MARCOS CAN DIDO
Para el Distrito 8 de Lowell
Lowell estuvo una vez a la vanguardia del desarrollo urbano. Es hora de que eso vuelva a suceder. Me postulo para el concejo municipal para reducir el costo de vida, transformar nuestras carreteras e invertir en nuestros niños.
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Dare to struggle, dare to win
Prioridades políticas
Reforma de Vivienda
Having a roof over your head is a human right and should not break the bank. What I believe Lowell needs (and can accomplish) is:
1. Passing the Lowell Forward plan which John Descoteaux rejected so we can access millions of dollars of state assistance to build affordable homes.
2. Increasing the housing supply by retaining our city-owned land and constructing sustainable, energy efficient, beautiful, and revenue neutral homes for all.
3. Simplifying zoning laws, incentivizing, and streamlining the building of beautiful affordable homes on land producing little to no value.
4. Increased tenant protections against undue lease non-renewals and wrongful evictions.
When we lower the burden of rent, the working class who build and support this city will thrive.
A car-dominated society is holding Lowell back from being a thriving and healthier community. Together we can:
1. Promote and expand bike-to-school/work initiatives. Our city is compact and 15,000 kids and thousands of workers on bikes is a lot healthier and safer then moving them all in cars.
2. Push for immediate implementation of the GoLowell plan, which maps out the appropriate roads that would greatly benefit from multi-modal use integration, to be well under way by 2028 - when the new walkable/bikable rourke bridge is estimated to be completed.
3. Utilizing state funds and partnering with local townships so that we may collaboratively improve the LRTA by electrifying our buses and increasing trip frequency along more efficient routes.
Less cars on the road means saving money on street maintenance, means less parking lots and dealerships and more homes and small businesses, healthier citizens, quieter streets, cleaner air, and happier communities.
Iniciativas de transporte saludable
Renovando el cuidado infantil
One of the largest burdens on working families or single parents outside of rent is childcare. I'm proposing:
1. A direct cash transfer program for new mothers. This program is tried and true in cities with populations and budgets comparable to ours, especially when utilizing state and federal aid in an efficient manner.
2. Expand our support of child-care providers applying for state-funded assistance to upgrade our children's learning spaces.
3. Ensuring that WIC-eligible families receive their due benefits. 50% of WIC eligible families have NOT signed up!
4. As a part of my housing initiative, I believe first floors of multi-floor buildings should be reserved for the needs of the city such as a small business, a local health clinic, or a child-care center!
When our children are cared for, our burdened parents will have time for themselves and for work, the strain on our healthcare system will be alleviated, and our kids will grow up to be outstanding citizens.
Prioridades políticas
Building Too Much?
Some may believe Lowell is building too much and that we ought to let surrounding communities pick up the slack. However, in my view I see many positives in building more multi-use multi-family units across the city. 1. State-assisted, non-profit developed, stream-lined home construction on city-owned land would be an enormous boon to Lowell. Income generated from new taxes from more development would shift tax burdens away from property tax increases. An increase in housing supply would reduce rents which would mean more money for small businesses throughout the city. In all, mixed-use development would be a boost for Lowell! 2. We should pick up the slack of these surrounding communities because people wanting to move to Lowell is a great thing! It means they want to spend their money here and contribute to our city and we should more than welcome that. 3. Some may be worried about the strain on municipal utilities and services due to a rise in population. However, studies show that a steady rise in population to an area does not burden resources and the taxes generated by newcomers assist in covering any fees for utility upgrades required. 4. Last, but surely not least, is the simple fact that building homes provides consistent work for our union workers involved in all steps of development, construction, and maintenance.
The Homeless Crisis
To solve the homeless crisis, we must move as a city with compassion. We must build homes for the homeless, not sic the cops on them as John Descoteaux voted to. Over 20% of our population makes less than $25,000 a year and studies show most people don't have $500 dollars saved up for an emergency. The homeless crisis is a self-inflicted wound healed only by building homes and offering comprehensive services to those in need. Without that, we risk harming and pushing more of our residents into inhumane conditions.
Energy Bills
Our energy bills are too high and with hotter temperatures earlier in the year, they will only continue to increase. As your city councilor, I would push for initiatives which would lower the cost of our energy bills. 1. We need to future proof our energy grid and move towards renewable sources of energy which will make our energy bills cheaper. 2. Increase communications about opting-in to Lowell's municipal energy aggregation plan which aims to reduce your energy costs by bulk purchasing energy from a competitive supplier. 3. Pushing and assisting property owners to reinvest profits for upgrading the energy efficiency of their homes. 4. Building energy efficient homes! Although initially more expensive, homes with better materials, insulation, windows, and awnings installed will be cheaper in the long run as they rot less, better regulate temperatures by keeping the heat in or out, and fare weather in various weather conditions and worsen in quality at a much slower rate.
Funding Education
The education of our children and young adults should be the priority of any city which is serious about taking care of its residents. That is why, if elected your city councilor, I would not stand for budget cuts to any part of our system which aims to educate and enlighten our youth. This is especially important as our national government threatens budget cuts that will harm our communities. I will be a voice for a well-funded childcare and public school system. I will not stand for austerity measures against vital community programs which help all our students thrive. Lastly, I will stand alongside you to hold those accountable in our government which attempt to push any of our students and community members by the wayside.
Supporting Local Businesses
Lowell is a historic city with a downtown that is in demand regionally. My priorities are to make sure our city is doing everything we possibly can to ensure more small businesses are able to sustain themselves and grow. I believe my bold vision to ensure rapid implementation of a more walkable, bike-friendly, and bus-friendly city would immensely support our smaller businesses. Increasing foot traffic near commercial zones by creating safer streets helps our businesses by increasing eyes, sales, and demand. Furthermore, I believe we ought to make sure the permitting process, loans, and incentives our city offers are improved so that the hurdle to beginning a small business is reduced as much as possible. I also strongly believe we must simplify our zoning laws so that we can create more multi-use buildings throughout the city in areas it makes sense to (i.e., small commercial zones, intersections with a small shop, corridors on main streets needing development) so that communities can grow without being separated and so more local businesses can flourish in parts of the city outside downtown. Lastly, I’m an avid supporter of having more festivities throughout the year in Lowell to celebrate different occasions and to connect our communities and small businesses! It is quite simple to me, a city which focuses on growing local businesses is a city with happier residents and is more financially secure.
Health and Reproductive Care
If we want to ensure that our city is healthy, we must properly invest in our health and reproductive care systems, not cut funds to them as our city council has voted to do. Cutting our public health nurse positions down to one, while our communities are still dealing with covid, long-covid, and the rise in other preventable illnesses, is simply immoral. We must - at minimum - return to the three public health nurses we had, with room to increase this capacity during especially heightened periods of risk, to both ensure we are on top of any threat of spread of illness and so that we may better engage and inform our diverse communities. Secondly, we need to be working with our Lowell Community Health Center as they continue to grow. In the coming years, they look to expand capacity and even begin training their very own primary care residents! We need to offer more multi-use buildings throughout Lowell so that we may allow the expansion of LCHC to occur more equitably. This would increase access to mental health care, improve routine prenatal and primary care visits, and positively impact a community in a number of ways. Third, Massachusetts is facing a shortage of critical hospital staff. We need more practical nurses, social workers, and home health aides. If we want our hospitals to save money by reducing the need for expensive temporary nursing positions - who often do not know the community or workplace, then we need to train our residents to be able to care for each other. We need to work with and expand our local programs such as the Greater Lowell Technical High School’s day/night time program for becoming an LPN. They should be able to withstand a capacity of greater than 40 students per class and we need to support them financially so that we can reduce costs and increase accessibility. We need to work with local cities and towns to make sure Middlesex Community College’s various healthcare related programs have the resources they need to train the next generation of caretakers - a critical backbone to any healthy society. Families need more support. Mothers should have access to reliable reproductive care such as abortion access and consistent prenatal care visits; Parents struggling financially deserve direct cash support; And parents should have the support they need to get their child into affordable daycare programs and preschool. Put simply, I want to increase support to those organizations and community programs which help us all. I want to make sure our communities have the resources they need so that our families are healthy and so that everyone feels confident in our city’s ability to take care of them. Massachusetts, along with our entire country, is facing a healthcare crisis. We need a city council constituted by those who are ready to meet the moment and protect their vulnerable community members and the health of the entire city against an austerity-based national situation which allows our hospitals to close and a local situation which is okay with making us all sicker. I also believe my policy priorities synergize with the need for a healthier city. When we build denser communities, do away with car-dependency, and reduce rents and childcare costs, we will have more money to go towards those resources which do improve our lives, we will move about in healthier ways, our air will be cleaner, and we’d be much happier.
Repairing the Roads
Many roads in Lowell are in disrepair. Side walks are overgrown or cracked and unsafe for those with mobility issues. I propose we improve our road conditions while also beginning to reduce car usage within the city. Car traffic destroys our roads and produces a negative and never-ending cycle of having to spend limited city resources on repairs. We can lower these costs by switching to more sustainable forms of transportation such as bikes and buses. Expanding the list of schools which participate in and improving upon Massachusetts's Safe Route To School program will be a priority of mine so that we can reduce the wear and tear on our roads while also producing healthier and cleaner communities free of fumes and the constant whir of engines.
Implementing Bike Lanes
The Climate Crisis
The climate crisis is not coming, its here. The data supports this and we are already beginning to see its effect in hotter and muggier summers with late hurricane season storms developing rapidly many months ahead of schedule. Our water sources and aging energy grid will be strained and the people who will face the costs are the citizens as for-profit energy companies look to continue making money. Every year we do not decarbonize and reduce energy usage is another crucial year wasted as we hurdle towards unprecedented times. For this reason, my policies holistically have the climate and environment in mind; 1. Homes built with sustainable materials guided by modern energy-efficient building codes is crucial to reducing energy consumption. 2. Reducing car usage will reduce carbon emissions, reduce need for expansive road networks and parking lots which absorb heat and warm our communities. 3. Electrifying our busses, improving bus mobility, and modernizing our traffic signal system to increase bus route efficiency are crucial steps to decarbonizing and creating a greener and healthier city. 4. Planting more trees and significantly expanding the households in Lowell which participate in Massachusetts's Grow Wild program. Planting trees and turning chemical filled pedicured green lawns into habitats of native wildflowers provides food, pollen, and protection for local wildlife as well as reduces local temperatures, water usage, and need for fertilizer. These efforts save us money in the long run in a plethora of ways and would make Lowell a blueprint for small cities looking to become greener, healthier, and happier.
Some may see some of the bike and bus lanes being produced throughout the city not being utilized and think, rightly so, why anyone ought to continue investing in such a venture. However, spending more on improving this infrastructure and making them wider-reaching is how we encourage and increase use. Isolated and unprotected bike lanes are difficult to reach, uninviting, and at worst a real risk to the cycler. If we expanded better integrated bike and bus lanes, as detailed out within the GoLowell plan developed in 2021 - 6 six years after a promise to develop such a plan - there would be a real incentive for use. Further, introducing our residents to a more healthy, sustainable, and cheaper form of transportation positively impacts the ways we move about the city in the long-term and saves us money.
Racism In Lowell
This nation was built on racism and the current state of this city was only possible by collaborating or operating with various racist institutions and ideas over the last 190 years. Lowell must reckon with this tragic past and only when we look within can we be able to transform how this city can look. It is disappointing to note that our council members have failed many times when given a chance to begin to correct the inequities which exist in our city. They failed us when they rejected a call to declare racism a public health crisis. They failed us when they rejected a plan to increase housing and transit options throughout all our communities. They will fail us again and again on this front as long as they continue to deny increased support to those who need it most. We must work steadfastly to correct this issue, else the issues this city faces will become worsening crises. We must pass and implement the Lowell Forward plan and create beautiful affordable homes in all our communities so that anyone may enjoy any part of Lowell. We must protect our most vulnerable citizens from those within our city with chauvinistic beliefs and from those outside our city who continue with threats to harm, deport, and destroy families here and abroad. We must properly improve and maintain infrastructure across all parts of Lowell. We need to increase our partnerships with and funding for local community programs. We ought to create a participatory budgeting process to give the unheard a voice. My vision for Lowell is a bold one and it can only happen if we move together as intertwined communities towards a common good. "I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” - James Baldwin
Immigration
Since its founding, Lowell has been a community of immigrants, refugees, and hopefuls. Many leave their homes and families reluctantly looking for a better life. Through taxes, they pay into a system that oftentimes does not reinvest in their quality of life. A lot of us can resonate with this truth and we should recognize this and understand that we are more similar to each other than we believe. I think all Lowellians, born and raised and newly settled, deserve to be treated with dignity and have their rights to a healthy and happy life protected. With my initiatives, we will not be competing amongst each other for resources but instead working together towards a more equitable and thriving Lowell. Furthermore, I believe it is of utmost importance we make Lowell a sanctuary city. This proposal was last discussed in 2019 and opposed because the Lowell police department already has an agreement to not cooperate with ICE. However, we have seen in recent months ICE and CBP's blatant disregard for the constitutional rights of both citizens and immigrants alike while police departments have also broken the trust of community members by standing idly-by and sometimes illegally assisting in ICE operations despite policies put forth to stop this. We must protect all our citizens, including immigrants, and hold those who create mistrust accountable.
Supporting the Arts
Lowell is at its best when we support our local artists. As your city councilor, I would be an advocate for sustaining and increasing support to those programs that develop our youth’s talent and uplift all our creatives. Supporting these programs creates a symbiotic relationship between our communities and the city. If our artists are capable of making a living off their talents or are capable of affording a space to create and showcase their art, we will not have to tell people Lowell is beautiful because it will already be known. Further, on a broader note, supporting community engagement year round, whether through summer sports programming or afterschool art initiatives, creates a more connected, safer, beautiful, and happy society.
A Peaceful and Prosperous Lowell
Lowell’s historicity is undeniable as a planned city which, through the mills and textile production, helped launch this nation’s industrial revolution. However, the cotton which fueled our growth was grown by enslaved people, demonstrating Lowell’s willingness to cooperate with the southern economy built on racism and the blood of millions of innocent people. Lowell’s diversity, too, has a dark past. While it is a privilege to welcome and learn from so many different cultures, people often arrive in Lowell as the result of poor conditions in their country of origin. Conditions which our nation has fostered through unfair economic policies, election meddling, purposeful destabilization, and direct military action. We find ourselves at a crossroads. We can choose not to make these mistakes again as we look forward to a possible second golden age of development in Lowell in the coming years. As a person with a background in research, I understand the importance of our partnership with UMass Lowell - a university which is growing and planning a major expansion in the form of the LINC project. Draper laboratory, a “non-profit” organization known to help develop technology deployed in America’s destructive and unjustified wars of aggression, has become one of the first major laboratories seeking to take space in our new innovation hub. This should give us pause to reconsider what our end goal with these new research labs are. This institution and others with similar research cannot continue on our soil; the city belongs to the people, and we ought to have a say in the type of research which is done within our borders. There is plenty of good research to be done outside of that which seeks to make America’s death machine more efficient, stealthy, and easy to deploy. Our innovation hub should be filled with those labs whose goals are grounded in helping people and creating a more peaceful and prosperous world. We should do this by building off our newly burgeoning relationship with the United Nations to develop symbiotic partnerships with other American and international research institutions to open new branches of research within our new state of the art lab spaces that focus on these goals. This would be a major boon to our city by making Lowell internationally known and by opening opportunities for our students to collaborate with world-renowned scientists at the forefronts of their field. I also believe that Lowell should review the tax exemptions we have in place for equipment purchased by “Research and Development” organizations. We should lower this tax subsidy from 100% to generate more income from the research that will be done in our city. Further, I believe this tax exemption should not apply to those labs which have defense contracts in order to ensure our tax benefits are going to industries and companies whose goals align with our values of building a better world. Further, as UMass Lowell continues to grow, and therefore begins to take more land under its tax exempt status, the city will be forced to face these budget holes from the loss of property tax revenue. This is an even larger reason to re-evaluate the economic relationship we have with the university in order to make sure their growth does not adversely impact our residents.
Election Reform
When elections are decided by the candidate with more money and the constituency with more free time, we fail to foster a truly democratic process. That is why I am proposing three points to create a fair election season in Lowell with the most participation possible. 1. Campaign financing reform: We need a spending cap, a matching funds pool, and to provide equal seed funds to all candidates on the ballot. A seed fund is extremely important for allowing anyone from any walk of life be confident in running a campaign, despite personal and community economic circumstances. A matching funds pool rewards candidates with broad small donor support and a spending cap ensures fair competition and disallows an election to be decided by who can better flood the neighborhood with mailers or lawn signs running up to an election. 2. Increasing Participation: Letters with short descriptions of term goals by each district specific and at-large candidate along with an explanation of mail-in-ballot/voter registration process should be mailed to every resident of the city during the election season. 3. Election years: If we want to increase the participation in our elections, we need to line up our election season with other major elections. This means switching our election years from odd years to even years.
Transparency and Accountability
As your city councilor, I aim to make our government more transparent and accountable to the people. I will make sure our public meetings are not held in secret and that summaries are understandable and more openly and easily available. I will be on the ground speaking to our citizens more often to hear out concerns and to lower the barrier for civic engagement. I will push to create a more engaged youth since they too should have a say in the developments of the city they will grow up in. I will push for a participatory budget, so that we can better understand what it is that the people want to see from our city. If we want to create a more democratic society, we need to lower the barrier to civic engagement and make sure that what is discussed within city hall is not held in secret but more openly and easily available.
Coalition Building
As a member of the city council, I would use my time to increase our partnership with our state representatives and other cities in the commonwealth to push for change at the state level that would benefit all Lowellians such as: 1. Joining the call to updating our state-mandated building code to modern standards so that we can build more efficient buildings with more sustainable materials. 2. Joining the push for Massachusetts to appeal the law which bans municipalities' abilities to impose rent controls - a measure which is capable of immediately helping all renters in Lowell. 3. Working with statewide communities to push our state legislature to increase public school funding. 4. Joining the international anti-war movement which aims to pressure against economies and university systems that invest into America’s war machine. It would greatly benefit the whole world and Lowellians if our economies were built upon technologies which improve all our lives here at home.
