The Lowell city election is this Tuesday with the polls open from 7 am until 8 pm. The city’s Election and Census Office website has a “find your polling place” app along with other election-related information.

I don’t have any predictions about the outcome, but I’m especially interested in two things: First, will turnout improve from the dismissal participation rate in the last city election where just 7,516 of 75,294 registered voters cast ballots? Second, do voters harbor any anti-incumbent sentiments? I ask that because in the September 9, 2025, preliminary election, the only thing on the ballot that day were three district council races and in all three, the incumbent finished second or worse.

In District 3, incumbent councilor Corey Belanger finished third behind challengers Belinda Juran and Dan Finn and thus failed to make the cut for the November election while in District 7, incumbent Paul Ratha Yem finished second to challenger Sidney Liang and in District 8, incumbent John Descoteaux finished second to challenger Marcos Candido.

With even more contested races on the ballot on Tuesday, will an anti-incumbent wave strike or were the preliminary results just a function of small turnouts that magnified the impact of a discontented minority? Tuesday’s results should answer that question.

Here’s a preview of Tuesday’s ballot. Because of our hybrid system of representation, voters will only see the at-large candidates plus the candidates for the district in which they live. Also, state law requires incumbents to be listed first and challengers second, both in alphabetical order.

City Councilor At-Large (top three elected)

Erik Gitschier (incumbent)
Rita Mercier (incumbent)
Vesna Nuon (incumbent)
Sixto DeJesus
Emile Kaufman

City Councilor District 1 (top one elected in all districts)

Daniel Rourke (incumbent)

City Councilor District 2

Corey Robinson (incumbent)

City Councilor District 3

Daniel Finn
Belinda Juran

City Councilor District 4

Wayne Jenness (incumbent)
Sean McDonough

City Councilor District 5

Kimberly Ann Scott (incumbent)
Sherri O’Connor Barboza

City Councilor District 6

Sokhary Chau (incumbent)

City Councilor District 7

Paul Ratha Yem (incumbent)
Sidney Liang

City Councilor District 8

John Descoteaux (incumbent)
Marcos Candido

School Committee At-Large (top two elected)

Connie Martin (incumbent)
Zoe Dzineku
Danielle McFadden
Robert Hoey

School Committee District 1

Fred Bahou (incumbent)

School Committee District 2

Eileen DelRossi (incumbent)

School Committee District 3

David Conway (incumbent)

School Committee District 4

Dominik Lay (incumbent)

I plan to post the unofficial results on richardhowe.com as soon as they become available and will dig into the results and their implications in next week’s newsletter.

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UMass Lowell Chancellor Julie Chen gave an update on the Lowell Innovation Network Corridor (LINC) to the council on Tuesday. She explained that this project will have a huge impact on Lowell, Greater Lowell, and the entire north-of-Boston region. The objective, she said, was to bring great jobs to Lowell by attracting companies that want to hire UMass Lowell graduates, other Lowell residents, and people from nearby communities.

Chen attributed that growing momentum of the project to strong support from every level of government. She cited a recently announced $25 million state investment in a building that will be occupied by Draper Labs as evidence of this, saying that Governor Healey and the legislature “don’t make that kind of financial commitment without everyone rowing in the same direction.”

Chancellor Chen also highlighted a $5 million state grant in support of the UMass Lowell and Mass General Brigham collaboration that studies “cognition and decision-making” by the military and athletes.

One of the best things about LINC is that it combines housing and entertainment along with businesses and jobs. Plans to build market rate housing amid these new companies are progressing. Sea Dog Brewing Co., a Maine-based craft beer company with locations across New England, will open a brewpub on Cabot Street with seating for 300. And the baseball Futures League is in negotiations with a team that will soon play its games at LeLacheur Park.

Chen closed by saying the LINC project is already bringing good jobs and good companies here and that many see Lowell as the next Kendall Square. This is great from a UMass Lowell perspective, because it gives the school’s students a reason to stay in Lowell, and it’s great for the city because it provides quality jobs with associated housing and entertainment for everyone who lives here.

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The city’s two vacant courthouses were briefly discussed with each having a distinctly different vibe. Regarding the Lowell District Court, City Manager Tom Golden exudes optimism about the future of that site and the surrounding area which includes the former UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center and the adjacent Lower Locks Parking Garage. Golden said that the city has already received many interesting proposals pursuant to the already-issued RFP for the District Court and that ongoing talks with the state suggest that the use of the ICC as an emergency shelter which is now scheduled to end in December 2026, could wrap up sooner, perhaps as early as next July. Golden said that between the ICC, the ICC surface parking lot (“ICC-2”), and the Lowell District Court, the entire area could be “reinvented” in a positive way.

In contrast, the vacant Superior Court on Gorham Street continues to linger with more problems than solutions. Now the issue is rats that may have been drawn to the neighborhood by trash that has been allowed to accumulate on the Superior Court grounds.

The Superior Courthouse is a historically unique building which makes it worth saving but also poses significant challenges to repurpose it for some other use. I think it best to button up the building for now and preserve it for future use until external circumstances make its renovation more attractive.  However, without ongoing maintenance and care, a mothballed building can soon fall victim to demolition by neglect so that when a reuse finally emerges, that building is too far gone to save. Consequently, it’s wise for the city council to keep the Superior Courthouse and its condition in the spotlight.

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This council’s obsession with “horizontal construction” (i.e., repaving streets) sometimes resembles a multi-part skit on Saturday Night Live.

Episode One: Councilor X moves to repave Street Y as soon as possible because neighbors are complaining about the condition of Street Y.

Episode Two (a month after the street has been repaved): Councilor X moves to install speed bumps on Street Y because now that the street has been repaved, people are driving too fast.

It shouldn’t take a professional traffic engineer to understand that if you make a street resemble the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, people will drive faster on it. While no one wants tire-destroying potholes littering the city’s streets, a few bumps or depressions in the road serve as naturally occurring speed bumps and slow traffic at a much lower cost that our current formula.

Beyond the budgetary strain that this obsession with street paving creates, it also skews the strategic direction of the city away from other forms of transportation like walking, bicycling, and public transit. A council motion on any of those topics that appear on the agenda is a rare occurrence.

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There’s always a Lowell connection: I’ve long been a fan of Tim O’Brien, the Vietnam veteran turned writer who burst on the American literary scene with his 1973 memoir, If I Die in a Combat Zone, and his award-winning novels Going After Cacciato (1978) and The Things They Carried 1990). Consequently, when a literary biography of the writer, Peace Is a Shy Thing: The Life and Art of Tim O’Brien by Alex Vernon was recently published, I immediately bought and read it.

In 1969, O’Brien served as a combat infantryman in the Americal Division, which included the platoon that perpetrated the My Lai Massacre the year before O’Brien’s arrival. American units in that region suffered many casualties due mostly to mines and booby traps as opposed to enemy fire. The stress on those deployed there was immense.

Biographer Vernon observes that this crucible of violence produced several notable writers from the ranks of soldiers who served there. Besides O’Brien, there was Tracy Kidder (Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award), the poet Yusef Komunyakaa, formerly James Brown, (Pulitzer Price), and poet Michael Casey (Yale Younger Poets Prize).

That would be Michael Casey of Lowell, Massachusetts. He was born here in 1947, graduated from Lowell High School (where he was a classmate and neighbor of acclaimed novelist Elinor Lipman) and Lowell Technological Institute (now UMass Lowell). Although Casey majored in physics at LTI, his interest in poetry was nurtured there by members of the English Department. After his Vietnam service, his first book of poetry, Obscenities, won the prestigious Yale prize.  Two of Casey’s most recent poetry collections are available online from Loom Press.