AS COMMUNITIES in Greater Lowell grapple with the pushback against Flock Safety cameras, the list of communities in Massachusetts opting to drop their contracts with the surveillance company grows.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, there are at least 80 police departments across the state that contract with Flock for the use of automatic license plate reading cameras, among which are Lowell, Billerica, Littleton and Tewksbury.

As the scrutiny has increased against the company and the broadening reach of mass surveillance, the issue of the cameras is being talked about more within the public meetings of select boards and city councils. Notably, there are a number of instances where those conversations were not happening at all as these cameras were being installed.

Now, though, the number of communities shutting off their Flock cameras grows. Just this week, the mayor and police chief of Salem said in a joint statement that the city will be “removing the Flock Automatic License Plate Readers that are currently installed in Salem.”

“The City has determined that there are insufficient protections for the ALPR data generated by Flock’s systems. Such data should be owned and used only in the furtherance of Salem’s public safety priorities,” Salem Mayor Dominick Pangallo and Police Chief Lucas Miller said Thursday.

The pair did not cast down ALPR cameras outright, just those run by Flock, as they claimed the police department there has had great success in using such cameras during investigations of a number of different crimes, which is consistent with the messaging police chiefs in Greater Lowell have given about these cameras.

Salem now joins communities like Framingham, Natick, Cambridge, Watertown and Attleboro in dropping their use of Flock cameras. It is a relatively small number of communities, but as the pressure continues that list may grow. In the case of at least Littleton, the town switched the cameras off temporarily in May “to allow the Select Board and municipal staff time to review the technology, better understand the available system features and operational capabilities, and evaluate policy considerations before any future decisions are made.”

The list does not seem poised to add any more cities or towns within Greater Lowell, at least not by the hand of select boards or city councils. As the fall approaches, though, it will be interesting to see if any Town Meeting articles spring up to put Flock to a vote, given the opposition.

— Peter Currier

THE BILLERICA Select Board is scheduled to meet in executive session Monday for the purpose of potentially releasing all eligible executive session minutes going back to 1975.

That isn’t a typo. The board will convene Monday evening to discuss releasing more than 50 years’ worth of unreleased executive session minutes, specifically those from Dec. 31, 1975, to July 16, 2026.

The discussion will take place in executive session before returning to a public session to make any relevant announcements for whatever action was taken during executive session.

Naturally that will exclude any executive session minutes pertaining to matters of ongoing litigation or that still require confidentiality, but theoretically that should make up just a fraction of the unreleased minutes from the past five decades.

The effort to release all eligible minutes is being promoted by Select Board member Dina Favreau, who said in a social media statement Wednesday that “Transparency and accountability matter.”

“Releasing historical records when the purpose of the Executive Session has been fulfilled helps preserve our town’s history while ensuring the public has access to records whenever possible,” said Favreau.

Exactly how many documents are involved here isn’t clear, but with 50 years to cover, it could be a doozy, depending on how diligent Billerica Select Boards of the past were about regularly releasing them.

— Peter Currier

THE LOWELL School Committee got a lesson in synthetic media deepfakes during its July 15 meeting. Deepfakes are digitally manipulated content.

The issue came up during a discussion around updates to the Lowell Public Schools Student-Parent Handbook for the 2026-2027 school year for grades K-12.

The annual updates are designed to ensure LPS policies remain clear, current and aligned with district priorities and state Department of Education and Secondary Education guidelines, and are in the best interests of students and families.

The 111-page document covers technical issues like attendance and graduation requirements, as well as safety concerns and cellphone use on campus.

Assistant Superintendent for Schools and Leadership Wendy Crocker-Roberge told the members that guidelines around the use of artificial intelligence tools were recent additions to the handbook.

“The Department of Education this year actually quite recently released guidance and a requirement for school districts to work in the creation of AI deepfakes,” she said. “These are images, videos, audio and more that are incredibly easy to make very real now with very little savviness technologically speaking.”

Lowell’s guidelines follow those implemented by Boston Public Schools in May, in which students and staff are banned from creating any AI-generated audio, video or images meant to depict real individuals without their explicit consent or to depict harmful, threatening, violent or inappropriate content.

“It was incumbent upon us to work those changes into this year’s handbook — to specifically name this as a violation in our handbook,” Crocker-Roberge said.

— Melanie Gilbert

CYBERSECURITY IS a priority of the state government.

The Baker-Polito administration created the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security in 2017 in partnership with the Legislature “to improve data security, safeguard privacy, and promote better service delivery” across the commonwealth.

That structure didn’t help prevent the disastrous cyberattack on Lowell City Hall in April 2023, which may have been due to human error, but the Healey-Driscoll administration has been supporting and strengthening cybersecurity through targeted funding programs.

In June, it rolled out its first EOTSS Cyber Remediation Grant awards. This program supports municipalities in strengthening their efforts to cultivate a cyber-secure environment.

“The award is designed to move participating organizations beyond assessment and into actionable remediation by funding high-priority cybersecurity improvements directly aligned with recommendations identified during Cybersecurity Health Check engagement,” the award notice said.

Lowell was awarded $40,000.

— Melanie Gilbert

THE IRISH Festival comes to Lowell Sept. 12 — more than a month from now. But the Lowell Memorial Auditorium, which hosts the event, already has a huge banner strung across its façade at 50 E. Merrimack St.

The daylong event takes place both inside and outside of the LMA grounds. Thanks to financial support by the brewing company Guinness, the family-friendly festival will be a free event for all attendees.

The event features music from national, regional and local acts, Irish-inspired culinary and beverage offerings, artisan vendors, family activities, Irish step dancing and more. Previous musical acts have included Ian Millar of The Irish Rovers, Shelagh O’Brien, My Druthers, Irish Whispa, Derrick Keane and Boxty.

So, mark your calendars for another one of Lowell’s signature events.

— Melanie Gilbert

AS DRACUT Town Manager Kate Hodges has reminded residents on several occasions lately, the town is losing employees. That’s due to salaries that are not competitive with what nearby towns can offer and the layoffs caused by the same budget crisis keeping paychecks low.

Right now, two key positions are listed as open on the town’s website. One is for the position of finance director — the assistant town manager title is missing. That is a vacancy created by the recent departure of Katharine Foster.

The second position is that of library director. It has been open since February when Christine Muir left for an equivalent position in Plaistow, New Hampshire.

Muir worked at the Parker Memorial Library in Dracut for four years, coming from Lexington where she was assistant director of the Cary Memorial Library. She was hired in Dracut as assistant director but became director shortly afterward.

She organized the Lexington library’s 150th anniversary celebrations and the Dracut library’s 100th. When off the clock in Dracut, she provided some quiet guidance to St. Anne’s Church in Lowell for its 200th anniversary in 2024-2025.

Libraries aren’t just for books and videos anymore. Muir recognized the potential of the “library of things” movement and expanded what her predecessor had started. Library card holders can borrow a host of items from lawn games, power tools, appliances, digital film scanners, tools for crafts and more. The library is open to anyone 18 or older who holds a Merrimack Valley Consortium library card.

When this reporter told Brian Flaherty, chair of the Board of Library Trustees, that Muir will be missed, he replied, “For sure, she was wonderful.”

Applications for the position were originally set to close on April 6. But the search continues. The board is reviewing resumes and hopes to have a new director on board soon.

— Prudence Brighton

BEACON HILL’S biennial sprint to its old July 31 deadline has always been a race against a firm legislative calendar. This year, lawmakers are walking up to a new, more forgiving deadline while voters and interest groups are racing toward the ballot.

As lawmakers barrel toward the end of scheduled formal sessions this week, they’re not scrambling to wrap up major bills since they agreed to a major internal rule change that pushes back their deadline and lets policymaking bleed into election season.

They’re trying to settle some of the questions Massachusetts voters are poised to weigh in on this fall — proposing their own, more limited version of legislative public records access as supporters of a broader ballot initiative push to simply apply existing law to Beacon Hill, and reviving a debate over a voter-approved tax cap before voters decide to adjust it themselves.

The topics emerged in a week when the House also tackled abortion policy and the Senate packed other major issues into a sprawling economic development bill that served as a vehicle for everything from housing reforms to happy hour.

Senate Democrats are expected this week to approve their version of a legislative public records bill after the House acted last month, setting up negotiations over mostly similar approaches. The Senate proposal would establish a statutory process for requesting legislative records, define nearly 20 categories of documents subject to “disclosure,” create records access officers and an appeals process, and establish separate public records provisions for the Legislature and governor’s office.

Unlike the Nov. 3 ballot question, it would not simply apply the existing public records law to those branches, instead creating a new framework with branch-specific procedures and exemptions. Most of the listed records are already publicly available but that has not stopped legislative leaders from branding their effort as a transparency offensive.

The Senate’s proposal also omits the House-approved language that would narrow the scope of the voter-approved legislative audit, but that debate is far from over.

If lawmakers move the bill into conference committee by July 31, negotiators could work on an agreement to be released at an unknown date before the end of the session in early January. That gives lawmakers the option of delaying a final vote until after November’s election, avoiding pre-election blowback over limiting the reach of the audit law that has proved politically popular.

The timing could also matter beyond the audit debate.

If lawmakers approve their own public records framework before November and voters also endorse the broader ballot question, the state could face new legal questions about how the two laws interact. Alternatively, legislative leaders could wait to finalize a compromise until after the election, allowing conference negotiations to take into account whatever voters decide. Either way, lawyers could find themselves busy trying to work out the legal technicalities.

Tax policy also surfaced in the Senate via way of the economic development bill.

During a two-day debate on nearly 600 amendments to the underlying $325 million bill, senators considered an amendment that would repeal Chapter 62F, the voter law that caps state tax collections and triggered nearly $3 billion in taxpayer rebates in 2022.

The initial proposal had the support of at least half the Senate, but was met with fierce opposition from the business groups backing this fall’s ballot initiative designed to make rebates more likely.

The version senators ended up approving on Thursday revised the law to limit how often the rebates are triggered. If the House and governor sign on, Chapter 62F rebates would now only be triggered if state tax revenue in a given fiscal year is equal to 7.5% or more of the total statewide personal income reported for that year.

We know Speaker Ron Mariano’s posture: he told reporters last week he’d “love” to repeal the tax cap law. As for the rest of his membership and Gov. Maura Healey as they’re running for reelection? It remains to be seen.

— Sam Drysdale, State House News Service