THE SUN caught up with Gov. Maura Healey after a Friday ceremony at the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Lowell launching the Department of Conservation and Recreation’s Summer Nights program.

Traditionally, the governor makes herself available for what is called an “off-topic” Q&A following scheduled events. And given all the interest and concerns surrounding data center development in Lowell, The Sun asked her for comment.

“The first thing people should know is that I put a pause on the sales-tax exemption for data centers,” she said. “So, no sales-tax credit for data centers right now in Massachusetts because I wanted to come out with a framework, with guidelines of what I expect of data centers.”

The governor said the hold on applications for the 20-year sales- and use-tax exemptions for qualified data centers, which she agreed to as part of a 2024 economic development law, will remain in effect “until we have strong protections in place for our residents and communities against higher gas and electric bills.”

Healey said Massachusetts was leading the country on this issue.

“I’ve been clear if data centers are going to come, they need to come with accountability to the community,” she said. “They have to be able to generate their own energy. It has to be clean energy. They can’t hurt the environment. They can’t hurt our water supply. They can’t cause environmental pollutions.”

The governor said putting that framework out a couple of weeks ago was very important.

“We’re going to continue to be focused on this,” Healey said. “We want things to be done in the right way.”

— Melanie Gilbert

IN APRIL, the oldest community food program in Lowell was notified that its decadeslong lease in Downtown Lowell on Hurd Street was not renewed.

Initially, the nonprofit continued its food distribution program directly from its delivery truck in the parking lot of the International Institute of New England at 585 Middlesex St.

But City Councilor Belinda Juran told The Sun that once the pantry signs a lease, it will take over an area in the new offices of IINE to house its community operations. Juran sits on the board of the immigrant and refugee advocacy group.

In the meantime, Catholic Charities at 70 Lawrence St. is meeting the community’s emergency food needs.

“Please bring ID and proof of address to Catholic Charities 1:30 to 3 p.m., Monday to Thursday,” the Open Pantry website said.

— Melanie Gilbert

AS OF last month, after decades in business at its 101 Gorham St. location, Towers News Stand (formerly Gorham Street News) closed its doors.

The building and business were owned by the Dunigan family, and besides public records, there’s very little news coverage of this longtime Downtown Lowell staple of some repute.

In 1979, a Massachusetts State Police detective obtained a search warrant for the premises of the Towers News Stand in Lowell.

The warrant ordered the seizure of 23 categories of material, including films, video cassette tapes, printed matter and business records and ordered the seizure of “[o]ther X-rated films and cassette tapes.”

“Over 1,000 separate titles were seized in a search that lasted for more than nine hours,” the court case file said. “Every copy of every book and magazine found within the ‘adult bookstore’ portion of a combination grocery and book store was confiscated.

According to the court file, a moving van was called to haul the seized books and magazines. Almost 1,400 cartons of materials, weighing 45,000 pounds, were removed from the store. A detailed return was filed consisting of approximately 475 typewritten pages.

In December of that year, indictments were returned against several defendants, including Paul Dunigan Sr. The indictments charged possession with intent to disseminate obscene matter.

The defendants moved to suppress all the evidence seized under the authority of the warrant due to constitutional issues.

A Superior Court judge found that “the warrant appears to have resulted in the indiscriminate seizure of everything within and upon the premises searched, including magazines and books to which it does not appear directed as well as a vast number of books which cannot, under the governing laws, be the subject of criminal prosecution” and that “the purpose of this search went far beyond the appropriate goal of reducing evidence to police custody….”

The court ruled that the government agents attempted an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech — “a procedure that offends against the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States every bit as much as the means used (an indiscriminate search and seizure pursuant to an over-broad warrant) is unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.”

The court record noted that some 1,350 cartons of materials weighing approximately 22 tons were removed from the premises.

The judge allowed the defendants’ motion to suppress in its entirety. It was a win for free speech and against unreasonable search and seizure, and the store continued to carry all manner of items and periodicals until late last month.

In recent years, the store became a destination for the transient and homeless population, some of whom used the location as their mailing address. Other patrons could be found at the back tables playing Keno.

Now, it becomes part of the historical record of Lowell’s early and scruffy start.

— Melanie Gilbert

AS TEWKSBURY moves toward a special Town Meeting vote on a new MBTA Communities zoning district this fall, some of the impact of the town’s noncompliance with the law is being made more clear.

The town first began to feel the impacts of noncompliance in December, when former Tewksbury Public Schools Superintendent Brenda Theriault-Regan revealed to the School Committee that the district was being denied state grant funding entirely because the town was still noncompliant.

Regardless of one’s stance on the MBTA Communities law, it is unreasonable for the state to be undercutting students’ education as a punishment for something the students have absolutely no say in because the vast majority are not old enough to vote, and the few who were old enough in May 2024 have long since left their public school system.

On the agenda for the Select Board’s meeting Tuesday is a letter from Town Manager John Curran to Tewksbury residents outlining the process so far, and what the town needs to do to get into compliance going forward. Within that letter, which is on the agenda for approval by the Select Board, was clarity on how much grant funding the town is losing out on overall by still being noncompliant. The school grant funding listed in the letter to residents includes a $25,000 pre-planning grant for early college courses, $200,000 in early College Courses grant funding and $30,000 in digital literacy grant funding. That $255,000 is slightly lower than the $325,000 Theriault-Regan listed in December, but it is within the same ballpark.

In addition to educational grants, the town has also apparently lost out on a $75,000 grant for a fire station project feasibility study, $300,000 for an Americans with Disabilities Act self-evaluation, $50,000 for the Local Early-Stage and Actionable Planning Program, $48,000 for a Mass. Department of Environmental Protection water withdrawal review and $1 million in Mass. Department of Transportation Complete Streets Program design assistance.

The projected total of grant funding the town has lost, according to the letter, is $1,728,000. Of all of those awards, only the $1 million Complete Streets design assistance grant is listed as being one the town has previously received, though that does not mean Tewksbury would not have received them this year if it had been in compliance.

In the same agenda for the Tuesday Select Board meeting, the board is set to schedule a special Town Meeting for Oct. 6, where the newly proposed MBTA Communities district will be considered by the voters. When the Select Board and Planning Board each saw the actual consequences the town is facing from noncompliance, like the lost grant funding and lawsuit from the Attorney General’s Office, they changed their tune on resisting the law even if they still aren’t happy about it.

The letter from the town explains that there will be information sessions about the new proposal in September during the leadup to Town Meeting. The question now looms: Will Tewksbury voters also change their tune after Town Meeting’s original overwhelming rejection of MBTA Communities, or will they double down?

— Peter Currier

THE MASSACHUSETTS School Building Authority may receive a flood of emails and letters from Dracut residents concerning a 120-day extension of the deadline for the town to accept an $82 million reimbursement for construction of a new school.

Thus far, only three communications to the MSBA are known. One is from Superintendent of Schools Steven Stone asking for the extension. The second is from Selectman Josh Taylor opposing the extension, and the third is from Sabrina Heisey, a former School Committee member.

Stone’s is very much what you would expect, thanking the authority for “its time, guidance, and inspiration” that the MSBA provided during the funding process. He explains the failure of town voters to approve the new school at a recent special election “was not a rejection of the educational need for the projection or the quality of the proposed solution.”

Instead, Stone attributes the loss to “confusion and concern” over the tax impact the school would have. He concludes his list of concerns with several bullet points about the town’s operating budget.

He ends with, “The Dracut School District finds itself with an overwhelming need for capital funding but is currently without a municipal capital planning committee to support it.”

Taylor begins his letter by thanking the authority “on behalf of the town.” After reciting his view of a joint meeting with the School Committee on June 29, he writes, “During that meeting, the Board of Selectmen made a motion not to recommend filing for a further extension, and that motion passed by a majority of the Board of Selectmen.”

He adds, “In light of this outcome, we want to be fully transparent with the MSBA: should the Board choose to accept the letter submitted today, July 7, from Superintendent Steven Stone requesting an extension, the MSBA would be extending the grant offer without the support of the Board of Selectmen or the town’s municipal government.”

Meanwhile, Heisey accuses selectmen of “a deliberate act of sabotage” by permitting misinformation that “flooded this community, including the flatly false claim that the average homeowner would pay $1,000 a year when the real number was roughly half that.”

She encourages the MSBA to grant the power to block what she called “an effort to run out the clock” and end discussion of a new school.

Heisey’s communication was widely distributed on social media and urged voters to send emails, traditional mail and phone calls to the MSBA backing the extension.

— Prudence Brighton