RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

Lowell Politics: May 24, 2026

An innocuous sounding item on Tuesday’s agenda generated the most significant discussion of the evening. This was “Sick Leave Usage and OT Update for FY2026” which included an eight-page document that provided historical data on sick leave usage.

When this item was finally reached nearly two hours into the meeting, City Manager Tom Golden made a passionate (and sometimes pained) presentation that reminded me of a sadder version of the more upbeat “state of the city” addresses that city managers give each year.

Golden began by saying one of his primary responsibilities as city manager is to protect the long-term financial stability of the city. The city is heavily dependent on state and federal funding, and we are seeing “an absolute seismic shift in how local government is going to be funded in the future.” He diplomatically addressed the federal government’s chaotic and destructive policies by simply saying, “I think everyone of us knows what’s happening.” Regarding state funding, he cautioned that if the referendum on this fall’s state ballot succeeds in lowering the state income tax rate from the current five percent to the proposed four percent, the impact on local aid will be enormous, all to the detriment of Lowell.

He then commended the 12 of 15 city unions that this year agreed to defer a two percent cost of living raise until the end of the fiscal year in return for reducing the number of layoffs of their members. (In the context of Golden’s later remarks, it seems that one of the unions that did not agree to that deferral was the one representing Lowell firefighters.)

Golden then reviewed some of the positive things that have been accomplished under his tenure, one of which is an overall culture of fiscal discipline which has resulted in a healthy reserve fund, high bond ratings, and lower borrowing costs. He then pivoted to the primary purpose of his remarks, saying “the same discipline is needed now more than ever, especially for overtime throughout the city.”

He continued:

Citywide sick leave is an area where additional controls are necessary. It’s an area that my administration has worked on and will continue to work on with our employees and our union leaders. There are departments that are doing extremely well and have been responsible. As an example, the Lowell Police Department alone reduced sick time from 15,278 hours in FY23 to 10,883 hours in 2025 and currently they’re on track at 9,637 hours for fiscal year 26. These improvements demonstrate what responsible management and cooperative effort with both of those unions has achieved.

Before I speak about the opposite side of the spectrum, this is going to be difficult to say. My comments have nothing to do with job performance. My comments have nothing to do with the excellent care that is given to residents in the time of need. I have had family members, friends today who serve on the fire department. I have family members that are taking the exam to become a firefighter.

Our firefighters have an extremely difficult job and we really truly should applaud them. However, for the last four years, I have raised concerns about sick leave and overtime with local 853’s union leadership’s team. Most recently, I truly believe I offered a fair and reasonable solution at the bargaining table that would have prevented layoffs.

We calculated the value of approximately $336,000 of savings while the actual salary costs were a little over $500,000. We started originally at eight layoffs. We got it down to six. And I have to say we worked with the union. We looked at the numbers. We tried to get it done. We tried to push it. But we needed a little bit more cooperation that at the time just isn’t there. We had something to do in a timely manner so we could get the budget to this council per the Mass General Laws.

But despite the offer that we put forward, the union leadership simply declined it. Instead, the union leadership determined the benefit of laying off the six firefighters outweighed what I had to offer. Additionally, the union leadership chose to wage a public relations campaign which is happening tonight.

However, as misguided this effort may be, it doesn’t change the math. Overtime costs have grown by an astronomical amount, roughly 300%. And the rate of escalation is simply not sustainable for the taxpayers of Lowell. In FY26, we are on pace to spend over $4 million in overtime. And this level of spending is not only unsustainable, but it’s also out of line with our peer communities. Brockton, Lynn, Lawrence, New Bedford, which are all four gateway cities with populations near and around 100,000, spend an average of about $2.75 million.

To address the root of the problem that is driving overtime, we must look at data. And that’s what we’ve been doing. And here is what the data shows. In fiscal year 2025, 112 firefighters used little to no sick time, which is commendable. . . . Sixty members used between seven and 15 tours of sick leave per year. Thirty-one members used 16 or more tours of sick leave per year.

Now, I apologize if somebody has an issue going on in their family. God knows nobody would want that to happen.

But when we’re talking about the difference between 112 members that are leading by example and doing the right thing which is commendable and the question of others we really need to look at this. This is not something that we can continue to afford.

When in 2001 we moved to the 24-hour shift. It was intended to reduce sick time and unfortunately it’s produced something the exact opposite. Sick time usage directly drives overtime. For every hour that someone calls in sick because of what this council has been trying to do, the city normally has to hire somebody back at one and a half times the rate. So that hour is costing us 2.5 times what it would normally cost [i.e., the person out sick receives their full salary and the person called in to replace them is paid at the overtime rate which is 1.5 times the regular salary.]

[Golden then made comments about time off by union leaders having increased by 60 percent which, per their contract, is filled by other firefighters who are paid overtime for filling the vacant shift.]

Shared sacrifice by the entire city cannot mean that the rest of the workplace steps up while one department maintains practices that costs are unsustainable. The fire department is critical to public safety, and its members perform life-saving work. But no department, no matter how essential, is exempt from the fiscal realities of what is going on in this country, in this state, and in this city. No department should expect others to carry the burden and not share it themselves, especially when overtime spending is up nearly 300 percent. Not when leave usage patterns cause mandatory callbacks. Not when union leave increased by more than 60 percent.

One of the charts in the “Sick Leave Usage and OT Update” report shows ten years of overtime spending by four city departments: police, fire, DPW and water & sewer. Here are the numbers for the police and fire departments by fiscal year with FY2026 showing year to date spending (FY2026 runs from July 1, 2026, to June 30, 2027):

• FY2016
  • Police – $876,193
  • Fire – $1,136,194
• FY2017
  • Police – $954,600
  • Fire – $998,820
• FY2018
  • Police – $951,384
  • Fire – $1,078,402
• FY2019
  • Police – $933,726
  • Fire – $1,032,390
• FY2020
  • Police – $807,245
  • Fire – $1,110,214
• FY2021
  • Police – $869,609
  • Fire – $1,377,098
• FY2022
  • Police – $1,142,720
  • Fire – $2,809,567
• FY2023
  • Police – $1,292,720
  • Fire – $3,324,750
• FY2024
  • Police – $1,445,480
  • Fire – $2,580,886
• FY2025
  • Police – $1,277,128
  • Fire – $3,368,314
• FY2026 (YTD)
  • Police – $996,876
  • Fire – $3,447,240

This chart shows that spending on fire department overtime has exploded during the past decade, especially when compared to the much more gradual rate of increase of police overtime during the same period.

After Golden spoke, Mayor Erik Gitschier responded to the manager’s remarks, saying in defense of the firefighters and the current system that the large amount of overtime is a function of firefighters working 24 hour shifts rather than the 8 hour shifts worked by police officers, so when a firefighter is out sick it is more costly than when a police officer is out. The mayor then urged the city manager and the firefighters union to work out their differences before next Tuesday’s budget session but closed by saying he supported using the city’s reserve fund to cover the overtime needed instead of closing any fire stations as a way of reducing overtime spending.

Interestingly, no other councilors spoke. Perhaps that’s because a vote earlier in the evening may have been a proxy for where councilors stood on this issue. It was a vote to transfer $822,000 to the Fire Department Overtime Account. The accompanying memo stated the fire department “has currently exhausted the remaining funding” in its salaries and wages overtime account, and this money was needed to make it through the rest of the fiscal year. (The money was coming from the police department’s salaries and wages account.)

Although this vote was listed far down the agenda, it came up early in the meeting – long before Golden spoke – when Councilor Corey Robinson asked that the fire department overtime funding vote be taken out of order. That request was seconded and passed by a voice vote. However, before any substantive action could be taken, Councilor Dan Rourke said, “Mr. Mayor, I move to table this.” Councilor Vesna Nuon seconded the request.

Under the rules of procedure, a motion to table a matter requires an immediate vote and is not debatable, so Clerk Michael Geary called the roll. Voting to table the overtime transfer were councilors Rourke, Kim Scott, Sokhary Chau, John Descoteaux, Belinda Juran and Vesna Nuon. Voting not to table the motion were Councilors Robinson, Sean McDonough, Rita Mercier, Sidney Liang, and Mayor Gitschier. Geary announced that vote as six to table it and five not to table it, so the overtime funding vote was “set on the table” and will remain unaddressed until six councilors vote to take it off the table.

In Lowell politics, as in life, its best not to believe in coincidences, so I assume this was a signal of support for the city manager in the face of off duty firefighters who were at the council meeting (or at least at City Hall) protesting the proposed layoff of six firefighters in the FY27 budget which will be debated this coming Tuesday.

For the fire department, sick time usage is a driver of overtime spending. Under previous city administrations, when firefighters were out sick, instead of summonsing off duty firefighters to fill the vacancies and paying them overtime, one of the city’s fire units would be taken out of service and the personnel assigned to that unit for that shift would be redeployed to fill the vacancies created by those who had called in sick. Shutting down a fire unit for a shift is referred to as a “brownout.”

The most recent city councils, however, have made “no brownouts” a priority, and Tom Golden, who became city manager in April 2022, has implemented that policy. While the no brownouts policy has kept all fire units in service continuously, it has also meant that as the amount of sick time used by firefighters increased, so did the city’s spending on fire department overtime.

Like Mayor Gitschier in his remarks, some councilors have been very vocal in their intolerance of brownouts. Certainly no one on the council wants fire units to be out of service, but the councilors who publicly proclaim that all fire units must be fully staffed at all times regardless of the cost put the city manager in a no win situation when it comes to negotiating with the firefighters union since the union has confidence that if it holds out against any reforms, councilors will side with them rather than with the city manager and his quest for some restraint in fire department overtime spending.

Of course, under our Plan E form of government, Golden can close all the fire units he wants and the council’s only recourse would be to fire him since councilors do not have the authority to force increases in spending from what the city manager recommends – councilors can only approve, reduce or reject those recommendations.

Conflict between the city manager and the firefighters union is not new. Back in 1993, City Manager Dick Johnson took a hardline against what he saw as firefighter intransigence at the bargaining table by ordering all beds removed from city firehouses. He also asked that the contract go to arbitration because of the deadlock. When the Lowell Sun wrote an editorial siding with Johnson, bumper stickers and signs that proclaimed, “The Sun ain’t so hot” sprouted around the community.

Somehow that conflict worked itself out. Such disputes usually do. Until they don’t. We’ll see what happens Tuesday night.

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This week in my Wednesday “Seen and Heard” column, I wrote about last Monday’s Lowell  Public Schools Civics Day at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium; reviewed True Yankees: The South Seas and the Discovery of American Identity by Dane Morrison, which is about America’s early trade with China which helped fund the creation of Lowell; noted the obituary of Philip Caputo whose 1977 book, A Rumor of War, was an instant classic in Vietnam literature; and mentioned a New York Times analysis of the recent US presidential visit to China.

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With tomorrow being Memorial Day, I reposted an article I wrote about the history of the holiday, and Leo Racicot reviewed my new book about Lowell servicemembers who died during World War II.

An excerpt of that book, Regret To Inform You: The Human Cost of WWII in Lowell, Mass. with instructions on how to download the free ebook version or order a paper copy online, is available here.

Lowell: A Jack Kerouac Destination City?

Lowell: A Jack Kerouac Destination City?

Steve Edington
Past President of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac

On May 13, 2026, the Lowell Sun carried a front-page article about Representative Lori Trahan’s tour of the proposed Jack Kerouac Center for Lowell at the former St. Jean Baptiste Church. She was accompanied by Sylvia Cunha, Director of Marketing and Business Development for the Jack Kerouac Estate, and David Ouelette, who has deeply been involved in the effort to create the Kerouac Center on this site.

These are some of my thoughts on this exciting possibility, drawing on my thirty-plus years of involvement in the Kerouac scene in Lowell:

These are quotes from three websites of museums or centers that honor the literary, artistic, or musical legacies of those for whom they were created:

“The James Joyce Center [Dublin, Ireland] is a museum and cultural institution which promotes the life, literature, and legacy of one of the world’s greatest writers, James Joyce.”

“The Beatles Story is a museum in Liverpool, England…The museum was recognized as one of the best tourist attractions of the United Kingdom in 2015.”

“As one of the largest literary museums in the United States dedicated to a single author, the National [John] Steinbeck Center [in Salinas, California] began as an initiative to create a forum for his writings and one that would inspire successful literary and educational programming.”

There are other similar locales I could cite, but I’ll keep it to these.  I have visited the Steinbeck Center several times and come away marveling at how it so wonderfully captures Steinbeck’s life and literary legacy.

Lowell, Massachusetts now has an opportunity to join these ranks with the creation of a Jack Kerouac Center in the former St. Jean Baptiste Church. Over the past few decades Kerouac has achieved comparable recognition as those of the people cited here when it comes to his literary and cultural impact world-wide. Lowell is now poised to become a destination city for Kerouac aficionados and scholars from around the world, in ways that would rival Dublin, Liverpool, and Salinas when it comes to the literary and cultural legacies of their “hometown heroes.”

My involvement, and one-time presidency, of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac (LCK) has allowed me to witness the ever-growing attraction of Lowell for devotees of Kerouac, as demonstrated by the attendance at our annual Kerouac Festivals in October. This fall we will host our 38^th annual gathering of “Kerouac Pilgrims” from around the country and world.

The prospect of a Kerouac Center will take our (LCK’s) efforts to an even higher level when it comes to the Kerouac presence in Lowell. The year-round draw of such a Center, the Kerouac-themed material at the Center for Lowell History that reflect his French-Canadian ancestry, the Kerouac Studies program at UMass Lowell, along with the annual LCK Festivals, will put Jack Kerouac at the forefront of the many fine attributes that attract people to Lowell.

Background: In 2022 the Jack Kerouac Foundation was created for the purpose of obtaining the former St. Jean Baptiste Church for conversion into a Jack Kerouac Center. Kerouac was an altar boy at SJB, and his Funeral Mass was celebrated there when he passed away in 1969. The property was owned by Lowell developer, Brian McGowan. In May of 2025 country singer and songwriter Zach Bryan purchased the building for the Kerouac Foundation/Estate. This past March Mr. Bryan also purchased the original “scroll” manuscripts of Kerouac’s novels On the Road and The Dharma Bums along with three Kerouac letters at Christie’s Auction in New York. The Center will become a home for these documents when its preparations are completed.

These preparations are the next crucial steps. The building has been purchased. The documents that will become the centerpieces of its exhibits have been secured.

More work is yet to come! This work includes generating the funds that will allow for the extensive, and necessary, restoration of SJB so the Kerouac Center can become a reality.

With the financial challenges the City of Lowell faces, fully funding the restoration needed for a Kerouac Center is beyond their resources. I get that. At the same time, however, I hope Lowell’s city leaders can understand just how much a Jack Kerouac Center will contribute to the vitality and well-being of Lowell, even as the community leaders of the cities mentioned here did.

Whatever support the city can provide will most certainly rebound to the greater good of Lowell. It will take some dedicated networking to fund the creation of this Center. I hope the city can be a part of such a networking process.

For those wishing to contribute to this effort, here’s the link:

https://jackkerouaccenter.com/pages/donate.

This year is the Lowell Bicentennial. It’s a time for looking back at Lowell’s rich history, and a time for looking ahead to what is yet to come. The creation of a Kerouac Center to highlight Jack Kerouac’s world-wide literary and cultural legacy can be a vital and exciting piece of Lowell’s future.

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Steve Edington is a past President and current Treasurer of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac. He is the author of three Kerouac themed books, including his latest one, The Gospel According to Jack—Tracking Kerouac in My Life. He is also the Minister Emeritus of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua, New Hampshire.

History of Memorial Day

This blog post first appeared last year. It’s the text of remarks I delivered at the city of Lowell Memorial Day observance at Lowell City Hall on Saturday, May 31, 2025.

History of Memorial Day

By Richard Howe

Good afternoon. My topic today is the history of Memorial Day. To understand that, you must begin with the American Civil War. From 1861 to 1865, more than 700,000 people died while serving in the military making it the costliest war in the history of the United States. Here in Lowell, of a population of 36,000, more than 5,000 served and 646 of them died. That’s the equivalent today of 2,100 deaths.

After the war, those who survived felt a duty to preserve the memory of those who made the supreme sacrifice. In 1868, General John Logan, the commander of the Grand Army of the Republic which was the largest veterans organization in the country, ordered that all GAR members should observe May 30 as Decoration Day, an occasion to place flowers on the graves of fallen soldiers. The size and influence of the Grand Army of the Republic caused Decoration Day to become a nationwide event. By 1890, all northern states had adopted it as an official holiday and in the aftermath of World War I it expanded to honor the dead of all American wars. In 1967, Congress changed the name of the holiday to Memorial Day and moved it from May 30 to the last Monday of the month.

One hundred years ago here in Lowell, Memorial Day began with veterans organizations attending church services then going to all the cemeteries in the city to place flowers on the graves of deceased comrades. All would then gather next door at Memorial Hall, now the Pollard Library, for lunch and socializing. At 3pm, everyone would walk to the South Common to form up for the big parade that at its peak involved 7500 marchers and 75,000 spectators.

While we are disappointed that parades like that have faded from our culture we should not grow discouraged. In his 1868 order that created the first Memorial Day, General Logan said there is no prescribed form the observance should take but that each community shall hold such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.

In the spirit of General Logan, thank you all for being here today to fulfill the solemn trust of honoring those who have given their lives in service of our country.

Book Review: “Regret to Inform You”

Book Review: “Regret to Inform You”

Review by Leo Racicot

Book by Richard P. Howe Jr.

History, when viewed from a distance, is often a matter of staggering numbers, of sweeping troop movements. But in Regret to Inform You: The Human Cost of WWII in Lowell, Mass. Historian Richard Howe Jr. performs a staggering act of literary and historical restoration. He brings the global theater of conflict down to the neighborhoods, triple-deckers, the mill-heavy streets of Lowell, reminding us that global tragedies are always, at their core, heartbreakingly local.

The premise of the book is as straightforward as it is emotionally stunning: Howe seeks to return a face, a family, a specific story for every single one of the 441 sons and daughters of Lowell who left for World War II and never came home.

Rather than allowing these names to remain frozen in the bronze and stone of the city’s memorial tablets, Howe meticulously excavates the archives to reconstruct who these people actually were before they became casualties of war. He reawakens them, Lazarus-like.

By detailing their local backgrounds—where they went to school, which mill or neighborhood shop they worked in, and who was left waiting for them at home—the book moves compassionately beyond a simple military checklist.

Howe documents the precise circumstances of their deaths, spanning the entire timeline of American involvement in the war from the initial shock at Pearl Harbor to the final, horrifying days of Hiroshima.

With his characteristic meticulous eye for detail, the author ultimately creates a haunting echo of the sacrifices these courageous people made in the name of freedom. He resurrects them as real human beings, releasing them from the anonymity of being mere names on a monument. Thanks to his empathy, they live again.

The book’s end result presents the sheer weight of global war when viewed through a telescopic lens of personal loss, the devastating cost of so many lives lost but not lost in vain.

Regret to Inform You is an essential addition to the history of Lowell, a dense, reverent, incredibly important work of remembrance that ensures the names inscribed on the city’s monuments are remembered not just for how they died but for the community they lived in, the lives they left behind.

For anyone invested in military history, local heritage, or the quiet, stories of ordinary people caught in the grip of extraordinary times, this is a deeply rewarding read.