The Tuesday, May 5, 2026, council meeting lasted just over two hours with no single issue dominating the meeting. Perhaps the central theme of council discussions on Tuesday and at other recent meetings has been the fiscal challenges the city faces in the coming year.

Related to that, the council received a report from Finance Subcommittee chair Belinda Juran on that committee’s April 28, 2026, meeting and the minutes of that meeting. The PowerPoint presentation to the subcommittee from Chief Financial Officer Conor Baldwin on the FY27 budget process was also included. The presentation was filled with information that sets the table for upcoming council budget deliberations, so I’ll review it at length in today’s newsletter.

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The proposed budget will be presented to the city council at this week’s meeting on May 12, 2026. The council will then schedule a public hearing on the budget and should adopt the budget no later than June 30, 2026, since Fiscal Year 2027 begins the next day. Under our Plan E form of government, councilors may adopt the budget as is, make cuts to it, or reject it entirely, however, the council may not increase the budget or any item within it.

On January 22, 2026, the Massachusetts Department of Revenue certified Lowell’s “free cash” from FY25 (which ran from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025). Recall that “free cash” is the city’s surplus funds from that fiscal year. Those funds may have come from several sources: Money that was budgeted for a specific purpose but was not spent by the end of the fiscal year; surplus revenue resulting from higher than projected income from taxes; or previously unspent free cash. Before the city can use free cash, the calculations must be certified by the state Department of Revenue. After that, the city can use the money for any legal purpose. However, the best practice is to avoid using it for recurring expenses like salaries. Instead, it is usually directed towards the city’s stabilization fund (which is a type of “rainy day” account); towards capital expenditures; or towards emergency expenses that could not have been anticipated in the annual budget.

In February of this year, the council adopted the city manager’s recommendation that $7.5 million of the newly certified free cash be sent to the stabilization fund to restore the amount used to close gaps in the FY26 budget, to subsidize the city’s parking operations, and to provide more funds to the Lowell Public Schools than the city manager had initially recommended in his annual budget. Another $1.7 million was used on “traffic calming investments” (I assume that means the much-desired “speed humps”); expenses from the two special elections for the vacant state senate seat; and a few other items.

Notably, all funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) has come to an end. That money had to be obligated by the end of calendar year 2024 and spent by now. The presentation states, “Positions or programs previously supported by ARPA that continue will require General Fund appropriation.” When a financial windfall like ARPA became available, it would have been irrational for the city not to have taken advantage of it, but the question now is whether the use of those funds was finite and ended with the funding, or did it become so central to city operations that there is pressure to absorb those extra costs into the city’s regular budget and thereby increase the fiscal pressure on the entire operation.

For revenue, the FY27 budget estimates $320 million from state aid; $199 million from property taxes; $16 million from fees and excise; and $38 million from other sources. The state’s contribution, which is contingent on the legislature’s approval of a FY27 state budget, consists of $276 million for education; $32 million in unrestricted aid; and $9 million in reimbursements for charter school assessments.

When it comes to what the city spends money on, there are five big drivers of costs, all largely outside the city’s direct control:

• Pensions: $39.7 million in FY27, up 12.2% from FY25
• Debt Service: $23.2 million in FY27, up 35.8% from FY25
• State Assessments: $57.0 million in FY27, up 40.3% from FY25
• Health Insurance: $34.0 million in FY27, up 43.1% from FY25
• Energy: $9.4 million in FY27, up 8.0% from FY25

The bulk of “state assessments” are for charter schools. Since charter schools are public schools, their funding comes from the overall city budget in the form of a deduction from state aid. The amount of the deduction is determined by a complex calculation based on the amount per student the city is supposed to spend. The problem with that approach is that it oversimplifies the cost of educating a student. Fixed costs for facilities, infrastructure, administration, and other things must be funded regardless of how many students attend the district schools, so a greater share of the money remaining in the system must cover those fixed expenses. That leaves less money for the direct education of the students staying in the district schools.

The charter school reimbursement law seems to recognize this by providing reimbursements to the school district for a percentage of the per pupil money going to the charter school. The problem is that the reimbursement is “subject to appropriation” which means if the legislature does not allocate enough money to this line item of the state budget, communities like Lowell don’t get the reimbursement set by the statute. That has been a regular occurrence so this is a chronic problem which puts direct pressure on the budget of the Lowell Public Schools and indirect pressure on the overall city budget which is compelled to finance a greater portion of the school budget than would be the case if the legislature adequately funded charter school reimbursements.

These high-cost structural demands don’t seem to leave much room for discretionary spending in the city budget, which will make the coming budget sessions difficult for councilors. It’s easy to govern when there’s plenty of money; the challenge comes in tight times when you must disappoint people by saying no. Thanks mostly to the ARPA funding windfall, few of the current councilors have held office in tight fiscal times so it will be interesting to see how they handle it.

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A pair of memos from the city’s Director of Elections & Census Will Rosenberry provided interesting information about the mechanics of holding an election, specifically where people vote. Now, voting places in Lowell are almost exclusively in school buildings.

For many reasons, including that we live in a country that tolerates mass shootings on an almost daily basis, it’s vital that school officials control access to their building. That is tough to do on election day when hundreds and possibly more than a thousand strangers enter the school building to vote. Consequently, for many years, Lowell Public Schools have closed on election days. In most years, that means one closure in September for the primary election, and another in November for the general election. However, this year, because of the two special elections needed to fill the state senate seat left vacant when Ed Kennedy passed away, the schools faced two additional days of being closed. Instead, the city election office worked with school officials to segregate the space within the school used for voting from the rest of the school, especially the students, and school was not cancelled.

Turnout in the special elections was quite low, so neither posed a true test of a modified system. However, studies and past practice have shown that even small changes to voting places (such as, which door to enter or where to park) tends to reduce turnout. Also, because so many children get rides to and from school, the immediate vicinity of a school becomes somewhat chaotic at arrival and dismissal times which would make it difficult for potential voters who arrive at those times.

As for making a building other than a school a polling place, that is feasible if the place is handicapped accessible, has adequate parking, and a room sufficiently large to hold all voting functions. A facility with a liquor license cannot be used as a polling place, but any other private building, including a church, is acceptable so long as the standards mentioned above are met. However, there are at least two challenges that come with using non-school buildings: the first is the city would have to pay rent, something that is not currently within the budget of the election office. The second challenge would be consistent availability. While the dates for general elections are known well in advance, the dates for primaries or preliminaries are more fluid, and the need to hold a special election can arise without much notice. Since research shows that consistently using a place for voting tends to help turnout, the city would not want to be changing polling locations with each election.

For now, it seems voting will continue to be done in city schools.

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On richardhowe.com, please check out Dave Perry’s stellar review of last weekend’s The Town and the City Festival which includes his account of reunion appearances of several bands that dominated the Lowell music scene in the 1990s.

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This week in my Seen & Heard column I wrote about the recent dedication of Eternal Flame a new public art piece by Lowell artist Jay Hungate that was commissioned by Lowell Cemetery for its newly opened West Meadow section; reviewed a New Yorker profile of Sam Altman, the founder of the artificial intelligence company, OpenAI; commented on a New York Times article on how professional historians are observing the semiquincentennial; commented on a New York Times Op-Ed about how elderly Americans went from being among the poorest group in America to the wealthiest and most powerful; and commented on another Times Op-Ed about Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for US Senate in Maine.

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Finally, Bob Forrant and I are teaming up to lead a free walking tour on Lowell and World War II to be held on Saturday, May 23, 2026, at 10am from the Lowell National Historical Park Visitor Center at 246 Market Street. The tour will take approximately 90 minutes and requires no advanced registration. Just show up.