Left In Lowell

Today’s Sun has an article on the official announcement of  the candidacy of Michael Hayden to the Lowell School Committee.  As Jen Myers reminds all of us Mr. Hayden, who previously served on the Greater Lowell School Committee lost the election two years ago.  Here is the link to one of Lynne’s post on Hayden and his campaign.  I am not sure what issues he will try to push during his campaign but if his appearance before the School Committee a few weeks ago is any indication, he will continue with unwavering and unlimited (financial and moral) support for the sitting Superintendent. 
 
As the events surrounding the departure of the Lowell School Superintendent were unfolding, there was talk, mostly in the paper and the radio, that there will be such anger directed towards the sitting School Committee that a rush of new candidates will come forth to unseat the incumbents.  Well, it has not yet happen and I do not think it will.  Because the Column keeps insisting that certain incumbents are in trouble, it does not make it so.
 
We will have a race, especially with an open seat (I know all seats are open) but it will be based on issues and who, in today’s world, will best serve the children who attend the Lowell Public School. I know that Kristin Ross-Sitcawich has received encouragement from a number of people, including me , to run for this seat.  With 2 young children in the Lowell public schools, her professional experience and her community activity, I think she represents the future. She is seriously considering it. Let’s see what happens!

In the documents provided in this week’s packet to the Lowell City Council, I saw that the Chairperson of the Zoning Board of Appeals, Stephen Geary will be leaving that Board after serving his 5-year term. He will be missed. He had a nice way of dealing with the general public as well as the professionals that appeared before the ZBA. I also like the way Tom Linnehan chairs the Planning Board meetings. They both set the right professional tone to the proceedings.

Geary like most volunteers served the City as best he could and then when it is time to move on, does so, thus allowing another Lowell resident to come forth and volunteer their services.

According to the City website, there are “over twenty Boards, Commissions, and other Advisory Bodies charged with performing the critical role of informing the public and its officials about important and complex issues. These Advisory Bodies also provide citizens the opportunity to provide input on the policies that shape their government and their City. Over 100 dedicated citizens appointed by the City Manager (and possibly requiring City Council approval) provide an invaluable service to the City through their work on Advisory Bodies.”

I also noticed that a woman, Marion Frances Saunders, will be joining the ZBA Board, pending City Council approval tomorrow as an Associate Member. I think Ms. Saunders presence and participation will motivate other women in Lowell to submit their resume to serve on other highly visible and influential boards, such as Planning and the License Commission.

Late last week, my car was broken into. Well, I am not sure if it was locked so I do not think technically it was broken into. But for sure, someone went into my vehicle without permission. My car, along with a few others parked nearby here in Lowell, got that special treatment.

Whoever did this took the only two things that he saw, my subscription sunglasses and a Market Basket reusable cloth shopping bag. The sunglasses are useless, unless of course you can find someone with the same eyesight as me and the same facial shape and the same taste in eyewear. How bad can it be that you need to steal someone’s sunglasses? How much money are you going to get for that? I would think just a few dollars, no more than that. So if you see someone walking around Lowell with the Anna Wintour-look and cannot see where they are going, please let me know, because that person has my glasses on.

And as far the shopping bag, I assume that he took it to make it easier to carry away the stolen items; but maybe, just maybe he decided he will begin recycling.

Funny, now that a report concludes that Kazanjian technically should owe the City of Lowell more than $3 million in fines for his illegal sewer hookup for an over-the-border property, that he and his lawyers have “reached out to the city to bring the case, which has lingered for nearly two years, to a resolution.”

I mean, he’s had two years to resolve this before wracking up fines equaling more money than most of us will see in a lifetime, but now suddenly wants to see this “resolve.” How much you wanna bet this “resolution” he wants will be far less than what is, according to the official Inspector General report, owed to our taxpayers. I’m sure that the city will likely settle for less than what is owed, if only to avoid having to take Kazanjian to court over not paying (which wracks up costs) but I do hope that Mr. Kazanjian realizes that anything at all less than the IG report states would be him getting lucky.

And I hope the city stands firm in getting what the city deserves for this obvious breach of ordinances and laws by his firm. Thus spake the Inspector General.

I’m so glad Lowell wised up and didn’t reelect this guy!

In case you missed it, Glen Johnson has a great post on today’s Boston Globe’s Political Intelligence blog discussing how local politics is really”where the action is.” So true.

The Globe blogger reminds us that although “presidential candidates are surrounded with advisers, guided by polls, and protected from reporters by velvet ropes, eager aides, or Secret Service agents, most local pols have their phone number in the book — and answer when you call, too.” Not only they answer their phone but their e-mails, and will stop and speak to you when you see them.

The shortest distance between a voter and an elected official is the municipal representative. Unfortunately, twice as many people come out to vote in a presidential election as they do in a local one. But maybe Jack, Victoria, et al will be able to help us change that.

In his post, Johnson quotes our late Senator Paul Tsongas who proudly stated that “Everything I needed to know in politics, I learned on the Lowell City Council.” And he identifies the four type of local politicians: the good guy; the bomb thrower; the media suck-up and the back-bencher and provides a description of each.

I know, long time no post. Just been busy.

So Lowell turns 175 this year, which is pretty neat. COOL released information on the planned festivities:

LOWELL CELEBRATES 175th ANNIVERSARY
Celebrating 175 years of Art, History, Heritage, and Commerce

This year the City of Lowell celebrates the 175th Anniversary of its incorporation. Fun and engaging events and activities will take place throughout the year. Festivities will begin with a 175th Kick-Off Celebration at City Hall on April 11, 2011 from 4:30-6:30 p.m. The evening will feature honored speakers, musical performances and City Hall tours.

Kick-Off Reception
Monday, April 11, 4:30-6:30 p.m., City Hall, 375 Merrimack Street

A sample list of programs Celebrating Lowell’s 175th includes:
• Peace of Art Exhibit, Lowell City Hall, April 12th
• Lowell in the Civil War. First Blood: The Lexington of 1861, Mogan Cultural Center exhibit opening April 18th
• Lowell Creates! Event series downtown & at UMass Lowell (Month of April)
• Lowell Film Festival (April 28-30)
• 10th Anniversary of Doors Open Lowell (May 12-14)
• Riverfest: Culture Flows event and community mural installation (June 11th)
• African Festival in June
• Lowell Summer Music Series concerts in Boarding House Park
• Lowell Al Fresca: kick-off to summer Friday nights in the City (June 24th)
• Friends of Tyler Park’s summer concert series, June-August
• Special Independence Day Celebration on July 4th
• Lower Highlands Summer Event in Armory Park, July
• 25th Anniversary of the Lowell Folk Festival (July 29-31)
• Lowell Quilt Festival (August 11-13)
• Southeast Asian Water Festival (August 19-20)
• Lowell Open Studios (October 1, 2)
• Lowell Undiscovered & Lowell Celebrates Kerouac (October 6-9)
• Monster Bash & Halloween Stroll (October 27)
• Baystate Marathon & Textile River Regatta (October)
• City of Lights Parade & Holiday Art Stroll (November 26)

As part of the ongoing celebration, The City will be holding a contest to collect “Lowell Stories.” Residents who have a fun story about an experience in Lowell, or how their family came to live in the City will be invited to submit their story and accompanying photo. Prizes will be awarded to for winning submissions and all entries will be featured on the website Lowell175.org [website not yet available] throughout the year. Contest details will be available soon on Lowell.org.

Lowell’s 175th Anniversary is an occasion for a year long community celebration founded in the past, built around our progress and focused on the future. For more information or event details, please contact the Cultural Affairs & Special Events office at 978.446.7162 or email csamaras@lowellma.gov.

Obviously some of those events are yearly favorites already, but I’m sure there’ll be a special flair for many of them for Lowell’s septaquintaquinquecentennial year!

By now most of you may have read the Lowell Sun “Inspector general: Kazanjian ‘defrauded’ city on sewer tie-in” (I will link as soon as it is on line) and/or “Report accuses Ex Councilor of trying to defraud City” the Boston Globe story on the Massachusetts Inspector General’s Gregory Sullivan’s report on the illegal sewer tie-in of a Chelmsford property developed by former City Councilor Alan Kazanjian. The Sun’s paper copy states that they have posted a copy of the full report on its web site; I will link to that pdf file also as soon it is posted. Here is the link to the report. The detailed 10-page report outlines the events that led to the OIG’s office investigation.

We find out that it was the DaSilva’s attorney who tipped off the City of Lowell that his clients’ property, built by and purchased from Kazanjian, had not received a sewer bill from the City of Lowell. At that point the DaSilva attorney was told that “the Chelmsford building could not be billed for the use of the Lowell sanitary sewer system because the City of Lowell had denied the requested sewer tie-in for this Chelmsford building in May 2008.” Then events began to unfold.

When contacted by officials, Kazanjian’s attorney “contends that Kazanjian’s professional engineer never informed him that Lowell had denied his request for an out-of-City-tie-in to Lowell’s sewer system. In an interview with this Office, Mr. Kazanjian affirmed that he had first learned of the building’s May 22, 2008 denial by the City of Lowell shortly after his attorney found out about the denial in October 2009.”

But the OIG answers this contention by stating “…it is difficult to understand how Mr. Kazanjian, an experienced developer and a member of the Lowell City Council (the body that deliberates and decides whether to grant a request for an out-of-City sewer tie-in), failed to realize that this sewer connection had not been properly approved/authorized. Moreover, Mr. Kazanjian had direct knowledge that the only permit he held from the City of Lowell was to connect sewer service to his vacant lot which conveniently abutted his Chelmsford commercial development. In this case, contrary to other Lowell developments Kazanjian was involved which he personally applied for permits, he caused two independent entitites — his professional engineer and LeBlanc General Contracting to make applications to the City of Lowell regarding the sewer tie-in. Additionally, since the project’s budget would be directly and significantly affected by the permitting and construction costs associated with connecting the sewer either in Chelmsford or Lowell, his claim not having been aware of the denial letter strains credulity.”

The OIG made a number of suggestion including “take appropriate enforcement action against Kazanjian and its principals.” In other words fine them up to $5,000/day for this violation; the City of Lowell should work with the town of Chelmsford to put into place a billing system “to obtain payment from the current building owner for the amount of waste water that has already been discharged into the Lowell sanitary sewer system through this illegal connection”; “the City should file complaints with the Massachusetts Division of Professional Engineers and Professional Land Surveyors” regarding the action of the project’s professional engineer and land surveyor who “continued to draft plans with their professional stamps and submit them to the Chelmsford Planning Board indicating the building’s sewer line connecting to the Lowell’s sanitary sewer, all the while knowing that Lowell denied sewer access”; and that the “City should file complaints with the Massachusetts Department of Public Safety regarding the inactions of Alan Kazanjian and David Grey, his project construction supervisor as licensed construction supervisors for proceeding to construct the building’s illegal sewer line without having confirmed the appropriate approvals by Lowell official’s and getting the necessary permitting for an out-of-City sewer line connection.”

Back in November 2010, Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone released a letter stating in part that “…despite the thoroughness of the criminal investigation conducted by this office, the Lowell Police Department, and the OIG, this office has determined that no criminal charges may be pursued by in this manner.” At that time, I found it odd that the District Attorney would visit the Lowell Sun’s editorial office to discuss a letter he had written to the OIG and the LPD. But that is the difference between an elected office (District Attorney) and an appointed one (Inspector General), I guess. By the way, Leone’s letter is still available on the Sun’s web site. Here is the link. Wouldn’t it have been more prudent for Leone to wait until the full investigation was complete before rendering an opinion?

I guess now that the OIG has submitted this report, those City Councilors who constantly tell us that they are so concerned about the poor taxpayers, will be leading the charge to collect what is owed to us. I do not want to subsidize the revenue of the politically connected. Those of you who continue to believe do not think that Kazanjian et al did nothing wrong, can go on and pay but I work too hard for my money to make a donation to a profit making operation. And I would be interested in hearing from all of those who back in November vilified LiL as well as a certain Sun reporter. By the way, to this day no one has proven that any of what Chris Scott wrote about this situation was inaccurate, on the contrary it was all correct.

Chalk one up for transparency and access! The Greater Lowell Tech school committee voted unanimously (and our PAC, Move Lowell Forward, officially thanks them as well) to try live streaming online the school committee meetings. This is a good first step towards greater participation by students, parents, teachers and voters in their school committee.

The stream will be live only online, and not available for dialup (which isn’t good for streaming anyway) for at least the next three meetings, which given that Dunstable does not have a cable access station, might be the only way to reach all four of our communities. I certainly hope that the committee continues to work with Lowell Telecommunications and the other communities’ local stations to broaden access as far as they are able.

Kudos to the GLT SC, and we look forward to seeing the results on April 7th (you will be able to get the link to the live stream at www.gltech.org when the meeting is live).

Tuesday night’s City Council meeting featured Round III of beating up on the Library Director and the Library Trustees. For those of you who are not familiar with the history, it began on April 4, 2008 and continues to date.

As a frequent patron of the Pollard Library, I certainly do not want to go there and get hassled. But in all of my decades of visiting the library, I never had a problem, except of course sometime the book or c.d. I want cannot be found on the shelf where it is supposed to be. Having said that, I do believe that on occasion there may be unruly individuals who visit the library and may create an uncomfortable or unsafe environment.

But can’t we say that of our public parks, our streets, public transportation? Why is the City Council’s Public Safety Committee focused on just the Library. Is it because a few staff members have direct access to certain CC members?

What has changed at the Library is the addition of c.d.s, videos and of course, computers. And those residents of the City who are on the other side of the digital divide have limited public access to computers and the library is one of the places where they can go. I do not think that service is under siege; I hope not.

You can watch a video of the Tuesday night meeting on blip.tv’s web site. Here is the link. The library discussion on the begins about 1 hour into the video. And here is a 2-minute clip of Library Board of Trustees member Nancy Pitkin addressing the City Council:

On Gerry’s blog this week the City Manager the Lowell Sun’s story that appeared this past Monday in the Sun regarding “safety fears” at the library. The CM wrote:

Allow me to weigh in and set the record straight. First and foremost, there was no retaliation. No one was reprimanded and no one was told to not speak to the paper. Unfortunately, the newspaper story was written in this manner to sensationalize a situation and respond to the complaints of a few employees. Three of the four employees that appeared before the City Council were addressed by the Director in an informal manner advising them that their issues were being looked at but that in the future complaints would be better handled in the ordinary chain of command. I certainly think that the Director should be able to converse with her employees on a better procedure for addressing issues.

Virtually left out of the story is the fact that a number of employees refute the claim that the library is unsafe. In fact, the reporter of the story was provided a letter signed by eight of the library employees citing their objection to the characterizations being made and opposing some of the actions recommended by the smaller group.

You can read the CM’s entire post on Gerry’s blog.

That Sun article revisited the issues discussed at the December 14, 2010 Public Safety Sub-Committee. (Here is the link to the video of that meeting: about 1 hour long.) At that December meeting, Lowell Chief of Police Ken Lavallee addressed the Sub-Committee. Here is in part what he stated: “… the report we did submit to you does indicate that they have been about 105 incidents total but again as I mentioned to you earlier off the record, many of these incidents cannot necessarily be attributed directly to incidents inside the library but possibly to activities outside in front of the library…”

The Monday article in the Sun stated “There were 106 calls to Lowell police regarding the library last year. Seven were for assaults, six for disturbances, and 47 were for officers performing checks of the location.” You decide for yourself if they were “106 calls to Lowell police regarding the library last year.” I guess the incident that took place today, where an altercation took place at the corner of Dummer and Markets Street and the alleged perpetrators fled towards the library. One was arrested outside and one inside. Is this incident a result of an “unsafe” library or the activities in the neighborhood where the library is located?

I did find it disturbing that a department head and a chair of a City Board would get scolded, lectured and criticized by CC members. It is one thing to question someone, it is another thing to yell at them. I wander if it had been, let’s say the Auditorium board, would that tone have been used? I was also surprised that CCs P. Murphy, J. Mendonca and especially F. Descoteaux, who is a member of the CC Public Safety Sub-Committee had nothing to add to this heated and disturbing discussion/debate/argument. I wonder how the Library Trustees who volunteer their time and effort feel?

With the public vastly turning on billionaire Koch kisser WI Governor Scott Walker and his disgusting display of anti-American union busting (didn’t we once have freedom of assembly and speech here?), you’d think that MA Sen Scott Brown would be a little more careful how he begs for money from the least popular rich guy in America. But no! ThinkProgress has the exclusive video:

At the public dedication of MIT’s David H. Koch Integrative Cancer Institute last Friday, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) effusively thanked conservative billionaire David Koch for supporting his election in 2010 and made a plea for help in his re-election campaign next year. David Koch directly gave the National Republican Senatorial Committee $30,400 in November 2009, and the Koch Industries PAC threw in $15,000 to NRSC plus $5,000 more directly to Brown right before Brown’s special election. In the following exchange, Brown thanks Koch and his wife Julia (off-camera) for their support, saying “I can certainly use it again”:

Partial transcript:

BROWN: Your support during the election, it meant a, it meant a ton. It made a, it made a difference and I can certainly use it again. Obviously, the uh . . .

KOCH: When are you running, uh, for the next term?

BROWN: ’12.

KOCH: Oh, okay.

BROWN: I’m in the cycle, I’m in the cycle right now. We’re already banging away.

Mark Arsenault at the Globe notes:

In public appearances, the senator says that he’s not interested in politicking right now, that there will be time for it in 2012 — his re-election year.

Yet in the video, Brown tells Koch he’s politicking right now.

Uh, heck of a job, Brownie.