[I didn’t have time to do anything about the last meeting of the year on Wednesday morning. The meeting was kind of a dud – but it was the last meeting for Councilors Belanger, Jenness, and Yem. Each served the council and the city well, and I thank them for their service. That said, I wanted to do some type of year-end summary – BUT – I didn’t want to do what I’ve done in years past: a bunch of charts detailing how many motions were filed. Instead, I came up with the following fever-dream.]

Eyes Wide Shut Is a Christmas Classic & is Useful for Analysis of the 2025 City Council

Every December, people argue about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie. These poor souls are misguided, as that debate is: (a) played out; and (b) a poor use of time that could be better spent discussing a more interesting proposition:

Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut is a Christmas masterpiece.

Not because it’s jolly, and not because it’s sentimental. It is neither (what other Christmas movie is best known for its Illuminati orgy scene?).

No, it’s a Christmas movie because: (a) it takes place (and can often be found on cable) during the Christmas season; and (b) it understands what the season actually does in the modern world: it creates a warm and fuzzy glow that obscures deeper truths.

The best classic Christmas stories aren’t about the superficial warm fuzzy glow. In fact, few are about the festive holiday itself.

They’re about revelation.

A Christmas Carol exposes exploitation. Charlie Brown is a rejection of materialism. It’s a Wonderful Life confronts despair. Even Rudolph is pretty dark and cynical: society will not accept you for who you are, but will tolerate you if you’re useful.

For its part, Eyes Wide Shut exposes how well-lit systems can remain fundamentally misunderstood by the people operating within them. That insight offers a useful lens for a year-end review of the 2025 Lowell City Council.

Council meetings follow a familiar script. Motions are filed and responses are generated. The process is visible and appears effective. However, like Eyes Wide Shut, the danger is an assumption that this visibility is meaningful. 

Kubrick reinforces this illusion by setting the film during the Christmas season. Dr. Bill and Alice Harford move through apartments, parties, and city streets washed in warm holiday light. The glow signals comfort and normalcy even as the story drifts toward something much more interesting. The lights do not illuminate the truth; they distract from it.

In 2025, the Lowell City Council filed something in the neighborhood of 470 motions. The administration responded with about 268 responses and reports. What deeper truths can we explore when reflecting on all this activity? On their face, these numbers reflect engagement and responsiveness. And in many ways, they should be read that way. The Council and administration navigated the year with seriousness and a visible commitment to service. I legitimately think both bodies do a very good job. Bravo!

At the same time, year-end reflections (ie. blogs with a strained concept) are useful precisely because they allow space to ask a different kind of question—not whether government is merely working, but how it might work better over time.

After sitting through most of the meetings and reviewing all of the agendas, my main critique is the Council’s stubborn refusal to give up on many low-level “retail” motions: individual street issues, localized maintenance requests, and other one-off interventions.

This approach made particular sense in the early years of district representation. When the system changed in 2021, there was a backlog of neglected issues. Entire sections of the city were arguably underserved. Visibility mattered. I welcomed and celebrated that phase. I published goofy “Motion Trackers.” I defended the volume of motions as a sign that long-ignored problems were finally being heard.

Four years later, the landscape has (or should have) changed, and my thinking has started to evolve. The administration(s) has/have had four years to implement systems that would (say it with me), “change business as usual.” Indeed, Lowell now has a functioning 3-1-1 system designed to handle precisely these kinds of issues—logging concerns, routing them to departments, and tracking outcomes. As systems mature, expectations evolve. As such, I was kinda hoping that the retail motion/response dynamic would dry up and we’d be left with more juicy “next level” conversations.

Instead, many of the same patterns persist. Not because anyone is failing, but because the existing approach is visible and politically intuitive. You could argue that district representation, by its nature, rewards this type of governance.

A speed bump you can point to (and put on campaign literature) is more concrete than a system change you can’t photograph. Too often, meeting agendas and administration responses read like a glorified 3-1-1 escalation system (ie: pave this street, add a stop sign to this intersection, etc.).

None of this suggests neglect or that systemic motions are absent – they are not. The administration filed hundreds of responses and informational reports in 2025, and many councilors are getting to the heart of many matters (In fact, if you’re a councilor reading this critique, we both know I’m clearly not talking about you). But when we’re still leaning so heavily on individual gripes, I worry that even a strong institution can find itself spending more time addressing symptoms than shaping systems (Ex: I legitimately don’t know how our traffic engineer handles the workload of putting out fires at individual locations and how it affects her bandwidth to problem-solve larger issues).

This dynamic becomes more concerning when viewed alongside the city’s anemic reference to its long-term planning efforts. Who is shaping the long-term direction of the city? Citizens? The UN? UMass? The Manager’s Office? Councilors who file the most motions?

How did an off-the-cuff motion to tear down the Smith Baker Center (and later reversal) meet our adopted goals? How did the HCD/Lupoli deal? Our approach to Markley? How about some positives like the Tree Committee, LINC, or UN Model Cities?

Our Master Plan, adopted in May of 2024, intended (as it always does) to provide shared goals and a roadmap for decision-making. There were encouraging signs over a year and a half ago that the administration intended to operationalize it: regular departmental updates! rotating presentations! and tracking of progress toward plan goals! These were great ideas!

However, they did not materialize in 2024 or in 2025. In addition, there wasn’t much – if anything – from the council seeking accountability in this area. It’s doubly frustrating when we’re told that the Master Plan was apparently a factor in Lowell’s selection as a UN Model City – but remains largely absent on Tuesday nights. A master plan that exists only in sales pitches isn’t a plan. It is a prop.

Kubrick ends Eyes Wide Shut without dismantling the system Dr. Bill briefly glimpses. What changes isn’t the world, but the viewer’s understanding of it. That distinction – in the film and in local government – matters.

Lowell doesn’t lack action or transparency. It has plenty of light, motion, and ritual. But visibility and responsiveness are not the same as direction and progress. Systems either exist or they don’t. Plans are either implemented or they’re props.

Good Christmas stories like Eyes Wide Shut don’t reassure us – they unsettle us. We’re challenged to look past the glow and ask difficult questions.

In January, we will begin another year with some new faces on the Council. I’ll be looking to see whether the council can focus more on the deeper work that begins when the lights dim and the masks come off.

[Did anyone read this far? Admittedly, that was pretty weird. Merry Christmas, everyone!]