Left In Lowell

Tomorrow is, as I was reminded in comments, Dick Howe’s last meeting before his retirement from the city council.

I am likely going to make it, probably with a borrowed laptop so I can still do Tuesday City Council Blogging (so I suppose everyone will know who I am!). I want each and every one of you who has felt that Dick Howe has stood up with integrity, even when it was the unpopular thing to do, to come to the meeting and send him off feeling like he has made a difference.

When I first started watching city council meetings on a regular basis, I thought Mr. Howe was something of an ornery opposer of just about everything. The more I learned, though, the more I realized those things he opposed (with the exception of the retroactive raise for the city workers, I still think that’s a fairly normal thing that happens in union negotiations and the workers had been without a raise for two years) were the same things I opposed.

When Greater Lowell for Peace and Justice formed a coalition to present an anti-PATRIOT Act resolution to the city council, it was Dick Howe who first began to support it. Sure, he wanted us to modify the language a bit (I suppose that was inevitable) but told us he could get behind it just when we thought we were toast in getting anywhere. It subsequently passed.

And maybe Howe is usually quite rude to Cox, but then again, he’s had years of frustration with the guy. After trying to get things accomplished in the city myself (and not just with the CBA), I can say I would likely do the same thing but I doubt I could hold off swearing intensely while doing it.

But the one thing I respect in Howe above all else is his ability to say what he thinks, no matter who likes it or not. I like to think his no-nonsense style of pointing out what he perceives as wrong or bad for the city has influenced me in writing this blog. As I get more confident of my knowledge of the city, I’d like to hold myself to the ideal of speaking the truth as far as I know it no matter with whom it gets me in trouble. But I get to do it behind a website. Howe has to do it in public, on camera, as an elected official. It doesn’t get any braver than that.

So, please come tomorrow night, and show him he’s been a force of good in the city.