The following is cross-posted from the City Manager’s Blog:

Staying Cool — Day 2
July 21, 2011 by Office of the City Manager

Last evening kids and adults alike took advantage of the extended hours at our water recreation areas for a dip or a run through the sprinklers at the Shedd Park Splash Pad. With today and tomorrow promising to be even hotter, we explored options for adding some temporary water features to some of our recreation areas without them. We came up with a simple and effective idea.

Extremely popular at the annual Folk Festival are the misting stations engineered by the staff at our Lands & Building Department and placed strategically around the downtown. We’ve taken three of the stations and temporarily placed them at Hadley Park, Gage Field and Father Maguire Park today and tomorrow. The stations will resume their regular call of duty at the Folk Festival next weekend.

The Senior Center is open tonight until 8 pm for ANYONE seeking relief from the heat. There’s plenty of ice cold bottled water and plans to show a movie. Call the Senior Center for more information. 978-970-4131.

Wednesday, July 19, 2011 – Saturday, July 23, 2011

Shedd Park Splash Pad 12:00 noon to 8:00pm

South Common Pool 12:00 noon to 8:00pm

McPherson Pool 12:00 noon to 8:00pm

Rynne Beach 12:00 noon to 8:00pm

According to Lyle Moran “Lynch disciplines two Lowell librarians” for their chat about another Library employee and Manager Lynch said he wants to see employee morale and behavior improve at the library and he plans to meet with the whole staff soon to “lay down the law.” But the city manager admitted he is still confounded with how to stop the infighting between employees at the library, calling it his “toughest challenge in 30 years” of municipal employment.

Bet he wishes for the days of Marion the Librarian and Mary the spinster Librarian now those were Librarians who knew how to behave. (Easy ? can you name the two movies and actresses?)

School Committee Candidate Kim Scott in a comment she posted said the following: “Grant information is hidden rather deeply it seems. The new budget was also removed a few weeks ago from the school site and I can not look at that still”

I emailed Asst. Supt Jay Lang to find out why the budget was removed and received his out of office message that stated he was on Vacation. 3 minutes later Mr. Lang replied from home with the following information:

I had posted the Superintendent’s recommended budget at the time of release and for deliberations in May. I had the recommended budget taken off-line to not confuse readers with the final approved budget. After the SC approved the final budget I still need to go in and make the line item adjustments and notes sections to provide a cross walk of the recommended budget and approved budget. Because many line items were moved to the suspense account I also am creating a notes worksheet to help guide readers through the document. After that, PDF’s are created and posted to the site.

The final approved budget with notes will be on-line early next week when I return from vacation. I have been working on it while away.

One thing I can say about the employees of the Lowell School Dept. from Supt. Franco, Asst. Lang, John Descoteaux and June Cormier to Principal Nan Murphy or Gail Feeney is that they are all very responsive even when they are out of the office and on their own time. All you need to do is ask.

The Sun reports that former City Manager Tully to plead guilty to fraud Aug. 2 but they seemed obsessed with trying to identify the “co-conspirator” and are dragging the name of a well known and respected local businessman through the mud because he was in the room when Tully made his demand even though U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, would not identify the co-conspirator or whether the person would face charges. If this person who the Sun keeps identifying is never charged do you think Chris Scott or the Sun will run a front page story stating that?…I don’t!