Tuesday night the Lowell City Council endorsed a motion by Councilor Rita Mercier that “the mayor enter into negotiations with the city manager and city council in executive session to discuss extending his contract, pay scale, etc.” As it appeared on the agenda, the motion did not specify the length of the proposed extension, but in her remarks, Mercier mentioned two years which she immediately amended to be for three years.

As reasons for making this motion, Mercier cited (1) Golden’s mastery in spending the $76 million in Federal ARPA funding received by the city; (2) his support of UMass Lowell’s LINC initiative; and (3) the forthcoming (hopefully) Frontrunner City designation for Lowell.

The vote on the contract extension was 7 in favor and 4 opposed with YES votes coming from Corey Belanger, Sokhary Chau, John Descoteaux, Rita Mercier, Dan Rourke, Kim Scott, and Paul Ratha Yem.

Voting NO on the extension were Erik Gitschier, Wayne Jenness, Vesna Nuon and Corey Robinson. All four said positive things about Golden’s performance and based their opposition on Golden’s current contract still having 26 months left to go. Gitschier said that the city’s financial future is uncertain, so it is not fiscally responsible to lock the city into an agreement that extends so far into the future. Jenness echoed that sentiment, stressing that with the current political upheaval in Washington, the future of federal funds flowing to Lowell is uncertain which could drastically change the fiscal circumstances Lowell faces. Nuon’s opposition was grounded in an extension being premature with 26 months left to go on Golden’s current contract. Robinson was concerned that this would set a precedent that other city employees might try to follow. He asked what the response would be if a collective bargaining unit that executed a three-year contract just six months ago suddenly announced it wanted to begin negotiations on its next contract.

As a practical matter, I don’t look at the length of a contract for Lowell’s city manager as being completely binding on either party, more due to politics than contract law. If a city council sours on a city manager, councilors can make the manager so miserable that they will leave on their own terms. Conversely, if a city manger sours on the job, the council will be happy to let them out of their contract.

Also, one of the consequences of hiring a politician to be city manager rather than a person who sees their profession as being a municipal manager is that the politician is unlikely to take (or be offered) a similar job elsewhere. In contrast, someone who sees managing as their profession is likely to be recruited to a bigger and better paying position elsewhere. So it’s unlikely that Golden will be recruited away from Lowell by some other city.

Golden clearly enjoys being Lowell City Manager and councilors, even those who opposed his contract extension, seem happy with his performance, so it’s unlikely there will be a change of leadership anytime soon. As for the council, a few challengers have already emerged for the upcoming city election but there is no “throw them all out” groundswell so it seems unlikely that there will be a big change in the makeup of the council.

However, that sense of satisfaction could and likely will change very quickly when finances get tight. There’s a saying in the military that a good general understands tactics, but a great general understands logistics. The corollary in local government is that a good city manager can run things when funding is adequate, but it takes a great city manager to navigate a fiscal crisis. Between the inevitable boom then bust cycle of state funding, the uncertainty around federal funding, the ARPA induced growth to the city budget that will need to be reigned in and the ever-increasing costs of employee health insurance and retiree pension contributions, it’s just a matter of time until a crisis in city finances will arise and tough decisions will have to be made, both by the city manager and by the city council. Historically, when city councils start feeling the political heat that comes from cutting popular programs, they quickly point the finger at the city manger and things change regardless of how long an employment contract might have left to run.

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The issue of snow removal and snow emergencies came up briefly on Tuesday night. Anyone who has tried to find a carton of ice melt recently was not surprised by Manager Golden’s comments that road salt is in short supply regionally. It sounds as if the city has adequate stocks but other communities face shortages. Golden added that the nature of last weekend’s storm with a period of snow that required salting of the roads followed by heavy rain that washed that salt away followed by a deep freeze that required re-salting put a big dent in the city’s supply of road treatment material.

My own observation is that while the roads are mostly clear, sidewalks and other surfaces still have a lot of ice, due mostly to daytime temperatures never rising above freezing since that snow-rain-freeze storm. We were fortunate this was school vacation week because walking to school or waiting for the school bus would have been hazardous in many places due to the residual ice. The weather people predict a warm up this week so hopefully the ice will disappear from city sidewalks and it will be safe to walk once again.

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Things are happening so quickly in Washington that a news item from two weeks ago seems like ancient history, but since this one has a Lowell connection to national issue, I’ll mention it here now. Each day, Boston’s NPR radio station WBUR sends out an email newsletter. The February 11, 2025, edition contained this item:

Testing their metal: How are President Trump’s new tariffs on steel and aluminum being received in Massachusetts? It depends on who you ask. As promised, Trump announced a blanket 25% tariff yesterday on all steel and aluminum imported into the United States. And unlike his already-imposed 2018 tariffs on the two metals, this latest chapter of Trump’s ongoing trade wars includes no carve-outs for Canada – the biggest importer of steel and aluminum to the U.S.

Who it helps: Steel fabricators. Steel is among Massachusetts’ top imports from Canada – a sore spot for local steel manufacturers. Dennis Scannell, president of the Lowell Iron and Steel Company, says it’s “impossible” to compete with Canadian peers – even on local projects – due to cheaper labor costs north of the border.  ”The tariffs, thank God they’re coming,” Scannell told WBUR’s Steph Brown. “Maybe this evens the playing field for us. But this hits right at home. There’s no way we can compete with Canada.”

 Scannell’s enthusiasm for tariffs finds precedent in Lowell’s history. When the city was first founded in the 1820s, those who invested in the fledgling textile mills were fierce advocates of tariffs on cloth imported from England which could be manufactured, shipped and sold here for less than the price US domestic manufactures could charge. By placing a 25% import tax on all cotton coming from England, the US government helped the Lowell mills become established, provided greater profits to investors in those mills, and helped ensure employment for residents of Lowell and for newcomers to the city.

Tariffs, however, were not universally embraced in the US. Southern cotton planters were harmed when English textile mills retaliated against the tariffs by purchasing cotton from other countries which cut into the export market for Southern cotton. Southerners also had to pay higher prices for finished cotton cloth whether it was imported from England (and burdened with the tariff surcharge) or manufactured in the US (with its higher base cost). Western farmers were similarly harmed by these higher prices.

Fast forward to today, tariffs on steel will assist companies like Lowell Iron and Steel, but they will increase the cost of cars, washing machines, refrigerators, and everything else made with steel.

Initially, I was baffled by Canada being able to produce steel at a much lower cost than in the US. Usually when there is such a price disparity, it is attributable to much lower labor costs overseas. But in this case, I couldn’t imagine Canadian steel workers being paid appreciably less, or having worse benefits, than their US counterparts. It turns out that Canada’s price advantage comes from lower energy costs (there’s a lot of hydropower generated by its rivers and natural gas is abundantly available), plus many of the raw materials used in making steel, like iron ore, are abundantly available in Canada and are located close to steel-making facilities which decreases transportation costs.

One final historical footnote: Daniel Webster, the renowned US Senator from Massachusetts, was against tariffs before he was for them. Early in his Senate tenure, much of the commerce of Massachusetts came from trading overseas in the glory days of the Salem clipper ships. (In fact, Francis Cabot Lowell, the namesake of this city, made his initial fortune as a trader of Chinese goods. He took that money and invested it in a textile manufacturing start up in Waltham which expanded into Lowell after Francis had died.) But as soon as textile manufacturing emerged as big business in Massachusetts, Webster changed his position and supported tariffs to help the newly created mills.

As the saying goes, all politics is local.

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Another national-to-Lowell connection showed up in a recent edition of the New York Times Book Review. A “By the Book” feature in the Book Review featured an interview with bestselling author and Lowell-native Elinor Lipman. Her answer to one question caught my eye:

Question: Have you ever gotten in trouble for reading a book?

Answer: Not me, but a good friend did. Her crime was choosing a novel from the adult shelf in the bookmobile that came to our middle school once a week. She was banned from the bookmobile for weeks. The book? A Jack Kerouac novel. And this was in Lowell, Mass., Kerouac’s birthplace.

Given the recent revival of a bookmobile at the Pollard Memorial Library, I found Lipman’s answer to be timely.

Lipman, a 1968 graduate of Lowell High and a 2005 Distinguished Alumna, continues to be involved in the city, primarily through her active participation in the Pollard Memorial Library Foundation’s annual Elinor Lipman Award for Writing.

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This week on richardhowe.com, in response to Vice President Vance’s criticisms of Germany, I reposted my 2020 article about how that country dealt with its Nazi history and what the US could learn from it; Charlie Gargiulo shared an excerpt from his Legends of Little Canada memoir about a day at the Royal Theatre; Paul Marion has a review on a new book about Bruce Springsteen; and Louise Peloquin highlights new health and beauty products promoted in 1925 in Lowell’s L’Etoile French language newspaper.