving frequencies and reducing travel times along these corridors would be hugely beneficial for job access. Both routes serve areas with recent and anticipated job growth, as well as communities designated for new housing development under the MBTA Communities Act, suggesting growing potential demand for improved transit connectivity in the future” (p. 17).

Based on these results, the report recommends “Incrementally improve service frequencies on the key suburban routes of 10, 13, 14, and 15 to every 30 or 40 minutes, addressing the substantial “almost in reach” job access gap currently limited by hourly headways” (p. 18)

As noted above, several of these routes are also areas that are likely to see housing development in the near future because of MBTA Zoning.

“Routes 13, 14, and 15 traverse corridors where new, higher-density housing is anticipated under the MBTA Communities Act. As these routes already have high jobs accessibility potential LRTA has a unique opportunity to proactively strengthen transit service in these areas ahead of new development, positioning the agency to capture future riders and support regional growth goals” (pp. 18-19).

Possible Steps Moving Forward

Planners at NMCOG have put a lot of hard work into figuring out the most efficient way to make it easier for people to get around Greater Lowell.

I am hopeful that the LRTA can follow the model of our peer organizations to boost bus ridership and make our buses more productive. The finding that these peer agencies were able to improve productivity “despite similar funding mechanisms” (p. 19) to the LRTA suggests to me that the LRTA can make positive improvements even within current funding mechanisms.

I would love to see the Lowell City Council and our State Representatives engage in an open conversation about these findings so that we are all on the same page about how we can build a better, more accessible Lowell.

The City Council has already shown some interest in boosting ridership frequency, and I am hopeful that we can build on that foundation.

For example, on May 6th 2025, Councilor Kim Scott put forward a motion requesting that the City Manager “collaborate with the Lowell Regional Transit Authority (LRTA) to explore options for increasing the frequency of service on the City’s most heavily traveled routes.”

In response, on August 12, 2025, the Council received a memorandum from LRTA Administrator David Bradley. The memo stated that the LRTA was conducting a Comprehensive Regional Transit Plan, as well as its own Systemwide Service Study to be released in early 2026. “This study is a deep dive into our existing system including routes, frequency, days of service and stop location. The study will explore potential changes to the fixed route bus network, including increased frequency, additional weekend and evening service, and changes to route and stop locations” (p. 2).

The LRTA released its 2025 Comprehensive Regional Transit Plan this in February of 2026, and its survey results were revealing. When asked “What should the LRTA prioritize in the next five years, the number one reply was “more frequent service for existing routes” (p. 77). The plan identified the need to “increase frequencies on high-ridership routes” (p. 113).

Given the overlapping findings of these reports, I think one concrete step the City could take moving forward is for the City Council to invite the LRTA and NMCOG to a City Council Transportation Subcommittee meeting to discuss the results (a) the NMCOG Jobs Accessibility Analysis, (b) the LRTA Comprehensive Regional Transit Plan and (c) the LRTA Systemwide Service Study. This was a step suggested at the Northern Middlesex Metropolitan Planning Organization meeting on September 29, 2025, which was attended by then-City Councilor Wayne Jenness (see 44:45).

I am hopeful that with the right data, and with a spirit of collaboration, we can make buses fast, free, and frequent in Lowell.

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Hi all!

I‘m going to be doing some video interviews for the 2026 State Legislature races (see examples of past interviews here). I’d like to incorporate questions that are priorities for you. Since my interviews will likely only include 1–2 questions per topic, I’d appreciate any suggestions for what you think would be most important to ask.

If possible, please share your suggestions using this form. (It will help me consolidate everyone’s responses.)

Thank you!
Ryan

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At the City Council meeting on February 24th, 2026 the Lowell City Council engaged in a heated debate about whether to approve a new lease agreement for the Lowell Senior Center.

Ultimately, the Council voted not to authorize the new lease at this time.

But the fate of the Senior Center property is still unclear.

As I mentioned in my last Substack, back in 2001, the City entered into an agreement with City Barns Trust LLC regarding the ownership of the Senior Center. At that time, the City’s leadership was under the impression that this agreement said that City Barns Trust would own the Senior Center for 20 years. The Trust would improve the property, meanwhile making the space available for a Senior Center, and then after the 20 year period, City Barns Trust would gift the property back to the city. That is how the City’s leadership understood the agreement.

But now, nearly 3 years after the agreement expired, City Barns Trust is still refusing to return the property. In fact, City Barns Trust is claiming that they are the rightful owners of the property, and that the City is behind on its lease payments.

This broken promise (and many others) left many people in Lowell feeling betrayed by the City Barns Trust. Based on the public information that was available at the time, many (myself included) were wondering why the City would not take legal action to try to force City Barns Trust to “gift” the property to the city.

Given this backdrop, many were confused about why City Manager Tom Golden would bring forth a motion asking to renew the lease with City Barns Trust. Whether their actions have been legal or not, one could hardly argue that they have dealt with the City in good faith.

I am glad to say that the discussion on February 24th was illuminating on most of these fronts. For one thing, the reason the Manager brought forward this lease is that the Council asked him to “continue negotiation of lease terms” during an Executive session meeting (p. 2). Former Middlesex County Register of Deeds Richard Howe’s March 1st Newsletter also provided some helpful perspective about the origins of this agreement.

While there are still some unanswered questions, I personally feel that I have a much clearer picture of the nuances of this predicament that the City is in.

In this piece, I aim to (1) outline what we learned about the City’s legal dispute with City Barns Trust and (2) point to some new questions that I have about this situation moving forward.

What We learned

Maybe Legal; Definitely Not Moral

Before getting into the legal technicalities, I think it is necessary to name the harm that has been done here and who has caused that harm. The City’s current plight is not the result of invisible, unchangeable forces, but rather the result of specific decisions by specific people.

The City Barns Trust – and more specifically, Trustee Nick Sarris (at this point, I am not sure of George Behrakis’ level of involvement [44:00]) – has decided to break what many understood to be a promise to gift this property to the city. That broken promise is putting unnecessary financial and administrative strain on an already overburdened gateway city. It is also hurting seniors, who are at risk of losing one of the only places in the City where they can find a sense of community and belonging. In my opinion, what the City Barns Trust did is morally wrong.

Councilor Sidney Liang expressed his disappointment. “In the old days when we do handshakes, our word means something. For this one, after twenty years, even footnotes that are clearly expressed in exhibits… it can’t be real. I’m a little disappointed in that” (1:28:50).

Similarly, Councilor Belinda Juran said, “I find it appalling to allow someone to have not fulfilled their obligations and, in a sense, to get away with it” (1:49:09).

That being said, let’s make an important distinction: The City Barns Trust broke a promise, but did they break the law?

Does the City Have a Legal Case for Ownership of the Senior Center?

City Solicitor Corey Williams and his team analyzed the legal documents related to the ownership of the Senior Center in order to evaluate the strength of the City’s legal argument for rightful ownership of the property.

Based on this analysis, he made the case that the City does not have a strong legal argument, and would likely not win in court. According to the Solicitor, the reason the City does not have a strong case has to do with where exactly the language about gifting the property is located in the relevant legal documents.

In short, in a legal battle over property, ultimately, “You look at the deed and you look at the lease.” And in this case, “That language [about gifting the property] is not in either” (1:20:10). So, according to the Solicitor, without clear language in the lease itself or in the deed, the City does not have a strong legal argument for ownership of the property.

But let’s take a closer look at some of the texture of the argument. Several City Councilors pointed to specific documents that mention the gifting of the city and asked the Solicitor to explain the legal significance of each of those documents in this case.

First, Councilor Sokhary Chau pointed out that there is language in a section of the lease about gifting the property, but asked the Solicitor to explain the nuance of where it is and why that matters. Here is the Solicitor’s reply:

“There is no explicit contractual term in the body of the lease. There is a reference to it in Exhibit B. It’s in a footnote at the bottom that says, ‘at the end of the 20 year period, the property will be gifted back to the City.’ Now, without going too far down the rabbit hole, there is a significant difference between an actual explicit contractual term and something you might find in an exhibit, especially the way that it’s incorporated by reference in the actual lease itself, which, a lot of that isn’t as strong as perhaps we would have wanted it to be. So there are some potential issues there for us, when it comes to the property coming back to the city” (58:40).

The Solicitor clearly stated the problem with the way attachments are written in the lease: “in a scenario like this, you would expect to see a specific provision as it relates to conveyance of the property at the conclusion of the lease, and it might reference ‘Attachment B,’ which it does not” (1:21:10). So while the language about gifting is in an exhibit, or an attachment in the lease, it is not in the lease itself. That weakens the City’s legal case for ownership of the property.

Councilor Sean McDonough pointed to another document with language about the property being gifted: the Purchase and Sale Agreement between the City and City Barns Trust. In response to this, Solicitor Williams pointed out that “as is true of any Purchase and Sale, language such as you just read is nonbinding. That describes the intent. So what you would look for after you saw a purchase and sale is what’s the document that comes after. You look at the deed and you look at the lease.” Basically, in legal terms, the Purchase and Sale Agreement is irrelevant.

Councilor Kim Scott pointed to yet another document with language about the gifting of the property – a vote from the City Council in 2001: “There is also another document that’s been circulating around that is a vote from the City Council in 2001, and that has been recorded at the registry of deeds. What legal effect does that have on enforcement with this contract?” The Solicitor explained that “that being recorded would show the intent of one of the parties. A vote is an internal document of the City Council, so it would be there to show that, in fact, the City Council voted the way that it did” (1:12:02).

So after some prodding from several councilors, the Solicitor’s position is clear: Because there is no explicit language about gifting in the deed or in the body of the lease, the city likely does not have a strong legal case for ownership of the Senior Center property.

What Can the City Do Now?

In a perfect world, the next step here would be to appeal to the City Barns Trust’s “better angels” and ask that they kindly donate the property to the city. Councilor Juran made this appeal on February 24th, saying, “I really do think City Barns has the opportunity to be magnanimous here, to live up to what was clearly the intent of the original set of documents to give the Senior Center to the City, and I wish it would consider that. It would go a long way towards trust on many levels” (1:52:15). I appreciate this opening for City Barns Trust to do the right thing, but, seeing as this was suggested by Councilor Wayne Jenness in 2025 (47:00) and presumably by the City in 2001, I think it is safe to say that there is not much hope in this approach.

Instead, as laid out by City Solicitor Corey Williams, it seems to me that the City has two realistic options: “The way I see it, there’s two options. There’s the lease that’s in front of you, to move forward with that, and the second option would be to move forward with pursuing ownership of the property” (59:45).

If I were to put this into my own words, the two options are:

1. Take legal action against City Barns Trust to pursue ownership of the Senior Center

2. Enter into a new lease for the Senior Center (either with City Barns Trust or some other entity at a different property)

Before deciding on what route to take, the City must consider a few factors. While I am no expert in real estate law, I believe I have been following this situation well enough to have a general sense of the landscape.

Here, I will do my best to outline some relevant questions for each of these routes.

No matter which route the City takes, I think it is important that the City center the voices of the people who will be most effected by these decisions – the seniors who frequent the Senior Center. That could be some combination of public forum, focus groups, or a survey.

Questions About Pursuing Ownership of the Senior Center

(1) Should the City Request Independent Legal Counsel?

While the City Solicitor’s team worked hard to evaluate the City’s case, several Councilors and community members encouraged the City to seek a second opinion in the form of independent legal counsel from a firm that specializes in real estate law.

Highlands resident Ryan Faria was the first to suggest this idea: “prior to any vote, we should seek outside counsel from a firm that specializes in real estate contract law and receive an opinion on the outcome of litigation as well as an estimate of the cost to litigate this if we need to go that route” (41:40).

Councilors each seemed to have their own reasons for why they supported getting independent legal counsel.

Mayor Gitschier, for his part, essentially said that he does not trust City Solicitor Williams. He quite blatantly said, “I don’t care what the Solicitor says. He’s been wrong before and lawyers can make anything sound convincing. He just got done saying that” (1:53:28). Later, he said directly to Solicitor Williams, “you’ve been wrong already before” (1:56:37).

City Councilor Belinda Juran – a former attorney herself – had a more legalistic reason for seeking independent counsel.

While there is no explicit language about gift the property in the deed, Councilor Juran pointed out that the deed does reference the May 8th 2001 City Council meeting vote, where the City Council voted to pursue this agreement with the understanding that it would be gifted back.

“When I see the 2001 deed filed with the Registry of Deeds, it references the that May 8th 2001 City Council vote. ‘Recorded herewith.” That vote was recorded at the Registry, and that mentions the gifting. So there is Exhibit B, which lawyers might argue whether it’s incorporated or not, but I struggle with the arguments there. But clearly the buyers were on notice of the conditions in that City Council vote” (1:39:32).

I was able to locate the deed on the Registry of Deeds website, and took a screenshot of the reference to that May 8th City Council vote.

Based on the uncertainty of the quality of the City’s legal argument, Mayor Gitschier made a motion, seconded by Councilor Robinson to pursue independent legal counsel regarding the City’s legal case (1:59:45). In a 5-5 deadlock, the vote did not pass.

While the independent legal counsel motion did not pass, something noteworthy happened with regard to this topic during the Tuesday March 3rd City Council Meeting.

Councilor Rita Mercier’s Motion

As readers likely know, City Councilor Rita Mercier must recuse herself of this vote due to her role on the Board of Directors for the Friends of the Council on Aging. But she and Councilor Robinson put forth a motion for the March 3rd 2026 City Council Agenda to request that the City Manager “provide the City Council with a detailed report on a pathway to secure independent legal counsel of our choosing to review and advise concerns the Council may have” (p. 1).

In other words, the motion asks for a pathway to obtain independent counsel in general, not in the specific case of the Senior Center.

Some have interpreted this motion as her indirect and legally permissible way of expressing her support for pursuing independent legal counsel for the Senior Center case. Consider, for example, how she framed the discussion on March 3rd:

“I firmly believe that sometimes we need another set of eyes to look a little bit more carefully. I’m not disputing what the law department says, but they’re government attorneys. I think there’s people out there that at times are needed because they’re professional and the excel at a specific aspect of being an attorney. You wouldn’t ask a real estate attorney to look at something that doesn’t involve properties and things like that, if you can follow what I’m saying. There’s many types of attorneys, so I want to know when anything arises that we’re concerned about, if we can get a set of independent eyes” (3/3/26).

Councilor John Descoteaux said he was not sure if it was legal for the City Council to hire independent legal counsel. City Manager Tom Golden said he was unsure if securing an independent attorney would be “afoul of the charter,” so he would check into it in the next week to see if that is possible” (3/3/26).

I think it is fair to say that in Councilor Mercier’s response to this, she was visibly agitated. Speaking quickly and in a slightly raise voice, she said, “I don’t agree that we don’t have the right to hire an independent person.” She made an analogy about how during debates about the Smith-Baker Center, the City consulted an expert about the safety of the building. “If that report came back that the foundation was structurally unsound, with as much as I wanted to save it, I would have moved to demolish it. […] I’m not an expert here. I’m not a lawyer. […] That’s why it’s important. Unless the message to the public out there is ‘we were voted in as City Councilors, and I know it all.’ I don’t know it all. That’s why I’m asking. And if we could afford to have an independent person come out and check out the Smith-Baker Center, where did that money come from? It came from somewhere. What is the problem with asking my colleagues, could we have an independent person, not specifically for one particular thing, but whatever could arise that we would need an opinion on? That’s all I want to say. I don’t think it’s rocket science here. I don’t think so” (3/3/26).

Seeing as Councilor Mercier is not able to directly speak on the Senior Center matter – and this is an inference on my part – it felt to me that her emotional reaction here was her way of trying to show that she wanted the City to consider getting another opinion on that case.

But there are downsides to pursuing legal counsel, including financial costs.

Councilor Kim Scott made this point while asking a question to the group trying to understand the motivation behind this motion. “I also feel questioning about why we need outside counsel. We have a seven-person staff that’s funded with $2.9 million in taxpayers’ funds. We should have confidence in that staff. The manager is responsible for that staff. If we have concerns, I would suggest we should reach out to the Manager if that’s where that stems from” (3/3/26). She cited several ways the current staff has repaired issues from the past.

For some councilors, this motion certainly seemed to come from a lack of trust in the City Solicitor. In stark contrast to Councilor Scott, Councilor Corey Robinson listed off several times he felt that the Solicitor had led the Council astray. Robinson and Solicitor Williams got into a back and forth that spiraled and ultimately ended in Mayor Gitschier saying “point of order, this is going nowhere” (1:04:28).

In the end, the Council voted 10-1 in favor of the motion to request a report on how to obtain independent legal counsel. It is unclear whether this will have any impact on the Senior Center case.

(2) What are the Unintended Costs of a Lawsuit?

If the City is seriously considering taking legal action toward the City Barns Trust, then we should have a clear-eyed view of the possible impacts of this process.

One of the pros of this approach is, obviously that the City might get the property back.

Another pro of a lawsuit – even if the City loses – is the sense of dignity in going down fighting. For example, one commenter in the Lowell Live Feed wrote about the Senior Center, “It’s ours and we should spend whatever money is needed to have it for our senior citizens.” There is something to be said about standing one’s ground.

But there are also cons to a lawsuit. For example, the process of a lawsuit may result in interrupted services for seniors at the Senior Center.

Because of this potential impact, before making a decision, I think it is incumbent on the City Administration to consult with with the people most directly effected – the patrons of the Senior Center.

(3) What are the Costs of Owning the Property?

It is also important to understand that there are key financial differences between leasing and owning the Senior Center.

Chief Financial Officer Connor Baldwin explained that in analyzing the situation, the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) contracted Gale Associates to conduct a study evaluating the capital needs of the building. They also looked at the current owner’s ongoing costs.

In the end, they found that, averaged over a 15 year period, ownership of the property could amount to $700,000 per year in capitol costs and $200,000 per year in back rent and operating costs, or about $900,000 total per year.

In contrast, the rent on the proposed lease was $504,000 per year. (Part of me wonders how this large discrepancy is possible unless City Barns Trust were to neglect the capital needs of the building. If that were the case and the City took ownership later, the City would still have to pay for those capital needs, just at a later time.)

Owning the building would also be more expensive for the City because of where the funds come from. Councilor John Descoteaux made the point that the Senior Center’s lease has historically been paid for by a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) grant from the federal government.

CFO Baldwin explained that if the City owned the building, it could no longer pay using CDBG grants.

“The restrictions of the funds are such that it is an eligible use of funds for a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) to fund a lease for public facilities, for senior centers. Those fall within the eligible criteria, and so the funding of the rent at the 504,000 figure is an allowable cost under CDBG. However, if we were to assume ownership, those costs that I outlined for ongoing expenses, those would not be eligible for CDBG, so we would need to look to the tax base or other available funds to fund those on an ongoing basis” (1:05:00)

In other words, if the City owned the Senior Center building, it would need to find $900,000 per year somewhere. Councilor Scott asked CFO Baldwin to explain, if the City were to raise property taxes to meet this need, how much it would be. He replied that, for a single family home worth $500,000, the homeowner would see an increase in property taxes of roughly $25.75 per year (1:15:24).

“Understanding the fiscal climate that we’re in,” said Councilor Descoteaux, “I think this is the way to go with the lease” (55:11).

Corey Robinson, on the other hand, argued that most residents would be happy to pay for the city to own the Senior Center. “It’s an asset. We’ll find the means to maintain an asset that’s providing services to our elderly population, I’m sure. I’m sure every tax payer would not object to that” (1:07:55).

Sidney Liang pointed out that those $504,000 in CDBG grants would not disappear, and that they could “also be spread out to other nonprofits” (1:29:00).

As I see it, these financial concerns are something real that the City needs to reckon with if it plans to own the building.

Questions About Pursuing a New Lease

(1) Should The City Consider Leasing a Different Property with Different Owners?

Given that the trust is clearly broken between the City and City Barns Trust, another option the City could feasibly consider is to start fresh by pursuing partnership with a different property owner entirely.

Highlands Resident Ryan Faria was the first person in the meeting on Tuesday to argue that “the city should consider an RFP [Request for Proposals] to go ahead and look at potential other locations for the Senior Center, given that we have demands or needs than the current Senior Center square footage can currently allow for” (42:35).

According to the recently released February 3 2026 Executive Session meeting minutes, Councilor Kim Scott “noted possible other sites for the Senior Center; Freshman Academy and new site on Market Street” (p. 2).

There are obviously pros and cons to this approach.

One pro is that it would prevent the demoralizing feeling of having to give more money to a Trust that betrayed the people of Lowell.

Another pro is that this approach would allow the City to continue using CDBG funding. There would be no need to increase property taxes.

A con, however, is that this approach would also take time, possibly interrupting the services of the Senior Center.

Again, before making a decision on this, the City should consult with the people most directly effected – the patrons of the Senior Center.

(2) How Can the City Strengthen the Terms of the Lease?

It is certainly possible that the city will eventually to decide to simply “grin and bear it.”

If the City does decide it is best to continue to work with City Barns Trust, I think we need to make sure the language in the lease and deed is as strong as possible.

Councilor Vesna Nuon touted the current draft of the new lease as an improvement over the last lease. He prompted Solicitor Williams to read a relevant portion – this time from the body of the lease.

“In accordance with paragraph 3 of this lease, the landlord shall donate the premises to the City of Lowell by delivering a properly executed quitclaim deed, free of all encumbrances not in existence as of the commencement date within 30 days as of the termination date” (1:36:50)

Councilor Juran, however, said that due to what happened in the past, she felt the Council needed to make sure the new lease was as strong as possible.

“I find it appalling to allow someone to have not fulfilled their obligations and, in a sense, to get away with it. I’m struggling to assure that if this lease goes forward that the City will not be in the same situation in fifteen years” (1:49:09).

She raised a few points, such as:

Why does the lease require the City to not record the lease? (I am not fully sure of what this means, but my understanding is that it would make it harder to find this information later.) “The city is obligated not to record this lease. Part of the situation we’re in here is because of language that exists, doesn’t exist, was recorded, was not recorded” (1:45:00) She asked why there is an affirmative requirement on the City not to record the lease. Solicitor Williams said that this was not a topic of much conversation. In order to promote clarity and transparency for the future, I think it would be good to revisit this language and make sure the City is in the best position it can be at the end of this lease period.

A few councilors did not feel comfortable voting in favor of this agreement, in part, because they had not seen all of the attachments beforehand.

Councilor Juran said that “We are being asked to vote on this agreement. I know we haven’t seen all of the exhibits. There is a reference to a settlement agreement dated in December of 2025 that isn’t attached. So I’m struggling to get my questions answered without asking them in public, which, as a former lawyer, I would normally never do.” (1:44:40)

Similarly, Mayor Gitschier said, “It’s an incomplete document that we got on Friday for Tuesday. We have never ever seen this document before Friday. […] so we’ve had no position to negotiate pieces in or out of this document. Nothing at all. It’s an incomplete document that we’ve been provided. It doesn’t even have the full exhibits. How do you vote on something that you don’t have the full exhibits?” (1:57:06)

All in all, what strikes me about the current lease is that the Councilors did not yet have access to the entire thing, and there could be a need to tighten the language. No one on the Council is a real estate attorney, and therefore it could be helpful to hear from experts.

As Highlands resident Ryan Faria argued, “we should again seek outside counsel to affirm that can confirm that the language in any future lease is rock solid so that at the end of 15 years we can take ownership of this property” (41:55).

Conclusion

I want to make clear that my primary frustration is not with anyone particular in the City, but rather with the City Barns Trust. They are the ones who, legally or not, are going back on a promise.

The City Administration has been put in what Councilor Juran called a “terrible situation.” There is a clear need to balance between our moral outrage, our pride, and being pragmatic.

No matter which way the Council goes, I hope they will center the voices of the people most effected by this conflict – the patrons of the Senior Center. They are the ones whose community is at stake.

While I’ve done my best to grapple with the nuances of this situation, I’m sure I’ve missed something. I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on what the City of Lowell should do moving forward.

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The release of the agenda for the upcoming Lowell City Council meeting on February 24th, 2026, has stirred a bit of online commotion.

The City Manager is bringing a vote before the council that has left many people scratching their heads.

Item 7.3 on the agenda asks the Council to authorize the City Manager “on behalf of the City of Lowell to enter into a Lease Agreement with Nicholas C. Sarris, as Trustee of City Barns Trust, for property located at 276 Broadway Street, in Lowell, and to execute all documents necessary for the lease of the property […] to be used for housing the Lowell Senior Center” (p. 1).

Under this agreement, the City would pay $504,000 per year, adding up to a total of $7.56 million during the entire fifteen-year lease period (p. 1).

This may sound benign enough. Of course, we all want seniors to have access to the Senior Center, so it would make sense to continue to lease this property.

“But the catch,” as Marcos Candido put it on Facebook, is that “Lowell should already own the senior center!”

In order to examine the claim Candido is making here, let’s take a look back at the history of the lease with the Senior Center. I’ve done my best to compile the information that is publicly available. (Please let me know if I am missing anything.)

We’ll look at the original terms of the agreement, the way the property owner has neglected many of its responsibilities per the agreement, and how the city has ended up in the position where it may be leasing out property that it should rightfully own in the first place.

The History of the Senior Center Agreement

The best description I have found of the history of the city’s Senior Center ownership agreement is from Lowell Historian Richard Howe’s Newsletter on February 18th, 2024.

On May 8, 2001, the City Council, by a 9 to 0 vote, authorized then City Manager John Cox to enter into a purchase and sales agreement with Nick Sarris and George Behrakis as trustees of City Barns Trust by which the city would convey to the Trust the City Stables parcel (also known as the City Barns or 276 Broadway). In return, the Trust would rehabilitate the City Stables building and make it (with a certain amount of parking) available to the city for use as a Senior Center.

The purchase price to be paid by the Trust to the city was $1,399,600, however, that was not to be paid as a lump sum at the closing. Instead, it would be paid by means of an annual credit towards the City’s lease agreement with the Trust. The lease between the city and the Trust for the use of the building would be for 20 years and the annual lease payment would be approximately $250,000 per year. The agreement further stated that at the end of the 20-year lease, the Trust “shall gift and donate the leased premises to the City of Lowell.”

According to Howe, in the February 13th, 2024 City Council meeting City Manager Tom Golden seemed to be aware of the agreement that Sarris and Berhakis would “gift” the property to the city mentioning that he “spoke about the upcoming expiration of the lease and handover of the building to city ownership. (I believe the Senior Center officially opened in 2004 so we are at the 20-year mark at which point the premises are to be “gifted” to the city.)”

If you would like to see the original agreement itself, here is a copy of it, sent to my by Ryan Faria (thanks!). I have made it public in my Google Drive.

One can see very clearly on page 17 that the agreement states, “In accordance with Paragraph 3 of this Lease, the Landlord shall donate the Premises to the City of Lowell by delivering a properly executed Quitclaim Deed, free of all encumbrances not in existence as of the commencement date, within thirty (30) days as of the termination date.”

There was 30 day time limit for the landlord to gift the property to the city.

Here is an image posted by City Councilor Erik Gitschier on February 20th, 2026. “At the end of the lease period Lowell Restoration, Inc. shall gift and donate the leased premises to the City of Lowell.”

To summarize, the City sold the property to Sarris and Behrakis to rehabilitate the building and make it available as a Senior Center for 20 years. Then, after 20 years, it would be gifted and donated to the City of Lowell.

So based on the information I have available to me, the agreement was that the Senior Center should have been “gifted” back to the city as of 2024.

A Long List of Broken Promises

Beyond the original agreement to “gift” the property to the city, some City Councilors have expressed concerns that the City Barns Trust was not holding up to its end of the lease. One major concern is that the Trust was not maintaining the property so that it is in working condition for the seniors using the space.

At the February 13th, 2024 City Council meeting, City Councilor At-Large Erik Gitschier made a motion, seconded by Rita Mercier, to suspend the rules to discuss maintenance issues at the Senior Center (06:43).

He told the Council that “over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been notified of it being cold over at the Senior Center, how deplorable some of the duct work is. Back in the summer time when we had a candidate forum over at the Senior Center, I had reached out about trying to get the duct work cleaned but it never happened.”

He told the Council that he had been shown pictures of seniors “trying to do yoga with jackets and hats and gloves on” (7:33). He said when he was there, the internal temperature of the building was 57° Fahrenheit (9:03). Finally, he concluded that “It’s not something any one of us would want for our grandparents or our parents or anybody” (9:58).

Manager Golden had provided Councilor Gitschier with a copy of the lease agreement, which he referred to throughout the discussion. (Again, here it is if you’d like to see it.)

At the time, there was not a copy of the lease online. The best public information available at the time screenshot from Ryan Gilday’s February 14th, 2024 blog post in The Lowell Citizen (see below).

Councilor Gitschier sighed. “I don’t know why it gets to this level, but it does. Some things, when you look at the contract, should be a no-brainer to me, but I guess they’re not.” (7:44).

“It’s not the city’s obligation for heating issues, he said, pointing to the lease. “It says, ‘The Condominium Association shall maintain in good and proper condition the heating apparatus and air-cooling system installed in the Premises. In the event that the heating or air-cooling systems or any of their appliances shall be damaged or injured or not in proper working condition, the Condominium Association shall forthwith make such repairs as may be needed and restore the systems to good working condition’” (8:26).

Apparently the Condominium Assocaition was waiting for a part to fix the heater, but at the time the part was seven weeks out. The heater had already been broken for three weeks, meaning that if there was no temporary heat in the mean time, the senior center would be cold for 10 weeks in the middle of winter(16:12).

Gitschier said that it was the responsibility of the Condominium Association to fix the heat, or, if repairs take a long time, “get some temporary heat, or whatever they have to do. That’s not the city’s position.”

He said that the City should put the owners “on notice” and “put it in writing” that the current conditions are “deplorable” (9:44).

At this point in the meeting, it was clear to me that Councilor Gitschier had two concerns: (1) The immediate needs of the seniors for more heat, and (2) The need to hold the Condominium Association accountable for their responsibility under the lease to maintain the property.

Gitschier had repeated these two concerns several times.

But when City Manager Tom Golden responded, he addressed to the first concern, but not the second.

Here is Manager Golden’s first reply: “Councilors, we do have four temporary heaters being delivered tomorrow, and that should take care of what we call the great room. It appears that that whole system is warm in some areas, not warm in other areas, but the great room is one of the biggest challenges, so tomorrow, we’ll have our electricians there to make sure it is all hooked up appropriately of course, […] so that will be happening some time tomorrow, so as soon as that is up and running, I’ll make sure that we send an email to the Council so they know that is happening” (11:02)

The manager’s response focused on the seniors’ need to get access to heating, but did not seem to acknowledge the fact that it should not be the city’s responsibility.

Perhaps Manager Golden’s intent in swerving this question was to be diplomatic, but Gitschier decided to follow up by repeating his concern.

“We shouldn’t have to use city resources to do that. This should be one call to somebody who has a Condominium Association and they should be doing it” (12:05). He thanked the City Manager for attending to the needs of the seniors, saying “I do understand it needs to get done real quick, and I thank your administration for that, and I don’t know why it has to rise to a City Councilor going down there, taking pictures, and doing this whole thing” (12:37) to get anything to change.

He pointed to how this was leading to an unnecessary strain on city resources. “I hope that the city is going to get reimbursed for the cost of all this stuff. Your time, everybody’s time that has to go into this because we pay you, and you as a resource should not be down there doing this. You’re the City Manager, not the building department” (13:43).

City Councilor At-Large Rita Mercier echoed Councilor Gitschier’s concerns that fixing the heating and air ducts “should not be the city’s responsibility” (15:05).

She, like Manager Golden, spoke rather vaguely, saying that she had a motion to reach out to the “proper person, which we know who the proper person is, to see if he can send his men there to clean the air ducts” (14:15).

She continued, oddly without naming names, saying that “this person was a good landlord for many years and I’m grateful for it, but it seems like since we are ending our lease where we’re going to own it for a dollar, I think we should have a good rapport right until the very end, and I don’t think that’s happening at this point. It’s a shame to go through all these years and be good and then at the very end, when we need things done, they’re not happening” (15:00).

I would like to note Councilor Mercier’s underlying assumption, based on the agreement, that the City would soon own the property. She believed that “we are ending our lease where we’re going to own it for a dollar.”

She said that the City Manager is not the only one picking up the landlord’s slack. “The Friends of the Council on Aging, sometimes we pay for things that should have been done by the landlord. We pay for someone to come in and do that. We don’t say anything because we realized he was a good landlord all these years, but if this is going to happen with the vents and the heat, I’m a little perturbed about that.” (16:00).

City Councilor Wayne Jenness added to the list of concerns, saying one night when he was there, the parking lot was “pitch black” and he had reached out about getting lighting in the parking lot. He said that while they were at it, they should check to see that the landlord had followed up in providing lighting in the parking lot (19:00).

Finally, Councilor Gitschier added yet another problem, which is that the city was plowing and salting the parking lot of the Senior Center, which is outlined in the lease as a responsibility of the Condominium Association (19:25).

So to summarize, the concern in this meeting was that, as of that time, the City Barns Trust was not holding up to its end of the lease when it came to maintenance, such as cleaning the air ducts, fixing the heating in a timely manner, lighting the parking lot, plowing and salting the parking lot, and other vague items alluded to by Councilor Mercier.

Manager Golden clarified that the City and Condominium Association had a “true-up” meaning that the two parties are keeping track of the services provided and that “they pay back, we pay back” (20:55). He suggested going into more detail at a later Subcommittee meeting (21:20).

What About Ownership?

When it came to the ownership of the property, in this meeting, Richard Howe described Manager Golden’s responses as as “cryptic.”

Manager Golden told the Council, “There is still a discussion about ownership for this particular piece that has been going on for a little bit. We could probably take it up at the next subcommittee meeting to discuss the ownership piece and what could happen for our future. I think that’s something that the Council would be very interested in” (17:09).

Later, he said that the city has an “assistant who’s really been digging down on the issues here with ownership, and I’d like to have all of these discussions in the subcommittee” (21:36).

So the conclusion of this discussion was that the Council would discuss the ownership of the Senior Center at an upcoming subcommittee meeting.

The Subcommittee Meeting

I did some digging and found the March 5, 2024 Senior Citizen Subcommittee Meeting. See the agenda here and the video here.

The meeting started with a discussion of the maintenance concerns.

With regard to duct work, Assistant City Manager Shawn Machado said that he had spoken with “one of the attorneys of the property owner and […] the air ducts will be cleaned next week” (7:41). When Councilor Mercier asked a clarifying question about who would be paying for the duct work, he said that it was a contractor paid for by the owner.

Councilor Mercier made a point of saying that these changes were only made because the City had been so persistent in holding the City Barns Trust accountable. “We did make a little bit of an issue about it, and now it’s going to be addressed” (8:40). She asked for a follow-up communication to confirm that it had ben done.

Councilor Gitschier emphasized that the issue is more than just this one time cleaning, and that “ducts should be cleaned at least once a year” (9:11). Essentially, he said that that the City should not have to watch like a hawk to make sure the property owner follows through on every little maintenance responsibility.

Later in the meeting, the sub committee discussed ownership of the Senior Center. Councilor Mercier posed the question: “is there a date or time that we will own that Senior Center outright? It was for a twenty year lease, Attorney McKenna, do we know when the time is up because we’re going on twenty two years” (24:30)

John McKenna confirmed that the agreement “has expired. the property is to be transferred as a gift after the expiration of twenty years. That day was April 5th, 2023. The transfer didn’t take place for certain reasons that we can discuss at a later time, one being the condominium documents didn’t provide the exact details and things like that, but, as mentioned earlier, it may be better discussed in executive session, being the negotiations of a transfer of property […] But due to the conditions of the building and certain things that need to be done, there are ongoing negotiations going on as recently as February 20th [2024]. We met with council for City Barns Trust to review that, so that’s coming up real quick” (25:25).

I’d like to highlight one particular detail here. McKenna said even though the agreement had expired on April 5th, 2023, one concern regarding the ownership transfer of the property was that “the condominium documents didn’t provide the exact details” for the ownership transfer.

I do not know much about any executive session discussions in 2024 or 2025 (the meeting minutes are not public) but I do know that the topic of ownership of the Senior Center came up at a public City Council meeting in September of 2025.

“We’re Still Leasing a Property That’s Supposed to Be Ours”

At the September 9th, 2025 City Council Meeting, Councilors Scott, Mercier, and Yem made motion 4.3 to request that the City manager “explore the feasibility of expanding the Senior Center into all or part of the vacant Walgreens space and report costs and potential funding sources.”

Several community members came to speak in favor of this motion, including Maxine Fargas, the co-chair of the Council on Aging Advisory Board (27:00) and Paul Gaudet. They spoke very convincingly of the clear need to expand the Senior Center to meet the needs of a growing senior population.

In addition to the need for more space, the topic of ownership came up yet again.

Councilor Gitschier said he agreed that the Senior Center needs more space, but he was also concerned about the fact that the City did not yet own the property. He cited the 2001 ownership agreement, which said that the property “would be gifted back to the city. We’ve never seen that gift back. So my question is how much money have we paid in lease to City Barns LLC from 2001 October 5th to today when it was supposed to be our property and hasn’t been gifted back? I’m trying to figure out how we’re still leasing a property that’s supposed to be ours” (41:33).

He reminded that Council that “We had to beg to get the heat, if all of the Councilors remember. Not that long ago, we had to beg.” (43:20).

Councilor Wayne Jenness suggested a step forward. “I’m wondering if we can approach the owner of the building and see if they can make a donation to the City. We’ve seem some big donations of other parcels in a similar situation. I think that would be the best scenario for the City and the Seniors. I don’t know if the owner would be amenable to that, but I think it would be worth a discussion” (47:00).

Evidently, the owner was not amenable to that.

A Series of Executive Sessions

While this was the extent of the Council’s discussion in public, it appears that the topic has come up for conversation in a series of executive sessions since then.

Executive Session meeting minutes are not public, and so, as of right now, it is hard to know what happened in those meetings. All we have is the language included in the agenda.

At the October 7th, 2025 City Council Meeting, the Senior Center showed up in Executive Session item 12.1:

“To Consider And Discuss The Purchase, Exchange, Lease, Or Value Of Real Property (The Senior Center, 276 Broadway Street), Public Discussion Of Which May Have A Detrimental Effect On The Negotiating Position Of The City

The topic appeared again in Executive Session on November 18th, 2025 (item 12.1), January 13, 2026 (item 10.1), and February 3rd, 2026 (item 10.1).

This is the extent of the public information I have been able to find about the history the lease agreement. If you have more information, please send it my way.

Why is the City Manager Asking to Lease This Property?

After all of this, one is left with more questions than answers.

Why? After how poorly City Barns Trust has maintained the property, after it has needed constant needling to fix the air ducts, to keep the heat on for seniors, why would we enter into another 15 year agreement to pay $7.5 million dollars to lease property that should have been gifted to the City in the first place?

Reviewing what we know, we can make some assumptions.

Based on the fact that Attorney John McKenna had said at the subcommittee meeting that negotiations had been held up, in part, because the “condominium documents didn’t provide the exact details” and that it “may be better discussed in executive session (25:25), and based on the fact that, nearly three years after the expiration of the agreement the City Manager is now requesting to lease the property again, one could assume that the City Barns Trust believes it has some legal standing in refusing to gift the property to the City.

It is possible that George Behrakis, who is reportedly worth $990 million (p. 10), hasaccess to great lawyers who have found some legal justification for getting him out of donating the land to the City.

Some in the City administration have possibly calculated, much like in the case of Sal Lupoli’s Hamilton Canal Innovation District Project (14:50), that it would be less expensive and less disruptive for Seniors for the City to renew the lease.

I do not want to make assumptions. I don’t want to come across as accusatory, public information is limited, and I am trying to understand.

Where Do We Go From Here?

As I mentioned at the beginning, at the February 24th City Council Meeting, the City Manager is asking to be allowed to lease the property again.

My gut response would be to ask City Councilors to vote no on this motion because it is hard for me to stomach a man who is nearly a billionaire refusing to follow a clear agreement to donate a small property for the benefit of senior citizens.

It is honestly hard to even put that into writing.

But before we even get to the point of deciding yes or no, I think the public needs transparency. The reason for discussions being restricted to executive session was that “Public Discussion […] Could Have A Detrimental Effect On The City’s Position.”

This may have been true at the time. But now, it is hard to imagine a more compromised position than continuing to lease property that, according to the agreement, should rightfully be owned by the City.

Given the commotion I have seen in public forums online, I think it would be helpful for the city to release the minutes of Executive Session meetings leading up to this decision. That public information would help us understand the nuances of the situation.

According to a February 20th, 2026 post from Councilor Erik Gitschier, "Two weeks ago a vote was taken to release all the executive session minutes on the Senior Center up to that point (it should include the funds and other discussions).”

He said that “I will post what has happened in my opinion in the previous executive sessions from hostile demands and threats from one side to what I believe is a take over of property that belongs to the City of Lowell.”

I believe this a step in the right direction.

If the city is seriously considering this lease, the public should also know:

• Why is the city not pursuing legal action when the City Barns Trust has clearly not followed the agreement?

• Why would it be beneficial to enter into a 15 year lease for $7.5 million with an organization that has proven itself untrustworthy as a landlord?

• Given that the city has had to apply pressure in the past to get basic maintenance needs met, what is the plan to hold City Barns Trust accountable during this lease?

• What is the City going to do in the future to avoid getting into a situation like this again?

If anything, transparency could build public trust in the City’s leadership. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in 1913, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

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On February 17, 2026, the City of Lowell released an informational report about the upcoming City Hall GoLowell Construction project. The project will include new bike, bus, and pedestrian safety infrastructure.

According to the report, “preliminary construction activities such as signage and permit applications [will occur] the first week of March 2026, with utility work beginning mid-March” (p. 1)

The report also includes a visual map of the proposed changes coming to Merrimack Street (p. 3), which I will analyze here.

This project is funded, the report says, “through a Federal Transit Authority Grant in association with the Lowell Regional Transit Authority, a State Transportation Earmark, and City Capital funding for a total construction cost of $2,261,000.”

Before going any further, I would like to appreciate the work of all of the people working on this project, as well as those who contributed to the 2021 GoLowell plan, which informed this project. A full list of the contributors is on page iii of the plan, and an early version of this project is outlined on page 40.

That being said, let’s break down the changes coming to Merrimack Street.

Bike Lanes

One of the major changes this project will bring is that it will “[c]reate new bicycle lanes and a formal bicycle crossing at City Hall” (p. 1)

Some of those lanes will be protected, as shown above.

These new bike lanes “will link City Hall with the two-way bicycle lane that is planned between City Hall and Cabot Street in conjunction with the infrastructure improvements associated with the Acre Crossing development along Merrimack Street and Cabot Street” (p. 1).

In the City Council Meeting on February 17th, Transportation Engineer Elizabeth Oltman explained that the City hoped that this bike trail would “increase our ability to connect with the UMass Lowell students in the University Crossing facility and to the various campuses that way, so we can encourage more students to take their scooters and their bikes and come downtown.” (2:25:05).

These changes should improve bicycle and pedestrian safety in this area.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration, “Most fatal and serious injury bicyclist crashes occur at non-intersection locations. Nearly one-third of these crashes occur when motorists are overtaking bicyclists¹; because the speed and size differential between vehicles and bicycles can lead to severe injury. Many people are not comfortable riding a bicycle because of their fear that this type of crash may occur.” One of the DOT’s major recommendations is to physically separate bike traffic from vehicle traffic, as “separating users in space can enhance safety for all road users.”

The 2021 GoLowell Plan outlined major clusters of pedestrian and bicycle crashes between 2008 and 2017 (p. 18) Several such clusters were on Merrimack street at this very location (see below).

I am hopeful that these new protected bike lanes on Merrimack street will make it safer to bike downtown.

Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons

Several changes have been included in the project to improve safety for pedestrians.

One of those changes is the installation of “Rapid Rectangular Flashing Beacons (RRFB) at two crosswalks across Merrimack Street to City Hall.”

RRFBs allow pedestrians to push a button to activate rapid flashing lights that alert drivers that someone is crossing the road.

A 2023 study in the Journal for Transportation Engineers found that ‘RRFBs have the potential to reduce 69% of total pedestrian-involved crashes.”

RRFBs will be installed on both the West and East sides of the intersection of Merrimack Street and Cardinal O’Connell Parkway (see below).

Curb Extensions

Another pedestrian safety measure in this project is to “[p]rovide curb extensions to shorten crossing distances across Merrimack Street at Worthen Street and Cardinal O’Connell Parkway.”

Shortening crossing distances has been shown to make pedestrians safer.

A 2024 study in the Journal of the American Planning Association analyzed the relationship between crossing distances and pedestrian crashes. The researchers “found that longer crossing distance correlated with increased likelihood of collisions” (p. 1).

The researchers recommended that once planners recognize intersections with relatively large crossing distances, they can “prioritize shortening them to improve safety outcomes, including via modular interventions such as refuge islands and sidewalk extensions” (p. 11).

From what I can tell, the curb extension at the intersection of Merrimack street and Worthen Street will reduce the crossing distance by about 8 feet. Since this area is home to a cluster of pedestrian crashes (as shown in the excerpt of the GoLowell plan above), I am hopeful that these changes will lead to a safer walking experience in Lowell.

There also seems to be an addition of a sidewalk on the North end of the median on Cardinal O’Connell Parkway.

Right now, pedestrians walking along Market Street who want to cross this Cardinal O’Connell Parkway have to brave a long crossing distance without any sidewalk. This will be remedied with the addition of a sidewalk North of the median (see below).

Bus Stop Shelters

This project will “[c]reate protected bus stops in front of City Hall and the Smith Baker building” (p. 1) I have outlined the bus shelter locations in blue above.

These bus stop shelters were suggested in in the 2021 GoLowell Plan based on “user frequency and downtown proximity” (p. 24).

In addition, the 2021 GoLowell Plan specifically suggested “custom designed bus shelters to reflect the historic architecture of City Hall and adjacent buildings” (p. 40). I will be curious to see if the final projects ended up following through on those architectural suggestions.

Below, I have outlined my best estimates of where these bus shelters will be located based on the locations on the map.

As I wrote about back in August of 2025, bus stop shelters are a great way to improve the comfort and accessibility of public bus systems.

Changes to Cardinal O’Connell Parkway

The final element of this project to note is some potential changes to traffic patterns on Cardinal O’Connell Parkway. It should be noted that, pending some uncertainty about the Smith Baker project, it is uncertain whether these exact changes will take place (2:26:50).

Nonetheless, here is what is publicly available.

First, the project will likely introduce two-way traffic on the west side of the parkway.

Next, because of this change in traffic, the intersection between Cardinal O’Connell and Market Street will be narrower (see below).

As Transportation Engineer Elizabeth Oltman “What I would like to do and what the designers have envisioned too is fixing the intersection of Market Street and Cardinal O’Connell, which I’m sure, if you’ve driven through it ever, you know it’s very confusing and wide and hard on pedestrians” (2:27:48).

These changes should reduce the crossing distance for pedestrians and make the intersection clearer for drivers.

Conclusion

Based on what I have seen so far, I am hopeful about this project. These improvements to the area outside of City Hall are one step toward making Lowell a safer place to walk, bike, and bus.

Not only am I excited about the final product, but I appreciate the deliberative, collaborative process by which these changes came about. This project is a result of input from experts such as transportation engineer Elizabeth Oltman, as well as the community stakeholders in the GoLowell Plan.

With the recent release of the Safe Streets For All (SS4A) Plan, I am excited about how the city will continue to make Lowell’s streets safer moving forward.

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From now until March 1st, Lowell artist Michael S. Vieira’s newest project, “The City I Know,” is on display at the Chelmsford Center for the Arts. The advertisement for the gallery describes it as “a collection of paintings that reflect Lowell’s character through its light, texture, and quiet dignity, turning familiar streets and buildings into a study of time and place.”

I first stumbled on Vieira’s work via a post on one of Lowell’s many Facebook groups. After opening his website, I was taken aback by paintings of Lowell’s familiar places, historic sites, and happenstance views, all captured with an eye for light and a dash of nostalgia.

To my (admittedly untrained) eye, his style and subject matter reminded me of the cityscapes of Edward Hopper, which I love.

I decided to reach out to Vieira, and he graciously offered to meet me at his exhibit for an interview.

Our conversation left me with a deeper appreciation for his work. More than just paintings of familiar places, his body of work both honors Lowell’s storied landscapes and challenges one-dimensional perceptions of the city.

In the end, I came to see this exhibit as a snapshot of city in the process of reclaiming its own story.

The Michael S. Vieira Backstory

The first questions I asked Vieira were about his backstory. What drew him to become an artist? And of all the possible subjects he could paint, why Lowell?

After these first questions, he paused for a moment.

“A lot of artists don’t have a choice in becoming an artist,” he said. He emphasized how for many people, art choses them more than they chose it.

“Some people spend a long time looking, searching for their own gifts. I guess I’m fortunate that my God given gift was so obvious.”

He then began telling me about his family.

“My parents were refugees from the Azores. There were three waves of immigrants that came from the Azores islands, because people were starving out there. So my parents came in the last wave in the 70s.”

Vieira sees his experience as the child of immigrants in Lowell as a key part of his story as an artist.

“I was born in the Portuguese community, in the Back Central neighborhoods,” he told me. “So I have such pride in my city.”

Vieira credits his childhood experience of starting school with limited English proficiency with helping him forge a unique perspective.

“I couldn’t speak English when I first started going to school, and I think that early on, I was a little bit separate from the crowd. I don’t know if I did it myself or if they did it, but just somehow I ended up being in the periphery, which was fine. I didn’t mind existing in the periphery, because I got to see things a little differently.”

From 1995-2000, Vieira studied at The School of The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. And from 2005 to 2011 he apprenticed under renowned artist Paul Ingbretson in Manchester, New Hampshire.

“A living master,” Vieira called him. “I studied under [Ingbretson] for seven years, and I studied classical realism. So I painted still life. I drew portraits. I painted portraits.”

He enjoyed the process of learning, “trying to make it as accurate as possible, trying to catch the light. But it never moved anybody.”

That is when Vieira stumbled into his audience. After spending time living in Texas, he returned to the city of Lowell with fresh eyes. He appreciated the beauty of his home town all the more.

“You know what?” He thought one day, “Lowell is my home. I’m painting the City Hall building. So I do a painting in the City Hall building. I did, like, 13, to 18. (I destroyed a few)”

The reaction? “Immediately people were like, ‘Oh my goodness, yeah, I used to go to The Worthen’ or, you know, ‘The Lowell Sun was my first job,’ or ‘That’s Smith Street.’ There was always a story attached to it. And I would see how excited they are about recognizing the place and knowing exactly where I stood, and I love that.”

“And that’s where I realized my audience. I paint for the people of Lowell, the people that work here, that live here, that were born here. I paint for them.”

The Painting That Started It All

Father Mike’s Morning Prayer, St. Joseph The Worker Shrine, 2024

“This was my first painting of the series,” Vieira told me. The day he decided to paint this painting was “the day I decided to quit my job. I said, ‘I’m gonna start a series of Lowell paintings.’”

Here’s how it happened. “It was raining, and I’m dropping my daughter off at school, and I saw Father Mike. He’s praying his rosary, so he just goes back and forth praying. And then I just parked the car, and I was like, ‘I want to take a picture of you in front of the church praying.’ He’s like, ‘What do you want me to do?’ I’m like, ‘Exactly what you’re doing. Just keep doing it. And I just took a bunch of photos of him, just in quiet meditation, early, early in the morning.’”

This building was originally constructed in 1850 and used for a protestant group called the Unitarian Society. In 1868, it was purchased by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and became the “first house of worship for Lowell’s rapidly growing French-Canadian immigrant population.” According to the Lowell Sun, “it remained a parish until 1956 when it became a shrine to St. Joseph the Worker.”

The church now has a museum dedicated to the “work of the oblates in New England and French Canada,” as well as “the long and rich history of Lowell’s Franco-American community.”

There are so many things I love about this painting. The first is that, in this painting, and in his public comments about it, Vieira honors the history of Lowell’s French-Canadian population.

Next, I love the use of yellow in the trees, which draws out the color of the stained glass windows. I am a sucker for stained glass. I realized this upon my first visit to La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. It was on this visit that I fell in love with what the architect Antoni Gaudí called the “harmony of light”:

“The Temple of the Sagrada Familia will be bright. Religious emotion will not come from the fear of shadows only just penetrated by a ray of light, but will be born from the bright mystery of the harmony of light, from the sense of wellbeing that comes from sunlight filtering through a tree with the thousands of nuances of its leaves. It will, thus, be the Temple of harmonious light.”

I also love the sense of awe that comes with the contrast between this momentous, beautiful building and the small human at the bottom of the frame. There is something very humble and earnest in that size comparison.

Zooming into Father Mike himself, I find it particularly meaningful that Vieira painted someone he knows in the community. Not only that, but that he happened upon Father Mike in his morning routine of praying the rosary. This intimacy, as well as the meditative practice of praying is very comforting to me.

This painting reminds me of a passage from the Pascal Mercier novel Night Train to Lisbon:

“I would not like to live in a world without cathedrals. I need their beauty and grandeur. I need them against the vulgarity of the world. I want to look up at the illuminated church windows and let myself be blinded by the unearthly colors. I need their luster. I need it against the dirty colors of the uniforms. I want to let myself be wrapped in the austere coolness of the churches. I need their imperious silence. I need it against the witless bellowing of the barracks yard and the witty chatter of the yes-men. I want to hear the rustling of the organ, this deluge of ethereal tones. I need it against the shrill farce of marches. I love praying people. I need the sight of them. I need it against the malicious poison of the superficial and the thoughtless. I want to read the powerful words of the Bible. I need the unreal force of their poetry. I need it against the dilapidation of the language and the dictatorship of slogans. A world without these things would be a world I would not like to live in.”

The final note I’d like to hit on this piece – and Vieira’s work in general – is that it challenges the one-dimensional story that often gets told about Lowell. While this city has its problems, it is also full of people who, in spite of it all, are making the most of their “one wild and precious life.”

This painting encapsulates the city’s “urban grit” and “quiet dignity.”

Even in the rain, Father Mike continues to pray.

Miniature prints of Father Mike’s Morning Prayer will be available for sale at the gift shop of St. Joseph The Worker Shrine. Profits will go to the Church.

SUN Building No. 1, Central St. 2025

“The painting shows the back side of an old apartment building at sunrise, with warm window lights and the SUN sign rising above the rooftops. It is beautiful history mixed with urban grit. The SUN Building is an important part of Lowell’s story and I’m glad to see the sign restored” (Instagram, 11/16/2025)

While the Sun building is an iconic structure in Lowell, Vieira told me that many people are often unfamiliar with the specific vantage point. “A lot of people are like, where is this? Did you just put that building in front? I’m like, Nope, I don’t make things up.”

The perspective of this painting is from the parking lot of the Dunkin’ Donuts on Central Street. I have placed a marker on the attached map at the exact location. (See below).

So how did Vieira discover this unique view? Whereas some of his paintings are more premeditated, “sometimes I wander around and I just let the muse kind of come to me.”

This time, he said, he happened to stumble on this view on a walk. “And I in my head, I said, I’m gonna make people like this painting.”

And they have. Not only did the painting “receive an Honorable Mention in the 15th Annual PleinAir Salon Art Competition,” but it was also accepted into the Salmagundi CitySpots 2025 show. (It’s worth noting that both Edward Hopper and Norman Rockwell were members of Salmagundi.)

Locals on Facebook have also appreciated that he “captured a bit of Lowell not normally seen by those that pass by.” One commenter even said that it “looks like a photo.”

I told Vieira that, the first time I saw this online, I thought it was a photo.

“Thank you,” he said. “I mean, I use photos, so it’s kind of hard not for it not to look like a photograph. But there was a point where I was just copying the photograph, and I realized I’m like the world’s slowest inkjet printer, because if I’m just using the photo as my reference on how good it is, an ink jet printer can do the same thing.”

“So that’s when I kind of took it to another level. And I started considering the texture of things. You can see how the power lines are textured.”

He rubbed his finger over the power line. “Each little thing, touch it, and it’s all texture, right? So all of it has texture, everything.”

No discussion of this painting would be complete without a reference to the city’s history. “This building has stood at the heart of Lowell for generations, once home to the city’s beloved newspaper, the Lowell Sun. It has witnessed the city’s growth, struggles, and triumphs, and I feel honored to celebrate that history through my work.”

In a Facebook post, Vieira wrote his appreciation for the recent restoration of the Lowell Sun sign: “Thank you to the Lowell Historic Board and Signs Now NH for the care and work you put into preserving our city.”

HAFFNER'S 2025

This painting of the Haffner’s sign does two things for me – something local and something universal.

In the local sense, he depicts the Dutton Street / Market Street intersection the way I usually encounter it at night – quiet and caked with the stubborn gray slush of late January. This beautiful sign, surrounded by historic buildings, all under a filthy layer of salt and snow is the perfect example of Lowell’s “urban grit.”

At the same time, not only is it this very specific sign at a very specific intersection, but there is something in this image that feels quintessentially American. It’s roadside diners. It’s drive-in movie theaters. It’s Lowell’s little slice of Americana.

We talked about some of the stylistic choices he made. Echoing previous comments about not wanting to be the “world’s slowest inkjet printer,” he pointed to the varied textures.

“That whole piece is raised,” he said, pointing to the Haffner’s sign itself. Looking closer, I noticed that the rough texture of the sign contrasts with the dark blue sky, which is shiny.

City Hall No. 13, Life Alive, 2024

“City Hall No. 13, Life Alive. I painted this scene from a photo I took about ten years ago during a huge blizzard. After running around in the storm taking photos, we ducked into Life Alive Organic Cafe to warm up, and this was the view from the window. City Hall rising through the snowfall, the streets quiet and peaceful. It always reminds me of good friends, good food, and the joy of being alive in the middle of a snowstorm” (Instagram, 12/3/2025)

My favorite thing about winter is being able to cozy up inside with a hot cup of coffee and watch through the window as the snow quietly falls.

This painting, with its snow-covered trees, quaint little lamp post, and its perspective from indoors evokes in me a deep sense of hygge.

The Hour of Grace, 2025

The best description I’ve seen of this painting comes from one of Vieira’s Instagram posts:

“The Hour of Grace portrays the old building on Smith Street in Lowell, once known as the Crack Street house and made infamous by the 1995 HBO documentary High on Crack Street and later echoed in the Mark Wahlberg film The Fighter. It is a place filled with heavy memories, tied to addiction and to a difficult chapter in the city’s history.

The viewer stands at dawn, caught between the quiet lamplight in the windows and the rising sun on the horizon. One light is small and familiar. The other is bright, overwhelming, and difficult to face, yet it is where renewal begins. The painting acknowledges the weight of addiction while honoring the dignity of the people who lived there and the courage it takes to step out of the shadows and into something new.” (11/25/2025)

Vieira gave a similar explanation in our interview, and as he described it, I couldn’t help but think of the incredibly analogous scene in the The Fighter – the film about Lowell’s famous Irish-American professional boxer, Micky Ward.

This scene centers around Ward’s older brother, Dicky Eklund. Dicky, who struggled with addiction, is released from prison, and he is trying to reintegrate into society. After he is rejected by some of his family members, he returns to the house where he used to use drugs – the exact same house in Vieira’s painting. (38 Smith Street)

Dicky is tempted to return to his addiction when he runs into his old friends. One in particular invites him to “head upstairs.” This is what Vieira refers to as the “small and familiar” light of returning to addiction.

But in the end, Dicky decides to, as Viera puts it, “step out of the shadows and into something new.” Dicky overcame his addiction, and has spent his later years teaching boxing at Micky Ward’s gym in Westford. (Based on the gym’s website, it does not look like he is currently teaching.)

As I see it, Vieira’s painting shows a deep respect for Dicky’s story, and the story of so many others trying to escape addiction.

Other people seem to feel the same.

“My mother grew up at 24 Smith Street--two houses down from this one,” wrote one Facebook commenter, “I walked by the Hour of Grace tenement every day going to Notre Dame de Lourdes school in the 1960s. You have captured the ambiance (hope, the porchlights on) extremely well.”

Vieira donates ten percent of the profits from any sales of his paintings or prints to Riverbend Addiction Treatment to support access to recovery services in Lowell.

Sad Beaulieu, Visions of Gerard, 2025

This is a painting of Jack Kerouac’s childhood home. Most Lowellians are well aware of Kerouac, but Vieira’s description of the story behind this painting made me feel like he was letting me in on a little local secret – another layer of Kerouac’s story that is less widely known.

“When you mention Jack Kerouac, everyone’s like, ‘Oh yeah, On the Road!’ They think of drinking and partying and, you know, hitchhiking and getting in the fights. And, you know, the thing about Jack Kerouac is that’s true. But he was also a very spiritual person. He was born into a French Canadian family. They were very, very Catholic. And he went to Catholic school, and then he discovered Buddhism later on in his life. And that kind of parallels with me, because I discovered Buddhism also, in my late 20s.”

This piece depicts the “home where Jack Kerouac’s older brother Gerard passed away in 1926. Gerard was Jack’s older brother. When Gerard passed away, he was about nine and Jack was about four.”

Even in his short life, Gerard had a profound impact on his younger brother Jack. In his novel Visions of Gerard Kerouac described Gerard’s life. Reading the book, it is hard not to be charmed by little Jack and his adoration for his big brother “Gerard, who warned me to be kind to little animals and took me by the hand on forgotten little walks” (p. 7).

Reflecting as an adult, Kerouac would write that “the whole reason why I ever wrote at all […] because of Gerard” (pp. 99-100).

The novel describes both the night of Gerard’s death, as well as his fantastical visions of the Virgin Mary.

“One of the stories is about when he was in class,” said Vieira told me.

Vieira actually spoke with the daughter of one of Gerard’s classmates at the St Louis School in Centralville to hear more about this story. That daughter of one of Gerard’s classmates said that “even when Gerard was in class, he still wasn’t there because he was just so sickly, because he had rheumatic fever and he his heart wasn’t great.”

But that day at the Saint Louis School, “during class, he blacked out, fell on the ground, and the nuns woke him up, and when he came to he’s like, ‘I saw the Virgin Mother, and the nuns were like, ‘Describe her to us,’ and he said, ‘She’s a very beautiful lady. And she came down, and she opened up her robe, and petals and birds started falling down.’

If you’d like to read this section of the book, Gerard’s visions at school are on pages 48-49.

Vieira was particularly inspired by the scene when when eight-year-old Gerard was on his deathbed, dying of rheumatic fever. “One of Jack’s earliest memories was seeing a few nuns in his bedroom, and they’re all praying, and they’re asking Gerard to describe heaven for them. And so that really moved me.”

‘How are you feeling, Gerard?’

‘Awright, my sister.’

‘Are you afraid, sweetheart?’

‘No, my sister ––– The priest blessed me ‘

They ask him questions which he answers briefly and softly, my mother sees the nun taking it down on paper ––– She never saw the paper again ––– Some secret transmitted from mouth to heart, at the quiet hour, I have no idea where any such paper or record could have ended or could be found today, lest it’s written on the rock in the mountains of gold in the country I cant reach ––– Or some fleecy mystery imparted, concerning the kinds of fearlessness, or the proof of faith, or the ethereality of pain, or the unreality of death (and life too), or the calm hand of God everywhere slowly benedicting ––– Whatever, the solemn tearful nuns did take it down, his last words, at deathside bed, and betook themselves back to the nunnery with it, and crossed themselves, and you can be sure there were special prayers that night ––– (p. 97).

This painting depicts the outside of the house, imagining it as the night that Gerard passed.

“I wanted this painting to look like a candlelit vigil, so I kept letting the light drop and letting the light drop.”

He also took some liberties with colors. A close eye will notice that “that green tree is blue, you know, because I needed the blues to offset these oranges.”

All of these decisions were meant to commemorate the deeply spiritual life and early death of an innocent boy in our own back yard. Not only that, but this painting recognizes the impact he had on his brother – one of Lowell’s most prolific writers.

“Those visions shaped the way [Kerouac] understood grace, suffering, and the holiness hidden in ordinary life.”

Vieira and I shared a quiet moment before he said, “I don’t know if that was his bedroom or not, but I feel like, you know, you’ve got a light there. You know, there’s a sick child in that room.”

“You’re envisioning this as like the night that he passed?” I asked.

“Yeah, the night that he passed.”

The Ponderous Chartreuse Cathedral of the Slums, 2024

Unlike many of Vieira’s other works, this piece is actually a color pencil drawing. While he had always wanted to capture this iconic Lowell building in his work, there were some complications that made him put it off.

“This was a tricky composition because it is a square inside a square inside a square. It naturally wanted to become a bullseye, and it sat in my unused photo folder for a long time. When [DRAWLowell] Confluence show put out a call for artist, I finally decided to tackle it” (Instagram).

Here’s how he explained the origin story to me. One evening, he was about to eat dinner and “it started sleeting. And then I saved my dinner real fast and got in the car and drove over there.” We discussed how he tried to break up that “square within a square” by painting the church from an angle to capture the curve in the top left of the building, and “the snowstorm helped break up the sharp corners and give it atmosphere” (Instagram).

I find this painting meaningful because of what it says about Lowell both in the past and in the present.

Looking backward toward the past, this painting again honors the history of Lowell’s French-Canadian population. In 1889, as Lowell’s French-Canadian population was expanding beyond the services that could be provided at the church on Lee Street, this larger church was constructed – “The First Franco-American Parish of the Archdiocese of Boston.” According to the Lowell Sun, “The lower portion of the church opened in 1890, while the grand opening took place at 10 a.m., Sunday, Dec. 13, 1896.”

The church served Lowell’s French Canadian population, largely in the Little Canada neighborhood.

Unfortunately, “in 1993, Saint Jean Baptiste closed, and the Nuestra Senora del Carmen Church opened the following year, but also eventually closed.”

This church was also significant in the life of Jack Kerouac. As a child, Keroauc was an altar boy at the St Jean Baptiste church.

Kerouac once called this church the “the ponderous chartreuse cathedral of the slums” – the origin of the title of the drawing.

Scenes from Visions of Gerard also took place near the church. One such scene happens after a character named Manuel gets in a fight with his wife about his drinking.

Manuel and Emil (the fictional version of Kerouac’s father) leave the house – ironically – to go out drinking. The two make their way through Lowell, Manuel on the motorcycle and Emil in the side-car, “putt-putting and bouncing over the Aiken Street bridge.”

“They go careering up Aiken through the tenement streets of Little Canada and cross the canal bridge and along to the high Medieval granite walls of St. Jean de Baptiste church (where Gerard was baptized)” (p. 76). The rest of the scene is worth a read, with its description of the Greek neighborhood in the Acre in the 1920s.

Kerouac’s funeral also took place at St Jean Baptiste, “presided over by Father Morissette.” Jim Sampas, literary executor of the Kerouac estate, explained that attendees included some of his “oldest and dearest friends — Allen Ginsberg and John Clellon Holmes among them” (WBUR).

Here is a brief excerpt from Father Morissette’s eulogy:

Jack Kerouac embodied something of man’s search for freedom. He refused always to be boxed in by the pettiness of the world. He had what Allen Ginsberg called “the exquisite honesty”, the guts to express and live his ideas. Now he is on the road again, going on further, as he said, “alone by the waters of life”. Our hopes and prayer is that he has found complete liberation.

So far, I have focused on what this drawing says about Lowell’s past. But it also says something about Lowell today.

This piece captures Lowell in the process of reclaiming its own story. While greater Massachusetts’ perspectives of Lowell are rife with stereotypes and stories from decades ago (see this Reddit thread for a taste), the city has gone through a period of revitalization and historic preservation. The city’s continued “urban grit,” as Vieira calls it, is on display here.

As far as I know this is the first piece of art depicting this building that includes the mural of Jack Kerouac on the side. “The mural became reality with major support from [the late] State Senator Ed Kennedy and [was] created by renowned artist Kori Thomas, professionally recognized as the artist Quest Nine. It is a vivid tribute to Kerouac’s life and work, capturing his restless spirit, creative brilliance, and his connection to the church” (Jack Kerouac Estate).

Quest Nine also spoke to the significance of Kerouac to her.

“I am truly honored to have been contacted by the Kerouac Estate to create the Jack’s Legacy Mural in Lowell, MA" says Kori Thomas/Quest Nine, "Jack Kerouac has been a constant companion in my lonesome ‘van life’ travels, guiding me through connections with fellow wanderers and in turn inspiring my passion for art. As I delved into his writings, I developed a profound appreciation for Jack—his words, madness, and unique perspective have taught me to embrace and love every aspect of myself. This mural represents not just a tribute to him, but a celebration of his message, ensuring that his legacy endures. With hopes of establishing the Jack Kerouac Center at this site, we aim to create a haven for fellow beat travelers, aspiring writers, and enthusiasts of his unseen works. I am immensely grateful to the Kerouac Estate for this opportunity to share and celebrate Jack’s impact.”

Another way Lowell is fully honoring its history is through the Kerouac Estate’s plan to create the Jack Kerouac Center at this very St Jean Baptiste church. Not only will it be a museum “with artifacts and a story but also a place alive with current culture, offering a multi-faceted educational component. We think of what it can be as a gathering place, welcoming to all for both pilgrims from afar and students just blocks away.”

This project gained even more momentum in May of 2025 when country music star Zach Bryan purchased the St Jean Baptiste building. The Jack Kerouac estate released a statement that “Bryan’s involvement marks a turning point, bringing essential funding and renewed energy. His commitment has provided the momentum needed to turn years of planning into a tangible reality, paving the way for the center to become a cornerstone of creativity and inspiration in Lowell.”

Starting in November of 2025, Bryan is helping to raise more funds for the project by selling Jack Kerouac / Zach Bryan t-shirts.

For those curious about what the new center will look like, here are some mock-ups from a 2023 article from The Architect’s Newspaper. According to the article, “the existing church will undergo a careful renovation to restore its interior for use as performance venue, with a modern glass extension erected adjacent to the church that will serve as operational space for the center’s programming.”

Restoration of the Holy Trinity, 2025

What I appreciate about this painting is that it does not simply depict the historic Holy Trinity Church, but also honors to the act of restoration itself.

Vieira explained to me that whereas typically, “people would want to paint it from the front and not under construction, I paint it from the side while they’re gilding the roof, because that’s real. That shows the city loving their culture, loving history. Preserving it. And also their faith, the faith of the city, the Greek community getting together to raise money, along with the city, to get the dome gilded again.”

Historic preservation is a recurring theme in Vieira’s work, and in his social media posts he frequently shouts out the organizations in the city helping to preserve historical buildings. On Instagram, he called this painting a “tribute to the people preserving our rich history of Lowell.”

For those who are interested, here is a brief history of the origin of the Church. The Holy Trinity Church was “the fourth Greek Orthodox parish in America, and first in the Boston area.” Whereas the church began gathering in 1893, “the church building was dedicated in 1908.”

“The community started to take shape in 1893-95, when Michael Latron (or Latros) founded the Washington-Acropolis Society. He became the parish’s first president and was succeeded by George Gouzoulis in 1908.

Lowell residents born in Greece appear in U.S. Census lists as early as 1850 (i.e. Mary Partridge, 24), but the first Greek of Lowell was probably John Kasimatis who was born in Hania, Crete, then under Turkish occupation. In his passport application he said he had lived in Lowell since 1874 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1881. He was the husband of Helenand the father of George.

The Lowell Hellenic Heritage Association said that about 50 Greeks, mostly peddlers, lived in Lowell in 1891, and about 200 by 1895. Greeks were the third most populous immigrant group in Lowell after the Irish and the French Canadians.” (Holy Trinity Lowell)

The Folk Fest in Saint Anne's, 2025

Most of the paintings in this series showcase buildings that are deeply connected to Lowell’s history and culture. This painting, in contrast, captures part of Lowell’s intangible cultural heritage – the Lowell Folk Festival.

Whereas the rest of the series helped me to appreciate the depth of our past, this painting urges me to appreciate Lowell’s present.

With the blue sky, bright colors, and striped umbrellas, this painting captures the excitement of this annual event celebrating the diverse musical – and culinary – cultures in Lowell.

It’s a painting of both celebration and leisure. The bright colors, the striped canopies, the various hats and the general sense of a summer celebration remind me of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880/1881). At the same time, the lounging festival-goers taking in the music remind me of the napping farmworkers in Van Gough’s The Siesta (1890).

But within this broader event, Vieira chose to make the focal point this young child in the bright pink dress.

“What’s funny about that is, this is her mom.” He pointed to the woman in the top left corner of the painting (circled below). “And her mom was actually right here in the picture.” He pointed right next to the girl in pink.

He explained that he wanted the child to be the focal point, so he moved the mother to de-emphasize her. “So the mom’s still there, but now she’s just away.”

I like to think of this as a depiction of the little compromises of parenting. The mom likely came to the event to enjoy the music and the food. But, of course, the child is far more interested in exploring, playing in the grass, and touching the railing. So mom does her best to enjoy the festival while keeping a watchful eye on the little one as she indulges her curiosity.

There is one final part of this painting the Vieira mentioned. “I put a pride flag in there. Not a lot of people see that.” He said that he made this choice because Saint Anne’s is an Episcopal Church and “they welcome everyone.” He stressed the he wanted to highlight Lowell as an inclusive city.

Conclusion

As readers can likely tell from the sheer length of this feature article, I deeply enjoyed this deep dive into Michael S. Vieira’s series, “The City I Know.”

Oddly enough, this series of paintings reminds me of one of my favorite songwriters – Sufjan Stevens. One of Stevens’ early albums titled Illinois is like an artistic cousin to this series. Each song on the album is titled after a specific location, each one of local significance. Much like those songs, this series of paintings is a catalogue of local lore with a unique artistic sensibility.

This series captures Lowell as a city in the process of honoring its history and reclaiming its future. It complicates tired stereotypes about Lowell, not by ignoring the city’s problems, but by showing what else is also true. Lowell is full of people with “urban grit.” People who preserve history, who embrace spirituality, who create art.

There is a quote I love from Dead Poets Society about the value of art. “Medicine, law, business, engineering—these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love—these are what we stay alive for.”

I can’t help but appreciate how lucky we are to have artists like Vieira in our midst to remind us of the beauty of our places and our stories.

More About Michael S. Vieira

If you would like to learn more about Michael S. Vieira’s work consider the following:

• Visit the gallery, “The City I Know",” at the Chelmsford Center for the Arts before March 1st.

• See Vieira’s website.

• Prints of Vieira’s works are available on Etsy.

  

• Vieira periodically teaches painting classes at Western Avenue Studios. If you are interested in taking one of his classes, contact him at michaelsvieira1313@gmail.com

• Check out this interactive map of Vieira’s paintings in Lowell. (Some of the exact locations are my best estimates.)

  

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In an attempt to balance the FY27 state budget, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey has proposed to decrease the amount of the state budget that goes to the Group Insurance Commission – the state agency that provides health insurance to public employees, retirees, and their dependents and survivors.

This cut to the GIC would mean that hundreds of thousands of public sector workers – including myself – would see our annual out-of-pocket healthcare costs go up by hundreds, or even thousands of dollars.

In this piece, I will outline the proposed changes, how exactly they would raise costs, and how people can push the Governor toward a different route.

In short: If we want to balance the budget, we do not need to raise out-of-pocket healthcare costs for public employees. We need to raise taxes on large corporations.

The Proposed Changes

What exactly has been proposed by the Governor?

According to a presentation from a January 2026 public information session, “The Governor’s budget office has given GIC a $100M net budget savings target for plan design changes for FY27” (p. 19).

In order to make $100,000 in “savings,” the GIC basically has two options (1) improve efficiency of current services and (2) push costs onto public employees.

By and large, they chose the latter. The GIC has drafted a list of “Potential Changes to Health Insurance Premiums and Plan Design.” The full list is on pages 22-26 of this presentation. I will provide a brief sampling of how these changes will increase costs.

• Increase annual medical deductibles significantly – $250 for individuals and $500 for families. (p. 25)

• Increase Emergency Room co-pays from $100 to $150 (p. 23).

• Increase office visit copays, with Primary Care Physician office visit costs increasing by about 50%. Instead of $10 for a first visit, people will pay $15. Instead of $20 for the second visit, people will pay $30. Instead of $40 for the third visit, people will pay $60. (p. 25)

• Ending coverage for GLP-1 drugs for Obesity. (p. 26) This is an extension of a decision back in August of 2025. See the response of CEO of the World Obesity Federation Johanna Ralston on the harms of ending coverage for GLP-1 drugs for obesity:

  “The World Obesity Federation is the main partner to the World Health Organization on obesity and has member organizations in over 100 countries. We work to advance policies aimed at preventing and managing this disease that affects over 1 billion people worldwide.

  By 2035 over half of humanity is projected to be overweight or have obesity, so effective treatments and policies that work cannot come quickly enough, and be made accessible to all.

  What we’ve seen in Massachusetts, where individual blame and prevention-only policies have been insufficient to address what is increasingly recognized as a complex chronic disease, is true everywhere. We can’t prevent our way out of this tsunami, nor can we just treat our way out of it. We must do both.”

In sum, Governor Healey is proposing to remove coverage from certain drugs and push healthcare costs onto public employees.

In the words of Massachusetts Teachers Association President Max Page, “Forcing educators, firefighters, public works employees, retirees, widows and widowers to pay significantly more every time they or their family members require medical attention is an affront to the public good.”

Tax Corporations Instead

It doesn’t have to be this way. If we want to balance the budget, we don’t always have to cut, cut, cut.

The other option, of course, is to raise tax revenue, and to do it fairly.

One way we can do that is by cracking down on corporate tax dodging.

Right now, the state of Massachusetts loses hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue to corporate tax dodging. Multi-billion dollar corporations hide their profits in offshore tax havens to avoid paying Massachusetts state taxes. This practice hurts small businesses that have to compete on an unfair playing field. It also hurts local families and communities that benefit from essential taxpayer-funded services.

A simple change to the Massachusetts tax code so that we tax hidden offshore taxes could bring Massachusetts $400 million in annual revenue, four times the amount needed to prevent this cut to public employees’ healthcare.

Maine is already doing this. New Hampshire is already doing this. We should be doing this too.

If you’d like to learn more about making corporations pay their fair share in MA taxes, see the video below.

In this video, I sat down with Harris Gruman, the Executive Director of the SEIU Massachusetts State Council and Dr. Phineas Baxandall, Policy Director of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, to discuss a bill in the MA State House: “An Act Combating Offshore Tax Avoidance” H.3110 / S.2033

What We Can Do Now

The GIC is set to vote on the plan design changes on February 12th (p. 30)

Before these increased costs for members come to fruition, Governor Healey and the GIC need to hear from the people who will be affected. These are unjust cost shifts that will save the state a small amount, compared to the significant harm caused for working families.

You can make your voice heard by Emailing Governor Healey, GIC Chair Valerie Sullivan and your state legislators, demanding that they protect the health care for public employees.

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At the January 20th, 2026 Lowell City Council meeting, first-term Councilor Sean McDonough opened up a much-needed community conversation about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

As the ongoing immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis commands the nation’s attention, people around the country are worried that their city might be next. Many residents in Lowell – especially immigrants – are feeling unsafe.

Lowell resident Carol Fallon put the city’s worries clearly: “What I’m worried about happening next is that we’ll be the next city like Minneapolis” (2:37:15).

So today, I’d like to take a deep dive into the motion (5.8) that sparked this important conversation, building on excellent reporting from the Lowell Sun.

First, I will analyze the content of the motion. Second, I will look at the local and historical context – the reasons why this motion is so salient for Lowellians at this particular moment in our history.

It is my hope that government transparency and ongoing community dialogue will help Lowellians to access accurate information and, ultimately, feel safer in the midst of a fearful time for immigrants.

The Content of the Motion

To understand the salience of this motion, let’s start with the text of the motion itself, made by District 4 Councilor Sean McDonough and seconded by District 3 Councilor Belinda Juran:

“Request City Manager have the appropriate department take any necessary steps to provide a report to the council on ICE operations in the City of Lowell over the last 18 months including: who has been arrested; where are they being detained; how many immigration related arrests have been made in Lowell; any cooperation, or requests for cooperation, between ICE and the Lowell Police Department.”

As I see it, there are two distinct categories of information requested here: (1) Information about ICE actions, and (2) information about Lowell Police Department involvement.

Information About ICE Actions in Lowell

The motion asks the City Manager to seek specific pieces of information from ICE: “who has been arrested; where are they being detained; how many immigration related arrests have been made in Lowell.”

In the meeting, Councilor McDonough explained how this approach is similar to what other municipalities have taken:

“I understand that several of the things I asked for is not information that the City is going to have readily available. Stuff like who ICE is arresting and what ICE is doing. The City of Lowell has no control over ICE. What other municipalities have done around the Commonwealth and around the country is just try to seek that information from ICE, if we can at least ask. It doesn’t seem to be bothering anybody at the federal level when anyone asks” (2:41:30)

Many Councilors expressed support for this motion. Sidney Liang, for instance, said, “We should know something. This is just about data” (2:59:20).

Other Councilors had reservations.

District 2 City Councilor Corey Robinson’s concern was Lowell’s limited jurisdiction in immigration matters: “I don’t think there’s anyone here that is sitting here supportive of what we see and hear, the way this is being carried out nationwide, but jurisdiction is the key piece here” (2:45:14).

It is certainly true that Lowell does not have jurisdiction over ICE’s actions, and there is no guarantee that we will ever get that information. As I see it, though, there is symbolic weight to the very act of requesting information about where our detained neighbors are. Asking is a way of saying, “We care about our residents. We are going to do our best to bring clarity and transparency, and to make people feel safe.”

District 5 City Councilor Kim Scott had a slightly different reservation. If the goal of the motion is to make clear that the City does not work with ICE, she felt it could backfire. “My concern about this particular motion is that we are requesting the city to report on federal activity, which it suggests that we somehow work with them or something, which does not happen” (2:56:32).

This is a fair point. While politically engaged residents will understand that this motion came from a place wanting to provide comfort and clarity, people who are less tuned in to local politics might be confused by the fact that the city itself providing information about immigration enforcement.

I am glad the Council is having a deliberative conversation about the pros and cons of reaching out to ICE for information. This need for clarity on the city’s stance is why I personally think that publicly reiterating the Lowell Police Department’s immigration policy will also be important.

Information about Lowell’s Police Department

The second portion of this motion is a request for information about “any cooperation, or requests for cooperation, between ICE and the Lowell Police Department.”

Here is how Councilor McDonough framed this part of the motion in the discussion:

“With the bottom portion of this motion, I would imagine that any information from the Police Department is going to be easier for us to obtain. I think the policy is great. I think that a year in, there are residents that are still expressing concern, and they want to see the numbers. They want to see that, Okay, we have this policy. Councilor Nuon, a year ago, brought this motion forward. The administration responded with the updated policy, and they just want that verified with a year of action. I think that our Police Department has almost certainly done a great job. I think this administration has probably done a great job, and I think we can make residents feel safer in the community when they see those numbers” (2:42:00).

As Councilor McDonough mentions, back on February 11th, 2025, the Council requested and received an official public statement from the LPD about their immigration policy.

At the meeting on Tuesday, Councilor Vesna Nuon expressed his gratitude for that public statement. “I am very proud of the City of Lowell, and I commend the police chief. It’s not just been this year, it’s been many years already that we have an ICE policy. The chief already stated last time around that we do not assist ICE on immigration issues. We do not. That’s the policy for the Lowell Police Department.” (2:43:00)

In order to make clear what exactly the LPD policy is, let’s go back to the text of the LPD’s February 2025 “Official Policy For Interacting With Immigration And Customs Enforcement (ICE).”

The immigration policy establishes the LPD’s primary goals. “The Department is concerned primarily with the safety and the welfare of all individuals found within the jurisdiction of the City of Lowell. Thus, the detection of criminal behavior is of primary interest and concern. […] The immigration status of individuals alone is not, and shall not, be a matter of police concern or subsequent enforcement action” (p. 2).

This is reassuring. In general, Lowell’s police are not focused on immigration enforcement, which it refers to as the “responsibility of the federal government” (emphasis added, p. 1).

The policy states that “Lowell Police officers shall not directly participate in any such ICE tactical operations solely for the civil enforcement of federal immigration laws such as part of any detention or arrest teams” (emphasis added, p. 5).

However, the plan does outline situations in which the LPD would cooperate with ICE. Those situations are based on specific criteria.

Some of the criteria for the LPD directly notifying ICE include:

• “when the immigrant or foreign national is arrested or sought for arrest for any violent felony” (there is a whole list of violent felonies) (p. 4)

• “when the Department has information that an individual has been convicted in a court of competent jurisdiction of any felony, regardless of whether the felony involved violence.” (p. 4)

• When a person is “reasonably suspected” of several offenses, such as “terrorist or subversive activities,” “participating in criminal street gang activity involving violence and/or distribution of illegal drugs,” etc. (p. 4)

The LPD would respond to requests from ICE in circumstances such as:

• “to ensure officer safety or to prevent a breach of the peace such as traffic control or keeper of the peace efforts during the duration of the federal operation as requested” (p. 5).

• “For the assistance in the apprehension of any individual who is also wanted on a Massachusetts issued Warrant Management System warrant (WMS) which remains in full force and effect at the time of the request.” (p. 5)

On the surface, I think the LPD’s approach is reasonable. It prioritizes community safety. It allows law-abiding residents to access to basic LPD services without fear of police asking about their immigration status. It also makes sure that in cases when an undocumented individual is committing crimes, the city and federal governments can cooperate to protect the public from them. (While undocumented immigrants have not been shown to commit crimes more often than other populations, all sub-populations include some people who commit crimes.)

While LPD’s policy has been published, there is still a sense of uncertainty in the city. For example, one of the speakers claimed that the police and fire department are cooperating with ICE (2:36:10), which several councilors disputed (2:46:20; 2:54:46). Still, they claimed to have video evidence, and I would be interested in seeing it.

Former City Council Candidate Jose Cervantes, who is also an immigrant to the US, told the Council, “My community is in fear. Is in fear that they can’t call the cops if something happens to them because they’re in fear of being deported.” (2:39:05).

Given this context of uncertainty and fear, District 8 Councilor John Descoteaux pointed to a need to reiterate the LPD’s stance. “I think it might be a good idea to have Chief Hudon here and just give us an update and a response on this subject” (3:01:00).

While there was some confusion as to whether motion 5.8 had passed or had been supplanted by Councilor Descoteaux’s motion, the meeting minutes (p. 6) reflect that motion 5.8 passed, meaning the Council officially requested the information.

Why This Motion is Salient with Lowellians

To understand why this motion is so salient to people in Lowell today, we need to understand not just the practical details of the motion, but also the vast undercurrent of local and historical context leading up to it.

Various layers of this context were on display on Tuesday: (1) the current national backdrop of the increasingly violent ICE and Border Patrol enforcement in Minneapolis, (2) echoes of Cambodian refugees’ pasts, (3) Lowellians’ recent interactions with ICE, and finally (4) the current emotional pulse of the city.

Let’s break it down piece by piece.

ICE Raids in Minneapolis

The most obvious backdrop to this motion is the ongoing spectacle of immigration enforcement by masked agents in Minneapolis. In a recent column for the New York Times, M. Gessen put together a detailed (though not exhaustive) list of some of the most concerning events:

“Please look at this list with me. Since early January, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement expanded its operation in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., federal officers have: killed Renee Good, a white middle-class mother; menaced a pregnant immigration lawyer in her firm’s parking lot; detained numerous U.S. citizens, including one who was dragged out of his house in his underwear; smashed in the windows of cars and detained their occupants, including a U.S. citizen who was on her way to a medical appointment at a traumatic brain injury center; set off crowd-control grenades and a tear gas container next to a car that contained six children, including a 6-month-old; swept an airport, demanding to see people’s papers and arresting more than a dozen people who were working there; detained a 5-year-old. And now they have killed another U.S. citizen, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an I.C.U. nurse with no criminal record. It seems he was white. The agents had him down on the ground, subdued, before they apparently fired at least 10 shots at point-blank range.”

I’ll refrain from including any graphic images or videos, but they have certainly been circulating on social media.

In Minneapolis, we are also seeing the effects of the Supreme Court’s Noem v. Vasquez-Perdomo shadow docket decision. In this decision, the court allowed “investigative stops in the Los Angeles area when the stops are based on the following factors or combination of factors: (i) presence at particular locations such as bus stops, car washes, day laborer pickup sites, agricultural sites, and the like; (ii) the type of work one does; (iii) speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent; and (iv) apparent race or ethnicity.”

The ruling does add the caveat that “apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court’s case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a ‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors” (emphasis added).

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued with clear foresight that “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”

Despite the Supreme Court’s caveats, right now, we are seeing a pattern of profiling based on apparent race and accent play out in Minneapolis.

A group of police chiefs in Minneapolis released a thoughtful, nuanced statement. Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley explained how several off-duty police officers who are people of color have been stopped by ICE officials.

What you won’t hear from any of us today is rhetoric of abolish ICE or that there shouldn’t be immigration enforcement. The truth is immigration enforcement is necessary for our national security and for local security, but how it’s done is extremely important. In fact, we have a long history of working exceptionally well with our federal partners, including ICE agents, and we have seen the best of them perform their job extremely well in the past. With that said, Recently, as the last two weeks, we as law enforcement community have been receiving endless complaints about civil rights violations. In our streets from US citizens. What we’re hearing is they’re being stopped in traffic stops or on the street with no cause and being forced to demand paperwork to determine if they are here legally. As this went on over the past two weeks, we started hearing from our police officers the same complaints as they fell victim to this while off duty. Every one of these individuals is a person of color who has had this happen to them.

Some Border Patrol agents are even openly admitting to targeting people based on their accents. Ramon Menera was detained by Border Patrol outside of his home in a Minneapolis suburb. “Why are you asking me for my paperwork?” he asked the Border Patrol agent. “Because of your accent,” responded the agent.

It is likely that many ICE and Border Patrol agents feel emboldened by the Vice President’s claim that the ICE agent who killed Renée Good had “absolute immunity.” He later walked the statement back, but its rhetorical effect still stands.

Beyond the current visuals of what is happening in Minneapolis, the increasing scope of ICE enforcement nationwide is also important to consider. The passing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act made ICE the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the country, “more than the current annual budgets of the FBI, DEA and other law enforcement agencies including the Bureau of Prisons.”

Given all of this context, it is no surprise that some people in Lowell, including Merrimack Valley Project Executive Director Julio Mejia, are referring to ICE as a “rogue agency” (2:34:57).

Lowell resident Carol Fallon put the city’s worries clearly: “What I’m worried about happening next is that we’ll be the next city like Minneapolis” (2:37:15).

With ICE’s ballooning budget and current federal government’s focus of enforcing immigration largely in blue states with Democratic Governors (California, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, Maine), it is not unreasonable that Lowellians would be afraid that ICE will return to Lowell.

“I Had a Flashback”: Echoes of Cambodian Refugees’ Pasts

One of the Councilors who truly met the moment on Tuesday was District 7 City Councilor Sidney Liang. He told a personal story about how, for Cambodian refugees like him, ICE activities echo their experiences during the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s.

“We are a city of immigrants and refugees. But some of use are wounded, mentally and physically. In September, I saw a homeless man was taken away. Now, he’s homeless. He had only very few friends. I work in the community. I know this little guy. He walked with a limp. But he came out of the courthouse and hew as taken away. None of his friends or family members knew where he was taken to. All I saw was a van with a New York license plate. That was it.

I’m saying this because I had a flashback. In 1977, my Uncle was taken away. That was it. He disappeared. We’ve never seen him since. So what I’m saying is, I was young, but I imagine there’s a lot of community members, let’s say coming from Cambodia like me, who have gone through this kind of stuff, have seen this kind of stuff.

So, it’s data to see what’s going on. Some of our friends are missing, disappearing. Where are they? What happened? So this little guy, I’ve never seen him since. I don’t know what happened to him, I’ve never seen him again. And I don’t even know if his friends knew where he went. So, it’s happening. It’s scary, but… I don’t know. We should know something. This is just about data. (2:59:20)

Councilor Liang’s story blended past and present, showing how ICE’s actions are echoing the traumatic experiences of Cambodian refugees.

ICE’s Recent Presence in Lowell

Another layer of why this issue is so salient is that Lowell has recently been the target of rather visible immigration enforcement actions.

Councilor Robinson, for example, invoked the day in May of 2025 when 17 construction workers in Lowell were detained by ICE. “I’ve seen when they rounded up those hard-working roofers at the car wash,” Robinson said (2:46:23).

Also in the Spring of 2025, Lowell Public Schools Superintendent Liam Skinner told Inside Lowell about “a Lowell High student ended up living alone after his father was picked up and deported back to his homeland. […] Skinner stated he did not know how long the LHS student was on his own after his father was picked up.”

In September of 2025, an Lowell resident named Ihsanullah Garay, who has brain cancer, was detained by ICE, leaving him “hundreds of miles from his doctors.”

His lawyer, Hans Bremer, told WBUR that Garay got lost while out on a delivery in Methuen on Sept. 14 and stopped to ask someone he thought was a police officer for directions. Bremer said the man turned out to be an ICE agent.

Garay, whose student visa expired in 2021 according to ICE, was arrested immediately. But, according to Bremer, Garay has legal permission to work in the U.S. through 2029, up-to-date paperwork and no criminal record. He also has applied for political asylum, Bremer said, citing threats from the Taliban.

“ He has an exceptionally strong asylum claim,” Bremer said. “He’s doing everything correctly that we have always required for somebody who wants to seek asylum.” (WBUR)

Garay was finally released from detention in October, but according to Bremer, after a month in detention, ‘Garay’s health deteriorated while in custody. During a recent court hearing streamed by video, he said Garay appeared frail, with slurred speech and difficulty responding to the judge’s questions. Bremer said his client also suffered more frequent seizures while detained.”

These are the types of stories circulating around Lowell. It is no wonder immigrants are afraid.

“I’m Afraid”: The Emotional Pulse of Lowell Today

Perhaps the most important reason this motion is important is how it addresses the immediate emotional reality of the City today. Take, for example, Councilor Vesna Nuon’s story about his nephew.

“I share the frustration. I share the worry. Just today alone, today, my nephew, who attends UMass Lowell called me.

‘Uncle, are you home, can you give me a ride to the post office before I head to UMass Lowell for class?’

I said, ‘Why? Can’t you take an Uber? Can you walk?’

He said, ‘No. I’m afraid. I’m afraid.’

He was born here. He was born here. He’s twenty years old. Second year at UMass Lowell. I’m telling you, this is not a joke. This is happening. This scares me. Really scares me. When my nephew was born and raised here. Twenty years old. That is trouble. I’ll tell you. I share the frustration. I’m not sure if we can do anything about it, but I just want you to know this.”

In a column in the Lowell Sun on January 25, reporter Melanie Gilbert said that she also senses the climate of fear in Lowell’s immigrant community:

“This reporter saw that fear firsthand while shooting photos of the Centralville Apple Orchard development one morning. As I pulled my dark SUV to the curb along Christian Street, a Latina-looking woman, who was waiting at the corner with her school-aged daughter for either the bus or a ride, visibly stiffened. When I opened my door to exit my vehicle, she gripped her daughter’s hand and started to walk away.

I made it a point to wave and say good morning, and then turned in the opposite direction to show her I wasn’t a threat.”

Given all of these personal stories about the fear circulating through Lowell’s atmosphere, it is likely that Counilor McDonough’s motion will, at the very least, communicate to Lowellians that the City is on their side.

I would like to add that, beyond this motion, Lowellians are coming together to support each other in the face of uncertainty.

On January 10th, several organizations in Lowell hosted a Solidarity Rally and Vigil at Lowell City Hall. Among the speakers were City Councilor At Large Vesna Nuon and State Representative Candidate Lorena Betts.

Also showing empathy in this situation, on January 24th, 16th Middlesex State Representative Tara Hong released a statement in response to recent ICE actions in Minnesota.

A final piece of context is that outside the meeting itself on Tuesday, there was an ongoing protest against ICE.

Conclusion

As I see it, the overlapping context of Lowellians’ personal experiences and the nationwide picture have left the city feeling anxious about the possibility that what is happening in Minneapolis could happen here.

The actions of ICE and Border Patrol in Minneapolis are making people feel unsafe.

I agree with Councilor McDonough’s when we get information about ICE activity in Lowell and the LPD’s immigration policy, “I think we can make residents feel safer in the community when they see those numbers.”

While the city has no control over the federal government, motions like this can send a message to residents.

You feel unsafe. We do to. We will try to make you feel safer.

We are on your side.

As Jose Cervantes said, this motion is “a way of you [Councilors] showing my community that if there’s an issue, you have their back” (2:39:32).

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Lorena Betts and I sat down to talk about her campaign for the 16th Middlesex District State Representative seat in the September 2026 Democratic Primary.

We discussed her backstory, her platform, and her thoughts on issues like economic development, education funding, taxation, housing affordability, addiction, government transparency, immigration / ICE, and more.

You can find Lorena Betts’ campaign website here.

This interview, recorded on November 21, 2025, is part of a series of interviews with State Representative and State Senate candidates in the 2026 election cycle. I also plan to interview other candidates in this race as they announce. The seat is currently held by State Rep. Rodney Elliott, but it is uncertain whether he will run again because he is currently running against State Rep. Vanna Howard for the 1st Middlesex State Senate seat in a special election on February 3, 2026.

🗳️ Don’t forget to vote in the special election for State Senate by February 3rd, 2026.

• Check your voter registration here.

• Check your voting location here.

• See Elliott’s campaign website here, and Howard’s campaign website here.

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I am concerned about free speech in Lowell.

Specifically, I am worried about the impact of new rules unveiled by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (dubbed “Anti-woke rules” by the Lowell Sun), and how they will stifle the speech of the city of Lowell, as well as nonprofits in the area.

As readers may know, Lowell receives about $3 million per year in federal grants from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) (15:04).

At the December 15th, 2025 Lowell City Council Nonprofit Subcommittee Meeting, Assistant City Manager / DPD Director Yovani Baez-Rose explained to Councilors and the public that, HUD released new guidelines that restrict Lowell’s ability to pass their grants based on whether certain “prohibited language” is included in nonprofits’ applications and/or online presence.

As Baez-Rose put it, these changes are “coming down from HUD that we need to maintain compliance with or all of the entitlement funds that the city would get would be at jeopardy” (30:10).

In his December 21st, 2025 Newsletter, Lowell Historian Richard Howe reflected on these changes, and how “the repercussions of these policies, their anticipated impact, and the rational for the city’s response should be fully discussed in public.”

I would like to do my part to participate in that community dialogue.

Today, I will (1) describe what exactly has changed in the federal funding guidelines from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, (2) analyze how these changes will impact nonprofits (both in terms of freedom of speech and in terms of funding) and (3) open a dialogue about how the city, nonprofits, and other stakeholders should be handling this situation.

What Has Changed in the Federal Funding Guidelines?

Assistant City Manager and DPD Director Yovani Baez-Rose, explained to the Council and the public that, according to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development’s new guidelines, the City of Lowell has “had to add language into our [Request for Proposal] that says that if you are accepting these funds, you know that you can not be doing any of the following things” (28:40):

“organizations must agree to omit any references to the listed prohibited language on websites, emails, signatures, and program materials that could implicitly or explicitly promote

• Diversity, Equity, Inclusion

• Abortion access

• More than two genders, such as use of pronouns, and LGBTQ+ services

• Hiring practices, job descriptions or employee handbooks that certain employees’ characteristics are required – Essentially DEI references

• Climate change, climate resiliency, or environmental justice

• Providing benefits to undocumented immigrants

There are two basic ways program funding can be impacted by these changes. The first has to do with the use of “prohibited language.” The second has to do with verifying people’s immigration status before providing services.

Restrictions Based on Speech

The first category, which applies to all grantees is that if they include any mention of the the aforementioned “prohibited language,” the grantee will no longer be eligible for grants. Even more significantly, if the city of Lowell is found to have passed grants to a grantee that used this prohibited language, then “all of the entitlement funds that the city would get would be at jeopardy” (30:10).

In other words, if nonprofits use a word that the federal government does not like, then both the city and the nonprofit will face financial consequences.

This puts the city of Lowell in a position in which it essentially has to monitor the speech of local nonprofits: “There is also an expectation that our staff is doing ongoing monitoring of organizational websites, assuring that they are in compliance with these things, monitoring the programs that they’re offering. When we’re doing monitoring and compliance, these components are now having to be added into our checks that the staff is doing” (28:50).

I think it is worth sitting with this for a moment. Let’s make this concrete. One of the recipients of CDBG monies is the Merrimack Valley Food Bank. The MVFB supports “serves more than 30 cities and towns and distributes nearly 4 million pounds of food each year. MVFB serves an average of 70,000 people each month through partnerships with over 100 member agencies” in the region.

Even before these new guidelines, the MVFB was already hit by the current administration’s $500 million in cuts to the Local Food Purchase Assistance program in 2025. According to Debbie Callery, the Executive Director of the MVFB, these cuts impacted their organization significantly: “We get a third of our food from the USDA. We’re not gonna get a third of it this year, so everybody is feeling that. We’re actually planning like we’re not going to get that in FY27 (1:19:18).

On top of all of this, in order to qualify for what little federal funding it can still get, the city of Lowell will now need to continually monitor the nonprofit’s website to make sure they never use “prohibited language.”

Dan Rivera, the Chief Executive Officer of the Coalition for a Better Acre, seemed shocked at this move from the federal government. “This has never really been seen before. The policing of language.” (47:30)

As City Councilor Rita Mercier put it, “This is a change that is kind of shocking, to some degree” (1:01:30).

Restrictions Based on Immigration Status

The next new restriction is that, in order to qualify for HUD grant funding, grantees for certain projects must verify people’s immigration status prior to providing services.

Assistant City Manager / DPD Director Baez-Rose pointed out that this is something new for the city: “Verification of immigration status is something that we have never had to do before” (31:10).

Here is how Yovani Baez-Rose explained how this will impact people: “if you are a first time homebuyer and you are looking to buy a house, in addition to the income verification documentation, you’re going to need to provide us proof of your legal status, and there is a federal online program called SAVE which the city would essentially need to put individual information into to confirm that person’s legal status. That’s documentation and information that we haven’t been collecting previously and that we would be required to do. And that’s information that we would not only collect, but that we would also input into this federal SAVE system.”

In terms of grant funding, in order to give grants to the Merrimack Valley Housing Partnership, they will have to make sure that they check people’s immigration status before allowing them to access the First Time Home Buyer Training classes.

“That would also be true,” she said, “for any small business expansion loan or any homeless prevention under ESG or any nonprofit organizations that are taking the grant funds and then paying for things on behalf of people [including rent, stipends for paid employment or childcare vouchers]” (33:00)

In a city with many immigrants (some of whom are undocumented or have connections to people who are undocumented), Baez-Rose acknowledges that this “could make people nervous. It makes us nervous. It’s not something that we’ve had to do before. It’s something that it’s important for us that people understand why we’re asking for it is because they are accepting these federal funds, and that it’s not a requirement necessarily of the city of Lowell, but it you’re trying to access these [federal] funds from the city of Lowell, this is something that you’re going to have to provide us.” (33:30).

Some services are exempt from these requirements, including shelters and street outreach work, as well as public infrastructure and facilities (money put toward parks, for example).

Fundamental Freedoms vs. Necessary Funding

As I understand it, one of the most challenging parts of these federal guidelines is that they pit two basic values against each other: the fundamental freedom of speech vs. the absolute necessity of federal funding for cities with large populations of people in poverty – like Lowell.

Here is how Richard Howe explained this dynamic in his December 21, 2025 Newsletter:

Then there are the moral implications. Many sincerely believe that DEI, LGBTQ+ rights, confronting climate change, and other banned concepts are positive goods. But is the sincerity of those beliefs so tenuous that any mention of them can be purged from an organization’s documented identity overnight? On the other hand, if the federal funds are irreplaceable and doing without would cause more suffering, is it acceptable to redact statements of an organization’s values to keep receiving that money?

This is an important question, and it deserves robust public discourse. Thankfully, some community leaders stepped up to the plate.

Dan Rivera, CEO of the Coalition for a Better Acre, described how it has been difficult for his organization, “trying to do the work to [help] the most needy among us, people with the highest pressures on them in society, at the same time trying to fit them into these blocks that the federal government has put before us. Very difficult. So, with the historic diversity that the Acre has – and we are really focused in the Acre – it makes it really difficult to try to help folks in that way.”

Yovani Baez-Rose made a similar point: “[A]sking organizations that serve vulnerable populations in a very diverse community like Lowell to abolish any Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion language in their documentation and their programming that is being funded is going to be difficult” (29:40).

I am personally of the mind that the most powerful institutions in the country should take a stand as bulwarks against restrictions on our fundamental freedoms. This is why many have pressured private universities with large endowments like Harvard University and Columbia University, as well as media organizations like ABC and CBS to resist pressures to restrict free speech. After all, with significantly more resources, they are more able to pay for large legal battles.

When we get down to smaller organizations like local food banks, I could definitely understand why they might choose to simply grit their teeth and provide the best services they can, given the circumstances.

As Dan Rivera said, “I’m not sure you can do anything about it, except to do the best you can” (48:42).

”There Are Ways Around It”

A final theme I would like to point to is the idea of findings “ways around” these guidelines. A guiding question that arose came from City Councilor At Large (and now Mayor) Erik Gitschier. Given these restrictions on speech, he asked, “is there a path that all of us can take to try to get these monies to the places they well deserve to be?” (51:00).

Jane Calvin of the Lowell Parks and Conservation Trust explained how it will be difficult to discuss the value of their work planting trees without any mention of climate change: “My challenge is going to be working around the climate change language. Trees have a lot to do with climate change, but they also have a lot to do with beautification and have a lot of other positive impacts on the city as well, so I’ll be working that angle” (53:30).

Gitschier agreed. “That was my thought too, when they said ‘climate change’ was the tree plantings. How do you get around that? But I guess you’ll figure out some good wording” (54:30).

City Councilor Rita Mercier later said that the city will have to help organizations to get “very creative” (1:01:13). “Please be compassionate to help our organizations so they don’t have to go through all the work and get denied. There’s ways around it. I’m sure you can help them” (1:02:00).

It is at this point in the meeting when I felt frustrated with all of time that good people are going to have to waste on contorting their words around “prohibited language.”

We should not have to be spending our time “getting around” the federal government. People in Lowell should be able to be “very creative” about literally anything else but using a thesaurus to avoid wrong-think.

Lowell deserves better.

That being said, I do think the wise thing for the city to do would be to follow the law and do their best to provide whatever services that the law allows. As City Councilor Vesna Nuon put it, we should “mak[e] sure that organizations that really need this money are going to receive it, and at the same time, comply with directives from the federal government” (1:00:20).

Beyond the Nonprofits

My concern with this issue is not constrained to the way these individual nonprofits will be impacted.

I am also worried about how restricting speech impacts people in general.

As a middle school English teacher who teaches George Orwell’s novels, I feel it incumbent on me to point out how incredibly Orwellian this whole situation is. Consider, for example, this excerpt from 1984 about the concept of “Newspeak” and restrictions of the word “free”:

“It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods.This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever. To give a single example. The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ’This dog is free from lice’ or ’This field is free from weeds’. It could not be used in its old sense of ’ politically free’ or ’intellectually free’ since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. […] Countless other words such as honour, justice, morality, internationalism, democracy, science, and religion had simply ceased to exist.” (p. 174, 177)

Orwell’s “Newspeak” is an example of what linguistics call “linguistic relativism.” It is the idea that, as Ludwig Wittgenstein said, “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” While modern linguists argue that language does not place absolute limits on our thoughts, it does seem that language can, to some extent, influence the way we see the world.

There could be far-reaching effects of the way that these federal directives suppress speech. For example, restrictions on the use of the term LGBTQ+ and pronouns could:

1. Discourage nuanced public dialogue about the complexities of gender and sexuality.

2. Send a message that LGBTQIA+ people do not belong in the public sphere.

3. Lead to an increase in bias toward LGBTQIA+ individuals. A 2019 article from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the use of gender neutral pronouns is “associated with people expressing less bias in favor of traditional gender roles and categories, as manifested in more positive attitudes toward women and LGBT individuals in public affairs” (p. 16781).

4. Lead to poorer mental health outcomes for LGBTQIA+ people, including higher rates of suicide. There is a growing conversation about pronouns as a public health issue. For example, a 2020 study in The Lancet found that, for trans and gender diverse people, having government documents that match one’s identity (correct name and gender marker) “was associated with a 32% reduction in serious psychological distress and 22–25% reduction in suicidal ideation and suicide planning compared with having none” (p. e202).

5. Create a chilling effect on services that support LGBTQIA+ people. After the current administration “end[ed] specialized support on the 988 national suicide prevention hotline for young LGBTQ+ callers,” nonprofits and states all over the country stepped up to fill in the gaps. Even so, I have heard from nonprofits in Massachusetts that provide services to LGBTQIA+ people, and they are saying that even private philanthropists are being more cautious about giving to LGBTQIA+ nonprofits.

Zooming out from LGBTQIA+ issues, I am also worried that these new rules will stifle a well-rounded conversation about how best to address the racial wealth gap.

I am worried that these could lead to stigmatize women’s reproductive health care.

I am worried that these rules will hinder our ability to take sufficient climate action.

I am worried about how these rules will affect dreamers.

Conclusion

I would like to express my deepest thanks to Department of Planning and Development staff for sharing this information with the public. In situations like these, it is helpful for the city to be as transparent as possible.

As Dan Rivera, CEO of the Coalition for a Better Acre, said, “I will tell you that the Development Staff, Yovani Baez-Rose and her staff have been very very professional in the way they’ve gotten this information out, making sure that we stay on track and get the information we need so that we don’t make a mistake and end up hurting the rest of the CDBG applications.”

Jane Calvin of the Lowell Parks and Conservation Trust also “commend[ed] the DPD staff for being open with us and being strategic in helping us plan.”

City Councilor At Large Vesna Nuon also said, “I’m really happy, Mr. Chairman, that the DPD, Yovani Baez-Rose and her team really doing this informational session for Nonprofits and individuals that are certainly going to be impacted by it, to do what we can to help alleviate it and make sure they address those concerns before they submit any RFPs to DPD. This technical assistance that DPD is going to do certainly goes a long way in making sure that organizations that really need this money are going to receive it, and at the same time, comply with directives from the federal government” (1:00:20).

While it goes without saying, I would like to conclude by saying that I wish our federal government would not put us in the position where we have to police our own speech.

Finally, in the spirit of public discourse, I would like to open up a conversation. How are other people processing this situation? What do you think the city should do? What should non-profits do? What should other stakeholders do?

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