The Lowell City Council meeting this past week had Councilor Corey Robinson bring up a motion to draft a “home rule” petition to force the creation of a City Facilities Department.

It is in my view a colossal waste of the Solicitor’s time drafting an ordinance, and the Council’s time discussing and voting on it.

The Massachusetts Legislature is NOT going to pass it! The Teachers Unions will lobby against it, and it will die. I believe a few of the Councilors know that.

Even if the creation of a facilities department is presented by the Mayor to the School Committee, they won’t vote for it. Especially after his Facebook post and Councilor Robinson’s comments about the poor condition of the school he heard from fellow councilors.

I’d like to say the mayor was wrong or say Lowell High School has 100,000 square feet more than Greater Lowell Regional Technical High School and that LHS has 3,374 students to only 2,312 students at the TECH, but those are excuses.

The mayor stated correctly “You would think someone in management would have looked over these before the City Council walk through? They should be doing this every day.

There are 12 custodians assigned to second shift at LHS, including the Freshman Academy. There are eleven on the second shift at GLTHS.

If I was on the Lowell School Committee I would file a couple of motions:

• Request a report from the Superintendent explaining how the building is in the poor condition that has been reported. What is the absentee rate on second shift? How many of the custodians have been written up? How much overtime has been used by the second shift at LHS? And Citywide in January?
• Vote to eliminate the Assistant Facilities Director position and instead hire a full time LHS Second Shift Supervisor who will submit weekly reports to the School Committee to show what is actually being done.
• Add  three full time second shift custodians to the LHS 2026/2027 budget.

The mayor could have just gone to the Superintendent directly and requested that the Facility and Assistant Facilities directors be brought into the next SC meeting with a report and explanation, but if you’ve followed the mayor since he was on the Tech SC, you know that isn’t his style.

He’s a tough love/hold department managers feet to the fire. Although many teachers and staff at LHS were pissed at the mayor and supported their custodians, the fact is if you can’t maintain the newly opened building in the first two years, what is the condition of the building going to be like in five years.

The mayor doesn’t want to outsource (he was a union member for a long time) and he isn’t wrong when he says “The employees not doing their job certainly can be upset with me. It is up to the employees and management to work together and push the worker who doesn’t perform.”

It isn’t Mike Fiato’s job to make sure the second shift custodians perform their jobs, it is the Senior Custodian, Assistant Facilities Director and Facilities Director’s job. Push for more staff if it’s needed, make sure they are trained, but don’t settle for the excuses that we’re bigger than the tech, we have more students, they have more staff.

Let’s see if any current School Committee member even addresses this issue at their next regularly scheduled meeting.

Maintenance of Effort Agreement: I was happy to hear that the City has submitted a revised MEA to the School Department. I’d be just as happy if Dr. Pinto and Supt. Skinner invite me to stop by and give it a once over. I worked on revising this in 2017/2018, but it went nowhere because the city wasn’t ready back then.  A couple of things to keep in mind;

Memo of Understanding

• Major Renovation and Repairs: Renovation or repair projects costing $100,000 or more are generally excluded.

The costs associated with the rental or lease of land or buildings for a period exceeding three years (these must be treated as capital leases).

Expenses that should be reported but that do not count toward NSS:

Student Transportation Services (3300) – The cost of providing transportation to public and nonpublic school students once daily to and from school.

Unless otherwise specified it is the city/town responsibility for transportation.

Transportation used to be about 80% reimbursed to the communities by the state from a separate line item, but in 2008 when the state was in trouble, the legislature zero funded that account and has never restored it. That is when many communities added that cost to the School Departments, because they can’t charge it to their required Net School Spending.

FREE CASH: One of the biggest misnamed fiscal items is the so called “Free Cash.”

Free cash is a revenue source that results from the calculation, as of July 1, of a municipalities remaining, unrestricted funds from its operations of the previous fiscal year based on the balance sheet as of June 30.

According to the Department of Revenue (“DOR”), Free Cash balance equal to 3%–5% of the annual budget is recommended to ensure financial stability and strong bond ratings.

This year, Lowell’s “free cash” has been certified at $8,949,041 which is ONLY 1.68% of last year’s budget. DOR used to send letters warning communities who ran their budget so close. The 3%-5% is there to cover emergencies and stabilize your bond rating.

A few other observations: From the MASSterList newsletter:  A preliminary list of projects that can be largely ascribed to the MBTA Zoning law, according to the report, shows 6,804 net new units in 34 communities. “If all are built, they would amount to substantially less than a 1 percent increase in the nearly 2 million homes located within the 177 MBTA Communities.”

Dracut, Tewksbury, Wilmington are you paying attention? Why risk losing other state funding when NO builders are overrunning cities and towns?

Bad news for State Senate candidate Sam Meas. According to Boston Talk Show Host Jeff Kuhner – “Sources tell me the Massachusetts Republican Party is nearly bankrupt. The @massgop has NO money. Mass GOP chair Amy Carnevale has been a disaster. She can’t raise cash. This means state Republicans lack the funding to effectively challenge Gov. Healey in 2026. PATHETIC!”

What’s the over/under on voter turnout for next Tuesday’s Special Senate Race? I say in total, Lowell-Dracut-Tyngsboro-Dunstable-Pepperell 13% max.

A few points of Interest (to me anyway) in Governor Healy’s budget:

Free school meals, no-cost community college, major transportation upgrades and her nation-leading investments in childcare that have enabled over 8,000 childcare programs to remain open and added over 22,000 seats statewide.

This budget will also secure the  funding to deliver on Governor Healey’s pledge to achieve universal pre-kindergarten funding in all Gateway Cities this year. It also proposes $10 million for Accelerating Achievement, a new multi-year K-12 school improvement initiative focused on rapidly improving student outcomes in the state’s lowest-performing schools. The Administration strengthening municipal capacity statewide through  local aid investments. In the budget, the administration recommends more than $10.4 billion in local aid, a $439 million (4 percent) increase over last year.

In addition to fully funding the final implementation phase of the Student Opportunity Act and dedicating $7.6 billion for Chapter 70 school aid (a $242 million increase over  FY26), the budget also proposes full funding for Charter School Reimbursements at $200.4 million, $20 million for rural school aid and the administration’s legislative package fully funds the Special Education Circuit Breaker at $802.7 million. This budget recommendation also expands the administration’s commitment to school transportation by investing an additional $154.3 million to reimburse school districts for a significant share of transportation costs.

Unrestricted General Government Aid (UGGA) supports local government functions including public safety, public works, and economic development, and remains the only fully flexible, unrestricted source of state local aid available to cities and towns.

The budget recommends $1.356 billion in funding, an increase of $33 million (2.5 percent) over last year.

Tune in Tuesday night to InsideLowell for complete election coverage with Teddy Panos, Marty Lorrey, Erin Gendron, Jim Leary, Asa Stutz and yours truly beginning at 7:30pm until we get the final “unofficial” results. (click here to link to the broadcast)