THE BATTLE for the soul of Lowell played out at last Monday’s Planning Board meeting, as the board discussed whether to formally adopt Lowell’s new comprehensive master plan,Lowell Forward.
The 20-year vision of the community’s plan for the future that City Manager Tom Golden called a “living, breathing document,” was unveiled during the City Council’s Feb. 27 meeting.
Department of Planning and Development Director/Assistant City Manager Yovani Baez-Rose told the council the 204-page, color-coded document took 18 months of “really hard work” to develop, calling it “one of the most inclusive plans this department has ever created.”
That was followed by a public comment period on the draft plan. The text was finalized and presented for review to the Planning Board before it will be presented to the council for final adoption later this month.
But, despite that lengthy bottom-up and public-facing work, Committee member Dan Tenczar seemed to say, “Hold my beer” when he challenged Development Services Senior Planner Francesca Cigliano over a word found in a paragraph on page 29.
The passage that offended him was titled “Lowell needs to reassess zoning barriers to enable affordable residential development,” and read “Lowell is very diverse, but inequities create fair housing concerns. Lowell is segregated by race, and areas with lack of multifamily or affordable housing may perpetuate this segregation.”
“’Lowell is segregated by race’ sends the wrong message,” Tenczar said repeatedly. “Lowell is not segregated by race. There may be areas that are more densely populated, but if you go to the Highlands, you’re going to find Cambodians, you’re going to find White Irish, French a variety of people… So, I wouldn’t want that to be stated about my city.”
In general, telling this Planning Board — the same board that voted 4-0 against accessory dwelling units — that it needs to “reassess zoning barriers,” is like waving a red cape in front of a bull. It’s just asking the beast to charge.
The failure of the ADU ordinance was a stunning loss for a zoning change that has been implemented in other cities and towns across the commonwealth. The debate also showed that despite the fact that more than two-thirds of the city is zoned exclusively for traditional single-family homes, residents and councilors remained concerned that ADUs would encroach on that standalone, special status.
That kind of geographical segregation in housing, Cigliano told the board, began in the post-war era when the federal government created programs for favorable mortgages that excluded people of color. Layered on top of that discriminatory policy was the practice of redlining, in which creditworthy applicants for a commercial loan for housing in a certain neighborhood were denied on the basis of race.
According to theFair Housing Act, which is under the Civil Rights Act of 1968, as amended, redlining on a racial basis has been held by the courts to be an illegal practice.
“So what we see today where single-family neighborhoods tend to have more white residents, and multifamily neighborhoods tend to have more people of color,” Cigliano said. “It’s a remnant of that era — particularly Black people were not allowed to buy a single-family home.”
In other words, Lowell is segregated by race.
Cigliano has worked in the city’s DPD since 2019, rising from assistant to associate planner to senior planner. The Lowell High School graduate received her master’s degree in regional planning from UMass Amherst, and she pushed back – hard – against Tenczar’s opinion.
“Yes, I completely understand where you’re coming from,” she said. “I do think that Lowell is much more of an inclusive, multicultural place when compared to a lot of communities – even in Massachusetts. But… there is actual data and spatial analysis that was conducted that shows that Lowell is segregated by race. Looking at it on a map by color, it shows that certain races tend to live in certain areas of the city, and that is segregated by race. The map follows the housing patterns.”
Tenczar demanded more data to back up the data, to which Cigliano replied “there is data.”
Chair Thomas Linehan weighed in, wondered whether the paragraph could be rephrased to “make it a little softer.”
But Cigliano held her ground, making a forceful and impassioned argument that segregation isn’t a personality quirk or a casual policy issue that can be mitigated through watered-down language.
“My planner opinion is that it’s OK to keep this,” Cigliano said. “Throughout the rest of the plan, it’s very clear that the city of Lowell’s current values are diversity, equity and inclusion. We are so proud of our multicultural city. We’re celebrating it constantly. I think it’s OK to just state things as they are, which is that yeah, it is segregated.”
She also made the case for DPD expertise, arguing that all the planners have gone to school for planning, are certified urban planners and would agree with the definition in the plan.
Tenczar wouldn’t budge. One of his other concerns seemed to be optics.
“That [sentence] shows up in the New York Times and Boston Globe – that this Planning Board acknowledged that?” he said. “I think it sends the wrong message.”
Some of Tenczar’s framing of the language around segregation has been heard before. Most famously from Bostonian Louise Day Hicks, who made a political career out of her strident and vocal opposition to desegregation in Boston public schools.
During Boston’s desegregation busing crisis of the 1970’s, Hicks was asked by a reporter if there was racial imbalance in Boston schools.
“If you mean predominantly ethnic grouping in our schools, yes, there is racial imbalance, which merely reflects the geographical content of the neighborhood,” Hicks said.
Issues of diversity, equity and inclusion – and segregation – have roiled the city since the passionate community outcry over the June 2022 motion declaring that racism “leads to” versus “is” a public health crisis. After hours of debate, a substitute motion unanimously passed making a more declarative statement of harm that racism is a public health crisis.
Last month, another City Council motion that requested the School Committee begin the process of vacating a 1987 consent decree failed by a 7-4 majority vote.
The1987 consent decreecorrected systemic inequality by desegregating Lowell schools through instituting busing across the city. The decree was in response to a lawsuit filed by the Lowell Hispanic Parents Advisory Council against school officials.
Committee members Caleb Cheng and Richard Lockhart agreed with Tenczar that the word segregation was problematic for them.
“Segregation is a strong word… I’m just thinking about the language,” Cheng said.
Lockhart concurred, saying “I think the word segregation should be eliminated totally. In today’s world, segregation has a very negative connotation. Take it out totally.”
With only five votes on the board, the three against based on Page 29 seemed to doom the plan until member Allison Dolan-Wilson suggested alternative phrasing. Her diplomatic approach acknowledged the DPD’s expertise, held the ground on the word segregation, but also appealed to the feelings of the aggrieved members.
“I’d hate for us to appear tone-deaf,” she said. “Clearly a lot was put into this with a lot of really smart people that thought about this. It’s an uncomfortable word… To tiptoe around it otherwise is disingenuous. To find a nicer way of saying what the facts are. Again, if currently we want to say by race and economic status, which again, guess what, one indicates the other. But if that makes people feel better. The first step is admitting it.”
Ultimately compromise wasn’t what Tenczar wanted; he wanted capitulation.
“Hate the word,” he said right before the vote. “Hate the word. Look, we have a lot of history. We have slavery, we have all sorts of these things, but when it’s in Lowell, it comes down to economics… I appreciate the efforts and the adverse opinions of Ms. Cigliano and Allison. But I disagree.”
He was the lone vote against board approval of the Lowell Forward plan as amended.
Cigliano, who may be tiring of being on the losing end of battles with a recalcitrant board and council, made the changes as directed.
The new passage that will be presented before the City Council for approval is “Lowell is currently segregated by race and socio-economic status may perpetuate this segregation.”
The council is not bound by the Planning Board’s vote or recommendations.
“I appreciate you hearing me out,” Cigliano said. “Obviously this is a really important conversation. I know that is not a word that we want to associate with the city, it’s not what the current administration or city stands for, but saying that is the reality and we want to be even more of an integrated and inclusive place – I think that’s just being honest in the plan. That’s just my professional planner opinion.”
A Chelmsford Town Meeting vote will stand
THE MBTA Communities zoning overlay approved overwhelmingly by the Chelmsford Town Meeting last month seems to be set in stone after an attempt to bring the issue to the ballot box appears to have failed to gather enough signatures.
The Chelmsford Town Clerk’s office said in a phone call Monday morning that the petitioner for a counter-article to the MBTA Communities article approved by Town Meeting, Doreen Deshler, informed them before the May 10 deadline that she would not be submitting the signatures. With approximately 27,220 registered voters in Chelmsford, according to the Town Clerk’s office, she would have needed to collect at least 1,361 signatures to bring the issue to a town ballot.
Unless there is some sort of reversal of this law, either through the courts or the state’s legislature, then Chelmsford will join what so far has been a majority of affected towns in complying with this law by the Dec. 31 deadline. This means that a zoning overlay for multi-family housing will be placed on the UMass West and Route 110 districts designed by the Planning Board, which advocates of compliance said during Town Meeting said were designed to have the most minimal potential impact possible.
While referendums of representative Town Meeting decisions can sometimes point to a disconnect between a town’s legislative body and the voters at large, perhaps an unsuccessful signature campaign could be seen coming in this instance, with the help of some hindsight, of course. Deshler, who had opposed the zoning mandate throughout the process, ran as the lone challenger against three incumbent Planning Board candidates in this year’s local election, all of whom had been involved in the development of the MBTA Communities districts. The voters overwhelmingly chose to go with the incumbents, which could have been the first sign that Chelmsford was leaning towards compliance. The MBTA Communities vote at Town Meeting later in the spring would be even more lopsided, coming in at 125-19.
Deshler did not return requests for comment.
Where’s the plan?
THE FIRST DRACUT Board of Selectmen’s meeting since the May 4 election began on a promising note. New Selectman Josh Taylor took his seat on the board for the first time. A number of his supporters attended wearing the signature lime green t-shirts of Taylor’s campaign. As expected, Tony Archinski was elected chair with warm congratulations from outgoing chair Alison Genest; Heather Santiago-Hutchings was elected vice chair, and Jennifer Kopcinski clerk.
The meeting ended, however, with former Selectman John Zimini in a huff berating Taylor for one of his first votes. To be exact, Zimini’s attempt to engage Taylor occurred after the meeting adjourned. Taylor declined to take the bait. Long before Zimini tried to engage the new selectman on his vote, Dave Martin, one of his campaign opponents, came forward to give Taylor his public congratulations on his win.
Zimini, who supported Taylor during the campaign, was upset with the new selectman’s vote to ask Town Meeting to approve spending nearly $1 million of ARPA funds to acquire the Proper Farm in East Dracut from John Brox. (The property is officially known as the Proper–Brox Farm.)
Zimini, it must be remembered, was one-half of a placard waving, swearing altercation in front of the Parker library just before the election. The other half was Brian Genest, who was supporting Martin.
Selectmen held an executive session before their May 14 meeting to discuss the acquisition of the property. Taylor had opposed the proposal during the campaign, but voted with the majority in open session to recommend approval of the purchase.
Taylor told The Sun he went into the executive session with a list of questions. “Most of them were for town counsel and they were all answered.” Based on those answers he changed his mind. And, based on those answers, he is working on a plan to share with voters.
The vote to recommend the purchase was 3-2, a familiar split on the Dracut board. Archinski and Santiago-Hutchings were opposed – not to the purchase itself, but the use of ARPA funds and the lack of a plan for its subsequent use. They would prefer to see a plan in place and Community Preservation funds used in the transaction.
Archinski said he fears a DPW garage on the site would be built and welcome visitors to Dracut coming in from the east. A DPW garage has been mentioned as something that will be needed in East Dracut because of Chapter 40B developments in the area. He also mentioned the possibility of it being used for a new school, something suggested a few months ago by now former Selectman Joe DiRocco. Santiago-Hutchings would prefer to see ARPA funds spent on something like the purchase of new fire trucks, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It’s likely that Archinski and Santiago-Hutchings would support using CPC funds to purchase the farm, if there were a plan in place for its use. Unfortunately, the town’s experience with Beaver Brook Farm makes them wary. Archinski noted Beaver Brook Farm was purchased with CPC funds in 2015 for $2.8 million. The town struggled for several years deciding what to do with it. An ad hoc committee finally set to work on its use.
The purchase included 20 acres of land and a farm house. The house was sold three years ago for $100,000 with restrictions on its use and renovations. The sale of the house means the town will have to pay $1 million for a driveway and parking lot for the rest of the property, Archinski complained with a hint of sarcasm.
This week’s Column was prepared by reporters Melanie Gilbert in Lowell, Peter Currier in Chelmsford, and Prudence Brighton in Dracut.
