This Friday the joint School Committee & City Council Facilities Sub-Committee will be holding an open meeting and tour of three Lowell schools to showcase the need to maintain and repair the schools in Lowell.
The meeting will start at 3:00 pm at the Reilly School and include visits to the Robinson School and Lowell High School.
School Committeeman Jim Leary and City Councilor Ed Kennedy the co-chairs invite the public to attend and participate. Members of this committee include City Councilors Joe Mendonca and Kevin Broderick along with School Committee members Robert Gignac and Kristin Ross Sitcawich.
I intent to do that and will post pictures on the blog to show how bad some of these situations are and how the city has let the buildings fall to this level of disrepair.
Last Night the Council voted to fund $100,000 to outfit 13 trucks for measured salting (do we really have 21 trucks salting at the same time?) No one asked that question and chose to ignore the needs of the schools.
The city enforces codes in private buildings but chooses to be absentee landlords when it comes to maintaining / repairing the school buildings they own and admitted so last night by stating when Councilor Kennedy mentioned that money might be better spent on school repair , he was told that would be addressed at a later date even though the Manager admitted the list is in the MILLIONS of dollars!
He and Ralph Snow the DPW Director couldn’t even agree on when these new computers will allegedly pay for themselves or if the 25% “savings” is actually 25% or something close to that. The Manager indicated within a year or two while Mr. Snow said 5 years and the Councilors just let it go without questioning what the truth really is or what the savings really would be.
Salt for 13 trucks used MAYBE 5 Months is more important to the Administration than Schools used 10 -12 months and serving thousands of students. Maybe those that criticize the Administration for hiring so many out of towners instead of Lowell people have a point. Maybe if they had students who had to use these bathrooms and bubblers (those that actually function) they would prioritize this issue more.
It is time for this city to step up and fund the required maintenance for these schools and provide the funding and labor to do so. The School Committee can only request it is up to this Council and this Manager to be the Landlords that they want all the private home and business owners to be.
I’ve been at the school and seen some bubblers that don’t work or bathrooms that look terrible and it is embarrassing. Yet the Manager and Council seem not to think this issue is important enough to spend money on when we can buy $100,000 worth of computers for trucks that are used only 5 months a year.
Keep an eye on the Salt budget this year, the Manager claims it was 1 million dollars in 2012, even if the expected savings is only 10% that line item should show us $100,000 in savings in the 2013 budget.
Will it?
I think the $1M salt expenditure was for FY ’11 – surely that wasn’t spent this past winter.
Let’s look at the numbers that were tossed around. First, take the 25% usage reduction and assume that is a supportable number. Adding the control to 13 trucks should mean that savings is expanded by 65% (13 out of 20 trucks will be upgraded). If the future winters are as bad as FY ’11 with $1M salt expenditure, saving 25% on 65% of the fleet should translate to about $162,500 per year of savings. So the pay-back would be in less than one severe winter.
Either it is a no-brainer to make the upgrade, or the figures being thrown around should be suspect.
As for the situation in the schools, that has to be solved by a combination of capital improvements and better maintenance. Each school administration should work to make the custodians’ jobs easier by making sure everyone in the schools respects the property.
Joe,
My issue is we keep hearing that these are tough fiscal times and we have to prioritize. We expect and demand homeowners and businesses to keep their properties maintained and up to code and yet we let our schools and our students use bathrooms that are broke, bubblers that barely provide water and not fill paper towels in the restrooms.
Would we let a Dining establishment NOT provide customers a way to wash and dry their hands? Why do we allow some schools to operate that way?
Shouldn’t the priority be in maintaining a building we use 10 months a year (some 12 months) over 13 trucks that are used 5-6 months 2 or 3 times a month? Savings is good but not at the expense of cleanliness and health of students.
I agree with prioritizing because you need to limit expenditures. I would like to see the whole picture for the capital plan before committing to a claimed priority.
However, the administration made a case for going ahead with the salt-control purchase now (need to get in before the next year’s price hike, piggy-back on a similar State purchase, and have installed prior to the next winter).
If indeed the claims are correct, FY ’13 will see a savings in salt greater than the expense of the upgrade, and that extra money can be used to improve school maintenance. You may want to get more assurance that the claims are correct, as the various statements are not consistent (25% savings, 2-yr pay-back, 5-yr payback).
Hopefully, a good plan for school maintenance and capital upgrades will evolve in the next few weeks and the FY ’13 budget will make a big dent in the list of short-comings.
Joe, I agree w/you that the truck upgrade costs will pay for themselves, and I would have voted for it myself. Made complete sense to me.
On the School building side, the costs that we are requesting are directly related to the landlord’s responsibility (City of Lowell) and their union contracts. The repair of broken stuff and regular general maintenance must be done timely. We will work with everyone to achieve this mutual and needed goal. However, improvement of our school maintenance would not address these concerns.
Thanks, Jim
Direct quote from a friend in the DPW. “We do what we are told and there are not enough of us to go around. ” He also made a nasty remark about current union leadership and about his kid’s school condition.