Left In Lowell

Special Notice

2 Responses to “Special Notice”

1. Prince Charming Says:
   January 6th, 2013 at 9:01 pm

   What?? No mention of Taupier? Must have been a senior moment.

2. Jack Says:
   January 6th, 2013 at 10:45 pm

   PC,
   Kendall did not forget Taup.

   I also noticed the MCM guys got the nod:

   … And what about guys like Tom McKay, Leo Creegan and Terry McCarthy who brought a once-decaying auditorium back to life.

   Maybe it was a “senior moment” to forget about this:

   Lynch: City misused $300G for auditorium
   The Sun, Michael LaFleur (2/1/07)

   LOWELL — The $300,000 payment to the city from the Lowell Memorial Auditorium’s capital-improvement fund in 2003 was meant to be a down payment on needed renovations to the 85-year-old building that never happened.

   William Taupier, a member of the auditorium’s city-appointed board of trustees and a former Lowell city manager and School Committee member, said he came up with the idea for the transfer to encourage former City Manager John Cox to bond the money for the repairs.

   “That was supposed to be our payment of the first three years of that bond,” Taupier said, adding that the money was given up front in light of large cuts in state funding that the city was then weathering. “I was trying to be political.

   “We have been trying to plan this out for a long time,” Taupier added. “It was an incentive to have them understand that we could pay for a substantial bond offering.”

   Bonds were never issued, however.

   The $300,000 transfer from the auditorium improvement account in June 2003 went into the city’s general fund and was subsequently spent, according to a memo from Tom Moses , the city’s chief financial officer.

   Today, City Manager Bernie Lynch’s administration is preparing a City Council vote on nearly $6 million in renovations to the auditorium. Under that program, the city would have to bond $1 million in each of the next three years with the remaining $3 million provided by matches from the state Cultural Facilities Fund.

   “It is problematic that the money was used for balancing the budget as opposed to being put toward capital improvements,” Lynch said yesterday of the $300,000 transfer.

   Reached at home last night, Cox declined comment.
   -snip

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