ON THIS holiday weekend, light news is the order of the day, and who better to fill that space than Myron aka “Krazy M.A.N.” — no last name required.

Myron decorated his Pontiac with a collection of skulls, including the license plate holder, the side mirrors, the hood, the antenna and the inside dash. All manner and size of skulls — some painted, some not — adorn the vehicle.

“It’s not done, yet,” he said, indicating that more decorating was planned.

This reporter spied him in the parking lot of Jay’s Food Store off Gorham Street in Lowell on Wednesday, and asked for a photo, which he was more than happy to oblige.

The man himself was a riot of skull-and-crossbones themes right down to the rings on his right hand and the glove on his left, as well as the full-length pants underneath his black shorts.

“I just like to be different,” Myron said.

— Melanie Gilbert

CITY EMPLOYEES got both Thursday and Friday off for the July 4 holiday, one extra day than businesses and most other municipalities allowed. It was a curious choice to take an extended vacation in a fiscal year that started on July 1, and featured layoffs and department cuts. The Column would have asked for a quote as to why the extra day, but City Hall was closed.

— Melanie Gilbert

AFTER ALMOST six years in the top job, Lowell Fire Chief Phillip Charron is retiring. He will end his more than 29 years of service in September.

And at the Tuesday Council meeting, it was announced that Ali Carter is leaving Lowell after nearly four years as the city’s economic development director in the Department of Planning and Development.

City Manager Tom Golden said her leaving “will be a loss.”

“Ali Carter was great at what she was doing,” he said during the meeting. “We need to hire for that position.”

— Melanie Gilbert

MERCIER ELECTRICAL and Communications trucks were spotted Wednesday in front of the Inn & Conference Center on Warren Street in Downtown Lowell, the first day after the last day that the space was used as housing for migrant and homeless families. The Dracut company could not be reached for comment, but The Column will continue to monitor the site for future development.

— Melanie Gilbert

IF YOU have time this holiday weekend, take a drive down Sprague Street off Boylston Street where Chris Bartlett has planted 250 flags lining both sides of the roadway in honor of the nation’s birthday.

“It’s a nice thing to do,” he said Monday. “It’s a high-traffic street. As I was putting them out, I got a lot of beeps and honks and thumbs up and everything.”

He measured out the flags a foot apart, and even though they keep toppling over here and there, he’s going to leave them up all summer.

“We’re 250 years old all year,” he said.

Bartlett was born the year after the country’s bicentennial, so he said this is his first big celebration.

“Nobody owns patriotism,” he said. “We all love our country in different ways. That’s what it’s all about.”

Happy July 4th!

— Melanie Gilbert

THE DISCUSSION surrounding Flock Safety’s cameras in Tewksbury last month hit all the usual notes found in any conversation about the controversial automatic license plate reading cameras.

This included a general discomfort with warrantless mass surveillance, claims by law enforcement that these cameras have helped solve crimes and close cases, and a mistrust of Flock Safety fueled by stories of data breaches and hacked cameras, which Flock representatives of course denied.

What was largely missing from the conversation during the June 23 Select Board meeting was how these cameras have been making their way into local cities and towns in the first place, which is concerning in that it does not seem to have been done with sufficient transparency. That is to say, there was not any direct input by the Tewksbury Select Board or Town Meeting when it came to these cameras being installed. They were simply added to the Tewksbury Police Department’s budget by the Police Department, which typically gets approved without too many questions from the Select Board or Town Meeting.

That is not unique to Tewksbury. When Billerica’s Flock Safety cameras were installed in recent years, it also came without a Select Board vote or a discussion at Town Meeting, beyond their respective votes on the overall town budget. This is less of an indictment on the police departments themselves, and more of a criticism of how their budgets tend to be handled.

A lot of scrutiny is given to departmental budgets every single Town Meeting cycle, but for the most part that same scrutiny is not applied to the budgets for police departments. At a minimum an overall town budget is presented to Town Meeting by the town manager or town administrator. For the more transparent towns in the area, the budget for the local school district is separately presented by the superintendent, since public schools are usually the largest individual department budget for a given town.

In a lot of cases, we don’t see that basic transparency coming from police departments, even though public safety is one of the more expensive departments to run in any community, behind schools. Perhaps a lot of the local backlash against Flock cameras could have been muted if police chiefs were required to give budget presentations to Town Meeting.

Them having to explain to Town Meeting voters why they want to pay for Flock cameras in the same way superintendents had to explain the budget for Chromebooks could have assuaged some fears before Flock took a lot of bad press, or at least given the voters the agency to vote to amend that funding out of the budget. Frankly, even without the Flock issue, they should have to regularly present the police budget anyway.

The police chiefs who have come forward to talk with their Select Boards about their towns’ Flock contracts deserve some credit, especially those chiefs who appear to engage in good faith with those vehemently opposed to Flock. Those conversations also give the police the chance to highlight cases where Flock cameras have genuinely helped their investigations, which is valuable information even if you want these cameras gone.

The problem though is that these conversations should have happened before our local police departments made deals with the devil, not after. Still, it isn’t too late for real transparency and input from the people, and at least that seems to be happening now that the public is more aware of these cameras popping up all over local communities. With Flock now a household name for the wrong reasons, one might wonder a town or two in Greater Lowell might reconsider the use of Flock cameras at a Town Meeting in the near future.

— Peter Currier

THE DRACUT Capital Planning Committee has ghosted the town. It hasn’t met — at least, had a session of sufficient consequence to warrant minutes being posted on the town website — for many years.

There is a document on the website that displays two files each purporting to be the agenda for a March 2024 meeting. Each document is identical and empty of content except the headings for the meeting:

“Meeting called to order at 6:00 PM

Minutes of 02-16-2023

Review of current Capital Projects and Capital Plan discussion

Adjournment.”

The Capital Planning Committee only meets one or two times a year to prepare a report for the town manager to use for budgeting purposes. There are no indications in the 2024 document that a meeting was held the previous year.

In fact, Town Manager Kate Hodges said that she could not find evidence that the committee had actually met in at least five years — something a former member recently disputed. The website shows files posted for several years in addition to 2024 but with little content. The website also shows that until May 1, the board had five members. Only one person is active. The board also has three vacancies.

Board of Selectmen Chair Don Plummer wants to change that and has the support of his colleagues and the town manager to begin resuscitating one.

Plummer believes that not having a functioning board contributed to the fate of a proposed school to replace the Joseph A. Campbell and Greenmont Avenue facilities. Certainly, the capital requirements of the two schools were not well documented and available for public consumption.

So, a Dracut voter might ask, “Who makes up this committee and what is its function?”

The Dracut Town Charter answers, “seven or nine persons to be appointed by the Town Manager for terms of three years, initially so arranged that as nearly an equal number of terms as possible shall expire each year. Each member must reside in a different precinct from all other members; provided, however, that if there has been a vacancy that the Town Manager has been unable to fill for more than 120 days, the Town Manager may fill the vacancy with someone from the same precinct as an existing member.”

The document continues, “The Capital Planning Committee shall prepare an ongoing capital plan covering the ensuing five years including all capital outlay items contained in the current annual budget and reasonably anticipated for succeeding years. They shall monitor the creation of bonded indebtedness and the annual interest charges thereon. They shall report to the Town Manager in sufficient time to enable him/her to develop the capital program required hereunder.”

Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 41, Section 106B has a more robust description. A town’s capital planning committee “shall annually review the capital improvement program, if any, and proposals for the construction of municipal buildings, acquisition of land or personal property and make recommendations to the appropriate officer, board, agency or department. Such recommendations may be included within the annual budget or the annual report shall annually review the capital improvement program, if any, and proposals for the construction of municipal buildings, acquisition of land or personal property and make recommendations to the appropriate officer, board, agency or department.”

It’s likely there were many reasons for the defeat of the proposed $177 million replacement for the Campbell and Greenmont schools.

A plan for developing and distributing information was undoubtedly one of them. A yearly capital planning report might have helped. But the fault goes back more than two years. Town Manager Kate Hodges began working for the town 18 months ago, but in Dracut’s always-overactive rumor mill, she is taking the brunt of the finger-pointing.

— Prudence Brighton