Lowell City Council tackles climate, crime issues - Lowell Sun

City Council tackles climate, crime issues
Mary Wambui, of Lowell, speaks to the City Council during its meeting at City Hall on Tuesday, May 16, 2023. Wambui spoke in favor of Councilor Vesna Nuon's motion on creating a sustainability department in the city to address climate goals. (Melanie Gilbert/Lowell Sun)
Lowell City Council members, ahead of their Jan. 10, 2023 meeting. From left, Corey Robinson, Paul Ratha Yem, John Leahy, Rita Mercier, Dan Rourke, Mayor Sokhary Chau, Wayne Jenness, Kim Scott, John Drinkwater, Vesna Nuon and Vice Chair Erik Gitschier. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)
March 9, 2023 - City leadership and community partners commemorated White Ribbon Day at Lowell City Hall Thursday. The annual event calls attention to ending violence against women, girls, children as well as all forms of gender-based violence. Lowell Police Deputy Superintedent Mark LeBlanc spoke about community policing and support for victims and survivors of domestic violence. (Melanie Gilbert/Lowell Sun)

LOWELL — The Lowell City Council convened its 18th meeting of the year on Tuesday with a focus on the future of climate and sustainability and crime-prevention strategies and programs in Lowell.

Resident Mary Wambui took the podium to speak in support of Councilor Vesna Nuon’s motion to create a sustainability department to meet the city’s climate goals.

She said the new department would provide centralized coordination and oversight to manage the city’s climate portfolio, as well as a dedicated effort to securing crucial funding from state and federal partners needed to meet climate goals.

“We need a department that can prioritize and leverage existing state and federal funding,” she said. “Chasing the money is a job on its own.”

In general, councilors were in agreement that Energy Manager Katherine Moses was already tasked with implementation of existing programs to also take on an aggressive grant and funding role, too.

Other speakers noted that neighboring communities such as Andover, Acton, Arlington, Boston, Cambridge and Chelmsford already had sustainability departments.

“A sustainability department would enhance the work of the energy manager by having a focus on grant writing and community outreach,” said Jay Mason. “State and federal funding for projects is not unlimited and we need to get our share of the funding while we can.”

He quoted statistics in which many sustainability departments bring in funding anywhere from two to nine times the salary of the person leading the department, which he said made a powerful economic argument to approve the motion.

In response to the economic impact, Councilor Dan Rourke asked City Manager Tom Golden to provide the council with a report on the funding that Energy Manager Katherine Moses has brought to the city to date.

Several councilors said they had received numerous calls and emails on the motion, with Nuon thanking the speakers, which included Lowell residents who belong to 350 Mass, a “statewide, grassroots, member-led, campaign-focused network committed to a just transition for a climate-safe world.”

“Electric bills are not going to go down, we need to think about it,” Nuon said. “There’s grants out there and Ms. Moses needs help.”

The motion coincided with a presentation by Moses to the council on climate initiatives.

In August 2022, the city was awarded a Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Action grant for $93,000 from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs to create a “ Resilient Urban Forest Master Plan and Urban Heat Island Assessment.”

“We are hoping this will be a document that starts us to be able to take actions to help to mitigate the impacts of climate change in particular our urban heat islands,” Moses said.

Analyzing data to drive policy decisions was also the focus of Lowell Police Deputy Superintendent Mark LeBlanc, who updated the council on expanding the department’s behavioral health unit and reducing gun violence in the city.

“These clinicians are embedded directly with the police officers,” he said. “They go to roll call, they sit in dispatch, they ride along with different officers. For the officers, it’s another tool in their tool belt. Expanding it makes total sense, and it’s something we’re interested in.”

Despite the headlines of shootings in various neighborhoods, LeBlanc said that incidents of gun violence are half of what they were last year for the same time frame.

“We are the lowest per 100,000 people for every single aggravated type of crime,” LeBlanc said.

He said the department’s multipronged approach was prevention, response and investigation and prosecution.

“Prevention starts with youth outreach – gang unit, neighborhood action unit, proactive patrol response,” LeBlanc said. “We do priority response to any gun calls so that’s multiple police units, but also supervisors, to have the best response – the most efficient response. Our criminal investigation bureau has an extremely high clearance rate on shootings in this city, and our gang unit has been extremely successful in seizing guns. They do a lot of intelligence work to determine where this violence is going to happen.”

That human intelligence combined with technology has helped address crime hotspots, said LeBlanc.

“Cameras in the hotspots is one of the most successful investigative tool we’ve ever had – bar none.”

The City Council meets in the second-floor chambers of City Hall, 375 Merrimack St. on Tuesdays at 6:30 p.m. To speak at a meeting, contact City Clerk Michael Geary before 4 p.m. the day of the meeting at 978-674-4161 or mgeary@lowellma.gov.