Left In Lowell

Some of you who do not subscribe to the Sun, either its paper copy or electronic version or purchase the Sunday edition, do not have had an opportunity to read the Sunday Column. In addition to providing us with some inside information, this static blog provides a lot of political rumors, commentary, spin and jabs.

If it were not for the Column, perhaps we may never had known about the on-going drama between the License Commission and Attorney Michael Zaim who was representing the Lowell bar El Rincon. The great majority of us do not have the opportunity to watch that board’s meetings, but thanks to public access television in general and LTC in particular here is the clip that set off Lowell’s latest political drama. You may need a list of the players as well as a short bio in order to understand the dynamics. Also, all Lowell government meetings, including the Boards, are archived on blip.tv.

The times I have watched the Licensing Commission, I have found Mr. [Walter] Bayliss, Chair, to be pleasant, fair, experienced and knowledgeable. El Rincon, the establishment located at 135 Central Street was facing the Commission because the LPD filed complaints of misconduct charges against for the brawl that took place on April 30th which saw every available Lowell police officer responding to the fight.

Gerry Nutter commented on his blog that he believes this was a delay tactic by Mr. Zaim. If it was, he succeeded. The hearing now will be held sometime in August by then the bar/restaurant may no longer be at that location, the paper also reported that they are having problems with their rent payments and their landlord, “the one and only.”

And as far as Mr. Bayliss is concerned, the City is standing by him and all other commissioners who sit on these kinds of boards, as they should. Any active and committed individual will personally know a number of people who come in front of these boards. I think most of them know when they may be facing a possible conflict of interest and take appropriate action by recusing themselves.

My problems with the membership of these Boards is that the City Manager and the City Council have not been able to actively recruit a wider variety of applicants. I was hoping City Councilor Kevin Broderick’s motion of May 18th asking the CM to “report/recommend on adding alternates to City Boards” would provide the opportunity to bring new faces and new ideas to these Boards.

Back to the Sun’s decision of limiting access to The Column. I still do not think it is a good business decision. I would think it attracts people to their site. Maybe down the road when they will follow the model that is coming next year, newspapers charging for selected content.

But for now, if they do not have the mechanism, I would bring it back. First of all, the electronic archives are non-existent and second, blogs cannot link to it, therefore bringing more traffic to the site and most importantly don’t you want to know what people on topix are saying; well maybe on second thought you don’t.

Tonight the Greater Lowell Technical School Committee (GLTSC) will be holding another special meeting to discuss the contract of the school’s newly-elected superintendent, Mary Jo Santoro.

On this blog as well as other on other ones, the GLTSC lack of transparency and antagonistic attitude towards tax payers who are requesting accountability and the right to be heard has been discussed a number of times.

Erin Smith of the Sun has been aggressively following the story and the paper has editorialized on a number occasion, including this past Saturday when they called to “End era of secrecy at Greater Lowell Tech.”

We urge the committee to hold a public meeting and to release the details of Santoro’s contract. Residents of the schools’ sending communities who are funding the institution, have a right to know how their money is being spent.

The contract with [retiring Superintendent Jim] Cassin has received considerable criticism in recent years, and justifiably so. The superintendent was first hired at an annual salary of $112,000 in 2003 and saw his yearly pay skyrocket to its current level of nearly $190,000. Cassin’s contract had such outrageous inclusions as automatic annual raises of more than 5 percent and merit bonuses of up to 4 percent.

So tonight, this School Committee has an opportunity to reverse their direction: have an open meeting, allow and encourage the public to speak and vote for a contract that is fair and reasonable. If the obstructionist on this Board thinks that the media and the public will go away, they are not only politically tone deaf but this behavior and attitude will be the catalyst for major changes come next fall.

I know it’s been a slow blog week - between kindergarten graduations (since when do they do graduations for kindergarten??) and work and lots of other stuff, I’ve just been too busy. I know that Mimi is facing similar time crunches too. (We need a third front pager!)

However, I do note that you made the $500 goal for donations to Patrick for my house party, five days ahead of schedule! That’s some serious mojo. Now, by July 11 I gotta get $2,500, so if you are thinking of donating, please help me out! I’m upping the goal for Tuesday to $750, so let’s see if you can shock me again.

Again, you can use the form below, or click on the thermometer on the right. Thanks for your help!

And I promise we’ll get to regularly scheduled blogging soon!

Fresh off of finally painting my living room and hosting a house party for Eileen Donoghue (thanks to those who came, it was a big success! and thanks to Mimi for co-hosting) I got permission from my poor besieged husband Mr. Lynne for another House Party/Fundraiser for Governor Deval Patrick on July 11th! Time is TBD (soon) but will likely be mid to late afternoon.

The Governor himself will be calling into house parties that day, and visiting some of them (we won’t know his exact schedule until later) so we’ll get a chance to hear from him, and I now have a goal of fundraising $2500 for the Governor, so seriously guys, I need a little help here! Luckily I can post a page on ActBlue and use the blog to bug the crap out of you all for it, cuz all my rich friends are out of town. So lots of small donors will have to do!

So, let’s start off things right! You can donate through our ActBlue page, or use the form below (goes to the same place) and donate. And stay tuned for more details on the house party itself. You can donate even if you can’t make it, and it’ll count towards our goal. Let’s see if we can hit our first $500 by next Tuesday!

One of Lowell’s premier painters and my neighbor at Market Mill on Market St (across from The Brush, near the Lowell Historic Visitor’s Center), Kathleen Cammarata of X/O Studios, is having a big open studio event entitled “Celebrating 26 Years of Painting.” The event is happening on Saturday, June 19th, 4 to 7pm. Light refreshments will be served.

Kathleen’s work can be seen at her website here.

I’m a huge fan of her work, which has extensive references to nature while also existing in a very fictional abstract world. Her pieces are textural and many evoke a vast sense of space. I’m fortunate to pass by some of her pieces every day going to my studio, but at this event she will be putting out much of her work for display and sale.

If you are looking for highly collectible work that you can really love, or just want to see this informal retrospective of Kathleen’s work, please consider attending this event!

Cool, via BMG, a link to how IBM has expanded their presence in our area (Westford/Littleton) into its largest software lab in North America. For a company IBM’s size, “their largest lab” ain’t tiddly winks.

The campus, dubbed the IBM Mass Lab, brings together 3,400 IBM employees, which is about 10 percent of its total software development work force, officials said at the event. The opening was marked in Littleton Wednesday with a ribbon cutting event that included Gov. Deval Patrick.
…
IBM said it chose the towns of Littleton and Westford for the combined campus due to the proximity of its geographically-dispersed employee population and the high-tech belt along I-495.

There’s a lot to like about locating your business in greater Lowell!

But, on top of the good recent jobs report for MA, and other news about our total economic and educational domination, this doesn’t bode well for Charlie “Let’s Crawl Backwards” Baker. Or Cahill.

(Bumped so no one misses it!)

The Donoghue campaign is officially opening their downtown office today, June 17, from 5:30 - 8:00 PM with a BBQ! It’s located at 73 E. Merrimack Street, across from the Memorial Auditorium. Free parking is available directly behind the office.

You can find out ways to volunteer for Eileen and meet other supporters, and of course, eat some food! They have also launched their new website so check it out.

The new jobs report (national and state) are out for May, and Massachusetts once again is looking great in recovery compared to the rest of the union.

The Massachusetts unemployment rate held steady at 9.2 percent in May as the state’s economy added 15,800 jobs, the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development said today.

According to a recent Twitter update by David Bernstein, 7,000 of the jobs were private sector, compared to 41,000 private sector jobs nationwide. That means that 17% of the new private sector jobs were in Massachusetts, which is pretty astounding.

7,000 may not sound like a lot, but it’s a good number for a single state, especially with the economic recovery being so difficult. Our unemployment rate sounds horrid (9.2%) but compared to the national average of 9.7%, you can see the results of not going as deep into recession and coming out faster.

Most people don’t think about it, but a lot of this lies at the feet of our political leaders. We fall or succeed based on how well our state balances its budget and what priorities we place in a recession. Without steady hands, and bold decision making that is sensible and proactive, this disaster would have been a lot worse under less smart and less careful elected officials.

Particularly Governor Patrick, who when the ax came down decided to prioritize and protect local aid and chapter 70 as best he could. Contrast that to Mitt “Hair” Romney, who slashed our local budgets in 2001-02, and caused great harm to our schools and local services. We of course are all seeing a lot of belt tightening, but Patrick has cut into the sacred cows over the last four years - the Mass Turnpike Authority, pension reform, greater control of the so-called quasi-independent agencies. It’s all little things that over time add up. Couple that with Patrick’s rescue of the pitiful deal cut for Big Dig debt under Charlie Baker, and you see millions of dollars that would otherwise have been tied up, being available to patch our budget.

When government is confident and careful, so are businesses, and this is why you’re seeing business confidence go up faster here than elsewhere. Patrick and the legislature have invested in green energy, biotech, and other industries that bring good jobs to Massachusetts. They have streamlined the permitting process, continuing to protect the public’s right to regulate business but with a more friendly attitude. All this groundwork was laid down before and even during the recession, and you can see the results - a more robust economy that weathered the storm far better than many other states. Look at California’s mess, or New York’s, and tell me you’d rather be there than here. With those budgets in freefall (CA largely because of all their ballot-initiative unfunded mandates and New York with a totally dysfunctional legislature), you’ll be thankful that you live and work in a state like Massachusetts with serious leaders at the helm like Deval Patrick.

So, let’s finish what we started!

PS - did I mention the incredible investment and actual progress on public transit projects? Yeah!!!

Bumping this as a reminder! Happening this Monday!

As Cliff our chair posted, we are hosting an open meeting of the Move Lowell Forward PAC on June 14th, 7pm at the Pollard Memorial Library. We’ll be meeting in the downstairs room.

Details are being worked out, but we will keep you posted. Of course, you probably know that we’re a nonpartisan municipal political action committee dedicated to monitoring our local governmental elected bodies for ethics, professionalism, and efficient delivery of local services. But if you want to find out more, or reconnect with us, please join us!

Since I’m going to the GLT school board meeting tonight, and since I have the Evo, I might as well live stream it, since it doesn’t run on TV live as yet. I am told that is being worked on, so let’s hope to see some progress on that front soon. ‘Twould be better than my shaky web-res version anyway. But for now, better than nothing.

The meeting is at 6pm, so I will start streaming about then as well. As always, it will stream below (then the video will be permanently affixed to this thread).

NOTE: until we start the live stream, you will get the last video I created - in this case, the interview with the Gov.

UPDATE: Stream disabled. I doubt anyone could hear anything on it…ug. Really, it is a terrible set up for a public meeting, totally atrocious.