RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

Lowell Politics: November 15, 2026

The big news from last Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting (YouTube recording here) was the council’s unanimous approval of a three-part agreement between the city and Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc., which intends to construct a 75,000 square foot research and development facility within the Hamilton Canal Innovation District on the parcel that used to be the surface parking lot for the National Park’s visitor center. The agreement ratified on Tuesday – the council had already voted to support it in Executive Session but had to repeat the vote publicly – included a Tax Increment Financing Agreement (TIF) which will reduce the facility’s property taxes in exchange for creating some new jobs; an agreement by Draper to lease 100 parking spaces in the adjacent HCID Parking Garage for 25 years; and a right of first refusal by which Draper would be allowed to purchase the adjacent (now vacant) lot, should the city decided to sell it.

Having Draper located here is a big deal for Lowell. The company was founded in Cambridge in 1930 alongside MIT and has become one of the foremost developers of advanced navigation and guidance systems for aviation, space and military uses in the world. Draper, which is structured as a nonprofit, is thriving and must expand, both space and employee-wise. The company was attracted to this city by UMass Lowell which will partner with Draper and will provide a pipeline of students/future employees to the company as part of the University’s Lowell Innovation Network Corridor (LINC) project.

The intended footprint of LINC is focused on the University’s East Campus, roughly from the Tsongas Arena to LeLacheur Park, so getting Draper into the Hamilton Canal District is a major accomplishment for City Manager Tom Golden and his team.

When the Hamilton Canal District was first conceptualized nearly a quarter of a century ago, the plan was always for mixed use development that would combine residential, retail and commercial uses. However, the commercial and retail legs of that triad have mostly been missing. Other than the Justice Center and two parking garages, only housing has been constructed in the district with even more housing in the pipeline. While the city does desperately need more housing, following through with a mixture of uses is critical to the long-term success of HCID.

A handful of parcels in the District remain unspoken for. Hopefully the city will find entities comparable to Draper to occupy them.

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While municipalities across the Commonwealth continue to turn off their Flock surveillance cameras, the Lowell City Council reversed course and ratified the use of the Flock system after first voting to turn the cameras off back at the council’s September 22, 2026, meeting. That evening, the council passed a motion by Councilors Kim Scott and Vesna Nuon to suspend the use of the Flock system “while the city completes a thorough policy review of its usage, the company’s use of data and the audit process of the data.” That motion passed by a six to five vote. Supporting the suspension of Flock were Councilors Nuon, Scott, Belinda Juran, Sidney Liang, Sean McDonough and Mayor Erik Gitschier. Voting to continue using Flock without interruption were Councilors Sokhary Chau, John Descoteaux, Rita Mercier, Corey Robinson and Dan Rourke.

Just two weeks later, on October 6, 2026, the council reversed that vote, only we didn’t know about it since the second vote was taken in an Executive Session which by its nature is secret. The cameras were apparently reactivated that same evening although the public was not informed of that until the Executive Session minutes were only recently released, a month after the vote was taken. The Executive Session vote to turn the cameras back on was 8 to 1 with Councilor Sean McDonough the sole no vote and Councilor Sokhary Chau absent.

The minutes of the Flock portion of the executive session are on the city’s website and I urge you to read that document to get the full context, but there were a few sections that left me with some questions. I’ve pasted the relevant portions of the minutes below in italics with my questions/comments following each:

Dept. Supt. LeBlanc noted how the system operated and that there are many safeguards with that including regular system audits. Dept. Supt. LeBlanc noted for the over one-thousand streets in the City there are only 47 cameras with a 30-day retention period. Supt. Hudon noted that if there are any violations of the policies they are dealt with strictly.

My response: The police and some city councilors continuously misapprehend the concerns that I (and others, I believe) have about these surveillance cameras. Their idea of “misuse” is some rogue police officer using the system to spy on their former spouse. While that’s atrocious behavior and from the volume of such instances reported in the media, quite common, the “system audits” and punishments for misuse that a well-run department would utilize should curb such incidents. My concern is how the data collected by these cameras is or could be misused by entities outside of the Lowell Police Department, but more on that below. Oh, and “only” 47 cameras seems like a lot of cameras.

Descoteaux requested technical explanation regarding use of the data. Lt. Murray noted the only data available on the system is the license plate and the make of the vehicle. C. Scott noted concern with wide use of data and what policies were in place to protect that. C. McDonough noted use of public regulated databases to combat crime, the issue here is that it is a private entity who is regulating the use of data. C. McDonough noted the concerns of many big cities across the country regarding Flock. C. Juran noted the balance between privacy and public safety and that is why information is important. C. Nuon noted the need to help police do their job, but the problem is with the company running the system. C. Nuon noted concern with sharing information with ICE and that system could be used without the wide sharing of data.

My response: The police say, “the only data available on the system is the license plate and the make of the vehicle.” I assume that is how the system as set up for Lowell Police Department queries. However, the cameras record everything they see, and the resulting images are somewhere on the Flock system. While Lowell may have chosen to limit what it derives from those images to license plate numbers and vehicular information, other entities that access those same images might make broader use of them. The councilors whose comments are captured in the above section expressed similar concerns, particularly regarding Flock, the company that provides the cameras, the software, and hosts the images captured by the cameras in Lowell.

Motion by C. Scott, seconded by C. Mercier to reinstate the use of the Flock Camera System by the police without the sharing of data. Adopted per Roll Call vote, 8 yeas (C. Descoteaux, M. Gitschier, C. Juran, C. Liang, C. Mercier, C. Nuon, C. Robinson, C. Scott), 1 nay (C. McDonough), 1 absent (C. Chau). So voted. (Emphasis supplied.)

My response: It’s interesting that the motion was to turn on the cameras without the sharing of data. Is that what happened? Because as reported previously by the Lowell Sun, the city of Lowell was sharing the images captured by its Flock cameras with police departments and law enforcement agencies across the northeast including, again according to the Sun, with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service which has been, since April 2025, part of a Department of Homeland Security task force performing federal immigration enforcement and deportation operations. Has the police department complied with the council vote by revoking access to Lowell’s images by all the entities outside the city that previously had access to it, or was the system just turned back on with no modifications made? Perhaps a councilor will make a follow-up motion to confirm compliance with that council directive.

That the US government collects massive amounts of data about its citizens is not a recent revelation. Back in 2013, Edward Snowden revealed classified documents from the National Security Agency that, among other things, disclosed that the NSA was routinely collecting information about the telephone calls of millions of American citizens and that US intelligence agencies were allowed to access the servers of companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook, to collect emails and web searches.

Back then, I didn’t find that information particularly threatening since, due to the sheer volume of that data, it seemed humanly impossible for the government to fuse together information in a way that posed a threat to its citizenry. After all, in 2001, the US government was in possession of all the information it needed to stop the terrorist attacks on 9-11, but no one put the pieces together and the attacks succeeded.

Two things have changed my calculus since then. The first is artificial intelligence. Searching and combining immense quantities of data may not have been feasible for human analysts, but that is exactly what AI is designed to do. The existence of AI and its capabilities make the threat of abuse of personal data – like where you’re driving as recorded by a Flock camera – more pressing.

The second factor that has raised the risk level is that since 2025, the federal government has routinely used internal security agencies like the Department of Justice and the FBI to threaten and attack political opponents and journalists, while immigration enforcement agents trample the civil rights of anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant.

I understand that Lowell’s use of the Flock system helps solve crimes, but at what cost? In today’s environment, I’m reminded of something Benjamin Franklin once said: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

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On Tuesday, June 10, 2026, in the Hall of Flags of the Lowell Memorial Auditorium, the Lowell Bicentennial Committee and the Lowell Veterans Commission dedicated a memorial plaque to US Army PFC John F. Landry Jr., who was killed in action in Iraq by a roadside bomb on March 17, 2007.

Tuesday’s dedication event was attended by PFC Landry’s father and sister along with hundreds of others. It was a dignified and poignant ceremony.

The Lowell Memorial Auditorium was constructed in the aftermath of World War One and is dedicated to all of those who died in the service of this country during time of war. Bronze memorial tablets list the names of those from Lowell who perished in the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War One, World War Two, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the first Iraq War, and now the Global War on Terror.

The next time you visit the Auditorium for a show or event, please arrive early and linger in the Hall of Flags which is filled with memorials for Lowell veterans and constitutes a first-class history museum right here in the city.

Susan Rose April: New Poem

Susan Rose April, whose roots are in Lowell and Dracut, Mass., is a past contributor to this blog. Her writing and artwork have appeared in many publications and on various digital platforms. She lives in Maryland and has a new poem in the Frederick (Maryland) Arts Council Literary Magazine, issue number one, Fall 2026. The new magazine is titled In Your Walk on This Earth. Readers from the Lowell/Dracut area will recognize place references and cultural details in the composition. For more of Susan’s story and work, visit her website. She is a writer and a scientist with degrees from UMass Lowell and the University of Chicago as well as an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College. The poem is reprinted here with permission of the author. 

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Fragment of Portrait of Man

by Susan Rose April

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How do you map the geography

when the path is an esker

and the water is dangerous?

I think you must have wings.

Here, then, is the map of me:

My fabric is velvet

My wine is dry, fruity, with a hint

of the ruined vineyard

My grandfather was a thief

My brook is Black Brook

My lake is Long Lake

My tree is Catalpa

My weather is a hurricane

with no name

My snow is asbestos

My clouds are high cirrus

My song is Sober

My street is Osgood

My desert is the Desert of Maine

My honor is negotiable

My rock is granodiorite with

mica and muscovite that steal

glints from the sun

My home is the mills

My air is more soot than oxygen

My arm hurts

My dirt bike route skirts

the Nickel Mine

My mother is gone

My father fought fires

My arm hurts so much I want

to tear it off.

I have no park

I have no song

I’ve missed the bus

My home is snow

My soot is air

The path is dangerous

The esker winds and winds

and disappears in the Nickel Mine.

Caught in the Headlights

CAUGHT IN HEADLIGHTS

A short story

By Jerry Bisantz

It was a hot day.  OK, what a way to start a story, eh? “It was a hot day?”  So mundane, so cliché, but, holy God, was it ever a hot day! It’s 1975 and I am driving my 1968 blue Ford Fairlane past Geneva, NY, in the Finger Lakes region, on my way to Watkins Glen, NY to see the love of my life, Anita.

A bit of a background check here. I am (at that time) a 21-year-old optician from Buffalo, NY, currently working at an optical firm in Rochester, NY, quite possibly the most boring city east of the Mississippi. I had met Anita at a Halloween party at a beer drenched, sweat filled pub called The Masthead when she was dressed as a doll.  Well, my heart went thump -thump -thump, and before we knew it, we were thump- thump – thumping at her apartment near Buffalo State University.

No one, I mean no one looked better in cutoff jeans than Anita, and I certainly worked very hard to remove those cutoff jeans when I courted her. A contagious smile, an incredibly vibrant personality, she was totally wrong for me in so many ways, because we were always vying for attention, me being a starry-eyed young actor who was getting lead roles in local plays and musicals in the Rochester area. And she… well, she was “Anita,” always on and always competing. But, by God, was I hooked.

We had spent a wonderful weekend three weeks before said “hot day,” that was pure bliss. If you do not know Watkins Glen, NY, let me tell you this; it’s a Natural Wonder of the World. Deep ravines with a rushing river, moss covered boulders, waterfalls everywhere. We had found our own private waterfall, stripped naked, let the water rush over us as we kissed. I mean, it was so romantic I feel embarrassed to tell you about it, but, hey, it happened, and it was dreamlike.

With visions of waterfalls and Anita’s wonderful derriere running through my head, loud rock and roll playing on my car radio, I was unaware of what was to come.

From the left side of my car, a stag deer attempted to leap over my vehicle. It crashed into my windshield. At 60 miles an hour, the poor deer flipped over my car, the windshield caved in on me, and I came to a screeching halt right at the lip of a deep ravine.

Shaken, I sat for ten seconds, checking to see if I was still alive. Picking glass out of my hair, I pushed the windshield away from my face and got out of my car. The sight I saw next is engrained in my mind for the rest of my life. The deer attempted to stand up. Blood, the deepest red I had ever seen, was gushing out of its side, pumping out with each beat of its heart. “Die!”  I screamed.  “Please, just die!” It was truly horrific.  The deer took two steps, bleated a sad and heartbreaking moan and crashed to the ground. Dead.

I killed this magnificent beast. Murdered by a 1968 piece of crap Ford Fairlane. Now, an undriveable 1968 Ford Fairlane.  I looked up and down the shimmering highway. No cars were coming by. The crickets didn’t seem to care at all for my predicament, just another day on the roadways of America. Finally, a small, rust covered truck slowed down. The driver, a man in his 50’s  with a long beard and yellow teeth, proceeded to roll down his window. Thank God! He can drive me to the nearest gas station, I can get the car towed, call Anita and tell her my plight, Hell, I was only 15 miles from her.

“Ya gonna keep the deer?”

Huh? What did he say?

“I said, are ya gonna keep the deer?”

Oh, OK, he’s asking about my murder victim. “Uh… no.”

The door immediately swung open. A spry young man on the passenger’s side leapt out of the car. The man (the father?) and the boy quickly walked to my victim.  “Yep, she’s a big one, alright. Sure ya don’t want it?”

“No, I don’t want the deer, but I would like…”

The father rushed to the truck, not even listening to me. He pulled the vehicle next to the deer. He and his son hauled the deer into the back of the truck. He tipped his baseball cap, said “thank you.”

And drove away.

He drove away. The son of a bitch drove away! This is 1975, my friend.  No cell phone. 95 goddamn degrees. All that was left was a smear of blood 5 yards away from me., a trashed car, and miles of highway. What to do?

What else can I do? I stuck my thumb out.

Twenty minutes later a kind man picked me up, gave me a ride in the opposite direction of Anita’s house and brought me to a gas station. I explained my predicament to the man at the station, gave him my credit card (yes, I was a real workin’  man in those days) and was assured that they would tow the car to a body shop, gave me a card for said  shop and let me know that I probably couldn’t retrieve my ride for at least a week. I asked him if I could make a phone call.  He led me into his office (no A/C!) and I dialed Anita’s number.

She picked up on the fifth ring. “Hello, Anita! I’m sorry I’m late, I got a real problem here.”

“What problem?”

“I hit a deer and my car is a mess. I need a ride. I’m about 20 miles from you. Along Seneca Lake. Can you pick me up?”

There was a pause. A very long pause.

“Anita, are you there?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“OK, great, so, can you come and get me? I’m really screwed out here without my wheels.”

Another pause.

“Umm… ya see, Jerry, I didn’t want to tell you over the phone, but I’m seeing someone else.”

Huh??”

“Remember that actor we met three weeks ago at that summer stock theater?”

“The fat guy with the bushy mustache?”

“He’s not fat!  Yeah, Glen. I’ve been seeing him for the last two weeks.”

“Glen? The guy who totally sucked?  Who blew his lines right and left?”

“He didn’t blow his lines.”

“Uh… yeah he did. So, lemme get this straight. You’re seeing him?”

“For the last two weeks.  I’m sorry, it just kinda happened.”

“I can’t believe you are doing this. Right now. at this moment. I’m stuck out here.”

“Jerry, knowing you, you will get out of this mess in no time. This wasn’t easy for me, ya know, telling you this, but I …”

I slammed the phone, cursed as loudly as I had ever cursed in my life.

The gas station owner came in. “Hey! Easy on the language!”

I apologized.  What could I do? I was 50 miles from home, about 100 miles from Buffalo, where I really wanted to go at that point. I asked the station owner if there was a bus that came around.  He shook his head. I noticed a huge picture of Jesus and the bleeding heart on his back wall and quickly realized that my curses did not go over well.

What to do? OK, “Mr. Kerouac,” time to hit the road.

I walked out onto the steaming highway after buying a cold bottle of Pepsi from an ancient machine and stuck my thumb out. What the hell? I had the whole weekend. If I had to sleep in some field, who cares?

Car after car passed me by.  The sun was at its highest point. Had to be around 1:00 and the sweat was pouring in beads down my back on its journey to the crack of my butt. I’m from Buffalo, fer cryin out loud! I’m a cold weather guy.  This was torture, pure torture.

After about an hour of frustration a van came into view.  Loud music was blasting away. It passed me, and then, as if having second thoughts, came to a screeching halt. Great! He’s gonna play that game on me! I run up, he takes off, laughing at my misfortune.

He didn’t. He actually stopped.

The passenger side window rolled down.  The driver, wearing a bandana and carrying a beer in his right hand, shouted out to me. The pungent odor of marijuana lofted into the air.

“Dude! Where ya headed?”

I couldn’t believe my luck.  Maybe I could at least get to the Thruway!

“West! As far as you can get me.  I’m headed to Buffalo. My car hit a deer and I have no ride.”

“Buffalo? WE’RE going to Buffalo.  To the “Dead” concert! Hop right in!”

The side panel slid open. Three young ladies were sitting on cushions, passing a joint back and forth. I climbed in.

The young ladies were from Cornell, and they were very animated, very nice. One of them kindly offered a hit from the joint and we were on our way, music from the tape deck blaring Led Zeppelin and The Grateful Dead.

Not only did they take me to Buffalo, but they also dropped me off right in front of my house on Homer Avenue, my childhood home, where for some strange reason I felt obliged to nurse my wounded heart.

I never called Anita again.

A year later, I held a Halloween party at my apartment in Rochester. Into my house traipses Anita, with two of my Buffalo buddies. I couldn’t believe she had the nerve to walk into my life one more time, but she did.

Once burned, I hadn’t learned, apparently.  We dated on and off again for about six months and then I decided to move to Boston and say goodbye forever.

The last time I ever saw her was for a lunch date in New York City. I said goodbye to her by the mouth of a subway stop.  She wanted to start up again with me, and I said, “no way.”

A month later her grandfather died and left her over a million dollars. Go figure! She moved to London, bought two apartment buildings, became a professional landlord and dated many a man, judging from the postcards she kept sending me.

After not hearing from her for over twenty years she found me on the internet, informing me that she was going to see a short film that I had made that was showing in a festival in Cambridge, UK. Now, we keep in touch from time to time.

Life is funny. You never know what it has in store for you. I guess you just have to hang on tight, because the ride might take you anywhere…. a Grateful Dead concert, a searing blacktop highway, a Halloween party, or , for me, a happy home, and a great family.

So, remember: keep your eyes open.

There just might be a deer lurking about.

Reflections on the Water

Reflections on the Water

By Leo Racicot

When I was a kid, I thought every city had as many canals as my hometown, Lowell, did. Canals seemed to be everywhere, crisscrossing the majority of the city; in summertime, brief, cooling interludes between long stretches of hot pavement. I didn’t think this was odd because, well, canals were part of the town. It never occurred to me that most places didn’t have waterways practically everywhere you walked. No wonder Lowell earned the nickname The Venice of America. Of course, originally, canals, whether in Lowell, Venice or Amsterdam were sewers, depositories for a city’s waste. A friend who visited Venice recently was appalled by the stench wafting off Venice’s waterways as he and his wife’s gondola made its way along The Grand Canal. “P. U. That city smells!” They never expected one of the world’s most popular travel destinations to smell like the farm.

I can’t say I never smelled anything foul about Lowelll’s canals. But I accepted them and their stench as part of my city, Stinky or not, I found there was something romantic about canals. The sight of them brings a welcome calm to the urban noises surrounding you. The gentle edges of them lap against moss-covered stones, almost hypnotically. When out on walks with Buddy, he liked to pause to gaze into the depths of the canal that runs through Ecumenical Plaza between Saint Patrick’s and Holy Trinity Churches, watch for the occasional fish head popping up through the green surface, watch the flock of ducks swimming by. I loved these moments with Buddy for — he was walking me, not the other way around and was my guide. I loved the interesting places he’d take me. At the canal, we would linger in peace. The seamless teal of canals gave a lightsome lift to the red brick heaviness of the old mill city, a heaviness I find melancholy on rain-heavy days. The relaxation properties of canals are many: the controlled water flow, the ways in which the mere sight of them can improve mood, outlook. They also offer reflection and respite on long walks, a means of entering a peaceful zone in the brain, what scientists call blue mind. It was a disappointment if you were strolling along only to find the city had drained your favorite canal. Back in the day, Lowell would empty all canals each weekend, this, to inspect them for leaks, fissures, remove unwanted debris (usually grocery store shopping carts people had thrown in them, plastic bottles, plastic bags, dead automobile batteries and car parts). Sadly, a canal would prove irresistible to those wanting to commit suicide. I remember wondering what kind of a place Lowell was, hearing about the number of students who’d fling themselves off the roof of the university’s Fox Hall, overwhelmed by their studies and life, the number of bodies found in city waterways. An acquaintance of mine from the 1970s who went by the nickname, The Cowboy, one whole summer took to saying he was “Done Trying”, despaired of ever coming back to himself. On a lonesome winter Saturday, he threw himself into The Western Canal running between Suffolk and Dutton Streets. My sister, Diane’s, dear classmate and friend, Helena Murgia, purposely drove her car into the dark night waters at an early age. Her body was never found.

I took my Franco American sixth graders on one of Lowell’s popular canal tours. They got a kick out of weaving in and out of the waterways around Dutton Street. Of course, they loved getting wet in spite of the slickers the city provided; in their post-tour theme papers, every single one of them mentioned getting sprayed as their favorite part of the trip. Kids!

I remember a special night when my housemate and friend, Pete Starrett and I on impulse went on a Kerouacian ramble through the rocks and white water falls under ULowell’s University Avenue Bridge. We had no fear of falling as we navigated the slippery stones, delighted in hearing our voices bounce off the rusty iron girders of the tired, creaky old bridge. It was easy to fall a little bit in love with Peter, as everybody who knew him in those days did. He was so open to the adventures to be had, tall stick of dynamite that he was. As with Buddy, I’d follow Pete anywhere, knowing an exciting escapade lay ahead.

These days, whenever I see a flash of water cutting through concrete, in a television travelogue or in a tv show or  movie, my mind rushes back to those mossy depths, the tug of a beloved dog’s leash, the ghosts of a city that taught me where to find a sliver of peace amid the urban grit. The canals are still here, slicing through the old New England town just as they always have, holding the weight of my past in their brackish currents. They remain my hometown’s heartbeat, proof that even unattractive places hold an enduring beauty if only you know where to look.

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Buddy at Western Canal

Canal boat tour

Canal boats

Canal walk in fall

Joe and Leo alongside Merrimack Canal in 1969

Lowell canals postcard

Merrimack Canal

Peter at Cape Ann in 1992