GN: This is the first of quarterly “special” Council meetings dealing exclusively with Departments that the Councilors oversee.

Agenda for City Council on February 28, 2012, 06:30 PM

LOWELL CITY COUNCIL
SPECIAL MEETING
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 28, 2012
CITY HALL, CITY COUNCIL CHAMBER
TIME 6:30 PM

SPECIAL MEETING NOTICE

Notice is hereby given, as required by Rule 6 of the City of Lowell City Council Rules, that the Lowell City Council will hold a Special Meeting of the Lowell City Council in Council Chambers on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 at 6:30 PM. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss matters pertaining to the Office of the City Clerk, including but not necessarily limited to:

I. Written Policies/Procedures

II. Ethics Law – Compliance, Acknowledgement

III. Open Meeting Law – Compliance, Acknowledgement

IV. Data Entry – Vital Records

V. Board Memberships

VI. Cross Training

By Order,

Patrick O. Murphy

Michael Q. Geary

City Clerk

Don’t forget to join Warren Shaw, Shawn Ashe, Tom Byrne, Mary Burnes and others as WCAP Saturday Morning Live Broadcast Live from M.L. Shaw’s tomorrow Saturday Feb. 25th along with special guest Sen. Scott Brown who will be on in the 8:00 hour.

Stop by say Hi to the Saturday Morning Live crew, enjoy the Breakfast Nacho’s or a regular breakfast and meet and talk with Sen.Brown

The City Manager is often criticised for depending to much on the City Solicitor. In fact my City Life friends often say she runs the city.

Today we have Greater Lowell School Committeeman Fred Bahou along with his protegé NEWLY elected Committeeman Erik Gitschier claiming to the SUN that Supt. Santoro is ‘to cozy” with the Schools Legal Counsel.

In the Column Blog on the Sun Website, reporter Sarah Favot Post that

” Some Greater Lowell Technical High School School Committee members think the relationship between Superintendent Mary Jo Santoro and the attorneys at Long & DiPietro, LLC. is too close.

“There’s a little to much comfort and too much money being tossed around,” said Fred Bahou, who represents Lowell and “I think there is a relationship that has been built over the last six years,” said committee member Erik Gitschier, of Lowell. “It has to be built, but I think it is too close.”

How would Gitschier who has only been on the board since early-January be able to make such a statement? It’s like Brian Bond voting out the Dracut Housing Director in his first meeting! What has he seen in 2 meetings to make him believe that the relationship is to close? Is he just supporting his mentor or does he have facts that can show his point? Legal bills alone prove nothing. Is he like Bond doing the work of another?

I tend to agree with the comments in the post from Greater Lowell Tech / Dracut Committeeman Victor Olson and Dunstable’s Dave Tulley:

Tully said he believes the amount of communication is necessary due to ongoing collective bargaining and the number of grievances filed

While Olsen said ” the committee votes on whether to take grievances to arbitration, so they shouldn’t be surprised if the fees paid for legal-services have gone up and that more communication is necessary.
“It surprises me how some committee members could question these things,” Olson mentions that “They seem to be “grandstanding.” He said he would rather be safe than sorry and seek out legal advice.

Maybe these members would prefer the school face multiple lawsuits? Maybe because the Union has filed so many grievances over contract negotiations that haven’t been settled the cost is high.

Maybe Bahou who is a member that is on the team to negociate the contract should be more concerned with HIS and his fellow members inability to settle a contract than worrying about the cost of legal service that HE is partially responsible for driving up!

Has he even looked at the cost of legal services and the number of grievances filed when a contract is in place? I’m betting it is less. Settle the contract and I’m betting grievances go down.

Both The Manager and the Superintendent want to fully check the legal ramifications before exposing their city or school district to lawsuits that could cost 5 times more than the legal bill that committeeman Bahou is whining about.

They share the trait of being cautious for the citizens and not exposing them to lawsuits and large settlements.

GN: The following Guest Editorial appears in today’s Lowell Sun from Councilor Nuon.

On Nov. 8, 2011, I was honored to be elected as the second Cambodian-American City Councilor in Lowell’s history. On Jan. 3, 2012, I was sworn in as a councilor and was later appointed as the chairman of the council’s Public Safety Subcommittee.

I asked Lowell Mayor Patrick Murphy to be allowed to serve on the Public Safety Subcommittee because my life’s work has been in public safety. In 1991, I joined the Middlesex district attorney’s office as a victim witness advocate and cultural con­sultant, working there until 2000. In 2000, I was appointed by Gov. Paul Cel­lucci to a full-time position on the state Sex Offender Regis­ter Board (SORB).

I was reappointed to the SORB by Gov. Mitt Romney and, more recently, by Gov.

Deval Patrick. In addition, much of my nonworking time has been spent on public­safety efforts, mainly those involving youth and gangs. I was a board member of the United Teen Equality Cen­ter, founded the Southeast Asian Families Against Domestic Violence in Lowell, and co-founded the Cambo­dian American League of Lowell.

Recently, some rumors have sur­faced concerning my serving on the Public Safety Sub­committee, because, some years ago, I brought a lawsuit regarding my civil rights and a charge of disor­derly conduct. It was said that the suit was unfounded but that I had some­how been person­ally awarded a substantial amount of money. Both statements are untrue. After nearly two years of litigation, a federal judge found that I had not been disorderly and that there was no probable cause for my arrest. The court could then have awarded damages to me and ordered my attor­ney’s fees to be paid in full as well. However, this suit was never about money; it was about ensuring that all citi­zens are treated fairly and respectfully. As a result, I agreed to a settle­ment that included addi­tional police training, and I was able to per­suade my lawyers to take less than one half their fee.

Importantly, all settlement funds went to cover my legal fees and expenses.

Going through two years of liti­gation was one of the toughest things that my family and I have ever faced. After the federal-court decision in my favor and the settlement of the action, it was tough to hear untruths circulate about my case, especially that I personally benefitted financially, as I did not.

For me, these events are now in the past. Regardless of what happened, I have great respect for the work that the Lowell police do every day. Theirs is a very tough job and what hap­pened to me in one instance does not mean that they, or even the officer involved in my incident, don’t regularly do good and important work.

I know this because I have worked on a daily basis with law enforcement in my cur­rent and past positions.

In order to avoid any fur­ther distraction, especially at this time when so much attention is correctly focused on public safety in our down­town, I decided to step down as the Public Safety Subcom­mittee chair but to remain as a member of the Subcommit­tee. Resolving our current public-safety challenges is a much bigger issue than who chairs the subcommittee.

The first concern in any community is public safety.

Police working with citizens can substantially reduce crime and violence. Activities such as after-school, week­end, and summer opportuni­ties for young people can also help prevent crime from occurring. Therefore, I look forward to working with Police Superintendent Ken Lavallee, the Superior Offi­cers Union, and the Patrol­mans Union in the future and sincerely hope that we can work together for the good of all Lowell’s residents.

GoLocalWorcester is a new “on-Line” Newspaper that features Natalie Jacobson, Bob Lobel, Matt Amauralt, Tim Cahill and others writing stories and reporting on news events in Massachusetts.

One of the stories that caught my attention is a Ranking of High Schools throughout the State. Based on their calculations and findings Lowell High ranks 286 out of 392.

Local Schools that finished higher than Lowell

Shawsheen Tech (88) – Billerica High (122) – Wilmington High (136) Tyngsboro High (157) -Tewksbury High (191) –Dracut High (219) – Nashoba Tech (225) – Greater Lowell Tech (251) – Methuen High School (279)

Midsize cities like Framingham High ( 78) – Marlborough High (163) –Woburn High (208) and Gloucester High (216) also were ranked higher.

Even schools in the Boston area came in higher, Fenway High in Boston (242) – Saugus (246) – Quincy (247) and Somerville (252)

West Springfield came in at 254 and Chicopee at 278.

The team that wrote the story explained their method:

“In order to come up with a realistic ranking system, we gathered thousands of data points from publicly available resources in five specific areas. Included were MCAS proficiency scores, SAT scores, student to teacher ratios, spending per student, and total school enrollment. These individual areas were then broken down and analyzed statistically, employing methodology used in similar rankings created elsewhere in New England.

The weightings for calculations were as follows:

Student/Teacher Ratio 15% -Per Pupil Spending 15% – MCAS-English 10% – MCAS-Math 10%
MCAS-Science 10% – SAT-Verbal 10% – SAT-Math 10% – SAT-Writing 10% – Graduation Rate 10%

Each school’s weighted numbers were added into a single evaluative number, which, when ordered from highest to lowest, gave us our ranking.”

So I’m interested to hear what the teachers, school committee and parents think of this ranking system and if Lowell should be ranked so low and what can be done to improve on that ranking?

Based on the specifications looked at here is how Lowell Broke Down:

Enrollment 3384
4 year Graduation Rate 69.8 %
Student/Teacher Ratio 15%
Per Pupil Spending $12,899.00
MCAS-English 75%
MCAS-Math 66%
MCAS-Science 45 %
SAT-Verbal 457
SAT-Math 447
SAT-Writing 482