An innocuous sounding item on Tuesday’s agenda generated the most significant discussion of the evening. This was “Sick Leave Usage and OT Update for FY2026” which included an eight-page document that provided historical data on sick leave usage.

When this item was finally reached nearly two hours into the meeting, City Manager Tom Golden made a passionate (and sometimes pained) presentation that reminded me of a sadder version of the more upbeat “state of the city” addresses that city managers give each year.

Golden began by saying one of his primary responsibilities as city manager is to protect the long-term financial stability of the city. The city is heavily dependent on state and federal funding, and we are seeing “an absolute seismic shift in how local government is going to be funded in the future.” He diplomatically addressed the federal government’s chaotic and destructive policies by simply saying, “I think everyone of us knows what’s happening.” Regarding state funding, he cautioned that if the referendum on this fall’s state ballot succeeds in lowering the state income tax rate from the current five percent to the proposed four percent, the impact on local aid will be enormous, all to the detriment of Lowell.

He then commended the 12 of 15 city unions that this year agreed to defer a two percent cost of living raise until the end of the fiscal year in return for reducing the number of layoffs of their members. (In the context of Golden’s later remarks, it seems that one of the unions that did not agree to that deferral was the one representing Lowell firefighters.)

Golden then reviewed some of the positive things that have been accomplished under his tenure, one of which is an overall culture of fiscal discipline which has resulted in a healthy reserve fund, high bond ratings, and lower borrowing costs. He then pivoted to the primary purpose of his remarks, saying “the same discipline is needed now more than ever, especially for overtime throughout the city.”

He continued:

Citywide sick leave is an area where additional controls are necessary. It’s an area that my administration has worked on and will continue to work on with our employees and our union leaders. There are departments that are doing extremely well and have been responsible. As an example, the Lowell Police Department alone reduced sick time from 15,278 hours in FY23 to 10,883 hours in 2025 and currently they’re on track at 9,637 hours for fiscal year 26. These improvements demonstrate what responsible management and cooperative effort with both of those unions has achieved.

Before I speak about the opposite side of the spectrum, this is going to be difficult to say. My comments have nothing to do with job performance. My comments have nothing to do with the excellent care that is given to residents in the time of need. I have had family members, friends today who serve on the fire department. I have family members that are taking the exam to become a firefighter.

Our firefighters have an extremely difficult job and we really truly should applaud them. However, for the last four years, I have raised concerns about sick leave and overtime with local 853’s union leadership’s team. Most recently, I truly believe I offered a fair and reasonable solution at the bargaining table that would have prevented layoffs.

We calculated the value of approximately $336,000 of savings while the actual salary costs were a little over $500,000. We started originally at eight layoffs. We got it down to six. And I have to say we worked with the union. We looked at the numbers. We tried to get it done. We tried to push it. But we needed a little bit more cooperation that at the time just isn’t there. We had something to do in a timely manner so we could get the budget to this council per the Mass General Laws.

But despite the offer that we put forward, the union leadership simply declined it. Instead, the union leadership determined the benefit of laying off the six firefighters outweighed what I had to offer. Additionally, the union leadership chose to wage a public relations campaign which is happening tonight.

However, as misguided this effort may be, it doesn’t change the math. Overtime costs have grown by an astronomical amount, roughly 300%. And the rate of escalation is simply not sustainable for the taxpayers of Lowell. In FY26, we are on pace to spend over $4 million in overtime. And this level of spending is not only unsustainable, but it’s also out of line with our peer communities. Brockton, Lynn, Lawrence, New Bedford, which are all four gateway cities with populations near and around 100,000, spend an average of about $2.75 million.

To address the root of the problem that is driving overtime, we must look at data. And that’s what we’ve been doing. And here is what the data shows. In fiscal year 2025, 112 firefighters used little to no sick time, which is commendable. . . . Sixty members used between seven and 15 tours of sick leave per year. Thirty-one members used 16 or more tours of sick leave per year.

Now, I apologize if somebody has an issue going on in their family. God knows nobody would want that to happen.

But when we’re talking about the difference between 112 members that are leading by example and doing the right thing which is commendable and the question of others we really need to look at this. This is not something that we can continue to afford.

When in 2001 we moved to the 24-hour shift. It was intended to reduce sick time and unfortunately it’s produced something the exact opposite. Sick time usage directly drives overtime. For every hour that someone calls in sick because of what this council has been trying to do, the city normally has to hire somebody back at one and a half times the rate. So that hour is costing us 2.5 times what it would normally cost [i.e., the person out sick receives their full salary and the person called in to replace them is paid at the overtime rate which is 1.5 times the regular salary.]

[Golden then made comments about time off by union leaders having increased by 60 percent which, per their contract, is filled by other firefighters who are paid overtime for filling the vacant shift.]

Shared sacrifice by the entire city cannot mean that the rest of the workplace steps up while one department maintains practices that costs are unsustainable. The fire department is critical to public safety, and its members perform life-saving work. But no department, no matter how essential, is exempt from the fiscal realities of what is going on in this country, in this state, and in this city. No department should expect others to carry the burden and not share it themselves, especially when overtime spending is up nearly 300 percent. Not when leave usage patterns cause mandatory callbacks. Not when union leave increased by more than 60 percent.

One of the charts in the “Sick Leave Usage and OT Update” report shows ten years of overtime spending by four city departments: police, fire, DPW and water & sewer. Here are the numbers for the police and fire departments by fiscal year with FY2026 showing year to date spending (FY2026 runs from July 1, 2026, to June 30, 2027):

• FY2016
  • Police – $876,193
  • Fire – $1,136,194
• FY2017
  • Police – $954,600
  • Fire – $998,820
• FY2018
  • Police – $951,384
  • Fire – $1,078,402
• FY2019
  • Police – $933,726
  • Fire – $1,032,390
• FY2020
  • Police – $807,245
  • Fire – $1,110,214
• FY2021
  • Police – $869,609
  • Fire – $1,377,098
• FY2022
  • Police – $1,142,720
  • Fire – $2,809,567
• FY2023
  • Police – $1,292,720
  • Fire – $3,324,750
• FY2024
  • Police – $1,445,480
  • Fire – $2,580,886
• FY2025
  • Police – $1,277,128
  • Fire – $3,368,314
• FY2026 (YTD)
  • Police – $996,876
  • Fire – $3,447,240

This chart shows that spending on fire department overtime has exploded during the past decade, especially when compared to the much more gradual rate of increase of police overtime during the same period.

After Golden spoke, Mayor Erik Gitschier responded to the manager’s remarks, saying in defense of the firefighters and the current system that the large amount of overtime is a function of firefighters working 24 hour shifts rather than the 8 hour shifts worked by police officers, so when a firefighter is out sick it is more costly than when a police officer is out. The mayor then urged the city manager and the firefighters union to work out their differences before next Tuesday’s budget session but closed by saying he supported using the city’s reserve fund to cover the overtime needed instead of closing any fire stations as a way of reducing overtime spending.

Interestingly, no other councilors spoke. Perhaps that’s because a vote earlier in the evening may have been a proxy for where councilors stood on this issue. It was a vote to transfer $822,000 to the Fire Department Overtime Account. The accompanying memo stated the fire department “has currently exhausted the remaining funding” in its salaries and wages overtime account, and this money was needed to make it through the rest of the fiscal year. (The money was coming from the police department’s salaries and wages account.)

Although this vote was listed far down the agenda, it came up early in the meeting – long before Golden spoke – when Councilor Corey Robinson asked that the fire department overtime funding vote be taken out of order. That request was seconded and passed by a voice vote. However, before any substantive action could be taken, Councilor Dan Rourke said, “Mr. Mayor, I move to table this.” Councilor Vesna Nuon seconded the request.

Under the rules of procedure, a motion to table a matter requires an immediate vote and is not debatable, so Clerk Michael Geary called the roll. Voting to table the overtime transfer were councilors Rourke, Kim Scott, Sokhary Chau, John Descoteaux, Belinda Juran and Vesna Nuon. Voting not to table the motion were Councilors Robinson, Sean McDonough, Rita Mercier, Sidney Liang, and Mayor Gitschier. Geary announced that vote as six to table it and five not to table it, so the overtime funding vote was “set on the table” and will remain unaddressed until six councilors vote to take it off the table.

In Lowell politics, as in life, its best not to believe in coincidences, so I assume this was a signal of support for the city manager in the face of off duty firefighters who were at the council meeting (or at least at City Hall) protesting the proposed layoff of six firefighters in the FY27 budget which will be debated this coming Tuesday.

For the fire department, sick time usage is a driver of overtime spending. Under previous city administrations, when firefighters were out sick, instead of summonsing off duty firefighters to fill the vacancies and paying them overtime, one of the city’s fire units would be taken out of service and the personnel assigned to that unit for that shift would be redeployed to fill the vacancies created by those who had called in sick. Shutting down a fire unit for a shift is referred to as a “brownout.”

The most recent city councils, however, have made “no brownouts” a priority, and Tom Golden, who became city manager in April 2022, has implemented that policy. While the no brownouts policy has kept all fire units in service continuously, it has also meant that as the amount of sick time used by firefighters increased, so did the city’s spending on fire department overtime.

Like Mayor Gitschier in his remarks, some councilors have been very vocal in their intolerance of brownouts. Certainly no one on the council wants fire units to be out of service, but the councilors who publicly proclaim that all fire units must be fully staffed at all times regardless of the cost put the city manager in a no win situation when it comes to negotiating with the firefighters union since the union has confidence that if it holds out against any reforms, councilors will side with them rather than with the city manager and his quest for some restraint in fire department overtime spending.

Of course, under our Plan E form of government, Golden can close all the fire units he wants and the council’s only recourse would be to fire him since councilors do not have the authority to force increases in spending from what the city manager recommends – councilors can only approve, reduce or reject those recommendations.

Conflict between the city manager and the firefighters union is not new. Back in 1993, City Manager Dick Johnson took a hardline against what he saw as firefighter intransigence at the bargaining table by ordering all beds removed from city firehouses. He also asked that the contract go to arbitration because of the deadlock. When the Lowell Sun wrote an editorial siding with Johnson, bumper stickers and signs that proclaimed, “The Sun ain’t so hot” sprouted around the community.

Somehow that conflict worked itself out. Such disputes usually do. Until they don’t. We’ll see what happens Tuesday night.

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This week in my Wednesday “Seen and Heard” column, I wrote about last Monday’s Lowell  Public Schools Civics Day at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium; reviewed True Yankees: The South Seas and the Discovery of American Identity by Dane Morrison, which is about America’s early trade with China which helped fund the creation of Lowell; noted the obituary of Philip Caputo whose 1977 book, A Rumor of War, was an instant classic in Vietnam literature; and mentioned a New York Times analysis of the recent US presidential visit to China.

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With tomorrow being Memorial Day, I reposted an article I wrote about the history of the holiday, and Leo Racicot reviewed my new book about Lowell servicemembers who died during World War II.

An excerpt of that book, Regret To Inform You: The Human Cost of WWII in Lowell, Mass. with instructions on how to download the free ebook version or order a paper copy online, is available here.