If Los Angeles is the City of Angels, is Lowell the City of Non-Profits?

The recent political angst over dismantling the homeless encampment on Plain Street was the latest in what seems like an interminable string of controversies “tailor-made” for advocates to climb on the soap box every Tuesday night and lecture Lowell’s leaders, and those who elect them, on how a city should be run.

In the eyes of some, you can forget Mills to Martinis. “Mills to Malaise” is the new Tuesday night motto.

Insider Ryan Gilday’s thorough breakdown of all 2022 City Council motions proves the Councilors do indeed focus on issues important to all of the Mill City’s 115,000 residents; taxes, traffic, trash and other items local government is actually equipped to solve.

It’s just that you’d be hard-pressed to realize it based on the endless string of paid panhandlers shaking their proverbial Dunkin Donuts cup in council chambers every Tuesday night. Except they’re not asking for spare change. They’re asking for millions.

Think I’m exaggerating?

I recently went through the list of every speaker registered to address a Council motion in 2022. 42-meetings in all. A total of 117 people spoke at those meetings. You know how many of them were employed by or affiliated with some non-profit or another?

64!

I half-jokingly predicted to friends the number would be about half. Turns out I underestimated. And that total doesn’t include the two homeless individuals who spoke at the final meeting of 2022, no doubt recruited by the same advocates who have used the tent city breakup to get a good jump on topping that 55% figure in 2023.

This isn’t to say that there isn’t a place for advocacy in any city, especially a city like Lowell. But it is time for Lowell’s elected and appointed leaders to stop catering so often to the people fighting over their cut of the $76-million in ARPA funds and start using that money to create the infrastructure and economic opportunities that help people escape the cycle of poverty once and for all.

Maybe then, there won’t be a need for so many non-profit speakers on Tuesday nights.