August 2, 2026

The Lowell City Council met on Tuesday (July 28, 2026). I don’t watch council meetings live. Instead, I catch them Wednesday morning from the YouTube recording. It’s always interesting to open that app and discover how long the meeting took, although in summer when there are just two meetings per month, they typically take 3 hours, 30 minutes. That’s the maximum time a meeting can take under the council rules which prohibit a meeting going beyond 10 p.m. (With the meeting starting at 6:30 p.m., going all the way until 10 gives you 3.5 hours.)

When I finished watching the meeting video two weeks ago, I felt a vague sense of contentment. Nothing major or controversial had come up, but the council and city administration seemed to be doing the work of government in a rational, responsible way.

I was left with a different feeling after watching this week’s meeting. The best word to describe it might be dysfunctional.

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An early item on the agenda was a motion by Councilor Rita Mercier to reconsider a vote taken by the council at their last meeting. That vote authorized the city manager to file special legislation on behalf of Vincent Fernandez, a former city employee who seeks to alter his retirement status and pension payments.

Looking back at that July 14, 2026, council meeting, the vote document the council acted upon explained that while working as a Lowell Police Officer in 2016, Fernandez was severely injured in the line of duty which left him unable to return to work as a police officer. Consequently, he received a disability retirement pension from the Lowell Retirement Board. The document presented to the council contains a page and a half of language which was difficult to comprehend for anyone not deeply immersed in the intricacies of Massachusetts government disability pensions, a group that includes me as well as most councilors, I suspect.

The city administration provided no further explanation or information to councilors. A couple of councilors asked if this would set a precedent and how many others in a similar situation would now come forward. City Manager Golden seemed to sidestep those issues and instead explained that the council passing this vote would only be the first step and it would ultimately be up to the state legislature whether to enact this special bill for Mr. Fernandez.

When the initial vote was taken, it passed with Councilors Sokhary Chau, John Descoteaux, Sidney Liang, Sean McDonough, Rita Mercier, Corey Robinson, Dan Rourke, and Kim Scott voting yes; Mayor Erik Gitschier voting no; and Councilors Belinda Juran and Vesna Nuon abstaining (Councilor Juran had earlier stated she was uncomfortable voting on this without knowing more about the implications).

This week, when Councilor Mercier’s motion to reconsider was called, former Fire Chief Bill Desrosiers, who is now chair of the Lowell Retirement Board, spoke on the motion. He explained that the retirement board first learned this had come before the council a few days after the council had already voted on it (which was why the Board was only just now addressing the council).

He further explained that sometime after Mr. Fernandez was granted his disability retirement, the state legislature changed the law to allow police officers injured by violent acts in the line of duty to collect more generous disability retirement pensions than had previously been the case. However, that legislation specifically prohibited the retroactive application of the new law. In other words, if you were already collecting a disability pension (as Mr. Fernandez was), you had to keep that pension and were unable to have the new law applied to you.

Notwithstanding that language, Mr. Fernandez petitioned the Lowell Retirement Board to revise his disability retirement pension so that he could receive the more generous benefits provided by the new law (it was unclear with the proposal would bring him within the law or place him in some hybrid situation with benefits equivalent to those in the new law). The Lowell Board, after checking with the Public Employee Retirement Administration Commission (PERAC), the agency that provides oversight and guidance for the operation of the state’s public pension systems, rejected the request of Mr. Fernandez.

With that avenue foreclosed, Mr. Fernandez now seeks the financial benefits of the new law through special legislation by the state legislature. To accomplish this, he seeks to have the city initiate this special legislation on his behalf, hence the vote that was passed by the city council on July 14, 2026.

Now, two weeks after that vote was taken, Lowell Retirement Board Chair Desrosiers came before the council to explain that (1) the Lowell Retirement Board had already rejected this request; (2) if the proposed special legislation passes, the Lowell Retirement Board will owe Mr. Frenandes approximately $500,000 more than it has already paid him or for which it has budgeted for future payments; (3) this will open the door to other similarly situated retirees; and (4) these unanticipated and substantial increases in pension payouts will place additional stress on the fiscal health of the Lowell Retirement system to the detriment of other retirees to whom the Board owes a fiduciary duty.

When Desrosiers finished, Council Mercier spoke. Although she did it more tactfully, she essentially said it would have been nice to have had all this information before she had voted yes for this two weeks ago because this new information would have caused her to vote differently. She further explained that since she was on the winning side of that vote, the rules allowed her to move for reconsideration of that vote, so she filed this motion.

Councilor Mercier stopped short of asking the city manager why this information hadn’t been provided to the council before taking the initial vote. A couple of councilors probed that issue, but no one pressed it aggressively.

Golden’s position, it seemed, was that there was no harm done in taking this vote since it was ultimately up to the legislature whether to grant this or not.

I have zero knowledge of this issue beyond what I saw and heard at these two council meetings, but reading between the lines of what was said, it seems that Mr. Fernandez or someone advocating for him, has been lobbying for this – at one point Golden mentioned having received inquiries from “the media” about this case – to the point that the city manager opted to “kick the can down the road” to Beacon Hill.

If that strategy was intended to get whoever was pressing him out of his hair, it likely backfired. By presenting the council with this vote two weeks ago without any context or supporting documents and with the retirement board already having rejected it, Golden may have left at least a couple of councilors suspecting that the manager was trying to slip something by them.

After more discussion, the roll call on the motion to reconsider the original vote was taken. Voting to reconsider were Mayor Gitschier and Councilors Belinda Juran, Rita Mercier, Vesna Nuon, Corey Robinson, Sokhary Chau and John Descoteaux. Voting against reconsidering the motion were Councilors Sidney Liang, Sean McDonough, Dan Rourke and Kim Scott. So the motion to reconsider the July 14, 2026, vote passed.

Since the council immediately moved onto another item without any discussion about what would happen with the Fernandez legislation now that the original vote had been reconsidered, that matter is now in limbo. The council reconsidering its prior vote just means the underlying vote is voided so the matter is still pending. It will be interesting to see if it shows up on a future agenda or if it just quietly disappears.

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If the context of that pension vote was opaque, another agenda item was deep in an information fogbank. This was a motion by Mayor Erik Gitschier that requested the minutes “of the July 14, 2026 Executive Session be released regarding the UHC-TIF; once released all discussion to be held in open session for this topic.”

Google tells me that “UHC-TIF” likely stands for the state’s Urban Center Housing Tax Increment Finance program which was created by Massachusetts General Laws c.40, s.60. While a standard TIF is designed to attract businesses and industry, this one (usually called UCH-TIF) promotes multi-unit residential development.

But maybe a UHC-TIF is something else. I couldn’t tell because watching this portion of the meeting put me in the mind of a World War II cryptographer trying to crack the German’s Enigma code. Whatever this thing is related to was discussed by the council in executive session, so everyone who spoke about it on Tuesday used riddles and codes to remain within the confidentiality required of executive sessions. The councilors all knew the secret handshake, but the public did not. This created the impression that councilors (1) are keeping something from us; or (2) don’t know what they’re talking about. Either way, it’s not a good look for the council.

I assume the mayor saw some tactical advantage to be gained by releasing the minutes sooner rather than later, but the motion failed with six councilors voting no (Juran, Liang, Mercier, Nuon, Rourke and Descoteaux) and just five voting yes (Gitschier, McDonough, Robinson, Scott and Chau).

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Another instance of “there’s more going on here than councilors let on” happened with a vote to transfer $249,708 to the city’s Health & Human Service Department to pay its lease at 107 Merrimack Street. (From some council comments, it seems this is related to something discussed in executive session, as well.)

HHS used to be at the old Brady School on Pine Street and will eventually move to 40 Market Street, the one-time Lowell Police Station and “police court” that the city reacquired last year. In the meantime, HHS moved into its current location which is alongside Purple Carrot Bread Company at the corner of Merrimack and John Streets.

From the (public) discussion of this vote, it sounds like the city entered a ten-year lease for the premises, but like all city leases, it’s “subject to appropriation.” It also sounded like the city has reached an agreement with the 107 Merrimack Street landlord to continue paying rent until the Market Street building is ready for occupancy at which time HHS will move there. This supplemental appropriation is to pay the rent on 107 Merrimack for the current fiscal year.

This all sounded reasonable; however, the council rejected the appropriation. Because it’s a transfer of money, it requires a two-third majority vote, which on this council is eight votes. It only received seven. Voting against the appropriation were Mayor Gitschier and Councilors Liang, McDonough and Robinson. Voting for the appropriation were Councilors Juran, Mercier, Nuon, Rourke, Scott, Chau and Descoteaux.

Besides the executive session obtuseness that cloak some of the circumstances of this vote, there is a political dimension, as well. The property at 107 Merrimack Street is owned by Nicholas Sarris as trustee of 107 Merrimack Street Trust. That’s the same Nicholas Sarris who owns the Lowell Senior Center building as a trustee. While it’s a different trust, it’s the same basic entity. The council’s Senior Center ownership dispute has been silent for several months, but that doesn’t mean it’s been resolved. Consequently, it’s possible that the rejection of this appropriation was a proxy skirmish in the ongoing Senior Center fight.

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In the legal profession, there’s a general rule that when you’ve made three points in your favor with a witness, sit down, because that one additional question, you’re tempted to ask might be overkill. With that in mind, I’ll quit for now even though there are several other examples of council dysfunction from Tuesday night.

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Thursday’s U.S. mail brought my Democratic Primary vote-by-mail ballot for the September 1, 2026, state primary. Since this system was implemented during the pandemic, I’ve been a reliable mail in voter and it’s always worked fine. If you want to vote that way or for information about this election and others, visit the webpage of the Lowell Election and Census Office which is packed with useful information.

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Bob Sullivan is a Chelmsford native with deep roots in Lowell who had a long writing and editing career at Sports Illustrated, Time and LIFE. I only met him recently and then just virtually, but our shared interests and the pleasure we find in writing made a quick connection. He also has a Substack newsletter called “That Reminds Me of a Story” in which Bob writes about “our life today and yesterday in America, cast with humor and hope of engagement.”

Please check out Bob’s Substack Page and subscribe to it. (I don’t want to curtail his revenue stream but thus far it’s all free although Substack offers you the opportunity to chip in.)

In the interest of full-disclosure, I appeared as a character in a recent edition of Bob’s newsletter: “Interluding On: Meet Our Unincorporated Kerouac Klub” which includes sketches of several well-known Lowell figures and a dip into some fascinating Lowell history. Even if you don’t subscribe to the newsletter, please read this piece.

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In some local literary news, Louise Peloquin, a regular contributor to this site has published her debut novel, Boarding School Blues, a fictionalized account of life at a New England Catholic all girls boarding school in the 1960s that ran in serial form on this site several years ago. The book is available from the print-on-demand company LULU Press and can be ordered at this link.

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Although I wrote a “Seen & Heard” Column this week, it failed to launch on Wednesday as scheduled so I posted it on richardhowe.com earlier this morning. This week, I wrote about the Lowell Folk Festival; reviewed the book, “Mailman: My Wild ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home”; described a guided tour I took of the Massachusetts State House; commented on an Op-Ed about “shaking up” the national Democratic Party; and summarized an essay about the artist Frederic Church, a member of the Hudson River School of landscape painting.