Left In Lowell

There were three major discussions during this past Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting. Of course, the first one being the motion to extend City Manager Bernie Lynch’s contract; the second issue was the unveiling of the selected developer’s Hamilton Canal plan and the third was the discussion on the City’s tax rate and property valuation.

We will address the first two in later posts but for now I want to focus on the tax rate/valuation issue. There were two motions on the topic that address those issues:

“Req. Mgr. if possible to set tax rate by 9/30 and Req. statNus of city’s property re-evaluation and new assessments.”

A lively discussion took place between the City Manager and Lowell resident and business owner Peter Markham, who had signed up to speak on these two topics. Mr. Markham has championed the cause of discussing property valuation and setting of the tax rate. Those who listen regularly to WCAP’s morning show, have heard him present these arguments before. I think Mr. Markham had the same discussion the last time the CM served as a co-host with George Anthes. I know that Mr. Markham did aggressively question Tom Moses, City CFO, on that topic when he was on that radio show.

During his appearance on Tuesday, Mr. Markham did ask the Manager why can Cambridge, who is similar to us in size and form of government, sets their tax rate much earlier than Lowell does? (more…)