Recently, I was on the City Life Show, a daily show run early in the morning. Host Tom Bomil started by asking me what I would discuss with our city manager in our very first meeting if I were to be elected city councilor. To that, I answered briefly that I would focus on advocating for city resources to support building affordable homes in our city. My larger point is that our city has resources to fund the important things, we simply lack the political will. And so I want to answer the age old “how will we pay for it?” question.

Over the last 10 years, the city has decreased our direct financial contributions to our public school system by over 20%. In line with this trend, for the fiscal year of 2026, we cut direct contributions to our schools - without warning - by $4M. Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s standard for how much municipalities should pitch in to support their local school districts is 22% of school district net spending. Despite our public school leaders planning conservatively, our city manager still surprised our committee with a mere $10M cash contribution towards net spending, amounting to a 14.5% contribution. Although the Chapter 70 funding system in Massachusetts needs a rework to better keep up with inflation, our city council needs to demand a budget which ensures school funding remains - at the very least - level with the standard. Our abysmal contribution places Lowell towards the bottom of a chart ranking actual public school funding compared to required standards. Schools are being underfunded and requiring private donations to make up for unnecessary austerity which hurts our children, those with special or language support needs most of all. If our budget is increasing a fiscally conservative amount, how is it that we are cutting back on school spending? How is it that our general government spending has increased by $40M since 2021, yet our working class residents suffer more and more?

For this fiscal year alone, our city has allocated an additional $5M to the police department, which went largely unnoticed. At a time when violent crime is trending downwards nationally and when our own local crime rates have decreased by over 20% for various types of crime (per data from our own police department), why are we giving the police force more money? As our police force deals with over 20 vacancies, costing us over 1.5 million dollars per year, why are we instead cutting back on our crucial public health nurses as our national government increases the attack on our healthcare system? As the police continue to murder more and more of us every year and are increasingly “just following orders” by standing idly by or indirectly and directly supporting I.C.E operations, how is there not one single city councilor yelling from the top of City Hall about this most egregious misallocation of resources? When trust for police officers are at an all-time low in the region because of cases such as police union vice-president (at the time) David Pender’s brutalization of a 16 year old special needs student within the first week of school or because of power trips by ilk such as Kevin Garneau who abuse their power and connections to get away with rape of our vulnerable unhoused community members, why do we continue to irresponsibly increase their funding and push austerity on other vital departments? 

With $5M alone, we could begin to help our residents in truly meaningful ways. 1300 Lowell residents became parents in the year according to a 2023 census. With one million dollars, every single new family could receive $750 of a direct cash contribution to support every single child born by one of our own. With $5M, we could make up for the entire school budget shortfall and then some, lining us back up with DESE standards. With $5M, we could begin a housing trust fund or support the funding of more social housing.

And this is only part of the money our city is misusing. The office of the city manager has secured $20M to begin improving our roads throughout the city, of which there is a backlog of over $60M worth of repairs. However, this money is being spent on reinforcing the same poor urban planning system which got us here in the first place. Instead, this money should be utilized to do the best thing for creating a more financially secure, sustainable, and connected Lowell well on the way to saving its residents and self money: building infrastructure for alternative modes of transportation.

Cynical call outs asking “how [good] things can be paid for” are just that - cynical. Our city has the resources to improve our lives, the resources are simply being diverted away from those things we know most uplift all working residents. Not to mention the various state grants and favorable loan programs being bolstered to support our efforts in molding a better city with housing, public transportation, and a proper pre-K-12 care and education – if only we had a city council with the will to fight for them.

We must rid ourselves of the neoliberal, austerity-loving worm buried deep within our brain and question why there is always money for them, and not for us. Our city council ought to be filled with people who understand that our finite dollars are sacred, and that they should be effectively used to provide a good minimum quality of life for all Lowellians.

Volunteer Bonanza

With the preliminary election being in two weeks, we will be ramping up our outreach efforts even more. For this reason, the next seven days are going to be even more busy and exciting.

This Sunday, I will be holding a canvassing event at Tyler park at 1PM. Stop by to meet your neighbors and peers, discuss canvassing tips, and then spend some time talking to neighbors on behalf of my campaign! We will also be setting up phone banking for those who cannot make it in person and/or would rather support by calling potential voters, so reach out to be added to the volunteer chat and keep an eye out for that on my socials.

In honor of my DSA endorsement, a quote from anti-war and pro-working class advocate, DSA member Rashida Tlaib:

“When we shift our public dollars away from our schools and city services and into company developments, it increases the root causes of poverty: unemployment, underemployment, lack of community resources, and lack of quality public education.”

Neighbor, Son-of-immigrants, and Believer-in-a-better-world,

Marcos Antonio Candido Jr.