IN HIS many years of public service, Bill Samaras has hardly been at a loss for words. He has fought hard for and been vocal about the students and programs he believed in during his almost 45-year career in Lowell Public Schools, as well as after retirement in elected office.

But as he sat at home with his wife Joyce watching the June 16 meeting of the Lowell City Council, he found himself speechless.

On the agenda was a motion by Councilors Vesna Nuon and Dan Rourke to name the Student Services Center at Lowell High School after Samaras, the former head of Lowell High.

Several speakers, including former Lowell Police Superintendent Ed Davis, former City Councilor Corey Belanger, former state Sen. Steve Panagiotakos, former Greater Lowell Technical High School Committee member and area Realtor Ray Boutin, as well as councilors spoke in favor of the motion.

“I heard the presentation by Councilors Rourke and Nuon and the speakers and the vote from the City Council, and the significance of the motion — naming the student center after me — it became really overwhelming,” Samaras said by phone June 26. “It caught us up.”

He paused, before adding in a voice thick with emotion, “It’s a great feeling.”

Samaras started his career in 1965, first as a teacher, before taking on roles as a curriculum director, assistant head of LHS and finally as head of LHS for his last 19 years in the education system.

Samaras started the Freshman Academy, began the process for the LHS Distinguished Alumni Awards and created the Latin Lyceum program.

In the early 2000s, Davis and Samaras started the D.A.R.E. [Drug Abuse Resistance Education] program to address gang and drug violence that was plaguing the high school. The program transitioned into the successful school resource officer program that continues to this day.

“Those student resource officers not only kept the schools safe,” Rourke said from the floor in support of his motion, “but they made that connection with young adults that I’m sure lasted a long time.”

Making connections continued after Samaras retired from education and moved into public service at City Hall, serving on the City Council and being elected mayor by his colleagues.

That second act of his professional life was noted by Nuon.

“His story is one of long-term service, integrity and vision,” Nuon said. “Providing that leadership in education and public service can have a lasting positive impact on a city, and he has certainly done that.”

In 2022, Samaras was given the first-ever Patrick J. Mogan Learning City Award, named in honor of a former superintendent of Lowell Public Schools who helped spearhead the successful effort to create the Lowell National Historical Park.

Councilor Rita Mercier said behind every man was a very supportive spouse.

“So, I wanted to make a shoutout to Joyce,” Mercier said. “That woman made him who he is today.”

The motion unanimously passed and the chamber erupted into applause.

Samaras said he was especially proud that his family — two sons and two granddaughters — got a chance to see the council meeting.

The naming of the center in his honor is “the summation of my career and what I value, and that was the students of Lowell High School,” Samaras said. “When it’s all said and done, that’s what I’m happiest about.”

The council directed the motion to the School Committee for review and approval.

— Melanie Gilbert

WILDLIFE IN Greater Lowell is on the move, and no, we don’t mean the public officials.

Chelmsford resident Wendy Capozzi sent a photo of deer in her backyard on Crabapple Lane, along with a photo of a very large turkey.

A Lowell resident sent in a photo of a coyote spotted prowling the grounds of the Reilly Elementary School in Belvidere.

Thank goodness school is out for the summer.

The Sun also received several photos of the orangey/yellowish cast to the sky from the wildfires burning in Canada.

The Column loves all the citizen reporting. More, please!

— Melanie Gilbert

FROM THE files of “citizen reporting,” comes a question from Lowell resident David McCabe, who sometimes signs his emails with the jocular, “Busybody Dave.”

Following The Sun’s reporting on the Father Morissette Boulevard and French Street improvements project that will replace the signalized traffic intersection at the corner of Arcand Drive and Father Morissette Boulevard with a roundabout, he asked what impact that new feature will have on the existing traffic circle between the Tsongas Center and the Ayotte Parking Garage.

A roundabout is a circular intersection where vehicles move in a counterclockwise motion around a center island. This circular intersection does not have traffic signals or stop signs. The drivers entering the roundabout yield to the vehicles already in the roundabout, then enter and exit at their desired exit.

The Sun posed that question to Melissa Desroches, the executive assistant to City Manager Tom Golden.

“There is no specific minimum spacing between intersections for roundabouts,” she said by email on Monday. “Typically, for urban roundabouts like [Vanasse Hangen Brustlin] has designed, the spacing between the roundabout and nearby intersections (like the existing Tsongas Arena traffic circle) is really dependent on the anticipated queues between the intersections.”

VHB is the civil engineering firm that designed the almost $8 million street improvement project that will run from Bridge Street to just short of Suffolk Street.

Desroches said the distance between the two intersections is approximately 200 feet.

“Based on the analysis, the 95th percentile queue on the southbound approach to the roundabout from the Tsongas arena is [plus or minus] 60-feet,” she said, “so no backup into the Tsongas traffic circle is anticipated … .”

Although the analysis did not study the operation of the intersections during an event at the Tsongas Center, Desroches said police details are typically used to control traffic entering and exiting Martin Luther King Jr. Way during those times.

“It is assumed that police details will still be required to control event traffic through the intersection with the change to a roundabout,” she said.

The public can view a map of every roundabout and traffic circle in the country at a roundabouts database.

— Melanie Gilbert

THE BILLERICA Historic Districts Commission made the bold move of voting for a third time to reject a proposal to have the Talbot Mills Dam taken down despite a judge telling them to do otherwise.

Ultimately the move seems to be symbolic, as commission Chair David Gagliardi said he was advised that the project will be able to move forward without BHDC approval, and on top of that any further symbolic votes could come with real consequences.

This isn’t the first time a board or commission in Billerica has been told outright by a judge that they must vote one way, but it is the first time in recent memory the body in question has outright ignored a judge’s order. The other instance of a judge compelling a vote that probably springs to mind for many was the whole Town Center debacle when the Billerica Select Board was ordered to vote to have a special election after previously rejecting a petition to hold one.

In that instance, while some of the Select Board may not have been happy about it, they followed the ruling without even an appeal, which, if nothing else, was probably the best move for the town from a financial perspective. Lawyers are not cheap.

The case of the Talbot Mills Dam is ultimately different in part because, in June, weeks before the judge’s decision, the town’s legal counsel made a filing indicating they would not be representing the BHDC on the issue any further. That takes away the question of how much the town would have to pay in legal costs if the case were to continue, but it was also a primary complaint among BHDC members who thought they could have been in a better position to win the case if they had proper legal counsel.

The project appears likely to move forward to the next set of necessary approvals from the Conservation Commission and Department of Public Works regardless of what the BHDC does, so functionally speaking, the only effect of Monday’s vote will be whether contempt of court charges are handed out or not.

Maybe there is room for an olive branch still. At least one commission member during Wednesday’s meeting balked at the suggestion for a bronze plaque to be installed to commemorate the dam, but what if it was something bigger? The dam is quite wide across the Concord River, so it seems unlikely it will be removed in one piece, but who said those pieces have to be discarded entirely afterward?

A little plaque for a structure that stood for nearly two centuries and had a tangible role in the region’s history maybe isn’t enough. A better way to recognize the history of the dam could be using the dam itself. The powers that be should consider whether even a relatively small section of the dam could be put on display somewhere near its current home. Surely that would be more acceptable to the local history buffs.

— Peter Currier

DRACUT OFTEN seems like a microcosm of the nation with deep divisions, animosities and quarrels that could be decades old. The Board of Selectmen and the School Committee might be as divided as Congress and the executive branch.

The making of the current debacle — the failed vote to build a replacement for the Campbell and Greenmont Schools — is blamed by some on the failure of communications between the two sides of government. For at least the last year, the two boards have had a difficult time occupying the same space.

The School Department needs infusions from the town’s free cash accounts and its own reserve accounts to function and may soon need to empty its reserves entirely to keep functioning into fiscal 2028. And the Greenmont School may need to close whether or not a replacement is underway.

Meanwhile, the town is caught by the soaring costs of health insurance for all employees —including the School Department’s — and the limits Proposition 2½ imposes on the budget. As a result, the police, fire and public works departments are understaffed in comparison to other towns.

In addition, the town risks receiving state grant money for its refusal to implement the MBTA Communities Act and is now unlikely to receive any state funds to solve the problems of the Campbell and Greenmont schools.

Last year, the town implemented an unpopular trash removal fee. Just recently, the town has increased its sewer base rate.

With all the financial problems besetting the town, it’s perhaps no wonder that Katharine Foster, finance director and assistant town manager, resigned abruptly recently. She’d returned from four months of maternity leave only six weeks before. She was hired only a year ago from Tyngsboro, where her work is well thought of.

Word of the assistant town manager’s departure began to spread across town on Monday thanks to a Facebook post that purports to be from Foster. It reads in part, “Reminder: You won’t be remembered by how hard you work, but rather were you a good mom, wife and friend. I’m free, now on to the next chapter.”

But covering the middle third of the image, and seeming not to be part of the original, were scratched the words, “When your Dracut Assistant Town Manager quits and calls Town Hall toxic…Yikes.” That is followed by another part of the original text, “A toxic workplace is more likely to change you than you are to change it.”

In an environment of such turmoil, it’s not hard to understand a level of toxicity affecting all town and school employees.

With all the difficulties affecting the town, one has to wonder where it all ends.

— Prudence Brighton