The Lowell City Council met on Tuesday, June 16, 2026. The substantive portion of the meeting led off with a motion by Councilor Rita Mericer asking the city manager to provide “a monthly report to the council as to the overtime spending in the fire department.”

In speaking on her motion, Mercier was harshly critical of the fire department, saying the amount of money spent on overtime was “shocking”, that it was “highway robbery”, that the “taxpayers are being held hostage”, that some firefighters “abuse the system for their own personal gain”, that they are “greedy”, and that “she won’t stand for it.”

Councilor Vesna Nuon said he agreed with the motion, especially considering the 4.6% tax increase councilors have imposed on city property owners. Councilor John Descoteaux said it was “a very timely motion.” Councilor Sidney Liang said he agreed with the motion.

Councilor Corey Robinson said he agreed with the motion, but that councilors “shouldn’t kid ourselves.” He laid the blame for high overtime on insufficient staffing, saying that if the city increased the number of firefighters employed by the city, there would be less need for overtime.

Councilor Sean McDonough said that while he, too, is concerned about overtime spending, he didn’t want to create unnecessary work for someone in preparing a new report since the information requested is already being provided to the council each month by the city auditor. He pointed out that the report for last October (just four months into fiscal year 2026 which ran from July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2026) showed that the fire department had already spent 67% of the money that the council had budgeted for fire department overtime for the entire year. (McDonough’s unstated inference being that if councilors had been paying attention to the information they were already receiving, the large amount of money spent on overtime should not have been surprising.) McDonough added that unlike other city jobs where when a person is out sick the job can be left unfilled, the fire department has “minimum staffing requirements” which require the use of overtime.

Councilor Mercier took umbrage at McDonough’s comments, responding:

“I’m not trying to make work for people. And if it’s already being done, then how hard is it to print that out and give it to 11 people? Is that a burden? It’s a burden to me to see at the end of the budget time and spring it on us. I don’t have the privilege to keep looking and I mean, you know, when you’re not working, maybe you have time to do all these things, but I just would like her, the auditor, to print it out. I don’t know how much more difficult it is. I want to see it in my hand to know that, yeah, it’s getting higher. I don’t think that’s asking too much.”

[Taken from the YouTube transcript of the meeting at 23:18.]

The reference to “not working” was aimed at McDonough who earlier this year resigned his teaching position at Lowell High due to the number of times he had to abstain from city council votes due to the conflict-of-interest rules. McDonough later added, almost plaintively, that he’s starting a new job in September, presumably in another school district.

Mayor Erik Gitschier spoke next, saying that while the overtime spending information was indeed in the auditor’s monthly report, the council needed more information than that. He said the council should more deeply analyze the reasons for high overtime. For instance, how many extra firefighters are there per shift, how many get called in on average per day, how many are out on workers’ comp and for how long, how many are on maternity or paternity leave?

Councilor Dan Rourke pointed out that as the city manager explained several months ago, 110 fire fighters use little overtime, 45 are out a moderate amount of time, and that 30 use every minute of sick time they earn. Rourke said he favors “a full fiscal audit” of the system if that’s what councilors want. He said Mayor Gitschier was correct in the factors he identified. Rourke said the council “should be looking at everything” including vacations and “union leave” (time spent on union activities for which the participants are paid their normal salary, but who are absent from duty which requires replacements to be called in and paid overtime).

Rourke then quizzed the fire chief who explained that the minimum staffing level required 41 firefighters per shift which included three firefighters for each of the city’s 13 trucks plus two deputy chiefs per shift. If all the city’s 213 authorized firefighters were available for duty, there would be 45 or 46 available per shift. This would provide a cushion for each shift meaning that up to four individuals scheduled for duty could be out sick and still leave sufficient personnel – 41 – to meet the minimum staffing level.

However, the city does not have 213 firefighters available for duty now. According to the chief, that number is closer to 200, which leaves the bare minimum on one shift and a single spare person on the other two shifts. In other words, there is no cushion before off duty personnel are called in and paid overtime.

One reason it is difficult for the city to maintain the 213-staffing level is a continuous stream of firefighters filing for retirement. The chief said that as soon as the department bring a new firefighter onboard from the twice-annual fire training academy, it seems that someone else retires.

I assume that long term injury leave is also a factor. Between working on ladders and roofs or slipping on ice that coats everything in the aftermath of a winter fire, or straining to lift a stretcher, “normal” working conditions for fire fighters inevitably lead to more injuries than among the average municipal worker.

Still, the distribution of sick time usage among fire fighters is not even. Are the 30 or so fire fighters who use all their sick time more prone to injury than their peers who use little sick time? There has long been suspicion – never proven as far as I can tell – that some fire fighters game the minimum staffing rules by coordinating their sick time usage with colleagues so that when Fire Fighter A calls in sick on Day 1, Fire Fighter B gets called in to replace them and is  paid overtime, then on Day 2, Fire Fighter B reciprocates by calling in sick, causing Fire Fighter A to be called in a paid overtime. Both A and B have worked a normal number of hours, but both have been paid overtime for one of their shifts.

A “full fiscal audit” that either documented such abuses or proved that they were not occurring would be helpful. But that’s unlikely to happen for at least two reasons. First, collective bargaining rules protect employee confidentiality to a degree that likely would paralyze such an inquiry. Second, it’s doubtful that (some) councilors really want to dig into this issue.

There was a Rip Van Winkle quality to Tuesday night. Just three weeks ago at the May 26, 2026, council meeting, City Manager Tom Golden made an impassioned plea for support in his efforts to curb what he framed as the abuse of sick time that was driving the exorbitant cost of fire department overtime. The council not only failed to back up Golden but also instructed him to go back and work it out which he did. That sent a clear message that there would be no meaningful pushback from the council on fire department overtime. Now with the time for any meaningful response already passed, we suddenly have a pack of born again fiscal watchdogs on the council.

That said, the collective bargaining agreement between the city and the fire fighters by which the city agreed to minimum staffing levels regardless of the cost ties the city’s hands in this conflict. That was apparent when, under the threat of fire fighter layoffs last month, the union obtained a judicial restraining order that essentially prohibited layoffs and any reduction in per shift staffing. Anyone who says, “the city should negotiate that provision out of the contract” has never been involved in union negotiations since, once a benefit as lucrative of that makes it into a contract, it’s nearly impossible to get it out.

In the end, public opinion counts for a lot so the more light can be shed on staffing procedures and fire fighter absenteeism, the better voters will be able to assess performance of councilors on this issue.

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In other matters, councilors discussed the practicalities of providing air conditioning in city schools that don’t already have it; debated how Community Preservation Act funding has been allocated; and discussed an upcoming public forum on data centers which will give residents an opportunity to ask questions and share feedback with the city’s Planning Department. That forum is Monday, June 29, 2026, at 6pm at the Butler School at 1140 Gorham Street.

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As challenging as Lowell’s fiscal road ahead may be, it perhaps got a little less dire on Thursday when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court invalidated the proposal scheduled to be on this November’s state election ballot that would reduce the state income tax from the current 5% down to 4%. City Manager Golden previously had warned that if this referendum passed, the effect on the city of Lowell’s budget would be catastrophic. With the SJC now invalidating the question, that risk seems to have been removed, at least until the next fiscal crisis arises.

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Lowell’s Franco-American Festival Week kicks off today. I’m especially interested in an event tomorrow night (Monday, June 22, 2026) called “Across the Years: Three Franco Poets from Lowell” which begins at 5:30pm at UMass Lowell’s Coburn Hall, Room 255, at 850 Broadway (on South Campus). The three poets featured are Dr. Joseph H. Roy (1865-1931) and contemporary poets Suzanne Beebe and Paul Marion. The event is free, open to the public, and will be moderated by Dr. Mercedes Baillargeon of the university’s Department of World Languages and Cultures.

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This week in my Seen and Heard column I wrote about a recent visit to the Boott Cotton Mills Museum; shared my thoughts on the NBA Finals including why I was cheering for the New York Knicks; commented on a Dan Shaughnessy column speculating on why the World Cup isn’t treated as a big deal around here; and noted the 75th anniversary of the creation of the Freedom Trail in Boston and reminisced about efforts to create something similar in Lowell.