Lowell staff outline options to tie tax‑incentives to local hiring, green measures and public benefits
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Summary
City planning and economic development staff told the economic development subcommittee that Lowell’s standard state‑authorized tax‑incentive schedules are conservative and proposed a points‑based rubric to reward local hiring, green building and neighborhood benefits; staff will return with a draft score sheet and public outreach plan.
City planning and economic development staff on April 7 gave the Lowell City Economic Development Subcommittee an overview of the state programs used to offer tax incentives and outlined options to attach community benefits to longer exemption terms.
Giovanni Baez Rose, assistant city manager and director of planning and development, opened the presentation and said staff prepared "a very brief kind of summary version of the motion response" requested by council members. Maria Dickinson, the city’s economic development specialist, reviewed the three main programs the city uses: the state Economic Development Incentive Program (EDIP), the Housing Development Incentive Program (HDIP) adopted in 2012, and the Urban Center Housing TIF program.
Why it matters: Lowell offers exemptions tied to state programs rather than unilateral local abatements, and those state rules both enable and limit what the city can offer. Dickinson told the subcommittee that Lowell’s standard HDIP schedule is a seven‑year offering and is conservative compared with peers: a MassINC comparison showed other gateway cities sometimes use up to 10‑year schedules with average exemption rates around 45.5 percent, while Lowell’s standard seven‑year schedule averaged about 14.2 percent across its term.
Staff described how exemptions work in practice. "A lot of people think that that exemption is on the full value of the assessed value of the property, and it's not," Dickinson said, explaining that exemptions apply only to the incremental value created by development and that the city resumes full assessment after the TIF term ends. She said the city uses the state’s boilerplate TIF agreement and that the state must approve any program language for these state‑backed incentives.
The presentation included recent examples of flexibility within state programs. For AVID, a company that relocated to Lowell earlier this year, staff said the firm moved about 182 existing jobs to the city and plans to create roughly 75 more; rather than a TIF, Lowell offered a partial waiver of permitting fees as the city’s contribution while state certification remained part of the process.
On enforcement and compliance, staff said projects file annual reports to the state and that the city receives those reports. "If you're not following the rules, we have the ability with the assessor's office to essentially send them a letter and say you're not eligible for this abatement anymore and your tax rate is moving to what it would be without this incentive," Baez Rose said, describing decertification and loss of abatement as a tool for noncompliance.
Councilors and staff spent most of the meeting on how the city could create a clearer rubric to guide negotiations and attach additional public benefits to longer exemptions. Staff presented two broad options: continue negotiating each request individually, or adopt a menu or points system that ties extra years or higher exemption rates to specific outcomes such as local residency or apprenticeship requirements, green building techniques, open‑space or pedestrian‑safety improvements, and affordable units in housing projects. Camilo (planning staff) described this as a definable scoring approach: the Department of Planning and Development would set the metrics, and additional interdepartmental checks would be needed to verify commitments.
A councilor raised integrated pest management (IPM) and a no‑rodenticide preference as an example of a policy the council could bake into standard offers. Other council comments urged neighborhood targeting — for example, weighting points differently for downtown or The Acre versus Pawtucketville — and public engagement on what the community values.
What’s next: The subcommittee asked staff to return with basic "bumpers" and a draft score sheet so the subcommittee can brainstorm a "dream sheet" and then scale it back to practical options. Staff also agreed to check with the building commissioner about permit language relating to IPM and rodenticide restrictions and to confirm existing tracking and compliance procedures.
There were no formal votes on changes to programs at the meeting; the subcommittee closed after a brief motion to adjourn.
